Wallstormers #10.03 The Breakthrough

 There comes a time, when the heroes cross the threshold, from struggling to survive, to formidable opponents. This happened at last.

The Threshold

While I had hinted at it, and we explored it a little. the characters who found this out, were lost to badly timed spells, and whisked away before being able to report back what they discovered. Today an explored concept took the next phase.

Weeks ago, maybe months, some explorers dropped a silver coin in a pond that had some blood at the bottom of it. the blood retreated. 

It could have been a copper coin, or a nail, but it was silver. So it retreated.

I've had this happen a few times.. copper coin or tin bit, dropped into blood, no effect. heroes shrug their shoulders and nothing happens.. that was 2017. 

This time, 2026, a silver coin, and it set of a chain reaction of events.

Next, players attempted a silver fork, stab it in the ground, and the blood stops creeping at them. Hmm they said.. weeks pass.

Silver dipped arrow, shot into a blood gate. the create is halted, confused.. the blood hasn't penetrated the wood, but its close enough to cause it pause.

Today, 20+ silver dipped arrows.

Why was it that the zombies were holding back.. why were they not nearby?

The team started bringing in some expensive furniture from the town houses, there were no zombies around.. word had it they're all gone to the Ziggurat gate and started to congregate, so nothing was near the North gate. Perfect timing.

House No.1 was cleared, and almost house number 2, but some strange robed fellow out on the far end of the main road stood and watched.

Kane decided to get closer, taunt the thing, see what was up.

Hammond wasn't in for it, he returned to town. Nope.. not gonna risk it.

Kane got the others to provide backup.. they joked.. sure, we'll just back up a bit more.. they stood 100m on the road behind him.

He approached. 200m from the robed man, with a long staff. a knarled staff, Oh.. Oh no.. too late Kane started running as the man raised his staff and struck the base at the ground, small tendrils under the sandy road snaked their way, impossible fast, rippling the soil. Kane ran faster as they snaked towards him, at the last moment he dodged, dived, rolled and then returned to his feet, not stopping for a second. 

His friends were all already panting, running, escaping. This thing was obviously dangerous.

Someone pointed out, they hadn't finished with the house.. they calmed down, watching the robed fellow from now 1000 of metres away. keeping watch, collected Hammond, they went back to the house.. but as they returned, they saw their path blocked by the robed fellow..

Kane, keeping watch the entire time, exclaimed how he'd not taken his eye off the creature, and there. look it still stood there, but was that.. who was this new one? were there two? more? 

confused, they dropped the tallboy right there in the street and ran.

Jorren called out to the group. He had a key to a secret entrance, "follow me" he said.

A few moments later, they were scrambling at the wall, 

Hammond panicked, not realising or looking for an escape route, he ran down an alley to the gate, but the robed being was there, too late, the sand tendril was send on its way, it caught Hammond by the leg, tore at his flesh, scarred and marked he ran back to his friends.. but they were gone. Hammond threw himself at the wall, "Hey, HEY I'm here, let me in", the crack appeared and a door opened, they pulled him in, and shut the door.

Fingers pressed to his lips, they waited.. then slowly began crawling back along a passage.

Emerging into the daylight. They called it a day. BUT, news would get out about the townhouses and the high quality furniture.. they would have days if they were lucky.

They decided to go for the Ziggurat gate, they hadn't heard the news.

The next morning, ready at the gates, the guards warned them to be ready. They opened the gates.

More than 300 metres away the edge of a horde of zombies stood. cold, slow, moving, but unaware in the light fog. The bulk of the zombies were 500 metres back further, so there was a chance.

Greed possibly took over their sense of preservation, so they made their way to a townhouse. Yet at some point the conversation got to prices of healing, and Hammond required more than he had, to buy a potion of cure-all. So they changed track, and went for a tavern.

Recently, Taverns were paying more and more for acquired bottles, as there often seemed to be a mix between magical potions and fancy alcohols. So a Tavern would likely end up with a few more coins. AND were easier to carry.

They made their way to the taverns back gate, slipped their way inside. The backdoor was blocked by a moat of blood, but the back 2 rooms were accessible from their windows.. IF they could make little to no noise.

The team set about, guarding and watching as the knife experts started removing panes from rotting frames.

As the panes were extracted, it was obvious zombies inside the building were being affected by this powerful pull, they were clawing at the door to get out.. obviously facing the wrong way, Hammond and Bob called over Jorren and got him to shoot them. 

Jorren got out his silver arrows.. This is where things get set in motion..

The arrow not only penetrated the back of the skull, but the blood in the head of the zombie tried to violently retreat, tearing the head off the shoulder and splattering all over the walls.

Jorren was already mid shot of the 2nd and third arrow before he noticed what had happed.

This was not normal.

He walked over to the yard and aimed at the pool of blood.

He shot.

It landed in soil, blood pushed back in a circle from the arrow tip.

Silver arrow tip.

He shot again, deeper, and again.. the blood was pushing back, and gravity was spilling it over, and it happened so fast, it began to steam!

Bob yelped as an arm came out of the window, he raised his short sword, chopping off the arm, but recently he'd had the sword coated in silver.

The arm didn't just come off.. the flesh fled the bones, and turned to soup. he bones fell on the ground, nothing holding them together, the zombies shoulder bones protruded from the flesh, and nothing else remained.

Jorren stepped up pegged 6 arrows into the room and took out the lot. He stood for a few seconds and watched as one, pinned to the wall, melted and dribbled down the wall. 

Hammond had just started to climb into the room, 

It was then that Johnathan yelled back to the group "Hey you GUUUYS!"

Johnathan had climbed the wall to keep watch, and noticed zombies closing in on the back gate.

"GUUYS!!!"

Kane and Bob ran back to the Gate, and opened it, to find more than a handful of Zombies had made their way to the gate. Bob started to push back against one gate, block the way, while Kane hacked into the zombies.. beheading them one at a time. In a quick effort and speedy thought, Bob got out his staff, Hammond a spear, and they pushed zombies back, while Kane slashed a path down the street. Jorren jabbed 5 arrows in the ground, creating a barrier.

But the zombies kept pushing.

Jorren looked on in horror and disgust, but also intrigue and understanding.

The Zombies.. being pushed from behind pushed against the barrier, their feet too close, melted. their bodies crumpled into the arrows and melted some more. Bones fell where bodies landed. and a thick ooze flowed onto the road.. absent of blood. that flowed back into the next zombie behind it.

The gang created a machine. Kane hacking the way at the front, Bob and Hammond pushing them out at the sides, creating barriers, while Jorren created blockades with arrows, He called to the group "Use Silver!"

Johnathan dug his hand into his pocket, and pulled out some silvers.. in another life, this was a weeks pay, This could afford rend, food, and a few drinks on Friday, and here he was.. as he loaded one into the sling.. throwing his money away.

He slung it, expecting it to need as much force as possible, the coin didn't edge into the head of his target as expected, it imploded. as did the zombie behind, and the few behind that..

While shocked, they didn't have time to take in what they just saw.

They burst out into the main street, their escape route at last.. but to the right, hundreds of zombies, and in the lead a zombie centaur, with helm and spear!

Jorren shot at it with arrows, Johnathan let loose with a handful of coin, slung at velocity, the blood curdling screams of the zombies or was it merely the escaping of gasses as they melted.

Johnathan, taking a second look at the spear, decide it was worth it and ran for the spear. grabbed it and ran.

The whole gang ran, the zombies were closing in. they were low on silver bullets, as they neared the gate Johnathan could feel the spear rising in power.. something was going to happen, so he willed it to happen.

The blood drained from his body, the flesh from his skin, the muscle from his bones, the marrow from within, he was barely a skeleton, covered in skin, but a 30ft tall skeleton, his clothes burst from his body, tearing at his flesh, he passed out, and returned to normal.

The gates shut, the party saved. They looked at each other as the naked unconscious Johnathan shrank back to his original size, but not his original health.

They rushed him to hospital, some of them slept there and then, others walked wearily home to sleep.  

 

Fantasy worlds vs Real Worlds, Major Differences!

 We forget often about the flow on effects of everyday life in roleplay games. Treating things like a peer to peer equal of medieval earth, but often in conversations around the table we discover how different things NEED to be, to give that sense of magical whimsy, and make our games feel more live

Magical Worlds Differences

This might be a re-occurring talking point, since it seems to me, most RPG games ignore it, most writers ignore it, most GMs and DMs ignore it, and yet, it should be common and used regularly, and I'm very interested in it enough to deep dive into the whys and hows of these differences.

Lets start with a common one. Lighting, in Towns.

Many magic spells lists have some form of continuous light as a low level spell. Mages need high to very high incomes or wealth to afford the costly materials, so they should be hiring themselves out, even as apprentices, with their abilities that the common public need but can't do.

I see Mages as programmers. Once in the 1990s we realised that 'math' could be done for accountants on a localised PC, average business could transfer their whole systems from paper to digital, do their accounts 10x faster, hire less book keepers, make less mistakes, hire cheaper uni student programmers to make ad-hoc programs to help, to now where we have massive dynamic systems that can cope with billions of businesses details.

Magic is on par with this kind of technology upgrades to lives, depending on your world, and your mages, it makes no sense that supremely high level magic is tied up in a university of spell casters, and the rest of the world is completely unaware of magic. That puts magic back into the University Univac of the 1960s, and what happened back then? people tinkered in their sheds, and invented Microsoft and Apple.

So the world builder need to take into account, where there magic is, Unis and Sheds? the start of Win 95? the dot com boom? 

So lets return to magic lighting. Kids, with some magic talent are born, they get to apprenticeship age, and the schools come say they'll sponsor a kid, but his parents are poor, so the kid needs to earn some living. 

Nearby the nobles are occasionally being robbed by very clever theives, and the guards that are hired, complain they can't properly see by lantern light. someone somehow remembers that continous light is a low level spell, and suggests that mages apprentices are hired to light up street lanterns at nightfall, and again X hours later, when the spell begins to fade (light lamp lighters in the 1800s)

Within a few years, an enterprising Mage, has a 'street lamps' business, where they hire out lanterns that last for 12 hours, being cast by apprentices, charged by apprentices, and the spell improved on by masters to last longer.

Now, noble families sleep better, having paid the lamplighters build for 12hour street lights that also glow red when someone moves nearby, or when someone with a low morale score comes close to their property.

Would theft become scarce if every street had cameras? automated detection systems? face recognition systems? no.. the theives will counter it, IF the worth is high enough to try. So the rogue career doesn't end, it just gets more interesting. 

Another: Light, nearby Healing.

Admittedly, healing isn't usually a low level spell, in some systems, it might be a d4 and stop death, giving the victim enough time to be taken elsewhere for deadlier blows, but the fact that a mortal wound is now negated under controlled conditions.. Warriors can train at full strength, like they do in Anime, not fearing serious damage or death, because one, both or also a nearby priest, has a healing spell that can do enough to pause bleeding or prevent death, giving them time to do greater healing.

So with Two warriors, fighting at full pelt, sure, pulling blows to help the situation, but accidental deaths will be mitigated, reduced to a manageable number, they're learn faster, and be better, much quicker than 'practice bouts' that we have to do.

What DOES light healing do? will it prevent a cold? diahorea? pregnancy? Is the morning after pill as easy as ducking down to the local church and speaking to a priest? There are gods of sex in some games, so surely those participants even have healing spells that prevent pregnancy, and are more than willing to provide that service to the public, (for a coin)

If cantrips that kill diseases and germs can be cast by even non mages, would it make sense that some young hedge wizard or druid or bard is employed at all food markets, to "clense" the tables each morning?

I think you get my drift.. So my idea for a few blogs and podcasts is to go through the general spells lists and discuss how they 'should' have changed your game world, and the continued after affects of generational usage.

Seriously, consider just how a cheap, non consumable, no flammable, light source, would have prevented the fires of Rome, the library of Alexandria, and the effect of those lost knowledge's. If the last 2 thousand years had retained those studies, would technology be leaps and bounds ahead of where we are today?