Friday, May 1, 2009

Campaign: Doings Near The Gospoda Gasthaus

Anshelm and Kazimir begin walking through the city, not in any specified path, but one must assume generally towards the foreign quarter, as this would have the least number of guards, and the most “opportunity” for thieves. They find there many persons weeping for the dead, who are gathered up in a less than sensitive manner, most of these having died by slug. There are perhaps sixty bodies loaded on three carts near the gasthaus “Gospoda.” A teamster is struggling with a mule who refuses to pull, while the other teamsters wait for him to motivate the beast. There are two impatient watchmen urging him to get the beast moving.

Nearby, across the narrow street (it is only 15 feet wide), another, smaller gypsy wagon, pointed the other direction, is being loaded by the members of the house – two sons, a young girl, a mother and father, possibly of Greek, Bulgarian or Egyptian descent, difficult to see which – while a landlord harangues them for rent they owe. The landlord has a “for rent” sign in his hand, which he has not yet put in the building’s window.

9 comments:

  1. Anshelm watches the landlord argue with the Gypsies for a short while.

    He points them out to Kazimir. "This might be an opportunity we could turn to our advantage...what say you?" he says with a slight smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

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  2. Kazimir cracks a very ugly smile. He pops the knuckles on his right hand.

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  3. (OOC: Alexis, you mention the evicted folks loading a "gypsy wagon." Are they, from what we could tell, actually Gypsies? Are the prejudices against them pronounced in this area?)

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  4. They might be Gypsies; the wagon is not actually indicative of that, nor is their possible origin from Egypt. A "gypsy wagon" is merely a small house on wheels, either large or small, fully enclosed and usually with a small window facing forward and another facing back.

    Yes, Gypsies are treated here pretty much with the same disdain one might find in the pages of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Deeply hated.

    It is likely that Kazimir, being unfamiliar with it, forgets that I emailed the following change to the assassin character, the addition of the ability "Ken."

    Ken

    Assassins possess this ability, which is much like the second level cleric’s spell, Augury, with regards to what they may observe about people. The assassin discerns facts about others based upon the clothes they wear, special physical conditions and habits and so on, allowing them to conjecture an individual’s general personality, including their disposition, tendencies, intellect, nature, materialism, honesty, bravery, energy, piety, sanity, occupation and so on.

    The assassin has a base 60% chance, +3% per level above first, of determining correctly any single requested piece of information about another individual from the list provided above. One different piece of information may be known per level—the same piece of information may not be checked about any single individual (if the assassin was wrong today, he will be wrong tomorrow), unless the assassin has increased in level since the last check. If the roll fails, but is within 20% of that needed to succeed, the assassin will make an incorrect judgement about the individual.

    For example, a third level assassin attempts to guess at the occupation of a bar patron, who is a fence selling stolen jewelry. The number needed is a 66% chance; a 73 is rolled. The assassin would then believe the jewel fence to be an actual jeweler—in the ball park, but not strictly accurate. The assassin would not believe that the individual was a coal miner or a peasant.

    As a matter of course, an assassin may look for a person of particular occupation, intellect or other characteristic—in which case the assassin has an equal chance of being accurate, and may attempt to search one time per day. Failure indicates the assassin could not find such a person.

    Another assassin will always have a –7% chance per level of deceiving an assassin’s ken. This modifier is always applied, whether the assassin is aware of being watched or not.

    Ken also allows the assassin a 3% chance per level of guessing the comparative power of an individual; for game purposes, this means the assassin would have knowledge of the individual’s level, or one of the six characteristics of strength, intelligence and so on, hit points or character class (one fact may be known per two levels of the assassin). There is a further 10% chance per level of the assassin guessing within a 3-level or 3-point range of the individual’s actual stats. The individual in question may fall at any point in the range guessed, either the upper, lower, or middle point.

    Example: an assassin guesses the level of an 8th level cleric and fails the first check; the second check reveals the assassin guesses the range, and 2d4 are rolled by the DM (the average, 5, is compared with the actual level), who rolls a 3 (two points below 5). The DM describes the cleric’s level as 6th. The assassin then knows that the cleric must be somewhere between the 3rd and the 9th level. The assassin also knows the chances of accurately being within zero to one level is 63%.

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  5. Kazimir will size up the landlord for his disposition and one of the family members for occupation/gypsy/not gypsy.

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  6. They're not gypsies; checking both sons (failed with the first), you can see that they're from southern Bulgaria, of good ethnic stock. The father's disposition is regretful; he does not wish to go, but he must.

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  7. I'll mutter to Anshelm "Don't think they're gypsies after all... I think maybe they're being run out."

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  8. "Perhaps we should assist...but whom?" says Anshelm...

    (OOC: Sorry for my spotty posting. Lots going on. I hate lawyers.)

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  9. Kazimir will listen in on the argument and try to ascertain more details.

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