Adventurer Conquerer King: Session Twenty Four

[james_davis_nicoll]

The party begins to suspect the negotiations with the ogre will not go well when the ogre interrupts Patience to grumbles "I prefer food not to speak."



Sage Renaldo Hashton Bryce
Scout Otho
Vault Guard Iatro Sirequake (NPC)
Former Legionnaire Titus
Cleric Patience (NPC)


Most of the session was an exploration of just how close the party could get to a TPK without actually losing anyone. As Otho discovered after criting a couple of times, the orge had a trick that let him dole out damage comparable to Otho's entire supply of hit points on anyone who managed to critical the ogre. As a result, Otho spent a certain amount of time out cold.

It didn't help that he kept forgetting to activate his ring of protection. Or that he broke yet another bow string, leaving him with one.

(How hard are those to make, anyway?)

At one point, it seemed that the ogre had managed to bisect Reynaldo in one blow but happily Iatro had a trick that let him block a lot of that damage. Less happily this worked by having the dwarf absorb that damage, which left both Iatro and Reynaldo out cold, joining Otho. The two things that saved the group is the fact that there were lots of healing potions on hand and also a cleric to distribute them,


The party barely managed to prevail, with Otho delivering the final blow in the form of a thrown knife after the others had whittled the ogre down. The one up side is the orge turned out to have a cave stuffed with treasure from slightly less lucky adventurers. The down side is everyone was short on hit points, healing potions and recoveries (Otho is at about 2/3rds HP and has one recovery left) and so the party decided to retreat for a time to the relative safety of the monster-infested countryside or rather, the temple since it can be secured.

Sadly, there was a group of evil clerics and their minions - cultists? Monsters? Monster cultists? Between the party and the door. Otho managed to glide past the other side but sadly, other members of the party were not so successful.

A chase ensued, as the PCs hobbled towards the safety of the woods and the flesh eating spiders they conceal. Although he managed to get outside without being seen, Otho deliberately attracts the attention of one cleric and his minions; once they start chasing him, Otho does his best to lead them away from his allies. The plan is to use his superior skill in the woods to pick off the bad guys one at a time before tracking his friends down. How that will actually work remains to be seen.

Comments

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

As you might expect from something widely used in neolithic cultures, bow strings are not that hard to make.

"Flemish twist" is a reasonable search term for traditional (Western-style) bowstrings. It's pretty much exactly twisting (small) rope, and you need suitable thread (good hemp or linen or silk), some wax (beeswax and rosin 3:1 works well) and then some other, finer, thread to serve where the nock goes to reduce the main source of string abrasion. (There are excellent instructions in Adrian Eliot Hodkin's "The Archer's Craft", if you feel like buying a book to commit gruesome verisimilitude with. You might rather like the prose style, it's a nigh-perfect example of its type and uses phrases such as "with which the King's effigy is disgraced" with no irony whatsoever.)

If Otto has got access to some Dacron or Kevlar equivalent (elvish thread-merchants selling spider silk?) you can do modern continuous loop style strings, which aren't recommended with traditional fibres, take a bit more infrastructure (four sticks, in pairs on pivots, instead of two sticks at a fixed distance), and may not be superior in any way to the user but are certainly quicker to manufacture.

Though, really, it sounds like Otto's bow has a serious "sharp nock" probably and should be taken to a bowyer for nock smoothing and a general overhaul.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem here is the PCs have found themselves in the middle of the wilderness, transported by a moving dungeon, when all they were really prepared for was a quick morning reccy lead by a friendly local sheep farmer. They are under equipped and basically running from one set of hideous opponents to another, and even their supply of rations is getting low. Thus, while Otho might find it trivial to restock strings and spend some attention to his gear, that's not nearly so easy at the moment as it might otherwise be.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I've been following along and realize they're stuck way out in the back of beyond with negative logistics. Was more trying to discuss the "how hard is it to make a bowstring?" in the abstract, not as something Otto has any reasonable opportunity to do now. (One is much more likely to bring a couple spares than the manufacturing supplies under "quick morning reccy" conditions, the string-making supplies live with the fletching supplies in general, and it's not a given that an archer knows how to make a bowstring; like arrows, you might well buy from a specialist if you're not trying out for a spot in the White Company or the Black Prince's Archer Guard.)

"Broken bowstring" as a fumble annoys me; broken strings are really unlikely, and if it does happen, it's very likely to break the bow. (Modern composites don't, typically, being massively over-designed; self bows almost always do, pre-industrial hygroscopic-glue, composites are very likely to do so. Same as you can't hold warbow draw self bows for any length of time without risking them breaking, most movies want to show arrows being held at full draw as a threat and you can't either physically or with that gear.) Getting an incoming arrow hitting the bow while the bow is drawn is very likely to break it, too, but "broken bowstring", as an event with no more consequences than having to change the string, is an event of dubious plausibility even for lightweight hunting gear, never mind military bows.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me, belatedly, that we might be able to trade with the spiders for silk with which to make bowstrings. I don't know how good the silk might be (I have vague memories of gut being used for strings if necessary.) Otho can probably find the plants with the good fibers: he's a naturalist-type, after all. I'd think it goes well with his background.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Gut strings are generally inferior to the fibre kind. You can do it, but you need carefully selected, washed, and dried (under tension!) gut and it will react badly to damp weather and just not be as strong. ("Humidity prima-donna") Plus the traditional sources were large animals, elk or bears. Could be exciting.

Naturally occurring fibres have heavy processing requirements; linen fibres have to be rotted out of the plant and then beaten ("retting"), hemp is the same only with more beating (modern processes use live steam!), and then you have to spin the stuff, which means a spindle of some kind. I happen to know that if you can drill a hole in a symmetrical round weight you can use a cut-down arrow shaft to make a spindle, so maybe Otho has that covered. (Could even use the longer part of a broken bowstring for the bow drill to drill out the spindle-weight.)

Silk, silkworm silk, was the preferred (but expensive in the West) bowstring fibre before modern synthetics. (I once made someone working in a large notions store sad by buying spools of heavy silk thread and telling them it was for bowstrings. It made excellent bowstrings.)

Spider silk, from spiders big enough to trade with, strikes me as the best bet, really; spiders can do different grades of the stuff, you want sort of "a little stretchy, no sticky", which might challenge the relative language comprehension a bit. And if you've got something the spiders actively want, maybe the spiders think having an export market is good.