< snip > If Kiera does manage to get that room, I can see her potentially talking Doc into knocking out another section of wall and putting a door straight through to the med supply room for even quicker access. < snip >
< snip > I'm thinking the medbay would be one of those areas that would be completely teleport-warded, except maybe to the properly attuned medic - meaning she'd have to actually use the door, at least for awhile. Still not totally sure how I want the intra-ship short-jumping to work - it's possible that each use draws power, which means Ketra would expressly forbid anyone from using it except for in emergencies.
I'm guessing the following locations would be teleport-warded (except to properly attuned personal): Medbay(attuned: medical officer), Amp room(attuned:engineer), Brig(attuned: security officer), Captain's quarters(attuned: captain), and probably the bridge(attuned: officers). Of course the captain (and anyone he designates) could be attuned to any/all of the above, but it seems like a good starting place
The transport probably would've had some salvageable minor supplies - bandages, gauze, tape, etc... and an emergency wand of cure mod with like 5 charges on it (which I was going to say Kiera may have used while the transport was crashing, but I checked and you don't actually have ranks in Use Tech, so she may not have wanted to bother with it - I've lowered some of the DCs considerably for Use Tech, but with no training and average Int, she probably wouldn't be able to hit it). Kiera was flying pretty much bottom-of-the-line economy class, so there wasn't much onboard as far as comforts and such (imagine the spacefaring version of a Greyhound bus). < snip >
While Kiera can't use the wand yet, Eldrick can, and since he seems the most likely to assist in the medbay, that may be a very good thing to have lying around! Kiera would have collected all the salvageable medical supplies as soon as she had the opportunity: bandages, gauze, tape, etc ... and a wand of cure moderate wounds (5 charges) Those supplies would now be stored in the Medbay's supply closet.
< snip > Incidentally, if anyone has any issues with the backstory/relationships posted above or modifications in how their own character might react, just let me know and I'll modify.
No issues, but an elaboration on Kiera's reactions. She would initially have a rather cold demeanor towards Ketra, and several hours/days later (once she found out about Red's part in occurences) she would also have a rather cold demeanor towards Red.
I can see a confrontation between her and Red (once she learnt of his part in occurences), where she goes down to the brig and and asks straight out .. why ... (@Belabras & Balthanon: A scene will be forthcoming once I have a few more spare minutes - probably later today).
It might be both funny, and appropriate, if Cinevus gave Cara an old hat of his - presented with some ceremony and telling her she's a true pirate now that she has the hat. It would, of course, be too big for her.
Heh. I could see that.
Incidentally, if anyone has any issues with the backstory/relationships posted above or modifications in how their own character might react, just let me know and I'll modify.
The relationship with Roac sounds good but he is currently part of John's crew, though he has dealt with Red in the past.
Kiera stands in the doorway of the medbay. The room is deserted and obviously has not been used for some time. Much of the equipment is in various states of disuse or disrepair and the light in the corner flickers inconsistently. With an inaudible sigh, she begins to clean, mentally assessing and cataloguing the items that are in need of repair or replacement.
Several hours later, the room looks different, clean and sterile, with much of the non-functional and broken equipment collected neatly in a corner, although the roof light in the corner still flickers. One thing hasn't moved, a transparent crystal column filled with what looks like green ectoplasm. At one stage of its life it would have been a regeneration tank, but now it was little more than a paperweight ... a very large and immovable paperweight. Perhaps, if they could obtain the right crystal circuits and the services of somebody with the right competence, it might once again be returned to use. Either way, being built into the medbay, it couldn't be removed, at least not without rebuilding the medbay itself.
With the medbay console inoperative, perhaps due to the lack of an appropriate crystal rod, Kiera takes recourse to visiting engineering in person to request the necessary repairs.
Arriving at the entrance to the Amp room, Kiera knocks politely on the steel door and waits ...
Raising his head, Doc, who was poring over the mysterious box for the thousandth time, pauses. John knows better than this. The crew would use the ship com so... I guess it's one of the newcomers? I hope it's the kid, she seems interesting. As long as she doesn't begin to tinker with the Amps.
She makes her way to the door and mentally opens it, hands at the ready to catch the scrawny kid if needed.
Kiera comes to face-to-face with the androgynous-looking warforged she spotted earlier, lurking in the back when Ketra was delivering his grand speech and his less grand ultimatum to the people captured. Strangely his forearms are raised but he lowers them. His face alters subtly - it does not possess the range of motion that muscles afford. "Oh, it's you. The 'thzerth" she says flatly. The 'gith' at the beginning is not there, but it might be suggested - or it might be an accent.
Doc waits. His patience is legendary, and eventually that ****-sure, deceitful Zerth will tell him what she came for. He does not realize, that even while shorter than the Zerth, he appears to be looking down on her.
The Zerth in question nods slightly to herself, she had not expected an easy integration into this strange crew, and so she resorted to the simply expedient of falling back onto her professionalism. "I have been assessing the medbay and there are certain repairs and replacements that will be required in order for it to it to be serviceable. I understand that you are the person to whom I should submit such requests?" she says plainly.
As she speaks, her eyes light upon the delicate crystal tracery on the warforged's body, and her eyes widen slightly in recognition, though she says nothing on the subject.
"Oh." Whatever Doc was expecting, that was not it.
Now that he's looking at her in a different light, not simply "a Zerth", he finally notices her tattoos. And nods to himself appreciatively. "You a medic? What kind? Where did you train?" he asks, still suspicious, but in parallel Kiera's questions have awoken another part of his brain.
He continues without letting her answer. "It is I, yes. The 'homme à tout faire' as they say" - she uses a Gnomish expression - "the handyman. Well, Yax too I suppose..." she cuts herself off before going off on a tangent.
"I'm not too busy right now" - now that I've contained the damage my fool captain caused - "let me come with you."
Doc motions her to take the lead, out of distrust rather than to be polite. "Let me warn you right away that our supplies are stretched. You'll have to make do. We all do."
And why am I telling this to the spy?
Kiera waits for the warforged to finish speaking before she nods and even as she starts to turn and take the lead towards the medbay, she replies, "I trained at the Academy on Káana'nahil and medical training comprised a part of what I studied there" a brief pause before she responds to the warforged's last comment "I understand. I'm used to making do of late, ... "
As they approach the medbay, Kiera speaks again, "The most essential repairs are the diagnostic equipment and the console. Any equipment that allows me to keep patients alive for even a single day is high priority, from my perspective, and anything else is simply a bonus. I can give you a precise listing."
Walking in through the doorway of the medbay, the first thing that can be noticed is that the floor to the left on the entrance is covered with numerous small non-functional or broken medical paraphernalia, all neatly laid out in some semblance of order. The Zerth gestures "Thats the stuff that doesn't work, and that I don't think is sufficiently useful to be assigned any sort of priority. I don't know if anything can be salvaged out of that lot?", she shrugs, "The diagnostic equipment is over here", she indicates a bed of crystal, "... and of course the console"
Kiera adds "... oh, and if you could do something about that light in that corner, it would really be appreciated", she indicates the flickering light set in the left back corner of the medbay.
There's an hesitation in Doc's step when he hears about the Academy. It's one of the good ones, and even if he doubts most things Zerth it signals some competence on her part.
He listens to her attentively and in silence, filing the tasks away on his never-emptying to-do list.
She starts with the easiest, the light: reaching it in four long strides, she realizes that it's too high for her. Undeterred, she jumps rather ungracefully, her fingers caressing the bulb briefly and lands with a metallic boom. The light has stopped flickering. Doc comes back to Kiera, rubbing her fingers together unconsciously.
She considers the pieces in silence for a time. "It's good that you have knowledge of these: I tried putting some of them back together a while back, but I didn't know what half of them were supposed to do. That made it quite hard."
"I'll allot a worker for you." Before Kiera has time to ask what he means, a glob of ectoplasm begins to take form, seemingly flowing out of Doc's left leg. It soon coalesces into a half-size version of Doc, only with the unmistakable sheen of ectoplasm. It goes to work immediately on the console.
Doc comes to stand next to it and her fingers begin a dance. In no time the top comes off and she starts tapping the crystals inside and probing the connections, sometimes pausing to extract a tool from her belt or asking Kiera about the various settings of the console.
After about half an hour the construct replica zips off somewhere and Doc turns to Kiera again - he has barely talked during that time, answering only laconically her inquiries. "He's gone off to look for some spare parts. I think he can restore basic functionality with just an extra hour of work or so. Then we'll take it from there. I'll drop in on him from time to time."
Part of her brain, all abuzz with the tinkering, has already forgotten she is talking to a Zerth.
OOC: I'm using augments soudou hasn't approved yet... no big deal though, I can change things easily. If Kiera wants to spark a conversation at this point it's fine, or we can call it a day - they have taken each other's measure in some way -, or we can RP a later conversation.
Love the ship, soudou. I think Doc might like more space, not for him but for his stuff, but I saw a power in Hyperconscious (a third-party supplement about psionics) that allows to create "extra room" (think Handy Haversack). She doesn't really have the gold for it, but if you don't mind I'd like to wing it and say she obtained a power stone of it in exchange for some services and then used it on her quarters - it's purely for fluff.
- What are the new Use Tech DCs ?
- Is it ok to have MW Tools for the Repair skill ?
Regarding the restriction on in-ship jumping: it makes perfect sense. And since when there is an emergency you need all the power you can get and/or the system might be more unstable, I'm guessing it's seen very little use. I do intend for Doc to learn Dimension Door at some point... it'll make her job easier!
Why would the medbay get teleport-warding though? Because prisoners are sometimes treated there?
------ @Stormwind: Craft doesn't require training, so Doc is good at all kinds of them. Doesn't matter much though - no need to change your list. I don't think an Inertial Armor psi-like ability counts, but it's no matter. -----
I did add MW trapmaking tools to his gear and a separate line for the corresponding Craft in his skills (no rank invested though) because he is quite protective of his quarters, and now with new people milling about he'll also trap some important parts of the ship - parts under his responsibility like the Amp Room, or secondary "control" panels around the ship if they exist.
I started looking at the trap rules: Doc will make easy-to-detect but hard-to-disable traps that don't injure but instead spray some colored dye (thanks, Minor Creation): detection rather than punishment is the goal. Now, maybe it's not even needed if the whole "attunement" thing works perfectly.
@Balthanon: I have grand plans involving Cara. Scene coming up shortly.
@Thram/Belabras: I liked the Roac/Red C interplay regarding poisons. I think Roac should try to slip Cinevus something mild from time to time then watch his reactions, hoping that this time it works. It may be needlessly "evil" though, not coherent with Roac's prized efficiency.
The relationship with Roac sounds good but he is currently part of John's crew, though he has dealt with Red in the past.
Everyone is now technically -- in the original set up, Roac was one of those listed as being part of Red's crew that accepted John's offer after Cinevus' ship was destroyed though. (My listing of "crews" was intended to be just before the job that soudou wrote about.) That left the crews at least slightly more even, so there was more up in the air with the additional "new" crew members.
I think your scenes still work with the assumption that you just joined the crew-- particularly if you've worked with John in the past like you mentioned after soudou's setup post. I'll change it if you want to go with Roac being on John's ship at the time of the job though-- if that happens, would one of the others switch to being part of the Red crew?
Kino was one of the characters that was up in the air-- would he have been part of John's crew, a passenger on the transport (seems like that might work best so Kiera isn't the only full "victim"), or part of Cinevus' crew?
For starters, your pirate captain, whose name is John Ketra (he's a Yanki who was raised by human parents on some backspiral asteroid), actually owns his ship legitimately, unlike many pirates. The ship is an old, obselete Thunderbird-class Zerth frigate, which was in such disrepair when he found it in an Ix Chel scrapyard that he was able to get it very cheap. I like the idea of him having met Doc very shortly thereafter, and the warforged would go on to help repair, rebuild, and modify the ship to effectively carry freight and such. Obviously a ship needs a good pilot, so they'd probably go out and end up hiring Tilan. (I know, the Firefly analogues are kind of obvious, but I think it's unavoidable.) It's also very possible that Kino could have hitched a ride out on this ship as well, either through knowing Tilan, or just happening across the captain and offering him a bit of money for a ride. We could potentially pick up Yax somewhere along the line as well, given the vague connection between Doc's organization and the undead kingdom.
Then, I like the idea of hooking up Cinevus with Edrick and probably Roac, and have them be the ones that inadvertently picked up Cara (assuming Bal/everyone else prefer her to Bal's thri-kreen). What I was thinking is that Cinevus is actually captaining his own ship at this point, and he and his crew cross paths with Ketra and his. There's at least two ways to go about this: Option 1, Cinevus' ship attacks or is attacked by Yanki patrols and ends up on the wrong side of the battle, Ketra happens by and saves their hides. Option 2, and possibly even more problematic/farfetched? is the idea that both ships somehow end up on opposite sides of the same job and Cinevus' ship is destroyed, but Ketra's nugget of compassion finds him teleporting his defeated enemies onto his own ship before they suffocate and/or freeze to death. I do like the second one a lot, because then in addition to the power struggle of a ship with two captains, you have the constant dull animosity of two guys who have kicked each other's **** before. /shrug
At some point during the first day after Cara's arrival onboard Wakin'yan'...
Doc has finally set aside some time to get to know the newcomers. First in line is the intriguing whelp that seems to flit in and out of existence: she appears in places without ever seeming to be in the ship's corridors.
She takes the girl away from a bout of morose reverie and sits with her in the mess.
"Hey, I'm Doc. What's your name?"
His tone is neutral - not friendly, not condescending like the adults often are with children, not aggressive either.
[insert answer, reactions, ...]
"Ok, Cara, nice to meet you. Tell me if I can help you feel at home while you're with us. So, where are you from and how did you come to be aboard Cinevus' ship ?"
[insert answer, reactions, ... Feel free to use summary mode]
Then Doc goes to the subject dear to his heart. The girl is already awakening his maternal feelings, which could be good or very bad - witness what happened when Doc took young warforged City under his wing. "Do you know your letters?" Then: "What would say are your best skills?"
As she speaks, Doc takes one of the cups sitting around the table with one hand, a hammer from his belt with the other and proceeds to crush the former with the latter in one swift blow. Then she touches the cup, concentrates, and it wobbles back to its original shape. "Mine is fixing things." In the background, Flae snorts.
As a side note I ended up dropping Inertial Armor for Detect Psionics, which an engineer should probably have. If someone ends up learning Inertial Armor (our Erudite?), the manifesters can just manifest it off of his/her knowledge.
That's exactly one of the main reasons I went with erudite/psionic tattoos. Feel free to focus with what you really want on your character. We can gear you up with combat crunch as we go.
I'm close to finishing my sheet & background modifications (from going from seer to erudite). Let's hope I can actually get down to typing it down today. I'll try!
Also, great stories people! I'll see if I can write one of those myself.
Love the ship, soudou. I think Doc might like more space, not for him but for his stuff, but I saw a power in Hyperconscious (a third-party supplement about psionics) that allows to create "extra room" (think Handy Haversack). She doesn't really have the gold for it, but if you don't mind I'd like to wing it and say she obtained a power stone of it in exchange for some services and then used it on her quarters - it's purely for fluff.
Since we're stuffing him into a supply closet, I'd say this is perfectly acceptable. I was just thinking, too - let me know if you think Doc would've added interior doors to connect all of the other supply closets and her own quarters. The idea being he could dash out of his room directly into and through the supply rooms, grabbing parts on his way to the Amp Room (or wherever). The only downside is that it might reduce the amount of usable storage space in the rooms.
Also, I finally had a chance to look over all of your custom stuff, and everything is a go.
DCs for stuff melded in from UMD/UPD are as follows (I'll get this added to the house rules section when I get a minute): - activating wands and dorjes - 15 - using scrolls/power stones - 15 + caster level of scroll/stone - activate blindly - 20 - also, mishaps are not a standard 2d6 damage. I have a table for this. - emulate a race - I'm thinking of bumping this up to DC 30. It makes sense, given how protective most races (particularly the Yanki and Zerth) will be of their highest technology, they'd take extra steps to make it more difficult to use fraudulently.
Use Tech DCs for ships and other tech will probably vary by item. I'm still kinda working on that.
Regarding the restriction on in-ship jumping: it makes perfect sense. And since when there is an emergency you need all the power you can get and/or the system might be more unstable, I'm guessing it's seen very little use. I do intend for Doc to learn Dimension Door at some point... it'll make her job easier!
Why would the medbay get teleport-warding though? Because prisoners are sometimes treated there?
That was one concern, yeah... another would be someone popping in and finishing off injured soldiers/crew who might've been in there. Again, if we go with this attunement system, the medic would be able to pop directly in if need be, bringing a seriously wounded crew member along.
...
Scene coming up shortly.
