Rac'cona: Between worlds [Fanfic RP- full, no more players]

[StrangeWulf13]

He smiled and drew up an extra stool, sitting down on it between the smith and Archivist, his mouth in a smile that didn't touch his eyes. He turned to Kyvan.

"I'm sure they are. It's why I came over. I thought, y'know, the more, the merrier." He looked over to the kit, his eyes sharp and watchful. "Why don't ya take off yer cloak lad? I'm sure the tavern's warm enough to keep you dry without it. You'll be sweating soon enough if you aren't already."

Movement caught his eye and he glanced over. His smile disappeared altogether. Great. Just what he needed: that silly priest. He sat back and watched the lad approach, sighing mentally at his frustration. Last thing he needed was someone arguing theology with him.

"Might wanna order some drinks and pull up another seat... looks like this is the place to be tonight."

[Kerry Skydancer]

Falcon looks at the newcomer coolly. "You're not planning to start any brawls, I hope?" He shakes his head, then looks up with more interest as the bookish priest comes over. "Andrew. Decided to join a conversation, have you? Did you hear what I said about my delivery schedule?" He makes a space for the young fellow between him and the kits.

[Starfury]

Andrew caught the glance of the other newcomer, and was tempted to cut and run back to his books regardless of the bartenders wishes, but that was cut short with Falcons question. "Something about a priest heading to the Gragum?" he replied, pulling up a chair. "I had heard, but thought it was just a rumur."

[Aurrin]

[deleted]

[Starfury]

OOC: BTW, I am completly new to this type of thing.. so please bear with me...

[Aurrin]

OOC:

*blinks* You're new at this? Coulda fooled me. Don't worry, you've got a good talent for it, it would seem.

[StrangeWulf13]

OOC: You're overlooking the obvious. An elf shot gun. Y'know, Quentyn's little toy that doesn't quite work right? She might've been able to scrounge an old one up. Might not work the same as Quentyn's, but it'd be effective enough... so long as you let the rest of us get out of the way first. =P

Oh wait... you're pointing that at me. >.>;; Nevermind.

IC:

"Hmmph. Some loony priest goes off to 'convert' the gragum and suddenly he's the talk of the Seven Villages. Bah." He looks over at the newcomer. "And what do you mean you heard a rumor? He's only been planning the darn trip for a year!" He leans back, going silent, his small plans having been somewhat ruined, but it didn't bother him. He intended to know what the kit was hiding. Every Guardsman knew that if Adam went after something, he usually got it. One way or another, he would know.

[Kerry Skydancer]

Falcon shrugs. "He's actually gone and done it, though. I've got a couple letters for him. Should be an ... interesting delivery." He leans back and sips his wine, eyeing the ex-Guard. "So what does bring you out here, Adam? Seems a bit far from your usual haunts."

[RHJunior]

OOC:


Y'know, on reconsidering, I'm not sure it's entirely infeasible for one of them to wield something of lethal caliber. Muscle doesn't scale linearly in strength, nor does bone, so being 2/5 of a human's height doesn't imply 2/5 strength. .

But that doesn't change the fact that she's about the size of a human toddler... a typical handgun would break her wrist and throw her around like a ragdoll---- assuming she could lift it and hold it in a firing position in the first place. And a handgun small enough for her to wield would be little more than a B-B gun.... an annoyance at best.

I can see someone specializing in non-lux-powered technology. However, if she really regards using Lux as "cheating" than she's more unusual than you realize. Lux is their civilization's Electricity, and someone who regarded it as "cheating" would be as unusual as someone living in New York City who regarded using electric lightbulbs instead of candles and getting water without working a pump handle as "cheating."

A possible work around for her gun, though, would be to replace the bullets with explosive cartridges. Of course this makes carrying the thing a whole new kind of hair-raising excitement, seeing as their alchemical explosives tend to be on the less-than-stable side--- either losing potency or becoming more "touchy" with age. This, on top of the fact that early generation firearms were not particularly ACCURATE....

Plus, she might have to shoot off at least one warning shot in every new town she goes to. See, one of the things about guns is that they don't exactly intimidate people who don't know what they are. (Her handgun might be mistaken for an elfshot pistol of some sort---- but even Quentyn's isn't really meant to deal real lethal damage to anything larger than birds or rats. Sorry, guys, but that's the case. It'll pepper you with needles--- which will hurt like heck--- but it wouldn't kill or incapacitate. A rac conan mugger would look at it and laugh in your face.)
As much fun as it'd be to have her walk into every situation, wave her gun overhead and yell "Alright, you medieval screwheads. This is my BOOMSTICK!!"
I don't see it happening.

Final consideration: every single feature of that firearm in her lap--- the bullets, bullet casings, the clip, the trigger mechanism, the firing pin, the action that ratchets another bullet in place--- all of it is pretty much *brand new, untested technology with no precedent in her society.* (Boomslangs generally fire balls or grapeshot, use loose powder, and use an odd variety of cocking, loading and priming mechanisms. ) The odds are pretty good that this young inventor has seriously miscalculated the consequences of pulling the trigger on that thing. There are about a hundred different ways it could jam or misfire, a couple dozen more that it could explode in her hands, and a good probability that she miscalculated how much propellant the bullets need and the cartridge will either burst the barrel or send the bullet barely across the room.


Look, you're trying to shoehorn a high-powered semiautomatic handgun into a society that barely has breech-loading flintlocks, and thanks to their magical technology really has no motivation for developing handguns in the first place. Fraid it's not gonna quite work...

[StrangeWulf13]

"Eh, I came out this way to check up on an old Guardsmen friend of mine. Lives in Freeman Downs, and said he had something for me to look at. So, I packed a few things and headed out, only to get caught in that bloody storm... er, sorry, lad." He seems a bit ashamed swearing around someone so young, but he let's the moment pass. He ordered a couple more drinks, something a not quite as hard as his previous ones, trying to keep his wits sharp. He added a bowl of stew to his order and paid the waitress the necessary fee.

"Wish the darn thing would let up. I've got to travel in the morning, and I don't look forward to muddy roads." He sighs and taps his fingers on the table. "Questors, loony priests, and blizzards... only way my day could get more irritating is if I found some miscreant hiding right under my nose." He gives the briefest of glances to Rayne before looking towards the kitchen, waiting for his order.

[Astral]

Rayne had remained remarkably quiet, merely shaking his head when Adam had suggested he take his coat off. He seemed to retreat inward when the guard gave him that look, the look that said

[Mjolnir]

"These are interesting time, no doubt," Kyvan said, "but I'm sure the weather wizards will have everything straightened out by morning. I know I'm not looking forward to trudging home tonight in this mess."

Kyvan finishes his mug and stands up, "In fact, I think I'll see what the lodging situation is here for the night. I'm sure the rooms have to be filling up with a storm like this."

Kyvan walks over to the bar, heavily patting Adam's shoulder on the way.

"How many rooms to you have open for the night, my friend," he says to the bartender.

"I've got two private rooms left, and some room in the bunk room," the bartender says, then lowers his voice, "I know the weather's bad tonight Kyv, but you know as well as I that you can't really afford to stay."

"I know," Kyvan says, equally low, "But I'm not going to leave Rayne here on his own, and taking him to my house would probably make him even more frieghtened. Can we work out an arragement?"

The bartender smiles, "When haven't we been able to work out an arrangement? So you want one of the ..."

"Both," Kyvan interupts him, "Kathryn needs a room, too."

"Then she can pay..."

"No," Kyvan interupts again, "I know that look. I'll work it off."

The bartender gives him a long, hard stare. "Fine," he says, finally, reaching under the bar, "Here are the keys." He hands Kyvan two room keys.

"You're sure about this?" he asks Kyvan.

"No," Kyvan says with a smile, "But I do know it feels right."

Kyvan walks back to the table.

OOC: I'm assuming that the rooms require keys, but I could be mistaken.

Also OOC: I've never done a RP situation like this, either. I have, however, done several Play By E-Mail games, and this is similar.

Also Also OOC: I'm assuming that some conversation happens while Kyvan's at the bar, so I'll hold my action on getting back to the table to give the others a chance to respond.

[DracoDei]

Semi-OOC:
For reasons of his own, my character is carrying no Lux-active items right at this moment. Also, StrangeWolf's character (OOC:what IS your character's name anyway, I skimmed but couldn't find it.) might have noticed that my entire outfit, although visually attention grabbing, is, from a noise POV built for stealth. He also seems to move with habitual silence, although he tends to be rather brash in vocalization.


OOC: I should have mentioned about the clothes before, as soon as Strangewolf started posting his character's having been in the gaurd and his paranoid nature, (what IS your character's name anyway, I skimmed but couldn't find it???). Also two ideas for the artificer: 1.) You might want to consider making the bullets poisoned in some way. Just coating them wouldn't be enough, they might have to hollow, and filled with the stuff... could be something you cooked up in alchemy lab, could be venom milked from an animal(if that would keep...). 2.) Your character might have no problem USING lux-crafted stuff, but she might prefer to NOT go that route when making her own stuff... this might be no more unusual than an architect who preferes the feel of a T-square in their hand to a CAD system, or someone who prefers to use no power tools when making wooden scuplture or their own furniture.

[Aurrin]

[deleted]

[Kerry Skydancer]

Falcon just rolls his eyes at the 'miscreant' comment. "Then ye'd best not go looking for one, Adam. It's not like they advertise, after all." He shrugs, and turns back to Andrew. "Do you think the fellow's actually got a chance to convert them?"



OOC: Falcon, though an archivist, is -not- a clerkish sort. Remember that that guild also covers security and communications functions; the little fellow is an armed courier. Kenning him will pick up a pendant with a situational awareness enhancement; he's almost impossible to sneak up on. The crossbow is enhanced for accuracy, and back in his room (an experienced traveller, he grabbed one as soon as he arrived) is a cloak with some weather-protection built into it - but not enough to repel a full-bore blizzard. It'll keep him reasonably dry and comfortable in a rainstorm, though. He's got a few holdout knives as well as the obvious weapons he's carrying, as well.

[Starfury]

Andrew was still trying to catch up. The guy was planning this a year ago?
"A chance, yes. I would always say there is a chance for converting someone. It's kind of hard to say though. We don't really know much about the Gragum..." Andrew then seemed to talk to himself. "A year ago. I gotta get out more."


OOC: Sorry it took so long to reply, I'm on hte west coast in college... So their may be some odd breaks in my "conversation."

[DracoDei]

Barnard is torn between getting in on the conversation with the group that includes several duel-worthy persons, or practicing his air control some more with the unusual conditions... hmmm.... well, no contest really. Duels could happen any time, but this storm would not be repeated again any time soon (or his family was either going to get a long richer, or a whole lot poorer). He pulls on his weather gear (whicch, like everyone else's, is not really adequete to the task), and steps outside to join battle with the storm, leaving the door open wide behind him. Immediately the winds in front of the door fall to zero in a hemisphere about 10 paces in diameter, and in fact, (as before) the cold does not enter the building. The snow sometimes falls steady, sometimes turning to mist (apparently without passing through the rain-drop stage first). Barnard intensifies his focus and reaches for his juggling balls.

[RHJunior]

OOC:

First off, yes it's ahead of it's time. That's the point. She's supposed to be the archetypical mechanical genius inventor who's ahead of her time.

You're misunderstanding what I'm saying, I think.

I'm not just saying that a semiautomatic pistol is ahead of it's time; I'm saying that it constitutes <I>several dozen</i> mechanical innovations, each one further ahead of its time than the last. Going from a crude approximation of a flintlock gun to semiauto pistol constitutes, literally, about 400 years of gradual innovations in firearms.... and a lot of false starts, bad leads and dead ends to boot.

Consider: the rifled gunbarrel was introduced in 1540. Then came the matchlock, the wheel or "rose" lock, then the flintlock in 1630. Breechloading in 1689. Safe and effective methods of manufacturing revolving chambers dates at 1810-1820. The copper percussion cap clocks into the picture around 1814-1816, and wasn't in universal usage until around 1826. rimfire cartridges, 1835. Pinfire cartridge, 1840. The Colt revolver was introduced in 1851. Center fire cartridges in 1852.

The true Center fire cartridge, as we know it today, did not make an appearance till 1861.

The box magazine was patented first in 1879.
The automatic pistol first appeared on the market in 1893.

That's over four centuries of accumulative innovation. <I>Four centuries.</i> Mind, all of the above doesn't even take into account the parallel steps in chemcial science from sifted to granulated (or "corned")black powder(which increased its power, and thus forced advances in gun design--!) to smokeless powder to guncotton and other bullet propellants...

Each and every feature of that gun she's wielding took decades to perfect, even with all the other prior design features having been perfected beforehand.

Even if she had recieved the entire design for the gun in some sort of whole-cloth cosmic vision, without any of the intermediary steps between, the odds against her taking that many seperate and paralleled innovative and conceptual leaps, designing, crafting, and integrating them, and getting them to work together <I>all at the same time</i>, are staggering.

Especially since she would have to hand-craft every piece herself, to specifications, and probably mix the propellant herself to boot....

The end result--- well, ever seen that episode of "The Simpsons" where Homer Simpson tried to design a car?

All this on top of the fact that she lives in a society where there is no reasonable motivation for this sort of invention. It's the Questorverse equivalent of that guy who invented the Grizzly Bear Proof Suit. (Must've been one helluva field test. Step one: Punch Grizzly.)

As to those individuals who were "ahead of their time": I'm assuming you're thinking of blokes like Leonardo Da Vinci. Hate to be the one who points it out, but for every feature of Leonardo's designs that were "ahead of their time," there were a dozen or so features that never would have survived practical experimentation. Yes, he designed a "helicopter." But thanks to the corkscrew propellor design, even with a modern motor, it never would have gotten off the ground. He designed a battle tank, of sorts, powered by cranks--- but the rear wheels were geared backwards. He designed air-tanks for diving underwater, and a two-man submarine, and anyone who used either would have suffocated. many of his other inventions had similar gratuitous flaws.

Had Leonardo da Vinci actually built all his machines, rather than contenting himself with merely sketching ideas for most of them, he would probably be hailed today not as a man ahead of his time but as a historical example of a failed inventor. But, the world being as it is, you can create all the THEORIES you like on paper, never make any practical applications of them, and be hailed as a great intellectual.

[Kerry Skydancer]

Falcon glances out the open door, past the weather-mage into the storm. "I don't think getting out more is a good idea right at the moment, though. Maybe after the storm passes?"

[Aurrin]

[deleted]