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1) Brianna knows she hit a raw nerve by digging into Roy’s past so she focuses on business as it’s less personal. She talks mostly about trade and the Horse clan they’re headed to, hoping to fill Roy in enough to do his work, but also to fill the silence. Roy buries his nose in a book he’s already read as he’s not used to this level of familiarity from non-shepherds, happy for the company but afraid of ruining things. Eventually he can’t resist asking questions in response to Brianna and gets pulled into conversation, and once the conversation gets deep enough Roy feels the need to explain the arm a bit more as he thinks his previous answer was curt enough that it might be considered rude. 2) Roy is lonely sure, but he doesn’t feel ready to resist his outsider status yet. His real problem is inexperience. He’s a fish out of water in an unforgiving land. 3) Both take +1 loyalty. They feel closer as Roy has shown Brianna an endearing vulnerability and Brianna has shown Roy a rare kindness. Roy will need to save experience as he feels the need to buy his own horse rather than risking strain to a potential friendship by continuing to mooch. He’ll also need to save for appropriate clothing and blankets for the environment. I don’t see a justification for improving his Shepherdiness. malbogio fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Apr 19, 2018 |
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Apr 19, 2018 16:13
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Tyrannosaurus posted:But when it comes to troubles... inexperience? Really? That's what we want to go with? Seems a little boring. I'd rather us gain experience through active agency rather than just the ol whoopsie daisy I done hosed up and stumbled into something cuz I cant derr figurr out these darned kooky customs I’d be interested in a more active phrasing of the problem than inexperience, but it also seems like the trouble most firmly established by the narrative thus far and the one most likely to cause Roy serious and repeated problems in the near future, especially given how reserved and cautious he seems at the moment. Once we hear more of Roy’s backstory and see more of his personality in play we can change the trouble to something more exciting as his newbishness falls into the background before disappearing entirely.
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Apr 19, 2018 16:43
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jagadaishio posted:So, I'm voting for Brianna's identity crisis, because that conversation left Roy feeling good but hit one of Brianna's fault lines. +1
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Apr 21, 2018 14:02
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Ice Phisherman posted:The implication as she was the only Shepherd for the entire county is that no, she wasn't. I'm going to be expanding more on what that means in later updates. From the first post: “"One of your guild mates from a neighboring county came by to judge him and picked up the slack while you were being sent. I saw to his burial. It was a shame. I liked Shepherd Mathers. He was a good man," she said.”
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Apr 23, 2018 06:56
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Toughy posted:Why did Mathers have to commit suicide? Maybe an eternal sentence to the fiery lakes is forbidden. It sounded like most sentences to the fiery lakes were far shorter. I was assuming the suicide was to prevent interrogation. The gunshots into the dead spiritless body were almost certainly through the stab wounds to remove traces of Bri’s presence. That Bri and Mathers didn’t discuss running suggests that Mathers knew they’d already signed their death warrant. Unsure if that was for the murder of someone powerful though or for a taboo which was broken in the process. That Bri’s acts of self defense would need to be so thoroughly concealed suggest the judged was particularly powerful. I wonder if Iron Hill lost a mayor or member of the mayor’s family recently.
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Apr 23, 2018 07:46
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Ice Phisherman posted:drat, screwed something up. No worries! The writing is superb. I’ve been digesting these as they come out and preloading Blake’s on my phone for when I have no internet. Would note though that in the first post Bri says Mathers was already judged but the quoted response suggests Mathers wasn’t judged yet, so was wondering if going back for a retcon would be better for the story or if Bri was just being an unreliable narrator (she appears to have plenty of secrets to keep after all).
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Apr 23, 2018 08:27
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1 & 4. Bri asked for space, we can respect that for a while until curiousity gets the better of us. I wonder if Bri’s grandmother is still alive too.
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Apr 25, 2018 07:47
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sheep-dodger posted:The horse maiden burns a ton of love and fertility incense using the stallion figurine, Roy will be "blessed" with being a lot more attractive to everyone in the next few days. Let's mess with the loner. +1. With an emphasis on attraction directed at Roy. We like him but he’s a spirit thief on our land so he deserves to be pranked.
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Apr 26, 2018 16:13
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1) Take her to the homestead. We need to check on her family and at least she has a bed and people to help nurse her there. She doesn’t know anyone in town and we’ve seen no indication that they’re prepared to take care of her; the closest thing they have to a doctor is a midwife who is currently occupied. If we take her to town then her family might exhaust themselves searching for her or get lost in the badlands instead of being able to help us. 2) 10 years. Remember we have very little information about how involved Aunt Mable was in the kidnapping and manslaughter and unfortunately we can’t ask her about it. We don’t know if Mable or Peter came up with the kidnapping plan. We don’t know if Mable or Peter implemented it. We don’t know if Mable or Peter killed the mother. For all we know Peter was the driving force behind it all and Mable was just trying to survive, make the best of a bad situation, and take care of her only surviving relative. Given the scarce notes and unreliable accounts we have right now there is a version of this story in which the worst things Mable did were to draw the attention of a violent man, annoy that man by crying too much after a miscarriage, and not killing that man in his sleep to avenge her sister. Then again do we even know how Peter died? It’s not like she would have confessed a murder to Maureen. If we’re going for such a lengthy sentence in the future I’d prefer to have more than a vague secondhand account from a habitual liar and passing comments from a half-mad ghost to go by. malbogio fucked around with this message at 10:58 on Apr 30, 2018 |
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Apr 30, 2018 10:50
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RickVoid posted:I'm actually almost tempted to add seckbd counts of involuntary manslaughter and kinslaying to Mabel's case, given that if she had given up the child at Maureen's insistence said child would not have been trapped in a plague house. So 125 years. I don’t get why everyone is rushing to apply maximums of decades of torture when at worst Mable committed a crime once out of desperation. For all we know though the gem of a husband could have been coercing her along or just blaming her for motivating his actions. There is still a reasonable chance that she is innocent and just did her best to take care of the niece her husband stole. Our information is shoddy, far from what it would take for a verdict of guilty beyond reasonable doubt in any modern court (and those still convict innocents with troubling frequency). Maybe we should worry more about the possibility of sentencing an innocent to burn for decades than of failing to sufficiently punish a criminal who showed no malice.
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Apr 30, 2018 14:21
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CourValant posted:Yes, Mable buried Joy, however, she doesn’t appeared to have shown any contrition in life as she kept Joy and Marshal Horseshit didn’t get involved (Mable didn’t confess to the crimes). Yeesh. Multiple people now want to go above the maximums when these aren’t even the worst versions of these crimes. You’re punishing her extra for not wanting someone to burn in hell and for wanting to take care of her niece. As a reminder these are potentially selfless acts that you are punishing her for. As for not showing contrition we can’t even be sure she was guilty. The evidence is paper thin. The settlers appear patriarchal so for all we know Uncle Murder committed all the crimes and Aunt Mable was another one of his victims with Stockholm Syndrome, in which case Aunt Mable was innocent, no kinslaying actually happened, and we’re sentencing an innocent person to being tortured for twice as long as she got to live. Don’t expect Ice to tell us when we’re sentencing someone who was falsely accused.
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May 1, 2018 00:19
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cigaw posted:Roy not only has the written account of another Shepherd - a journal is certainly not a binding document but why would she lie on thing? - but also first-hand account from the little girl. I’m not saying Maureen lied. I’m saying she’s fallible, her only source of information was a pathological liar, and her notes could fit on a post-it. Joy was probably a toddler when she was taken. I’d bet her recollection was fuzzy to nonexistent even before she became a half-mad ghost. I suspect her story was based on an argument she overheard between Mable and Maureen and a fantasized Real Mom who would treat her like a princess and wouldn’t ask her to perform the difficult chores necessary for survival rather than any real memories. Witnesses suck at telling the truth even when they’re sane and trying their hardest. Memories are not a solid thing, we rewrite them each time we recollect them. malbogio fucked around with this message at 04:51 on May 2, 2018 |
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May 2, 2018 03:33
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JesterOfAmerica posted:I not too sure on this but I think the second trouble is Brianna's Guilt from Maureen's Death. Agreed guilt/self-loathing can be a very dangerous thing as it leads one to take unnecessary risks both to stay busy & distracted from your own thoughts, and because you maybe think you deserve some suffering.
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May 4, 2018 13:04
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We blame Ignacio. The years in which we'd bite our tongue are long over and they can't exile us twice. What's the worst that could happen?  Our second trouble is honesty. We aren't looking to rehabilitate the image of Shepherds as it's well earned and people are better off being wary of us. We've seen enough injustice and corruption to be sickened by it. We won't just refuse bribes, we'll also refuse gifts and favors as they might influence or be perceived as influencing our decisions. We won't just tell the truth, we'll speak up when silence would be the safe and prudent course. This trouble strikes me as more immediately relevant because we are heading away from Iron Hill and its settlers. I doubt the people of the River Clan are acquainted with any Shepherd other than Shepherd Mathers, so I wouldn't expect them to prejudge Roy as corrupt.
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May 16, 2018 22:06
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CourValant posted:Honestly? Repeatedly pissing off an army of corrupt judge/jury/executioner necromancers might have a downside? You don't say. I just think Roy would totally do it anyway or he wouldn't have been exiled in the first place.
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May 16, 2018 22:32
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Shepherds probably make for the nastiest demons, quickly taking control of the simulation like a lucid dream. I'd bet the guild keeps Shepherds as priority targets for judging, and that it typically gives even corrupt members a free pass to the fields. Both to assure cooperation from potent ghosts and to reinforce the fraternal structure of their organization. I wonder if some ghosts can stay sane indefinitely. I suspect it works more like rewinding and fastforwarding a cassette over and over where before long it always devolves to noise. Shepherds seem a lot better than necromancers, but still.... ASAB.
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May 17, 2018 02:11
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Xarbala posted:Okay, Ignacio was pulling double duty at the time, that explains why some stuff slipped through the cracks. Ice Phisherman posted:"So there was another Shepherd that came through about two weeks ago," said Tina, coolly. The only two examples of good Shepherds we've seen (Roy & Mo) were exiled. Lazy & corrupt Shepherds seem to be the norm. You say Iggy let "some stuff slip through the cracks" but we've yet to find evidence that he performed his duty in this county at all. malbogio fucked around with this message at 02:18 on May 18, 2018 |
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May 18, 2018 02:15
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