Saturday, February 10, 2018

The River Tunnel

The journey through the darkness is unnerving.  After the boat hits the first rock in the river, Engelhart realizes he will need to move to the prow, with the lantern, and hopefully call the rowers to move the boat to the port or starboard.  The boat is, thankfully, responsive, and thankfully Lothar is conscious and has good instincts.

Still, from time to time, it is impossible to keep from striking a wall on either side of the passage.  The boat takes these hits fairly well, but the for the injured, every jar is a seizure of pain where they have been recently wounded.

The river goes on, and on, for well past an hour.  Time begins to lose meaning.  Engelhart, however, grows more and more sure that he can smell salt water.

Without warning, the boat is seized by a current.  There is no warning, no sound of rapids ahead ... but soon after, the make-shift oars are nearly ripped from the hands of Lothar and (most likely) Willa.  The boat swings around, moving faster and faster.  It flies towards a wall, but just before it hits a new current grabs it, pulling the boat sharply to the right.  Then again, the boat turns, and is pulled to the right, now inches from the opposite wall.

And so it goes for seven heart-stopping rounds ... and then, again without warning, the river slows. The boat steadies and the speed of the current settles.

"Is that a light?" calls Willa, pulling Lothar's attention from his oar, and Engelhart's concern from the unconscious wounded.  "Quick, Father, douse your lantern."

28 comments:

Engelhart Askjellson said...

I douse it.

Alexis Smolensk said...

You do perceive a light; it is far distant, and takes a long, long time to approach ... but it does seem to be an exit.

Lothar Svensson said...

Lead us towards the light, o Cleric.

Engelhart Askjellson said...

I paddle along as best I can.

The rapids dash our hopes of making a later return by this egress, but I'm still certain the Store Stokka must have some outflow that will lead us to that same landing spot, maybe we can use it for a discreet return visit.

Lothar Svensson said...

I'm thinking we've stumbled upon a backdoor that the army would be excited to know of, perhaps they might have better resources than us to launch an amphibious assault. ;)

Engelhart Askjellson said...

I know, but I'm a glory hog. I want to buy us a couple of lightweight boats and come back on our own.

Fully healed and levelled, we can come back and barge into a tidy fortune.

I mean, if the goddamn *kitchen* was what it was, imagine what the actual treasury might be like!

Alexis Smolensk said...

[Sorry, sorry ... things have come up]

The boat will drift towards the light. Sure enough, the river opens into a cleft between two high cliffs, a hundred feet above you, soaked in spray. For a time, the boat is protected by the shape of the tiny fjord, but you're soon exposed to a fresh breeze from the south, with white horses forming on top of the waves on the sea in front of you.

Thankfully, the wind into blowing from the west, else there might be waves surging into the cleft, threatening to tear you apart. But on this day, still May 5th, a Thursday, very late in the afternoon, you're relatively safe as the boat emerges out between two stony headlands, left and right.

As you try to paddle towards one, however, to perhaps catch your breath and take stock of the coast, you feel the boat being pulled faster and faster past the headlands, and into the sea. You're caught in a rip tide.

Alexis Smolensk said...

The headland will be, perhaps, 40 feet from the boat before you move past it. It's clear the planks are not going to do the job of pulling you closer to it.

Engelhart Askjellson said...

Can we see some protuberance where a well-aimed rope lasso can arrest our progress?

Alexis Smolensk said...

The rocks, beaten by the sea for millions of years, are smooth and round and wet.

Engelhart Askjellson said...

Ok...

Can we fix the planks at an angle so as to make a rudder of sorts, steering the boat to the side until we're clear of the undertow?

Alexis Smolensk said...

The planks don't have enough surface area for that, and the boat simply isn't that yar.

Engelhart Askjellson said...

The wind is south to north, right?

Can fashion a makeshift sail, even if short-lived? Just needs to be enough to get us out of the current.

Alexis Smolensk said...

A sail would need a mast to be effective; to pull the boat out of the current, it would have to be fixed to the boat in some manner that it would catch the wind, and create the necessary drag to change the boat's heading.

Engelhart Askjellson said...

How about we use ourselves as anchors for the sail?

Distributing weight: Me and Lothar to one side, hefty Bergthora and Fjall to the other, makeshift fabric sail amid us?

Otherwise... les'see... We have pots and pans, right?

We can maybe tie some rope netting with them and use them submerged as an anchor point of sorts to generate some water drag, enough to change our course?

Alexis Smolensk said...

Think of the weight of the boat below the waterline being the amount of water that's displaced; so, the weight of that part of the boat that is below the surface, plus all your equipment, and your combined weight ... and all that has to be moved by the wind.

So, could your character hold onto a billowing sail that had enough force to pull all of that weight along with it?

Engelhart Askjellson said...

No, sir, I'm grasping here.

Let's just say I'm open to suggestions... can be as simple as letting it ride further out to sea and then making progress from there.

Anything obvious that might have escaped the seasoned mariner (that I'm not)?

Engelhart Askjellson said...

(The ring??)

/grasping

Alexis Smolensk said...

Willa says she would swim for it with a rope ... if she could swim. But the boat would be long past the last rock by the time she swam for it, so that wouldn't work.

Sorry, Engelhart. I'm playing off your despair, as you helplessly drift out to sea ... watching the land steadily get farther and farther away.

My next question is going to be, how much food do you have?

Engelhart Askjellson said...

Well, I figured swimming to be a non-starter, and the question of whether any rocky outcrops were present where a rope could be affixed also negated the option of going there with a rope.

[I figured that there was nothing to be done from the start but since you kept giving thrift, I kept trying.]


I have no food on me.

Lothar Svensson said...

And I suppose we'll be too far out for it to make it reasonable for Engelhart to divest himself of his armor and swim us back...

As we were going on a scouting mission and I'm a skinny little elf who starts losing AP at 19 lbs, I left all my heavy foodstuffs back with the donkey. And the army. And of course I've left all my fishhooks and twine back there as well.

I really hope Embla or Pandred with their greater carrying capacities have some food in their gear. Or at least some fishing gear.

We might be just as boned as if we stayed back with the frogs.

Question time (and if any of the answers are "you have no way of knowing", I guess I'll take what I can get: What side of the mainland are we on? I have it in my head that we came out the west coast and are heading out into the North Sea. I imagine the undertow will stop having an effect on the boat at some point, and we'll be able to paddle ourselves along at that time correct?

My thought is we start paddling north and east, eventually we'll come back in sight of land and hopefully a calm shore that won't be actively pushing our boat away.

Pandred said...

No food here my friend. I had a squire for those purposes, who wisely high-tailed it out of there.

Alexis Smolensk said...

[home at last]

The hirelings have about six pounds of food between them. There's always the unexpected.

Your estimation of your position is probably correct, Lothar. There are thin clouds covering the sky, but you can just make out the sun in the general west. You'd guess its about quarter of six; the temperature is brisk and tolerable, particularly for a bunch of Norwegians and one Pole.

Six pounds of food won't go very far. You've all fought today and you're craving a hearty meal ... but you're not going to get it. You can still see land, but once getting your bearings and, as guessed, falling out of the rip tide, the land is at least a mile and a half away. You try to paddle, but without your full strength, and beaten down by the fight, and bleeding, you all eventually give out from exhaustion. Fjall and Bergthora fall asleep. Willa offers to keep watch. If the cleric gets some sleep, perhaps he can cast once he's rested.

Engelhart Askjellson said...

I turn in for the evening, then.

Hopefully the morning will bring good tidings to this ragged company.

Alexis Smolensk said...

I hate to drag this out, but is there anything Lothar wants to say before six to seven hours pass, so that Engelhart is rested enough?

Warning: without proper sustenance, living on less than half rations, there should be effects. I haven't made rules for this specific situation; I can't even go to forced march rules, as I've not written those down, either.

[This is a situation where I'm forced to make a ruling out of the blue; and I hate that. Wouldn't you as players prefer a rule already existed?]

I'm going to keep effects at a minimum. I'm guessing the party has no fresh water, either ... which is effectively going to dehydrate the party, too. Your stats will drop 10% per day without food, unless a constitution check is made. Water is more severe: 10% for the first day without water, then 30% for each day after that (and no saving checks)

Lothar Svensson said...

I'm out of other ideas, at this point we've made our bed and will have to endure whatever the cruel sea throws at us.

The hunger rules sound pretty on par for reality, and aren't terribly different in their severity from the ones I use in my game. Hunger is endurable for a time however unpleasant, dehydration brings death in only a few days. I am willing to be subject to that call.

Alexis Smolensk said...

I have rolled Lothar's sage abilities and it happens that he has cracked the authority level as a scout. That gives him a skill called "water discipline" ~ for which, again, I haven't specifically written out rules. But you can read about the actual real life skill here:

http://daily-survival.blogspot.ca/2009/01/water-discipline.html

I believe I'll play it that Lothar will lose nothing the first day, 20% the second day, 30% the 3rd day and 50% on the 4th day. This way, he doesn't live longer, but he endures the dehydration process more easily.

Alexis Smolensk said...

The next post is up.