Michelangelo - Friendly Capoeirista
Roberto King - Murderous Dagger Fighter
Dan da Ying - Helpful Eagle-Stylist
Sumo Struggle
Big Po made an All-Out (Double) Sweep, but missed both, and Tetsu Slammed into him, knocking Po out cold. The two tougher thugs outside continued to Slam at Michelangelo, but he managed to dodge, and all the other gangsters except for them and Tetsu were out cold on the floor of the Happy Rancher Saloon. Roberto gave into his Bloodlust and started stabbing the fallen, while Dan saw Po get knocked out and started moving towards the door.
Michelangelo kicked one of the thugs' feet, but failed to cripple it, Acrobatic Dodged one thug's grapple, and critically parried the other, sending him to the ground. Dan continued shuffling away, but heard Tetsu's heavy footfalls behind him as the sumotori charged in for a Slam. Michelangelo kicked at the prone thug's skull, but his foot only bounced off as the thug regained his knees, and the other dropped into a Wait.
Michelangelo broke away from the two thugs and jumped through one of the Happy Rancher's windows, while Dan, seeing Tetsu charging towards him, took an Evaluate. Tetsu stopped his charge, and took a Wait, and Michelangelo kept his distance. Dan moved in to kick at Tetsu, but he parried, and Tetsu used his Wait to grab him. Michelangelo kept his distance with an Evaluate, while Dan grappled the sumotori back.
Tetsu took a kick from Michelangelo, despite a Feverish Defence, and threw Dan at him in retaliation. The two thugs ran back in through the main door, and charged back towards the brawl. Dan regained his knees as Michelangelo landed another Stamp Kick on Tetsu, dodging a pair of All-Out grapple attempts. One of the goons grabbed at Dan, but he Judo parried, while the other circled around to behind him.
Dan stood up and missed with an Eagle Claw Punch, while Michelangelo continued stomping on Tetsu's feet, then flipped over a table and away. Roberto got tired of stabbing bodies (aka his player showed up), and took stock of the situation. Tetsu Slammed through the table and at Michelangelo, who Acrobatically Dodged out of the way. One of the thugs missed Dan with a grapple, while the one behind him took a Wait.
Dan hesitated for a moment, trying to do something that wouldn't leave him open to an attack from behind, then tried an Eagle Claw Punch that got parried. Michelangelo spun and stomped Tetsu's feet some more, while Roberto stepped into close combat, stabbed the thug that had been trying to grab Dan, and threw his off-hand knife at the Waiting thug, who was hit but unharmed as the knife stuck in his fat.
Tetsu was critically parried by Michelangelo on the first attack of a triple Rapid Strike, causing him to lose the rest of his turn. Dan turned to Evaluate the Waiting thug, and Michelangelo Feinted before critting with another Stamp Kick at Tetsu's feet anyway. Roberto moved towards the surviving thug, whose Wait triggered. The thug grabbed at Roberto, but was parried by his knives and taken out by the resulting injury.
Now alone, Tetsu took a Wait, and Dan started running up to the second floor, while Michelangelo Evaluated and Roberto moved closer. Tetsu continued Waiting and took a step back, putting his back to the wall. Michelangelo moved in to attempt a Sweep, but Tetsu interrupted him with a Sweep of his own! Both of them managed to keep their feet, and Tetsu remarked that they were evenly matched. Roberto stepped in and stabbed at Tetsu's vitals, but he parried one and dodged the other, using Feverish Defence on both.
Tetsu made an All-Out Feint at Roberto (which failed), followed by a heavily deceptive grapple, and got a a hold of him. Dan continued running towards the stairs. Held close, Roberto missed two vitals stabs and shouted out for somebody to cripple Tetsu's arms, while Michelangelo tried another unsuccessful Sweep. Tetsu Bear Hugged Roberto, starting to crush him. And Dan continued up the stairs.
Michelangelo moved behind Tetsu and finally succeeded at a Sweep, knocking him prone and freeing Roberto. As Tetsu struggled to his knees, Dan shouted "Flying Eagle Sun-Screech!", jumped off the second floor, grabbed Tetsu, flipped him over, and Judo threw him into the piano. Michelangelo and Roberto each landed more attacks on Tetsu as he regained his footing, but none of them did any actual damage.
As Dan Evaluated, Michelangelo and Roberto frantically Stamp Kicked and stabbed Tetsu, but the Mountain Ape parried and dodged all of their blows, then Slammed past Dan, who dodged out of the way. The party rained down a hail of blows on him from behind, but Tetsu was unbowed, though he missed an All-Out grab towards Roberto. Dan put Tetsu in a Choke Hold, Michelangelo kicked him some more, and Roberto flipped his knives to Reversed Grip and stabbed him in the vitals twice.
With a groan, Tetsu thundered to the floor, unconscious. Roberto moved to finish him off, but Michelangelo stopped him, and eventually convinced him to interrogate Tetsu first. Michelangelo went outside, informed the Sheriff of their victory, and asked if he had any rope to tie up Tetsu. The Sheriff suggested using chains instead, just to be sure, and hobbled towards his office.
Next Steps
Roberto went upstairs to check for any other assailants, but found only a handful of prostitutes in the private rooms upstairs; none of them had seen his daughter. Dan questioned the prostitutes as well, asking if anybody had been selling really good lemonade recently, but they were of no help, and left the saloon, daintily lifting their skirts to avoid the corpses. The pianist finally got up, and took his chance to leave, while the barkeep sighed dejectedly, grabbed his "Tuesday" mop, and got to work cleaning up the puddles of blood from Roberto's handiwork.
The barkeep similarly hadn't seen any strange girls ("Gila Gulch has a population just shy o' one hundred, so I'd know a stranger if I'd seen one." Michelangelo, pointing at corpses: "Well, 99, 98, 97..."). Shortly, the Sheriff arrived with an armful of chains, followed by an indigenous man, who he introduced as Apha, a member of the Hopi and the closest thing they had to a doctor. As they dragged Tetsu over to a beam and tied him up, the Sheriff said "Thanks for the help 'n' all, but, and I don't mean to be imposin', that ain't all of 'em."
Apparently the rest of the gang showed up once a week or so, probably within the next two days, and similarly caused a ruckus. The Sheriff was especially worried now that all their friends had been "murdered to death", but the party told him not to worry; in particular, Michelangelo was keen to make new friends in this strange land. The Sheriff asked why they'd come to their "fine town", and Roberto was the first to answer that he was looking for his daughter, a red-headed Irish girl.
The Sheriff replied that while he hadn't seen anybody fitting that description, there were reports of a couple dozen kidnappings taking place down in Sweetwater, a bigger town with a train stop, a day's ride to the south. He disliked the town, saying the "big city" was too unsafe, before acknowledging that, okay, sure, maybe Gila Gulch's rampant sumo wrestler problem was worse ("but before that, our murder rate had been 5 per year, the lowest in the territory!").
Michelangelo declared that he was looking for the Foot Clan, and the Sheriff was dismayed to tell him that some of the Outlaw King's gang used a foot as their symbol, and they weren't going to want to head north to his hideout atop Hangman's Mesa right now. The Outlaw King had taken over four other gangs that had been in the area, and divided the land between them. As a result, the mesa was well-guarded, and they would be severely outnumbered. However, if they were able to deal with the other gangs first, maybe they'd stand a chance.
Lastly, the Sheriff confronted Dan, asking why he'd been "spookin' the prostitutes" with his questions about lemonade. Dan explained that his friend had been killed and his lemonade recipe stolen by Dragon-Stylists, and the Sheriff replied that one of the four gangs were Chinese and used some sort of Kung Fu, but he hadn't gotten a good look at their styles as he'd been too busy getting his ass kicked ("Let's just say today ain't the first time somebody got thrown through the back o' the saloon").
The Kung Fu gang were in Three Trees to the west, where the railroad extension was being built. Though none of them seemed to care, farmsteads out east were getting attacked by the fourth gang, some kind of European cavalry types with bows. The Sheriff cautioned against engaging them in an open area; he'd avoided being trampled, but two former deputies hadn't been so lucky.
Apha, who'd been quietly observing the party, now stepped forward and shouted for Dan to sit down before he collapsed from his wounds; Dan asked if there was a clinic they should go to, or tools Apha needed. Here was fine, and he got along fine with his hands. Dan got a shot of "medical whisky" from the bar, and Apha started, massaging his pressure points to heal some of his wounds and putting some healing herbs in the whisky.
He healed the others in turn, and gave them some of the healing herbs to be put in a drink. Dan asked how he had healed them, and Apha replied that it was similar to what the Chinese would call "re-aligning chi", and that there was a limit to how much he could do ("Don't go cutting arms off for fun"). When asked if the herbs were alchemy or some kind of drug, Apha went on a bit of a rant about how the Europeans might think that, but the Hopi's healing herbs were proven and safe as long as they weren't overused, before turning to the camera and saying "Winners don't do drugs."
Michelangelo was eager to help in the cleanup, and ended up dragging unconscious sumotori to the Sheriff's cells, and dead ones to the church.
The Monster Comes
The next morning, Tetsu woke up, and the party were there to welcome him. He started to charge up for Power Blow until Roberto put a knife to his throat, and asked him to stop. Roberto Intimidated him to find out where his daughter was, but Tetsu just laughed. He said that he wasn't some sort of monster who kidnaps little girls, though they'd meet the monster of a man soon enough. Dan asked if his style had a weakness (Roberto: "Just ask Po"), and Tetsu replied that it was being attacked 3-on-1 by cowards. Michelangelo knocked him out with another kick, and just then, the barkeep came in and announced that a dust cloud had shown up to the north.
Notes:
Big Po's player couldn't make it, but had given a secret order with his Wait details to Dan's player. We played it out, and then I just had him fail the consciousness roll. Similarly, Roberto's player was late, so he just hung around stabbing the wounded until then.
This fight was clearly a bit over-tuned; this group of PCs is definitely less effective than the usual DF PCs (largely due to lack of armour).
We found out partway through the session that Michelangelo has been cheating! Not only was he not adding the extra -4 to hit the foot onto Stamp Kick, it's not even part of Capoeira, so he can't use it in the first place. Also, we're not supposed to be using "kick with boots" damage.
A houserule I'm using: a combatant can lock eyes with their foe to challenge them to a quick contest of Will. If the aggressor wins, their target is forced into single combat with them. If the defender wins by 5+, the aggressor is forced into single combat. There are penalties for Overconfidence and other traits.
In this game, Hidebound requires the stylist to follow the advice given for how their style fights in Martial Arts. Only Dan has it, and it means he cannot make All-Out or Committed Attacks.
I made a ruling that for those whose Step distance is over 1m, they suffer movement penalties until they are reduced below 1m. I'm 99% sure this is correct.
Roberto's Dual Weapon Attack probably shouldn't allow him to throw a knife, but I allowed it because it was rad.
I gave Dan's "Flying Eagle Sun-Screech" a situational +5 bonus to the follow-up Judo throw because it was awesome.
In discussion regarding Power Blow and the PCs' caution after seeing Po get thrown through a wall, this comic came up.
This fight took a really long time, but I put that down to the extra HP and DR that Sumotori have access to. Most people have 0 DR because they're just in clothes, while Sumo get 1-2, plus more for the Skull. That said, nobody ever used Mighty Blows, or AoA/CA (Strong).
My Cinematic Healing houserules:
- Physician heals 5HP with a successful check 1/day, Esoteric Medicine heals 10HP
- Every night, so long as you were able to sleep, every PC rolls HT and recovers HP equal to twice their Margin of Success.
- The healing herbs give 5HP per use, once per day. Don't overdose.
XP gain for this campaign is going to work a bit differently, in order to encourage a certain style of play:
- After every fight, you get 1XP if you failed to use one or more techniques/skills from your style, to be spent on increasing those techniques/skills (NOT including primary combat skills).
- After a fight in which two players worked together, they may mark down that PC's name (max 1 per fight). Once they have cooperated with every teammate, they will gain the Teamwork advantage.
- If you do something that is just awesome (Dan's Flying Eagle Sun-Screech qualified), you get 1XP, to be spent on anything from your Style except for primary combat skills.
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