Curses, Curses Broken by the Sword

In the style of this and this. Inspired by a quote I found from this: 

"that was magic, which could be undone, and this was scissors, which could not."

"See, Paetus, it does not hurt.” Arria and Paetus. François-André Vincent, 1746–1816. Oil on canvas. It hangs in my office.

No peace

 

The blood and tears the Fools ignored

but the sweat they've all forgotten. 

For peace is pain we haven't bought

And the strongest spell well-knotted

When told all what dull swords have wrought.

'All curses can be broken yet, if broken by the sword'

 

Sacrifice the petty lord

they bleed like all the rest 

Lice make up the sacrosanct  

And lies the church erects

Turn your levies unto sycophants and tell them strike the flank. Say,

'All curses can be broken yet, if broken by the sword'

The Sun on sweat and tears adored

Recall the sword is Gabriel's hand

the Moon she laughs when wolves catch hares

her light a dancin' on the blood of the damned

blood is the song and tears the prayers, Sing

'All curses can be broken yet, if broken by the sword'

[This system assumes all magic can be undone somehow but that what is done by the blades, by the sweated hand cannae]

The Violent 

You are tired. You have ran through the sunset haze of gut-burning rage and you have arrived here all but willing. The burning spike in your chest and groin upon seeing and hearing and tasting what had transpired has cooled like the blood on your hands and other places. And the grip, icy, knuckle-white, on the steel used to commit this Act has relaxed. And you sweat. Weariness, not of body but of light sits on your shaking shoulders and the spirit of Violence, always writhing now walks hand-in-hand with you. He, oh yes he, not her, with his long hair and twisted spinster fingers and ever-present smirk is with you stride-for-stride. He made his way through your tunnel conjured red when your hand drew steel with virgin grace, which he now fondles and presents to you. Trembling with adrenaline, he fades not far from reach, but from furthest sight he goes, you cry and sweat and bleed. 

Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle. Arnold Böcklin. 1872.  

Starting Equipment. A weapon grabbed in a crime of passion, a memento stolen in the guilt that followed. Something acrid to dull the pain and something sharp to stimulate it. As much armor as you need to feel safe. 

Templates

A) Great and Terrible Violence, The Act

B) Sweat

C) Blood

D) Tears

Judith Beheading Holofernes. Gentilieschi

Great and Terrible Violence

In anyone else's hands, the average weapon is dangerous and what is improvised is desperate. In your hands what is improvised is dangerous and what is a weapon is deadly. Whatever damage or harm ordinary non-fighting people are capable of, you are capable of ten times that. 

Violence is your suitor, your prince, your confidant and your lover. He is always with you and his advice and his answers, while multifaceted are always the same. If there is a question about how to most effectively enact Violence, you know the answer. If there is a second question, he will answer it for bruises or blood, yours or your foes.

A weapon used to commit Great and Terrible Violence weighs nothing to you and uses no inventory slot. A second weapon may benefit from this if the Violence committed with it is worse than the first, whatever that means to you. 

The Act

You have performed it, the reasons myriad and different in every case. Whatever your reasons, you draw a mote of sympathy from those who have as well, save psychopaths. You gain respect, fear or derision from people who have not and the love of demons and monsters everywhere who crave it, though all may accost you for it and you must take it, for fair's fair. Unicorns will shun you, lions will respect you and gods above dragons note your cause. 

You may tack on a modifier to reaction rolls for each Violent template you possess, though the referee will determine if it adds or subtracts.

When you perform the Act, track it, as a Notch on a weapon if you prefer the gauche. 

 

For every prime numbered notch, for you are indivisible, gain +1 damage or harm when you strike

 

For every tenth notch gain a nick and you see an opening to attack again. Every nick after that practice that reveals another opening. Your suitors lust grows more ambitious in you.*

    

*[Nick-in-6 chances of successfully using the opening to attack again. On a failure, you may attack anyways but take 1 harm. Each attack after the first has a -1 chance of success.]

You have a Notch-in-20 chance of having terrible wet visceral nightmares each night where you gain no benefits of rest though each has a Notch-in-6 chance of containing information useful to your current quest, campaign or mission. Vices, whether drugs or sex, dull the effects of both the nightmares and the visions. Of course love, that thing that is not a sword, can soothe it all but your suitor is a jealous one. 

Your suitor can now identify someone who has not performed the Act for you the same way a streetfighter can recognize someone who has never been in a fight. He rewards your educating them with ecstasy and the taste of their blood, with tenderness and joy.

Sweat

Each day you do hard physical work, fight (whether mock or for your very life), fuck passionately or take maximum (6) damage, you sweat, the thing all magic fears. For what a man does with a sword cannot be undone by any Magic, that is the Law. Wipe the sweat from your brow, one day's work enough to damp your sleeve and apply it to a weapon you've committed Great and Terrible Violence with. With it you may make ordinary tests Easy and Hard tests ordinary where the weapon can concern itself. Impossible tests come within your grasp at the expense of 1 harm, 2 if you fail, sinew stretching white and bone tensioning, twisting unnaturally. This will not affect those tests whose objects have no concern for the sword. 

Hard work can be a day in the fields, a forced march, some naked escape or other great and stressful toil. Your suitor, he tightens your muscles like great springs, crying for release. 

Blood 

You find little use for it, unlike those evil and their ilk out there, though some use you do find. Your suitor whispers in your ear what blood cries out for: release.

Spill it and the earth laps it up, to return it to the dead and forgotten and those imprisoned in the earth. Mixed with libations, it draws forth shades, those slain by your hand or command first, spurned lovers second and whom you seek last. 

Mix it with milk to draw out the little wicked things in homes: nightmares, gremlins, imps and ills. Care, you must still catch them. 

Take it still warm and brush it over the eaves of a home and it will be granted protection from ghosts, angels, the superstitious and the kin of the deceased. Upon your forehead the same.

This however anyone can do. What you can do is much worse. It speaks to you, upon bar room floors and moldering battlefields. Like a frothed-mouthed hound get down on all fours and take time, longer than ten minutes but less than an hour to listen to the song of spilled blood, how it twists and burbles, denote its color and taste and consult below. 

[You may determine one of the following for every three Notches you have] 

• its origin
• who or what spilled it
• the direction either victim or perpetrator (but not both) went thereafter
• its former owner's Humour, in the Greek sense
• the weapon used
• the state of mind when spilt, victim or 

Alternatively blood freshly spilled or sacrificed can give you an omen, answering pertinent one-word questions like "Ambush?", "Number?" and "Skilled?" 

Finally, you may take a weapon, perfectly balanced and made with care and push it to the hilt into a still living foe. Let it drink its fill as the foe dies on the blade. You must hold their gaze and the weapon while they die. The weapon becomes a bane to the foe and its ilk; against them it deals +6 damage or harm. Your suitor, he is as pleased as a maiden who need no longer wait, the weapon a promise like a ring. 

You will never forget their eyes, and you gain a grief you can't shake off. Without what keeps you sane, pacified or medicated, you either begin taking trophies or take up their mantle. A string of ears or a check cut to a newly christened widow, or else you can't go on.

Tears

Faithful Unto Death. Sir Edward John Poynter. 1865.

Tears, that what cut the living from the dead and the monsters from the monstrous. Grief, a flitting sparrow that forgets to sing its song upon its perch up in the boughs of mighty trees, grief that awful thing with wings that flies upon the summer skies and while it roosts at dusk and dawn you weep with such a stream of eye, the ground can't even drink it dry. You cry. 

When you cry this mighty sea of salt and yearning that cannot be, you heal. An old wound fades unto a scar and a scar becomes a line if, before the rising of the sun, or after its just passed, you weep for all the pain you feel and pray that you will last. The bleeding of the skin will stop, or the poison's work is done, a feeling of the Act will pass but the curse is broken some. 

The tears come when expected least, at the death of hated foe, after sex without meaning or when a passing crowd grows slow and also when you expect them most, anniversaries, funerals and when sad tales are told.

 

When you weep, deeply and openly, your most severe wound is healed by one stage, whatever that means to you. Savaged limbs become crippled, crippled merely scarred. Curses and poisons too will lose potency or severity or simply fizzle out a frothing mouth. Most magic spells cast upon you will end as well, good or bad, your wounded heart shedding its harms and charms like a snake.  

Everyone knows the most potent curses are cured by the kiss of true love. 

Everyone learns that all curses can be broken yet, if broken by the sword. 

Guilt remains, one you can hardly place. It costs one inventory slot and one day you can put it down. 

 

 

Yikes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kill! If you think you have the HD to do it!

Last year I was following Gundobad's series on fighter maneuvers has been fascinating or rather was at the time when I read them last year. I love when designers post their thought processes and in the open like this series here. So, I sought to steal and adapt their rules for whacking monsters in my own Heartbreaker. 

Some background on my Heartbreaker

• Game is for referees like me with tiny mental CPUs. Players roll everything, active defense, ref almost never rolls. 
• Armor is ablative, lowering damage 1-3 points
• Uses split team initiative (or whatever the kids are calling it these days). Players Test DEX and go before the monsters on a success or after on a failure. 
• No order beyond that, anyone can go at any time or the same time. 
• Currently uses "relative distance" e.g. Near (melee), Close, Far and Distant. I first saw it in MechaHack and loved it. Can run anywhere Close in a turn
• Combat Theater a la this
• Resolution mechanics are rolling pools of D6s and hoping to get a 6. Each 6 is a success. 
• Attacking is the same, but you automatically hit and choose your damage from the rolls
  
  

Baseline Whacking 

When you attack in the Heartbreaker you roll D6s equal to your Fighting skill (1-5) and choose which one you want for damage (you automatically hit). These are your Fighting Dice. Additionally roll an additional D6 of another color. This is the Hit Locator. A roll of 6 tracks to the head, then left arm, right, torso, left leg, right. I do the macarena to remember. If the damage and location match, you crit, roll the D6 again for damage. If it's the head (a roll of 6) the crit explodes. Keep rolling D6s as you do. 

You can roll 1 less Fighting Dice, for 1 extra Hit Locator for trying to fuck up one limb in particular, though you may not crit this way.

• When you deal 1 damage, either from a roll or damage reduction from armor, you give your opponent an opening and they may Counter! Check if the weapon is damaged or breaks by rolling its quality under its nicks. Each time you're Countered! add 1 nick. The first time you roll under its damaged. If its damaged and you roll under, it breaks. 
  
  
• [This helps keep heavily armored foes dangerous. You can chip away at the armored knight but he's going to be Countering! the whole time]

When you defend in combat you again, roll your Fighting Dice and choose the damage of your opponent. If it's a 1 or reduced to 1, you may Counter! while you check armor quality (same as above).  Roll the Hit Locator after you've chosen. It's only fair!  

• [I find this method elegant. Unlike in many D&D games and clones, those who fight good (fighters) get punished with extra attacks. The Heartbreaker simply lets them roll max damage more often. Similarly better fighters are better defenders, choosing the damage their foe does, letting them set up Counters! more easily.]

It is encouraged the referee and players scream "Counter!" when a counter occurs, for purposes of morale. 

Whacking Alternatives 

Sometimes you may want to permanently injure a foe by inflicting wounds, such as hamstringing, blinding or bone breaking. Sometimes you may wish to go for a single killing stoke. If so, use the maiming and killing procedures.  

Maiming attacks permanently weaken a foe. To go for a medusa’s eyes, a dragon’s wings or the thews of a mighty giant, is a precise or even “called” shot, that carries great risk. You must garner two successes to maim without being maimed in return, the first to successfully maim them, the second to avoid being maimed, gaining a grievous wound.

Monsters in the Heartbreaker are designed modularly, that is each part may have its own HD. Take care however, monsters often protective of these regions, some inaccessible unless specific maneuvers or other actions are taken. A giant will never be killed while its heart beats and you will never reach its heart while it stands.  

A killing attack inflicts the best status condition fighting has to offer. Dead. Again, take care would-be monster slayer. As with maiming you still need two successes. Unlike with maiming, failing the second roll gains you a mortal wound, crippling the limb struck or turning your torso into hamburger meat.

Many monsters are emblematic or symbolic. When murders go unsolved in rural communities, scarecrows arise and kill each night. When kings gorge themselves and peasants starve, ogres arise. To kill a monster is not to stop what may cause its return. Like hydra’s heads or a vile phoenix, when one dragon falls in avaricious lands, two more make take its place if the community's greed is not tempered. Its a sign something is fucked up.

To successfully maim or kill a foe you must first compare your experience surviving, a comparison of HD, to see if you even can. 

Armor improves your HD for these purposes. Gambeson (light armor) adds +1 HD and Maille (medium) +2. Plate mail adds an impressive +4 HD, if its user is trained in it.  

Anyone who’s ever survived a fight can size up a foe. You can always roughly guess a foe’s HD.  

HD Maim-Kill Table 

Foe’s HD	Maim?	Kill?
Much greater +6 HD	If Staggered	Impossible
Greater +2-5	If Staggered	If Maimed
Even +/- 1 HD	May attempt	If Maimed
Lesser -2	May Attempt	If Staggered or Maimed
Much less <-2	May Attempt	May Attempt

 

The referee consults the table above to determine if a maiming or killing attack is successful. Some foes must be whittled down first if they are to maimed or killed. Remember a bloodied foe (half HP) is automatically staggered.  

Whacking with Friends

You may have some fine fellows you pay or have lied about giving treasure to, in exchange for violence on your behalf. If they are fighting men, mercenaries, they will fight at the line of battle but will not pass it. If they be a levy of some kind, inexperienced or disloyal, they will not pass the second rank. If they be shield, spear or torch bearers they will avoid being Near the battle at all except to throw you a new shield or shield, or keep things lit. 

Asking (yelling in the heat of combat) for these folk to do more than that prompts a morale check or rout. 

If they must because their life depends on it, roll morale. On a success they do it and then flee. On a failure they rout or give up, based on their humors. 

If they are fighting for you, rather than give them a whole turn, add +1 Fighting dice of a different color to your own. They can crit as you (representing teamwork) can but do not roll an extra Hit Locator. Far too slow unless you think it's worth it. If your fighting guy gets an exploding critical or kills a monster in a very cool way, they get a name.