Before I say anything, what I would really like is for this discourse to happen in some form or another
in character. Thoughts, whispers on the sidelines, whatever. I know I asked OOC, but I
resorted to doing so. That's in no way meant to be a slam at IC posts. Just a side note.
Martin Grey:
It is hard to know, without knowing what exactly is going on.
Right! I am, of course, being intentionally ambiguous and vague about this situation because your characters probably have no more of an idea about what's going on than you all do. However, as a GM who does know all the details of this situation, I must take care that I'm not making any wrong assumptions about what's going through my players' minds.
This situation is
bloody important to the game.
By the way, in my GM Screen, I jotted down real quick pretty well everything that is going on right before I made my OOC post, just so you know that I'm not having you write the story here—not that anything would be wrong with that.
Once, I said to all my players during a late-night table-top session, "In this legend that you all are familiar with, I've been calling someone 'The Thorn.' To be honest, I don't have a good reason for that title or name. What do you think?" My girlfriend at the time said, "A thorn is a protector of roses. Perhaps The Thorn is a protector?" So, I went with that. That's the short version.
That's not what I'm doing here. If it were, I would tell you all and I wouldn't be ashamed to do so. ;) I consider this as much your story as mine and don't have any trouble with including you all in the weaving of it.
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But if we were to kill one or the other, it would probably be bad if it was ever traced back to us. If we kill Blade (assuming we can) Durgin will probably try to track us down. If we kill Murdock (again, assuming we can) then the Empire will probably try to track us down. If we kill both, we'll have both on our ass.
Right again, and I
assumed that we were all the same page here. You don't kill a cop or a crime lord's henchman without consequences, and those consequences are similar.
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Fighting off Blade (without killing him) or simply getting him to back off, might not earn us the enmity of Durgin, depending on what is actually going on, but will probably earn us the enmity of Blade, who, we must remember, probably won't have any qualms about murdering us once the boss no longer needs us.
He's probably already beyond pissed at Wiley's last post, BTW.
Wiley's character might have got a bit ahead of himself there. Not sure if Murdoch's calling him "boy" had anything to do with it. ;)
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Fighting off Murdoch might not earn us an imperial bounty, but Murdoch seems like the type who might come around with a bunch of imperial bullyboys for some unofficial "justice".
Maybe. Guess part of it depends on why he's here and what he's doing.
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Again, getting both to back off will probably earn us both their enmity.
Again, maybe. That's a hellofa tall order, though.
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Speaking of that, if we can't simply get them to back off, we'll have to fight one, the other or both (if we get involved at all). Blade and Murdoch are both trained killers, which we, unless someone has hidden depths, are not. Even if we are in fancy magical gear, there is a good chance of someone dying or getting badly hurt. Martin has what he considers a reason for risking that. I don't know about the rest of you.
Yes, physical combat with either or both will be highly dangerous. Murdoch is roughly equal to a DF Knight if that tells you anything. So, good luck there. Being GURPS, it's possible that any one of you could take him down solo. It's also possible that he could hack his way through all four of you without taking a scratch. Not real good odds against heavy casualties, but I'd lay wager that you four could at the very least win a Pyrrhic victory. That's just against Murdoch 4-1. Add Blade into the equation and you guys don't have a snowball's chance in Hell in melee . . .
. . . But, Meeshak has magic and that makes calling the outcome of any fight difficult.
However, that's all still not really what I'm after. Of course, we all are aware that (GURPS) combat is dangerous and lethal.
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Of course, now that we have shown ourselves, we might not even be able to back off without consequences.
Of course.
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If Murdoch wins, there probably is no consequence . . .
Oh no?
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but if Blade wins he might feel pissed about us not backing him up.
Wiley has already said he's going to fight Blade if Blade takes Murdoch. The "backing him up" ship probably sailed at that point.
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The best choice might seem to side with Blade and kill Murdoch, knowing that Durgin will do his best to cover up the situation. But that still involves going up against Murdoch. We would probably take him down, but I wouldn't be surprised if he took out one or two of us, pretty permanently.
Again, we can't count Meechack out of this. Blade against Blade, yeah, things don't look real good for a lone warrior. Five on one odds in GURPS is dubious no matter what. When one of those five is a mage, things get real, real harry.
Meeshak:
Best option would be to make it look like they killed each other.
I'm certainly not saying that's wrong, but better do a
damn good job of covering that up, magical crime scene forensics being what they are.
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Are we currently dressed as our cover identities? If so, this might tip off the wrong people.
Well, Wiley said he had his stuff in absence of me saying that there's no way in hell Zuul or the wizard would let you guys take it out of the shop for a night on the town. It was in the "vault" for a reason, the same reason Zuul didn't let you all keep the invitation. You lose that stuff or get caught with it—image the problems that will cause with the whole plan, not to mention there's no reason to have it anyway.
So, no, you probably shouldn't have the stuff. You certainly are not dressed in it! However, we don't have to retcon Wiley's statement if we don't want—I decided to let it fly. Up to you guys.
There are issues here that I think
might be escaping you guys. You certainly have a grasp on the immediate danger. And, you also know the social (if not lethal) consequences of not backing Blade.
And here is where a sentence was that I cut before posting . . .
It's not what I'm getting at, but one has to wonder where Lisha is on all this, if she even cares. The whole problem could be that both these guys are looking for tail and she's had her fill of the BS and doesn't want to go home with either one of these ugly old dudes, if you consider Stephen Lang and/or Danny Trejo old ugly guys ;).