Wounds

A man in Aquila is never simply hurt. He has an opened artery in his forearm bleeding 80 millilitres a round, a cracked shin, and a shock that will halve at the start of his next turn. The unit panel on the right of the battle screen shows all of it for whichever man is in view, and this chapter is how to read it and what each kind of wound does to him.

The unit panel

Select any man, on the field or in the order bar, to keep him in the panel; otherwise it follows whoever is acting (see The battle screen).

The name line

Under his name is who he is: Your company, Raider for a man of the other side, or the beast and the weight of its kind, Bear, 320 kg. Then three numbers:

• skill: his skill at the art of the weapon in his hand, which is where his blows go;
• guard: how hard he is to hit;
• strength: an old measure of his muscle and how much of it he can call on. What actually reaches a blow is in joules, under his weapon at the foot of the panel.

Below them is his state: fit to fight, wounded but fighting, the short words the order bar shows (bleeding, lame, reeling, on the ground), or, once he has fallen, Down, Dead or Fled the field, with the cause beside it: fainted from blood loss, heart destroyed.

The bars

Pain and shock are one gauge seen two ways, and Shock and pain explains it. Wind is explained in A turn, nerve in Nerve.

The six tabs

Under the bars are six tabs, each a way of looking at the same body. Hover over a tab for its description.

Each tab colours the doll by what that system has suffered, draws a small mark on every part that system has something in, and lists beneath the doll what the system as a whole is doing to him. The Blood tab, for instance, gives his blood in millilitres, the points at which he will faint and die, every wound that is bleeding and how fast, and, at the rate he is losing it, about how many rounds he has before he faints. That estimate takes no account of wounds closing, so it is the worst case.

The doll

The figure is the man, part by part. A part's colour is how badly it is hurt, from pale for a nick or a bruise to dark red for a broken bone, an opened vessel or a torn organ. A part that is gone is a faint dashed outline.

In the All tab a part under armour has a thick outline in the colour of the outermost piece's material, so you can see at a glance where he is covered and in what. A drop of blood is drawn on every part that is bleeding more than 15 ml a round.

Select a part to see it in the list beside the doll. Selecting a part here only looks at it: a blow is called on the chart that opens in the middle of the screen once a man is selected with Called chosen (see Striking). In the All tab the list walks the part from the outside in:

• each piece of armour over it, with its thickness and, once it has taken damage, how sound it still is;
• skin, fat and muscle, each with its thickness in millimetres and whether it is nicked, cut, torn open or bruised;
• each bone: sound, cracked, fractured, shattered or cut through;
• any organ that has been hurt;
• each named vessel, whole or opened, and each named nerve, whole, numbed or severed.

The other tabs list only what belongs to their system.

For a part of an arm or a leg, the list on the All, Bone, Nerves and Muscle tabs ends with Works at n%: how much of its use the part still has. See How well a part works.

What the wounds cost

Under the doll, the All tab lists what every wound is costing him, one line to a cause: where it is, what it costs in the game's own terms, and why. Right arm (weapon): −15 to hit; the blow is weakened through the arm. right forearm: muscle cut. The other tabs show the lines that belong to them.

The last line, In all, is the ledger: everything added up, as the rules use it, and told to the whole point, such as In all: −15 to hit, −4 guard, 8 of 9 action points. When a man has nothing wrong with him it says Nothing yet. Every part works as it should. Hovering over a man on the field shows the first three of his lines.

Under that, in the All tab, every wounded part is listed in a line, and then the worst four wounds that are bleeding. At the foot of the panel is his kit: his weapon, its weight and, once it has dulled, what is left of its edge and its point; the joules, metres a second and momentum of each of his strokes as he is now; his shield and how sound it is; his armour; and what he is carrying.

Bleeding

Every cut bleeds. A cut through the skin bleeds 5 to 15 ml a round, by how far across the part it runs, and a cut into the muscle bleeds from its bed 20 to 70 ml more. Torn flesh on one part pools into one wound: cutting the same ruined muscle again opens nothing new, and only the worst of it counts.

The named vessels bleed on their own account, each as a wound of its own. The largest of them:

A torn organ or a shattered bone bleeds inside him, where no one can reach it. A torn heart or aorta bleeds hundreds of millilitres a round.

At the start of each of his turns he loses what his wounds bleed, and then each wound closes a little. Skin closes fast, a quarter of what is left each round (25%); a muscle wound 12%; a great artery hardly at all, the carotid 3% a round. A wound bleeding under 2 ml a round has stopped. A fresh blow on a part tears open whatever had begun to close there.

What bleeds outside him runs onto the ground, and you can see it on the field.

Binding a wound

Bind a wound (4), or the B key, costs 4 action points and binds the worst open wound he has that is bleeding outside him and not yet bound. One press binds one wound. A bound wound bleeds a quarter of what it did and closes much faster. In the groin there is no place above the wound to tie a strap, so pressure is all he can do: it bleeds about two thirds of what it did, and closes only a little faster. The button is dark when there is nothing left he can bind.

A wound inside him cannot be bound. A fresh blow on a bound part tears the binding open, and so does the wound itself if it is cut wider.

The order is plain: bind the artery first. A man with an opened femoral artery who fights on faints within about half a dozen rounds; bound, it bleeds a quarter as much and closes.

Fainting and bleeding to death

A man's blood is in proportion to his weight: the reference man carries 5000 ml, a beast 71 ml for every kilogram of its kind. What it costs him to lose it:

The Blood tab gives both lines for him in millilitres; for the reference man it says Faints at 3000, dies at 2500. A man who faints is down: out of the fight for good, lying where he fell, and still bleeding at the end of every round until his wounds close or he reaches the line that kills him. The small bar under each name in the order bar is his blood, drawn empty at the point where he would die.

Shock and pain

Every blow hurts, and the whole of what it hurts arrives at once as shock. Half of that (50%) stays behind as pain, the ache of the wound itself. Shock halves at the start of each of his turns; pain eases by 2 a turn.

What drops a man is his shock with half his pain beneath it. When that reaches 110 plus his will, he drops senseless: on the ground and helpless, with no action points, no guard and no use of his shield. His turns pass him by. He is not out of the fight: he comes round once the load has fallen below 55% of the line that dropped him, on the ground, and has to get up. Until then anyone near him may finish it. A man's will is his own, and the Shock line in What the wounds cost tells you where his line is: for the reference man, drops senseless at 130.

Before he drops, both cost him. From 12 pain he is worse to hit with and easier to hit, and loses an action point for every 50 of it; from 15 shock he is reeling, worse again. The panel prints the exact figures. A blow whose shock alone comes to half of what would drop him staggers him on the spot (see What a blow does).

A part whose nerve has been cut feels nothing: a blow on it does its damage and adds no pain. A beast feels a wound less the bigger it is, and the toughest beasts less again, so the same gash that would fold a man barely troubles a bear.

How well a part works

Every part of an arm or a leg works at some share of what it should, which the panel shows as Works at n% when you select it. It is the one reckoning the rules use for everything the part does: how hard he can strike through it, whether he can hold a weapon or a shield with it, whether it bears his weight.

Losses multiply. A whole limb works as well as its worst part, and a nerve cut high up takes the use of everything below it: cut the radial nerve in the upper arm and the forearm and hand hang paralysed. A ruined foot still lets him hobble, at 35%. A limb working at less than 30% is useless: an arm that cannot hold a weapon, a leg that will not bear him.

A nerve numbed by a crushing blow comes back within three of his turns. One that is severed does not.

Arms

A wound in his weapon arm costs him twice over, and the game charges each once:

• Aim. The panel line −15 to hit; the blow is weakened through the arm is the aim. It grows with how little of the arm is left.
• Force. The blow is weaker because the arm is part of the chain that makes it. Whatever his legs and trunk produce has to pass out through that arm, so a forearm cut halfway through takes close to half the joules out of the reference man's cut, not just the forearm's own share. The joules under his weapon at the foot of the panel already show it.

The game does not also knock a flat percentage off his blows for the arm: that would charge the same wound twice. For the same reason, the Muscle tab's Strength of blows line counts only what the chain cannot see, which is his wind and his ribs. Read the joules under his weapon for the whole of it.

When the weapon arm fails outright, his weapon falls to the ground. He fights on with the other hand, empty until he picks a weapon up again, and left-handed at −15 to hit. If neither arm will hold a weapon he is disarmed. A two-handed weapon swung with one good arm is −25 to hit and far weaker. A hurt shield arm catches fewer blows, in proportion to what is left of it, and a useless one drops the shield.

Legs

A leg working at under 30% does not bear him. If it failed below the knee he goes down on that knee, the other foot planted, and fights on from there, tagged on one knee; a leg that fails at the thigh or the hip, or both legs failing below the knee, puts him down. A beast stands on any three of its four. If the leg is only numbed he can get up again once it comes back; if the bone is broken or the muscle cut through, he stays down, and the log says so: goes down, and will not get up again. See On the ground.

Legs that still bear him but are hurt slow him. The panel names his gait, favouring a leg, limping or hobbling, and says what each hex now costs him: half as much again, or twice as much, for a man on his feet (a beast limping on three legs can come to three times). The order bar tags such a man lame. Hurt legs also cost him guard, as much as 16 when neither bears him. A man with no leg that bears him is tagged crawling, but he is on the ground, and a man on the ground does not walk until he stands.

The legs have nerves above them too. The sciatic nerves leave the pelvis at the hips and the femoral nerves cross the groin; cut one and that leg is useless, however sound the leg itself is. Numbed there, the leg loses two fifths of its use until the numbness passes. A broken spine in the chest or the belly paralyses both legs. A broken neck puts him down for good, and a neck cut through kills him.

Losing a limb

A limb cut off takes everything below it. Every vessel that crossed the cut is open at once, with the muscle and the skin clean across, and all of it is one wound: stump of the left forearm. A forearm's stump bleeds 165 ml a round, and it is bound as one wound. The wounds that were below the cut stop mattering. The nerves the edge had not already found hurt as they go.

The limb falls to the ground, and any piece of armour that was only on the lost parts, such as a gauntlet, falls with it. If it was his weapon arm, his weapon falls too; if it was his shield arm, his shield does.

The head

• An eye. A light blunt blow may swell an eye shut for a few turns (−8 to hit, counting down on the panel); a harder one, or any edge or point, destroys it. One eye gone costs him depth of sight: −15 to hit and −5 guard. Both gone and he is blind: −60 to hit and −25 guard, and he no longer turns to face a man who strikes him from the side.
• The scalp. A cut through it runs blood into his eyes for a few turns: −8 to hit.
• The skull. Cracked or worse, his ears ring: −5 to hit.
• The brain. A blunt blow that reaches it dazes him, puts him down or caves the skull in; a point or an edge that reaches it puts him down or kills him. A daze from a blow that never reached the brain is in What a blow does.
• The neck. Its muscle cut, he cannot turn his head: −5 to hit and −5 guard. The brachial plexus runs through it, and cutting it kills the use of one arm.

Chest, breath and belly

• Ribs. Cracked, his wind comes back 15% slower. Broken, it comes back 35% slower and his blows are 10% weaker. The chain does not read the ribs, so this is the one weakening of the blow the panel charges as a flat share.
• A lung. Each lung wound costs him an action point, and his wind comes back 40% slower again. It also bleeds inside.
• The windpipe. Hurt, his wind comes back at half speed; torn badly, he chokes on his own blood and goes down within two turns.
• The heart and the great vessels. A heart destroyed kills him on the spot. A lesser wound to it, or to the aorta, bleeds inside faster than anything else in the body.
• Chest and belly muscle. Cut deep, they add less to every blow, through the chain; a cut belly also costs him 5 guard.
• Guts and stomach. Torn, they cost him an action point, hurt badly and bleed inside.

However many wounds take action points away, a man keeps at least three.

Wounds on a beast

A beast is wounded by the same rules and read on the same panel. Its doll is four-legged, and its parts have their own names: the shoulders, forelegs and forepaws in front, the rump, haunches, hind legs and hind paws behind. Its forelegs are both its arms and its legs: it rakes with them and stands on them. It stands while three of its four legs bear it.

A beast strikes with its body, so its wounds weaken its blows through its own chain, as a man's do, and the panel charges only what they cost in aim: a hurt foreleg costs a clawed beast aim, and with both forelegs useless it cannot rake. A beast that bites or gores is hurt in the jaw and the neck: a broken skull costs it 20 to hit, and with the neck muscle cut it cannot drive the bite home.

A big beast has blood in proportion to its weight, and its vessels grow more slowly than its body, so the same gash empties it far more slowly than it empties a man. Its hide is thick, its bones heavy, and its organs as much bigger as it is. See Who you will meet for each beast.