Wednesday 3 March 2010

Winter 988 - Chaaaarrrrggggeeee!!!!!

Once more Brother Cedric chases the Spear of Lindorf. He is close to his objective now. We rolled that he had found it but must first fight a pitched battle before conducting a raid to retrieve it. I shall let him tell it in his own inimitable words. Click the pictures for larger versions of the images.

The terrain is from various WWG sets: Streets of Himmelveil, Himmelveil Canals, Castleworks Ultimate, Villageworks, Cathedrae Noctis and Requiem. Some of the buildings are items I picked up elsewhere but cannot remember.

Dear Griselda,

I’m sure this is all a mistranslation. The gift of a dozen horses, left with the Lodge Master by the Hykar delegation, must have been to celebrate Barbax’s soon to be born child. Undoubtably she has sent such gifts out to many people. Fancy thinking I could be the father. Still the hierarchy of the Faith seem very happy with our good relations with the Hykar.

The Church of Saint Lindorf in Jellsway.

I’ve finally arrived in Jellsway. The journey was fairly uneventful, with Sir Ashby along. After spending a couple of days scouting around the cathedral, or ‘the seeing of sites’ as Sir Ashby called it. We decided the weakest point, of the cathedral’s defences, was the rear. To the right of the road was a guard house, which would be our main worry. To the left a recent building called ‘Ye Newe Gifte Shoppe’. The commercialisation of religion is quite sickening in the Treyine Empire and most especially in the capital. I’ve enclosed a snowglobe of the cathedral for you, containing genuine ashes from Saint Vesta, hopefully it survived the journey.

Brother Cedric deploys his troops.

We finally decided on the night, and after Brother Siegfried slipped Sir Ashby a sleeping draught, we headed towards the cathedral and the Spear of St. Lindorf. Our attack would be two pronged. Brothers Konrad, Siegfried, Klaus and I would head straight down the road on horseback. While Brothers Wilfred and Leelove, together with Herman and Henning would approach from the left side, on foot.

Guards stumble bleary-eyed and half-dressed (I did not have time to finish them before the game) from the guardhouse, while Brother Cedric demonstrates all the tactical acuity of a sledgehammer cracking a nut.

Well we could probably have timed it better, as we hit at the same time as the guard changed. They came out into the street en masse, but fled as we thundered towards them, singing ‘See the holy angels burn the sinner’s eyes’. After this Brothers Siegfried and Klaus charged the remaining soldiers at the guardhouse, while Brother Konrad and I charged the ones at the bridge.

The battle near Ye Newe Gifte Shoppe (a waystation for pilgrims to the Church of Saint Lindorf, where they may purify themselves before entering his holy shrine).

Henning, meanwhile, was firing at some archers near Ye Newe Gifte Shoppe. He kept them occupied until Brothers Wilfred and Leelove were in a position to charge them. They soon had one down and the others running for their lives.

Brother Klaus took a wicked blow to the head and tumbled from his horse, while Brother Siegfried made a valiant stand. We soon routed the soldiers on the bridge, including the vicious looking fellow in the middle who soon turned tail and ran. A blow finally knocked Brother Siegfried from his mount. I leapt from my horse to rush to his aid, while Brother Konrad headed towards two archers fleeing the other battle.

Snipers! (In the windows if you look closely)

We soon had the situation in control and the enemy fled. Brother Klaus was still dazed and so we left him in charge of the horses ready for our escape. Brother Siegfried soon roused after we gave him some of his healing potion, although his comments about it tasting like horse urine could only be blamed upon himself.

We now steel ourselves for the final push towards the cathedral and the spear. Hopefully I shall be returning to Harbottle soon.

Brother Cedric and companions steeling themselves:

Regards
Brother Cedric

To be continued ...

So, the first part went well for Brother Cedric, possibly better than the paternity suit that will follow just as soon as I get some suitable 28mm Hykari. Let's see how the second part goes. I had better get the interior of the church finished now. I must admit that I thought Brother Cedric would have a hard time with this game, but his high Rep and star status combined with low rolls for the Treyine troops saw them routing in the face of his charges. Attacking at night helped too, even though there were street lights around the town. The reduced visibility meant that the archers could not shoot before Cedric charged, which was a major advantage.

10 comments:

  1. Very entertaining report and excellent terrain, but where are you going to store all those fantastic paper houses, especially the cathedral? ;-)
    Ps. Now I know the capital of Treyine is Jellsway. BTW, Einar is visiting Treyine at the moment, perhaps he could meet brother Cedric? ;-)
    Cheers,

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  2. Steve writes a good postcard home for his character. I am always entertained by his writing too. You will notice that my style and his are both very different. It would be good fun to do a cross-over game if we could work out a scenario that would make it interesting. Perhaps Einar and Cedric (or my character Ragnar) could team up for an adventure. We could run it as two or three scenarios with each of us running one or two of them. Might be entertaining! I have always been interested in expanding our campaign to include additional characters. The problem would be keeping to the timeline because of the different rates at which players could manage to play games.

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  3. Some ideas:
    -If either Einar or his cousin Ragnar get captured, the other would go to rescue him.
    -Both Einar & Ragnar could meet accidentally in Treyine or its surroundings and agree to do a two part mini quest or raid, playing each part one of us.

    Mind you, if we start this cross-over game, Einar won't be following his true quest Eastwards until finished; so it should be arranged to do those two games in one or two months or so, and thus Einar and Ragnar can proceed after that with their respective plots.

    I think it could be really fun and innovative, and if it results fine we could even perhaps start a new blog with a new campaign, playing cooperatively or even one agaist each other, at a each owns pace.
    What do you think?

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  4. Javier, drop me an email at ruarighATvalhallaDOTkarooDOTcoDOTuk and we can discuss how you might join in. I like the idea of introducing other people into the campaign world and it would be great to hear other tales told against that backdrop. If I could find other people to take over areas of the world, we could even expand the massed battle part of the campaign too.

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  5. Wonderful story and top notch terrain, but I have came to expect that from you!

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  6. Thank you. Steve and I do our best to entertain.

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  7. Yup, I can't add anything new - excellent report and terrain.

    As a note the non WWG buildings (photo #2) are definately Dave Graffam (www.davesgames.net) ones.

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  8. Positively beautiful.
    The buildings are WWG and Dave Graffam? Any others I should know about?
    V

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  9. No, it's just the Dave Graffam and WWG stuff. Each is beautiful in its own way, but I prefer WWG because the interiors are playable. We make a lot of use of the interiors in our games if they are available. In this scenario we assumed that the locals had barred their doors for the night and access was not possible except into the guard house.

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