Brisham Wood - Campaign Turn 1

After enjoying 5 Parsecs From Home in 2024, I picked up 5 Leagues From the Borderlands in a recent sale. Like 5PH, it’s a narrative skirmish wargame, meaning that it focuses on developing a story in a series of wargames where each unit is an individual person or monster or similar (as opposed to, say, a brigade or regiment or whatever).

Five Leagues from the Borderlands is a solo adventure wargame where you take the role of a warband of heroes and adventurers, and explore a grim world full of monsters, enemies, creeping malice, and exciting quests.

It’s set in a fairly typical fantasy world with humans, fey, and undead, though not necessarily specifically tied to Tolkien’s typical origins.

Warband Creation: Silver Hawks

Even before creating the region, the first step is to create the warband. This is 4 Heroes and 2 Followers. One of the Heroes may be my Avatar, sort of the main PoV character. When completed, I ended up with the following Heroes:

• Maurice (he/him): Human with a Townsfolk background. He has +2 in Wilderness and carries a war spear, crossbow, light weapon, partial armor, and a helmet. (This is my Avatar character.) An old drunkard told him to travel to this region (Brisham Wood, introduced below) and visit the strange rock.
• Daisy (she/her): Human with a Frontier background. She has a slightly improved Combat skill to go with her war spear, longbow, light weapon, and partial armor.
• Chert (he/him): Human with a Zealot background. He has a bit more Agility and carries a war spear, staff, and light armor.
• Carves-The-Dark (they/them): Fey-blood with an Outsider background. (Effectively, a sort of half-elf). They have the Sight (letting them guess the future with some precision), the Aura of Winter (slightly intimidating enemies), and are Cursed (they can never gain Luck but will gain skill points instead). They also have a bit more Wits than other characters and carry a bastard sword, staff, light armor, and a shield.

Note that all Humans have a bonus to Speech and are Driven, marking them as “fiercely motivated to attain great things”. They are the default population in the world.

The warband also has two Followers, who have less ability improvements, experience, and equipment but could eventually progress to Hero status.

• Drog (he/him): Human and former soldier. He carries a standard weapon and light armor.
• Danticus (he/him): Human and roving traveller. He carries a staff.

I decided to name the warband the “Silver Hawks”, a semi-mercenary group with a heroic bent.

Despite growing up in a town, Maurice spent a great deal of his childhood exploring the wilderness just outside the village. When he was old enough, he took up work as a caravan guard (where he met Daisy, a fellow guard with a particularly imposing presence). Defending the caravan against bandit ambushes led them to develop a mutual respect and friendship akin to a sibling bond. He has developed a strong understanding of skirmish tactics and an ability to read the land.

Chert came from a distant village that Maurice and Daisy visited at some point in their travels. After he saw them defend the locals against an aberration (monster), he decided that they were aligned with his faith and, in his zealousness, decided to join his destiny to theirs.

Carves-The-Dark sought shelter with the Silver Hawks when fleeing a mob of superstitious villagers. Not only has their foresight benefited the warband several times, Chert and Carves-The-Dark have bonded in some syncretic fashion, tying together Chert’s faith and the Fey-blooded’s burden of fate.

Campaign Setup: Brisham Wood

This campaign takes place in a region called “Brisham Wood”, a heavily-forested backwater region. It has four settlements:

1. Irongate: The largest town in the region near the eastern entrance, a natural place for a trading hub.
2. Woodcross: A crossroads in the forest, where local farmers, crafters, and other traders come on designated market days.
3. Brisham Hold: A manor with ancient ties to the land, with a small community at its gates.
4. Priory of the Blessed Pine: A tiny hamlet around a monastery deep in the Blessed Pines, a sub-region in Brisham Wood.

In addition to the Blessed Pines, the region also has Scartara (a charred or dead forest) and the Horsden Glades (a swampy area). There are a couple of unexplored locations, including the strange rock that drew Maurice here originally, and a delve (dungeon).

There are three significant threats in Brisham Wood. The primary threat is a group of bandits known as “The Ruin Within”. Secondary threats include a sorcerous cult raising undead (“The Whispers From Beyond”) and warbands of Dusklings, who are creatures of the shadows with an intense distrust of magic and an even greater hatred of the undead. Each of these threats has a camp on the region map as well as a hidden hideout that will need to be sought out and destroyed during the campaign.

Travel to Brisham Wood

Normally, a campaign starts with a Preparation phase, but to get started, we need to prime it a bit.

To start, the warband enters on the southern path, headed for Woodcross. However, as they travel through the woods, they start to feel as though the forest will swallow them whole. Maurice ends up getting them hopelessly lost and they must camp in the wilderness.

Preparation Stage

After making camp, they spend some time planning. The warband is able to get the lay of the land, which should make the next day’s journey much faster. (No travel roll will be required to get to their destination again.)

Maurice goes foraging for herbs. He has +2 for the required 8+ [Wilderness] test and finds 2 doses of silvertree leaf (the group now has 4 doses).

While Maurice is out doing that, Chert will practice and gains an additional experience point.

Their next adventure will be to continue to travel to Woodcross. The group already scouted out a bit, so no adventure roll will be needed.

Adventure Stage

No travel roll required this time. The Silver Hawks arrive in Woodcross, a village known for its Market Day once a week located at a sort of crossroads in Brisham Wood. That’s where we’ll pick up in Campaign Turn 2.

Wrap-up

Looking ahead at some of the upcoming possibilities, I’m excited for this to scratch the “D&D warband itch” that I wanted from OD&D. Given how much fun I had with 5PH, my expectations here are pretty high.