Brisham Wood - Campaign Turn 14

Small children have no concept of whether they are “good” at drawing, singing, dancing, and the like. They do these things because they enjoy the act of doing them. Somewhere along the way, we lose that sense of enjoyment and play; we start to judge ourselves (“I can’t draw”). But creativity is not the same as professionalism.

Basically, this is my way of saying “yeah my terrain doesn’t look professional.” But I enjoyed the week of building it. As my little niece says, it’s more fun than watching TV!

And thus, another campaign turn in 5 Leagues From the Borderlands.

Preparation Stage

Maurice has another night of troubled dreams. He’s in the forest, and there are eyes everywhere. No matter what he does or where he goes, he knows he’s being watched. In the morning, the others report the same. The interpretation comes from their hostess, the wise woman: the Whispers From Beyond are in fact tracking them.

The dead and the sinful have always roamed the lands by moonlight, as do those who seek to wrest control over life and death from ancient tomes. With every sinner that attempts to break open the barriers between this life and the next world, the veil grows thinner, and the shadows begin to move.

Many scholars believe that a malign power rules over these denizens of the gloom, directing them for some ulterior motive inimical to the survival of day-dwellers. Cultists speak of a voice that whispers in their fevered dreams, declaring the insignificance of their mortal lives.

Drog is nearly done recovering and will be fully available to fight in the next campaign turn after this one. Maurice forages for herbs behind their cabin, directed by the wise woman, and finds another dose of silvertree leaf. Tiffany tries to scout out a new route from here to Irongate without success.

Gunuert, their monk friend, sends them aid. (Somehow this is +1 Story Point; it’s an abstraction that doesn’t bear too close of an examination).

So what are the Silver Hawks’ options now?

• They have some minor tasks that aren’t time-bound
• There’s a monster lair or two they could try to locate and assault
• To continue their quest for Gunuert, they need to locate a particular artifact
• All of the major threats in the region need combating
• Several locations remain to be explored, including a local delve (dungeon) and enemy camps

After conferring with his followers, Maruice decides to take the fight to these Whispers From Beyond. According to their information from Gunuert (there’s my explanation), some of them have been raiding the outlying areas near Irongate in an attempt to establish a larger presence in the region. The plan is to head towards that settlement and see if they can find and intercept some of these raiders.

Adventure Stage

Their travels are uneventful. As they approach a wayside shrine, however, they do in fact encounter half a dozen enemies returning from a raid:

The Taken: The remains of people lured into dark rituals or forbidden pacts. Only husks remain, driven by a malevolent force.

There are five of them, plus a leader. For this battle, there’s also an objective: fetch something, a small box with a secret compartment hidden near one of the terrain features (randomly chosen to be a particular tree)

I built a really crummy structure for the shrine and stuck a Cthulhu pin in the front of it. Also, I attached bases to about half of the trees, made a few tents and an abandoned cart, and put an unpainted mini in front of the shrine as if it was a broken statue. Finally, I made a few standing stones and put them on a base as well. None of them look particularly great, but I did enjoy the process and learned a good bit about the materials I was working with. As usual, the Wrap-Up section will say a bit more about this part.

Wayside Shrine battle setup

For the enemies, I used a collection of pre-painted D&D minis. However, for the enemy captain, I did use an old Mind Flayer I painted years ago. It’s not great, but it’s easy for me to remember which one is different.

I have a 20” x 30”Because there’s a road on the battlefield, I decided only to roll for two edges to see where each side would be. This ended up having the group on the other side from their objective, which was fine by me.

Combat

In the first round, Carves-The-Dark moves slightly ahead of the others. Danticus has line of sight on an enemy, but they’re out of his range with an 18” self bow. (Also, I realized later that I should have restricted their visibility to 9” due to a supernatural fog that surrounds this enemy faction.) The enemies move up slowly - they can’t dash, and in fact they just move directly towards the nearest warband member. A few shots into the husks yield some wounds, but that doesn’t stop their counter-attack.

Danticus and Chert have line of sight

After this, Daisy continues to fire until she runs out of arrows, but misses. The husks continue to advance, until Maurice drops one in front of the shrine. Tiffany wounds another behind the shrine, but Chert is unable to finish it off.

In the third round, Daisy stows her bow, pulls out a war spear, and moves over near Maurice to provide melee support. Chert runs in the direction of the tents to have a better angle on the enemies before they charge. The husks take Tiffany and Danticus down in a flurry of blows. (I should have remembered to use story points here…) Maurice drops another enemy over by the standing stones.

Finally, a husk charges Carves-The-Dark, who parries the blow and kills it shortly after. Another charges Daisy, but eventually they just separate after neither of them can land a blow. Maurice puts a crossbow bolt into it before Daisy moves back into the fight and kills it in a couple of blows. Chert drops the captain with his longbow before CTD finishes off the last husk.

Resolution

The fight yields 4 Adventure Points for fighting a threat, plus 1 for the captain, plus 1 specifically for defeating enough members of this faction in a single battle. The visions at the beginning yielded another pair. That’s 8 AP, getting us up to 25. I want to use them, but those observations prevent me from doing so this turn.

For the injuries, on first examination, Tiffany seems to be dead! However, a dose of silvertree leaf brings back her vital signs. She’ll be out for quite a while. Danticus isn’t actually injured, but his staff is damaged.

For advancement, there’s a good bit of XP to go around. Maurice gets another advancement, increasing his combat skill to +2. Daisy gets a similar increase, but she now specializes in melee to get +3 combat when fighting hand-to-hand. Tiffany gets a point of Luck: the next time she goes down like that, she’ll have something else to rely on.

The box wasn’t particularly helpful, but they do find a coil of rope in one of the empty tents that can still be used. And a dead body outside the shrine has a letter and bit of jewelry that indicates he might be connected to Outpost Loren; the next time they head that way, they’ll try to find his next of kin.

As they settle in at Outpost Loren, they get news that someone else in the region has something that can help them with their quest.

Wrap-Up

So, about the terrain: I’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from the Selrahc Games YouTube channel, where he makes Mordheim terrain mostly from cardboard. Of course, he’s practiced a lot and so it looks better, but the main thing is that the techniques are very accessible.

So while my wayside shrine doesn’t look like in reality like how it does in my head, I got the chance to try some new techniques. The next thing will be a little better. And slicing through cardboard with a craft knife, gluing it together, and making a sort of papier-mâché texture covering was fun on a sort of kinesthetic level.

I used the same technique with the standing stones. Unfortunately, the paper towels I used had a deeply embossed texture that didn’t go away. The base I put them on was a better success this time, though, so it represented progress.

As far as the rules go, perhaps I missed a few details specific to the faction. They mostly didn’t matter this time, though, and I got an interesting narrative out of it. That’s one of the joys of solo gaming: you’re beholden to no one’s view of the rules but your own. (I’ll still try to remember next time, though.)