Normandy, June 1944
Earlier in the afternoon a British armoured column had pushed through the village of St Elmo-de-Feu-Violet. Something attacked them and the boys of the Armoured Corps are not going back in.
So, as the summer sun sinks into gloaming bocage, it comes down to D Company, 2nd Battalion, The Sussex Regt to clear out the village with bullet and bayonet. They deploy from the east, in three sections of 5 men, picking their way across rubble and through smashed cafes toward the village square which is still littered with burning tanks and vehicles.
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The village square...ominously silent
Across the square looms a large old Norman church, and from behind the church, prismed through stained glass, radiates an eerie purple glow and the chanting of an insane ritual.
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Nazis up to their dirty tricks again
Soon the sound of footsteps scuttling can be heard. Weapons are re-checked and boots crunch across the ancient cobbles.
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"Up and at 'em lads!"
The Tommies soon come under fire from within the sacred precinct: Ill-directed bullets from pistols and Schmeissers mingle with the ominous tearing cloth of an MG42. The British reply with Bren and rifle fire and soon a vicious firefight develops.
Working their way across the square and through back gardens they close in. It is clear that the defenders are an odd mix of Mauser-armed swivel-eyed cultists - complete with flapping crimson cowls - and battle-hardened Fallschirmjager.
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Pushing forward among the wreckage of war
Behind the church a strange, hideous chanting and a gathering of clouds blotting the summer stars.
Eventually the weight of fire begins to tell. From upstairs in the town hall, a British sniper picks off cultist and paratrooper alike. Down in the square, a cultist rushes from a sacristy door and, after a brief skirmish between wicked curved blade and bayonet, goes down.
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A Cultist surges across the cobblestones...
A tremendous bang: and air is filled with the suffocating fungal musk of a rotting forest, and from around the corner of the church strides a hideous Black Forest Dæmon, an otherwordly vengeance weapon brought forth by corrupt and foolish magick.
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A denizen from the blackest of black forests....
As the German defences crumble, this giant beast is the focus of the British fire, which builds up to a crescendo, smashing twigs and tearing chunks of wood from the Tree-man. A grenade explodes in a volcano of wood-splinters and fires break out, causing the forest-thing to de-manifest, writhed in purple flames which consume it, dissolving back from the world where it has been wrenched.
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No match for .303s and Sheffield steel
The battle over, the sun sinks. The troops consolidate, their sleep tonight will be restless, eyes opened to yet more horrors of war.
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Weird War 2 Fistful of Lead at the Perth Miniatures Gamers Group last night. We used the Galactic Heroes variant (more guns, team weapons and grenades) with some Weirdness added in from the Tales of Horror expansion. What next for the boys of the Sussex Regiment?