It is necessary to make a campaign map of the region your adventurers are operating in, so here's mine...
The little fella marking our position on the map is a soldier from English Heritage Risk. Remind me to put him back in the box at some point or the Red player will be a guy short.I toyed with the idea of getting one of those cool fantasy map-making programs, which certainly would have given us something a bit easier to see on LAF than this photo, but in the end drew one by hand. I may do so later, or not.
Next one generates three
Threats. These will be our main antagonist groups for the campaign, and you get to pick from a bunch of different ones in the book, allowing you to match them to the figures in your collection. The overall campaign objective is to bring peace to the region by eliminating all three threats. I have also decided upon a personal objective for Iago, that of avenging his town by slaying the Nine-fingered Man.
The ThreatsThe Sea Reavers Nasty piratical Viking types, taking advantage of the Empire's weakness to raid the coasts. The Nine-Fingered Man is among their number (We are using the
Duskling Warbands threat from the book. It is kind of implied they are non-humans in the rules, but really they are just a stat line and a set of abilities, so can easily be represented with any figures. In our game they are humans).
The Mano RossoThe chaos of the Defamation has led to widespread banditry. However, some groups are more of a threat than others. The Mano Rosso are an organised network of bandit gangs, led by the mysterious bandit king known as
Il Ragno (We are using
The Ruin Within threat for these, who are basically bandits and brigands so a good fit).
The ListenersMany of those who have forsaken True Religion have listened to the voice of the Whispers from Beyond. They are a fanatical death cult, dedicated to spreading the gift of Undeath throughout the lands, though the less committed ones merely roam the county defacing statues of Our Lady of the Veils. (For these we shall use
The Whispers from Beyond threat, which as you may guess, is cultists and undead. It is the faction with the largest variety of enemies in it, so will be the biggest painting task, from skeletons to bestial humans, cultists and Our Lady knows what else).
As of yet I haven't painted anybody for the three threats yet, but I do have some skeletons and bandits on the painting table. As soon as I have anything to show, rest assured the pics will be posted here.
It has become our custom in games that require you to mark the turns, that you
simply must have a
Turn Track Lady. So here is ours, Galadriel masquerading as Our Lady of the Veils...
I have started a dedicated Turn Track Lady figure, but she isn't finished yet, so it will have to be Galadriel for a bit. We picked up the Turn Track Lady habit playing Congo, and this is our original...
I think I prefer her fashion sense.
So at last, on to the campaign itself. Much more of the book is dedicated to the the campaign mechanics than the actual tabletop combat rules. All sorts of stuff goes on between battles. To ease ourselves into things, we met up at the Horse Fayre Fields, a seasonal village used by the travelling folk of the county to hold... surprise surprise... their horse fairs. After establishing our stash point in the wagon of a friendly traveller, we hunted a little, foraged a bit and then for our main campaign activity we rode out on patrol, looking to keep the environs around our travelling friends safe and secure. The book suggested riding patrol as a relatively safe activity for starting groups, or ones who have some wounded characters. We believed the book because we are idiots.
Our patrol ran into some impoverished common folk who had turned to banditry out of sheer desperation at the harshness of the current times. Iago and Lenore decided that was no excuse and they should be punished harshly. We figured they would be no match for us, these bumbling pretend-brigands (they honestly had terrible stats and there weren't very many of them - ha! Easy peasy!)
Only took a couple of photos of this one, unfortunatelyOur heroes advanced against these villainous scum, and initially things went as expected, we were brushing them aside with ease.
One of the bandits was played by Sean Bean (in the centre of the group, blowing his Boromir horn). As is entirely fitting for Sean Bean, he was killed in the fight.But then in our hubris, the (dice) gods deserted us. When the bandits were down to two men they suddenly unleashed their pent-up fury against us. One by one our heroes began to falter. Greville and Neville fell. Well, they are only followers after all, who really cares? But then Lenore was cut down, and right after that Iago fell too. Suddenly the halfling Pottler and Morgaunt were the only ones still in the fight, and things seemed pretty bleak.
Just as hope was fading, Wicklow summoned his construct and it was Patches to the rescue (Patches can only be summoned when we have less than six figures on the table, so he makes a good impromptu reinforcement). With his aid the beleaguered survivors of the bandit onslaught managed to fight back and triumph. Hurrah for Wicklow and Patches! Examining the aftermath of the carnage, it was discovered that Lenore and Iago had only been knocked out. Neville had sustained quite a nasty wound that would take him some time to recover from, but recover he would. But for Greville, it turned out to be the end of the road. He lay dead by the side of the road. A sobering sight for the adventurers (and for me and Sickers too, suddenly this game wasn't the cake-walk we thought it to be.)
Sickers had rolled badly on the injury table for Greville, and talked me out of using any of our medicine to save him, as he was 'only a follower' and it wasn't worth it. We decided this was Lenore's doing, being the stuck-up daughter of the count, and thus having little regard for the lowly working man. What a cow.
But then fortune smiled on us. A scared villager had seen the entire thing from his hiding place, and inspired by our heroic feats (was he watching the same fight?) asked to join our merry band. So we immediately acquired a
loyal follower and it didn't cost us anything.
Noice! His name is Brom and he has his own figure, it's just I haven't finished it yet, so the Greville figure shall have to do for now.
Then it was back to the Horse Fayre Fields to lick our wounds.
Poor Greville. We never really knew you.