A Tale Of Two Tortles (Punkrabbitt's Five Leagues From The Borderlands Campaign)

[punkrabbitt]

Let's meet the warband! I am done painting up all of the characters for my "Five Leagues From The Borderlands" solo campaign.

This is "A Tale Of Two Tortles," and features the adventures of a brother and sister as well as their friends and assorted hangers-on. They will be exploring the recently ruined city of Armskirk and fighting against assorted cultists and bandits (The Ruin Within,) Goblin raiders (Duskling Warbands,) and rat-men from under the foundations of the city itself (The Gnawling Horde.) They have travelled to the city and safely boarded in the not-quite-so-ruined neighborhood of Mirefield. Along the way they made a friend of Roysa, a young herder.



Meet Weppi. She is the brains of the whole operation, and my campaign Avatar.



This is Kipor. He is Weppi's brother and second in command.



Tundaline is a friend of the two Tortles from way back when she first came up to the surface world.



Drustan just started hanging out with the previous three adventurers and eventually became another friend.



Isabeau the Street Urchin and  Alaric the Wily Rogue, more mouths to feed.

[Dean]

Nice one Harry, I’m looking forward to hearing how they get on.

[Plynkes]

It's always good to see our little LAF Five Leagues gang grow, and to meet a new party. 


Where do your tortle figures come from? I really like them.

[punkrabbitt]

Nice one Harry, I’m looking forward to hearing how they get on.

Thank you! First adventure should be Monday night.

[punkrabbitt]

It's always good to see our little LAF Five Leagues gang grow, and to meet a new party. 


Where do your tortle figures come from? I really like them.

Those are "Spikeshell Warriors" from the Reaper Bones range with a few modifications.

[punkrabbitt]

OK, so I played the first game of my new Five Leagues From The Borderlands campaign last night.

Our Heroes started out doing a Ride Patrol that ended in a Meeting Engagement with Northern Wolves that had entered the ruined city of Armskirk. Three of them, to be precise, as well as an Unknown Enemy that might represent from one to five of the foul beasts. We will find out later. The forces deployed 16" apart from each other, or 4" in from each table edge. And the Unknown Enemy marker (a black hound) was 2" in from the side.



The first turn pretty much everyone moved closer. Drustan moved to the second floor of a ruined building, because if you have a ruined building with intact stairs as a part of your scenery, you need to dash someone up those stairs. It's one of the unwritten rules, you see. Tundaline did not move, but instead fired her crossbow at the one wolf she could see. She missed.



The second turn had much more action. Both Drustan and Tundaline took shots at the oncoming wolves to no effect; when the Unknown Enemy marker was close enough, it was revelaed to be FOUR more Northern Wolves! Weppi charged in and felled a wolf. When Kipor did the same, the wolf got the better of him and he was down! Alaric the Wily Rogue moved to attack a wolf but failed to hurt it... Isabeau the Street urchin followed him and handily dispatched the pesky creature.



Turn three saw a bit of a decline for Our Heroes. Weppi felled a wolf only to be felled herself by another. Isabeau went down to claws and fangs as well. Alaric promptly killed the same wolf that took down Isabeau. Drustan and Tundaline had another round of ineffective firing. Three wolves and three of the warband remaining, it was a close skirmish so far.



On turn four, both Drustan and Tundaline were successful in shooting at the wolves, killing off two of them with a little help from a Story Point well spent at the right time. The remaining wolf, however, lunged at Alric and brought him down.



Finally, Tundaline took a good shot and killed the remaining wolf at the beginning of the fifth turn. Our Heroes had Held the Field!



In the aftermath, Weppi was found to have some damaged armor. She might have died if not for the timely application of Silverweed Leaf! Kipor too may have succumbed to his wounds but for the Silverweed, and will need to spend a campaign turn recovering from his injuries. Alaric, as it happened, was just Knocked Out and had no lasting injuries. Unfortunately, Isabeau did not survive her injuries; the Street Urchin was dead.

Investigating the immediate area of the battle, the standing Heroes found a jar of spices worth three gold, a lead to a new location, and discovered some news of monsters moving into a nearby ruin.

The warband made it's way back to Mirefield to lick their wounds and recover a bit before venturing back into Armskirk.

[Plynkes]

A tough fight for your first one. Ride patrol is suggested as an 'easy' activity, but it has thrown up some pretty difficult encounters for us. And rough to lose a party member in your initial encounter.

[Basementboy]

Looks like a great game! Pretty lethal for a first fight, may Isabeau rest in peace

[anevilgiraffe]

Have there been any more progress on this? I want to get my own campaign going at some point...

[punkrabbitt]

Have there been any more progress on this? I want to get my own campaign going at some point...

I seem to have entirely forgotten to post the second outing here. My bad! I will try to get around to it before the weekend

[punkrabbitt]

OK, so I finally managed to get my second campaign game of Five Leagues From The Borderlands played. It's been a while, and I was delayed because I rolled up Campaign turns 3 (where Our Heroes simply recovered) and 4, wherein they decided to Ride Patrol again. As I was generating the various pre-game events and enemies, "Roving Fiends" came up as the enemy, and I thought it would be fun to paint up some Daemonettes from Warhammer to use. As it turns out that was a big mistake, as it took me a VERY long time.

Anyway, in the settlement of Bradfordshire of the Ruined City Of Arsmkirk, Weppi and her companions enjoyed a rare starlit night with singing faeries. This should have allowed one warband member to be "Blessed" during the game, but by the time I played I forgot all about it. They helped the Town Guard to skip out on the Upkeep costs, and made an attempt to recruit someone to replace Isabeau the Street Urchin who sadly died during the last Patrol. Finally, some connections were made and the warband gained a Story Point.



The battle itself was four turns long, and the Objective was to Secure The Area. The Unknown Enemy marker was spotted the first turn and yielded two Roving Fiends, for a total of six of them against Our Heroes five. During that first turn, Weppi and Kipor went into a ruined building and took up position in a break in the wall. Tundaline and Alaric both used the unsteady stairs to get to the second floor, and Drustan snapped off a shot with his bow that missed. Alaric took up position behind Weppi and Kipor. The Roving Fiends simply advanced towards Our Heroes.



Between the first and second turns, there was a Giant Cat Attack that caused a bit of an earthquake. Buildings already partially destroyed shook on their foundations and all trembled in fear.







Next turn, Tundaline tried to shoot her crossbow at the advancing Fiends with no effect. Four of the Fiends crashed into Weppis and Kipor, got pushed back, and Drustan picked one off with his trusty bow. Alaric, trying to be a Hero (but only a Wily Rogue) made an attack and was quickly knocked out of action for his trouble. Will he make it? Will he die? We will have to wait until after the game to find out.



The third and fourth turns were really just the Roving Fiends going back and forth with Weppi and Kipor. At the end of turn four, there was only one Fiend left and it was removed due to a Morale roll. Our Heroes held the field and saved the day!





After the game (always my favorite part!) Alaric turned out to have just broken his weapon and played dead (very Rogue-like.) The Roving Fiends had enough gold ornaments to sell for a total of 8 gold coins. And there was news of someone important needing adventurers. We have two campaign turns to travel to a new wilderness location to accept a Quest. Weppi says they need to get a little more skilled before they go about just accepting quests from strangers. Seems legit to me.

[Plynkes]

Sweet.

I love your giant cat figures, they're very realistic. What stat line did you use for them? 

[punkrabbitt]

I love your giant cat figures, they're very realistic. What stat line did you use for them? 

I treated them as a natural disaster; anything they moved, stayed that way and was not moved back. They rearranged the terrain a little, but nothing game-changing.

[punkrabbitt]

OK, so I had my third game of "A Tale Of Two Tortles," which might now be a bit misnamed as you will see later. I decided that after two games of just Riding Patrol it was time to confront the Duskling Menace head-on, and see if we could take down those nasty little yet surprisingly tough and stringy goblins. But before we went off and faced that madness, there was some time spent in town doing the basic upkeep of life stuff.



To start with, there was a Renowned Scholar in town, but Weppi said to forget him, we ain't studying, we're gonna help the town guard and recruit some new blood. And new blood is what we got! With some gold coin spent, Yammel, another Tortle, joined the warband. At this point it must be said that I made some really appropriate Tortle rules instead of just using the Dwaf rules, and so Yammel would be the first one to start with these new rules. Weppi and Kipor were switched to the new rules at this time as well, but since this was effectively a roster change, I spent a Story Point for each of them to switch. Two new basic weapons were bought, one for Yammel and one to replace Weppi's, which had broken last adventure. Also some light armor for Yammel was purchased.



Now here's a thing: when I recruited Yammel for the warband, I was very excited because Reapr has just released the Spikeshell Anti-Paladin miniature, and I thought it would go great with the Spikeshell Warrior miniatures that I used for Weppi and Kipor. When it arrived through the mail, it was almost double the size of the other two. So now this BIG Tortle is going to be the Weppi miniature, and the previous Weppi will be the Yammel miniature.



And so we ventured off the combat the Duskling Menace, with the full intention of kicking goblin ass all the way out of Armskirk (the ruined city in which we are adventuring, for those of you that are new to this story.) We found where the goblins had been, and went looking to see if we could find any evidence of their sinister plans.



While we were searching, we ran into some Mist-clad goblins, led by a sergeant. Seven of them, including their leader, two with bows. More likely though, they had been watching us and thought this was a good point for an ambush. Their bowmen were flanking to the north, so Kipor and Aalric decided to move through the cover to get the drop on them. Weppi, Yammel, Drustan, and Tundaline went southwards to try to engage the bulk of the Dusklings.



Tundaline was able to get one shot off with her crossbow, felling one of the goblins, before the smelly creatures were upon them. In the course of the ensuing melees, both Tundaline and Drustan were felled by the foul vermin before Weppi and Yammel finally defeated or drove away the remainder. Of the two archers, Kipor killed one and the other fled; a total of three goblins fled tis fight, showing their generally low morale and disorganization.



You know how when you get a new freshly painted miniature that you are feeling great about, and the first time you field it there is terrible luck for it? I fully expected that to be the case with the new Weppi miniature, but she was a BEAST during this game. She accounted for three of the enemy, including their sergeant. That was 75% of the total kills. So I'm pretty excited about that.



After the dust cleared, it was time to take stock of the outcome. Tundaline and Drustan were both down, but survived. They would be out for a few game turns each recovering from their injuries. There was a Ferret's Drink potion recovered, as well as 3 Gold coins. For the game Meta, there was a gain of 5 Adventure Points and 3 Story points (2 from the scenario objective and one from the "Letter From A Friends" News Travels result.) 4 Adventure points were spent to make an Adventure Milestone check, and a roll of 3 means the Duskling Menace has been reduced by one point.



Anyway, I had a great time and I am happy to share it with y'all.

[Frugalmax]

Nice game, and I like the big hulking tortle- he's a beast! Thanks for sharing!