Dark Age of Eracost Session 4

 From my perspective, playing Fingol the Navgarine Keeper.

Party:

• Fingol Innes, Navgarine Keeper of the Stars 1

• Tavenna, 0-level apprentice keeper

• Greg, Paladin 1 (in absentia, played by me)

• Jaret, Navgarine Urchin 1

• Ceana, 0-level seamstress

• Efaila, 0-level tavern keeper

• Ambrogino, Venturer 1 (in absentia, played by me and Jaret)

• Szeidran, 0-level guard

• Draeo, Assassin 1

• Shevayron, Tratkean Fighter 1

May 5, 427

Yesterday, the party had arrived back in Amtolosz after raiding Tarvon’s brigand patrols. On the morning of the 5th, there was a disturbance in the streets, as a wounded man arrived in town, reporting that Tarvon had raided a hamlet in the Baronies, slaughtering everyone and sending the lone survivor with a message that the “coward” who had killed his men should show himself. Of course we had no idea who he referred to, since we were all very based and courageous lads who had slaughtered his men.

So after briefly considering a reckless outing to try to intercept his raiding party, we proceeded with our previous plans and force-marched south to the small city of Rantal.

May 6

Here the party took two weeks to prepare for the attack on Tarvon.

Notable hiring:

• Fingol hired a new 0-level henchman, Kirosz, a muscular launderer with an intense desire to “wring the brigands’ necks”

• Ambrogino hired an artillerist and a driver for his cart-mounted ballista

• Greg/the party hired a small force of mercenaries:

• 10 light infantry

• 14 heavy spearmen

• 6 bowmen

Notable purchases:

• 2 war dogs with spiked leather barding (1 for Shevayron, 1 for Fingol)

• 14 bags of caltrops (!!)

Tavenna was assigned to study healing for two weeks with the local physicker, Shevayron worked on learning riding and some others did odd jobs for a bit of coin.

May 21

We scouted the brigand patrol paths, then approached Tarvon’s fort after nightfall. The fort was a strong stone keep, with a bailey surrounded by a 10' wooden palisade.

A rough sketch of our force deployment:

Advance

• Draeo and Jaret

Center

• 14 Heavy spearmen + Greg in a single rank

• 6 bowmen + Kilosz in second rank

Right flank

• 5 light infantry with javelins

• Fingol, Tavenna, 3 armored war dogs and 2 hunting dogs

Left flank

• 5 light infantry with javelins

• Shevayron, 2 armored war dogs

Rear

• The ballista cart with Ambrogino, Szeidran, Efaila, Ceana and the unnamed cart driver and artillerist

The main force held back far out of hearing distance without torches while the advance force sneaked up to the palisade. They made it up to a dark section of the wall undetected, then slid along to the gate and began spreading caltrops. Still not hearing any disturbance, they went north and lit a section of the palisades on fire with naphtha, then circled all the way around to the south.

When the watchmen finally spotted the fire, they raised the alarm and sent five men out to fight the fire. Those five men ran across the caltrops and were horribly incapacitated. Seeing the fire lit, our main force advanced.

While the general confusion reigned, Draeo and Jaret slipped over the palisade on the south wall. They tried to light the stable on fire to stop the brigand cavalry from mounting up, but it didn’t stop them.

At this point we realized there were 31 medium cavalry with lamellar and barded warhorses. Previous intel had said there were 20 cavalry, and we had assumed they were light cavalry. We had prepared two layers of anti-cavalry defenses - first the caltrops, then the heavy spearmen. 14 against 31 didn’t look too good, but then…

The cavalry charged out the gates directly through 15 ft. of caltrops, and they were absolutely devastated. On the same round, we hit them with a bolt from our medium ballista and a volley of arrows. At the end of the round there were only 8 or 9 left standing, and their morale broke. The next round they attempted to retreat, but none made it back inside.

With the heart of Tarvon’s forces torn out, we advanced, exchanging fire with his archers until they retreated. To add insult to injury, Draeo had set even more caltrops on the grassy field between the gate and the keep, which took out even more archers. Unfortunately, the retreating archers caught on to the fact that someone was infiltrating, and they quickly searched the tents and outbuildings. Draeo and Jaret were both caught and slain by the enraged brigands.

Our main force advanced into the bailey, and the brigands sealed themselves into the keep.

Dark Age of Eracost Campaign Session 3

From my perspective, playing Fingol the Navgarine Keeper.

Party:

• Fingol Innes, Navgarine Keeper of the Stars 1

• Greg, Paladin 1 (in absentia, played by me)

• Jaret, Navgarine Urchin 1

• Ambrogino, Venturer 1

• Draeo, Assassin 1

• Shevayron, Tratkean Fighter 1

April 14, 427

Late in the evening, the party returned to Amtolosz and went to the Garden House inn, where they met a Tratkean sailor named Shevayron and quickly recruited him.

April 15-27

During the following two weeks of downtime the party sold all the bandit gear, including the magic items, and spent lots of money on equipment, mounts, dogs and henchmen. Fingol managed to get a war dog and kitted him out with spiked chainmail.

In all, four 0-level henchmen were hired. Jaret hired two women who appeared to have potential as thieves, and Draeo began training them in hopes that they would be able to level into assassins. Ambrogino hired a spearman from the town guard. And Fingol hired Tavena, an apprentice Navgarine Keeper.

“I’m essentially looking for if any of the women are morally dubious.” - Jaret

“I need FIGHTING MEN!” - Fingol before hiring a female mage.

“If you were to fall down the stairs, would you survive the impact?” - Jaret to Tavena, who turned out to have 1 hp.

April 28

The newly expanded party set out toward the location which we’d been told contained a hill fort occupied by Tarvon and his brigands. The total strength now was 6 PCs, 4 Henchmen, 2 hunting dogs and 2 war dogs.

April 29

We stashed Ambrogino’s cart and set out on elk-back to scout the hex. Very quickly we stumbled upon the fort, a small stone keep with a wooden palisade around the bailey. We set up along one of the trails leading toward it.

It wasn’t long before a patrol of 5 men came across the party’s path, and we ran them down, taking a prisoner. We got some basic numbers out of the prisoner before executing him, and found that the brigands had more numbers than we thought. We also found out that there were two patrols of 5 men out, and the route of the other. Thanks to this information we intercepted the second patrol and wiped them out as well.

April 30-May 1

The party had some wounded, and wanted to go back to town as the new month would mean another war dog, so we headed back to Amtolosz. On the way, we spotted what may have been a valuable vein of ore.

There, in addition to the new supply of war dog and military oil, we found that we could obtain siege engines. Ambrogino promptly built himself a war wagon with a medium ballista on the back. None of us understood the rules for siege engines so we got away with (figurative… just barely) murder. Next session we’ll have to correct the ballista rules, but at this point we were rolling with a warthog from Halo.

May 2-3

Returned to the field. Updated strength: 6 PCs, 4 Henchmen, 2 hunting dogs, 3 armored war dogs and a medium ballista on a cart.

We camped out again on the brigand patrol routes, and this time ran across a patrol of 10 men. They’d obviously doubled the patrol size since we ambushed the previous ones, but this was to our benefit, as we still won the fight with ease and took out twice the men.

Figuring if it worked once it might work again, we checked the opposite patrol route and… voila, another brigand patrol. This time after the shock and awe of our ballista, we captured 5 men.

May 4-5

We took the 5 prisoners back to Amtolosz and turned them in to the guard, accepting a small reward.