Introduction
Sir Dunston's party has departed the small border settlement of Rook Moot and is headed north along the old road towards Stone Acre on the first leg of their journey to Longmyre. Following an uneventful day's travel and just as the light begins to fade, Sir Dunstan is planning on calling a halt for the night when suddenly a foul stench fills the air. From the shadows ahead, shambling forms emerge from the gloom and the party is faced by its first challenge, a pack of Revenants shuffle towards them!
The Battlefield
The battlefield is 2'x1' but for larger scales. please do use 3'x2' or larger and represents rough grasslands with piles of boulders, the odd ruin and some trees. The pathway leads across the board from left to right and to win the game, the adventurers have a couple of options, they can try and avoid the Revenants or be a bit more heroic and charge in. The heroes deployment zone is the blue rectangle on the left while the Revenants deploy on the right hand side.
The Forces
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Sir Dunston and co
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Sir Dunston is a knight armed with a longsword and wearing chainmail armour.
Bodkin is a retainer armed with a shortsword and wears leather armour
Rumblebum the wizard is armed with a staff and has heavy robes which is better than nothing. He can cast lightning bolt.
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| Vile Revenants |
The revenants are mindless creatures which will move towards anything they can sense and will attack anything they encounter along the way. Until they sense a foe, they move randomly using a direction dice and D6 for how far they move.
In combat they use their claws and teeth and if they get a double roll on the D100, they sink their teeth in and do double damage!
The Game
I decided to give the decaying Revenants more of a chance of sensing foes if they moved quickly or made noises so Dunstan and co could try and sneak past but if they ran, fought or did pretty much anything else, there was a fair chance they'd be spotted and set upon!
I used Brutalquest with a D100 dicing rather than D10 as I rather like the more granular effect it has and it suits a small skirmish.
Similarly I only gave the Revenants 10 points of damage each as I tend to use NPCs and mob type monsters as speedbumps or inconveniences and try to give the heroes something to worry about with either sheer numbers or by adding a more powerful mini boss to up the danger level.
As this was the first game in the campaign, I thought I'd go easy on my heroes. How little I knew...
The game started with my adventurers cautiously moving forward towards the narrow point of the table, keen to avoid attracting all the revenants into a choke point where they'll be stuck. Fortunately the shuffling deadmen don't immediately spot the party and two even bump into each other and begin savaging one another.
Spotting one off by itself and despite the urgings of his companions, Wizard Rumblebum jabbers a spell and with a crackle of energy, a searing lightning bolt flashes from his staff impacting the near by Revenant and reducing it to smoking ash.
Unfortunately this alerts all the other undead and they begin shuffling towards the party. Sir Dunstan, uttering many swears under his breath bundles the cackling wizard off towards a narrow gap that Bodkin has spotted and is heading towards.
Unfortunately the Revenants begin approaching from both directions and Sir Dunstan and Bodkin draw their swords, determined to carve their way through the mob in front of them before the second group which is approaching from the rear.
In the swirling melee that follows, Sir Dunstan bellows his battlecry and decapitates his foe with a single stroke but bodkin fumbles and the Revenant begins to chomp on him. Supremely confident due to his previous spell, Rumblebum decides to cast another lightning bolt but flubs it and the bolt of electricity strikes poor bodkin instead!
Things are looking grim but a smouldering and chomped on Bodkin fights on, managing to dispatch his foe but before they can recover, the second group piles in. Bodkin goes down under a pile of clammy undead flesh and Dunstan piles in to rescue his minion.
Perhaps trying to redeem himself, Rumblebum casts another lightning bolt and manages to actually hit his target, blasting his target from its feet and allowing Dunstan to hack down the last foe and drag the still smouldering and well chomped form of Bodkin from the corpses.
Post Game
In Brutalquest, you earn Brutality Points which you can use ingame to buff your attacks and so on or save them to improve your stats after. I had thought that I'd be able to upgrade my characters after a simple game but I ended up using all my points to kill off the Revenants before I got overhwelmed!
I rolled on the injury chart for Bodkin and he did survive but is unsurprisingly traumatised by his experience and has a minus 10% to his stats for the next 3 games.
Following the game, I rolled to see if I had any further encounters using the table I found on Five Leagues from the Borderlands and met an itinerant priest called Brother Maynard. The kindly fellow gifted the still traumatised Bodkin a healing potion so it was a bit of a win!
Brother Maynard heads towards Rook Moot to warn the villagers that the undead are abroad while Sir Dunstan's party continues north towards Stone Acre.
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| Campaign Book |
It's taken quite a bit to get this battle report put together but it's been rather fun and hopefully I'll get chance to post a second turn of the campaign soon but in the meantime, All the best!
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