Stormbringer Wolves Upon the Coast Session 13

The party started where they stopped, about to charge the ruined tower.

Hrafknel lie still beneath it, barely moving. He wasn’t hurt enough to be unconscious as it turned out, but his player was delayed at work and didn’t make it till it was all over.

Step one was to rescue him, but the players were wary of the rain of arrows and javelins. Sigmar flew up and over to land on the tower roof. Her weight wasn’t enough to make the mud and reed plaster collapsed so she had to hew at it, causing it to unexpectantly collapse. In the top tower, she confronted 5 iron-blooded who would not come into the morning light. They threw rocks to no effect. Sigmar grappled one into the light and it screamed as it blistered. The other four made a desperate charge and Sigmar realized she could not fight back, though she dodged twice. Sigmar fled into the air and back to the rest of the group.

Meanwhile, Althrow Tams passes a Move Quietly roll to sneak up to Hrafknel while covered in mud and drag him back to the group. They stand around and debate what to do, some want to sail back, others want to attack as the iron-blooded are stuck inside their tower during the day. Sigmar inquired with her red pearl eye to see what happened to the iron-blood she had grappled. To her and the group’s disturbance, they saw it chewing on what looked like a fetus that had an adult arm growing out of it.

They debated everyone marrying Sigmar to achieve the permenant Flight spell. But they decided the limited flight might leave them in the air when it ran out. I gave them the descriptions of what consituted flying monsters from &Monster. Harpies came from the Reaver zine. I had been describing all descriptions as translated non-rhyming poetry.

They agree to attack. They order the rowers to advance, fighting as marines. The rowers argue it would be better to have Sigmar march in front of everyone due to her high-AP platemail. Sigmar marched in the front.

The arrows and javelins took a heavy toll on the marines. One fell to a critical wound to the gut, he perished soon after the whole fight was over, having lost more CON than remaining HP. Another was badly struck in the right leg for -4 DEX. Five in total were injured to varying levels. The charge took them inside the tower’s first floor where some 30 iron-bloods awaited them. Bloody was the battle, first Althrow Tams died, from critical hits of some 14 damage straight through the armor. Althrow Tams called out to the Chaos gods, but they replied they already owned Althrow Tams soul. Althrow Tams instead demanded an elemental death and was obliged with a pillar of fire upon death. Setting the second-story floor ablaze. 2 more marines fell. Sigmar was done in by another critical hit, the 14 damage too much with her prior wounds. This is a point of contention for the retrospective. Though the dead were even on both sides, it was 25 to 8. With the upper story on fire and the panicked masses fleeing down the stairs into the crush.

Miklas Domonkos and the seven surviving marines exited the tower and watched as the tower toppled from the warping of the interior and the panicked movement. They saw the iron-blooded digging into the peat bogs, trying to bury themselves to escape the sun. Once they were done, the surviving party tore open the heaps and killed all the iron-blooded one by one. The treasure was bittersweet compensation. As much of it was in trade goods and a treasure map to claim. Fortunately, close by ship or land.

About this time Hrafknel and Yrestor’s players arrived. Yerstor suggested trying to take Hrafknel ‘s axe as we were presuming Hrafknel might be dead. The demon inside it, Scarsabad  made a roll to see if it could dominate him, which was easily passed as it had twice Yerstor’s INT. Failing he Spirit of Wisdim roll meant Yerstor was fully and gleefully prepared to hew into his comrades and anything else still alive and set off on a quest of violence when Hrafknel’splayer arrived and remarked that the weapon cannot be removed from his possession while he is conscious, which is was.

Hrafknel’s player was particularly incensed by the session happening while absent due to unavoidable work. With the campaign over, everyone felt a bit unsatisfied, so I laid out what the next steps would have been.
A journey to Pyorra with an attack by a seas god along the way, which had something to do with the whale they rescued. In Pyorra they would have been given a set of tasks by the Deathless One, who was not a nice fellow or they would have a chance to kill him. Either would complete the objective of the Powers That Be.

Sigmar's player wanted to know what would have happened if Sigmar took the ring off, and I decribed them dying instantly. They realised that Sigmar could have been still alive under the rubble but decided the ring had come off or been taken off by the survivors.

A random typo triggered the Star Wars FFG Discord bot. 5 Failures 5 Setbacks and 1 Lightside Point was agreed to suit the party well. Having mostly perished but freed Ruislip from every monster bar the undead of the barrow and those were stuck in one place.

Hrafknel’s player agreed in principle that the character would have tried to get the Deathless in a single strike of his demon axe. Even after I described the Deathless One’s powers. For Hrafknel would have slain at least have the iron-blooded here. Attention was drawn to the dragon on the island south of Ruislip, and I discussed my toss up between choosing to adapt the WUtC-adapted dragon or use the Stormbringer dragon.

A comparison of Scarsabad the Axe theoretically after clearing the tower (3 STR from half the iron-blooded equals 90 or 9d6 more) and the Stormbringer dragon revealed it would have taken only two hits to slay such a beast.

I laid out my final plot twist in that I would have had Scarsabad spring free from the axe should they have killed the Deathless One too easily. With all the STR, Scarsabad could have redistributed the points and still have been an extremely lethal final boss. They agreed that would have been cool.

We debated what to play, two liked the idea of Star Wars d6, one said Mutants in the Now would have been interesting. That brought a deep objection from my regular, who had sat through 2 sessions of character creation the last time we played that.

I decided that since some had never played D&D 5E, that Microlite D20 Fifth - Adamantine Edition Revised, the 17-page cut down of D&D 5E and a well-regarded 5 room dungeon would go down as a one-shot.