A Whole New World, Of Doom!

 After settling in to this new continent after a two plus year journey (ie drinking ourselves silly at the tavern) the warriors hear of a pygmy burial ground that was uncovered by the archaeologist's guild.  Unfortunately the little buggers have returned to take back their sacred ground and its up to us to commit hate cri.... er clear the ruins of monsters...

During our short stay at the previous settlement before our epic journey we encountered a dwarf who decided to tag along as an NPC ally.  He had no idea how long it would be until the end of the 'next adventure'.  Poor fellow...

After a few uneventful corridors we encounter 6 forest goblins, 1 forest goblin boss, and since this is a pygmy adventure, pygmies!  They may be small but they but they do have gang up and jungle poison which deals 1D3 damage per hit during the next power phase with no modifiers.  This is the most dangerous part of lustria as warriors tend to get loaded up on poison counters all the time!

The goblin with the bag pipes happens to be our fairy for the druid (the real model being lost at the time).  The party makes short work of the goblins as the berserker takes on the goblin boss in one hit and even the fairy gets a kill!  The hippie banishes a few pygmies and goblins.

the pygmies next retaliate by killing the fairy.  At this point we should have named our fairy kenny due to it being summoned and promptly dieing the next turn.  After the retaliation against kenny the party finishes off the remaining pygmies.

The hippy then scries the next room which contains a treasure chest.  The room also contained a portal leading to distant lands which we promptly ignored.   The dwarf opened the cheest taking care to absorb the brunt of any traps and found a few elven arrows that no one has a clue how to use.

We opened up the next door to find the room of sacred plaques and a flames of death trap which incinerates kenny.

 After a fun laugh at the expense of kenny we roll an unexpected event resulting in 10 pygmies and a fimir.  Sadly this is a BL1 monster spawn due to the special difficulty modifier rolled on the dungeon so it isn't much of a threat neither does it reward us with much gold.  We make short work of the monsters but not before kenny is killed yet again.

Next we get lucky finding the objective room already!  The room rains down lizard men in the form of spawns 12 saurus, 6 skinks, 12 pygmies and a cupboard for someone to take cover behind.  Right off the bat we roll a combat event which results in the monsters deciding to gang up on the weakest member, ie poor lil kenny again.

The warriors eliminate several of the lizardmen on the first turn, the hippie searches the cupboard finding it bare and kenny decides to wander off as the monster pursue and eliminate his life in his feeble attempt to escape.

 After taking minor damage we manage to clear out the rest of the room and start working on the back log of saurus and pygmies.  Our dwarf companion wages war against them slowly as the fairy is re summoned again and manages to take out a pygmy.  Surprisingly the fairy does not die again and we manage to clear the objective without too much damage.

Our treasures were less than satisfying and of little worth or use to the party so we manage to leave the crime scene and head back to the harbor.

Of course since we are apparently cursed the chainsaw warrior finds out the harbor is about to be attacked by the undead and as the chosen one (and friends) we must defend the harbor or slink away like slimy weasels.  We of course choose to stay and fight a pile of monsters that are all considered undead versions.  The invading horde consists of

1 undead skink terradon rider (leader) w double wounds, fear 5, magic dispel 5+

6 undead skinks

12 undead pygmies

2 undead pygmy champs

10 undead corsairs

12 undead dark elf warriors

The battle starts slow however all we have to do is eliminate the leader and the horde will scatter.  Kronk opens up by butchering the pygmy champions while bruce works on clearing the corsairs around us.  The hippie banishes a few distant pygmies to avoid a few poison darts.  The berserkers amulet proves the undoing of the corsairs as its undead turning abilities cause them to break!

Eventually the terradon swoops down into the throne room droping rocks and opening itself up to the fatal blows from our party. With the leader defeated the rest flee the castle and we are free to enjoy our stay in town.

 

The witch hunter Bruce is lucky as he finds an adventure from a traveling quest giver of sorts.  Kronk the berserker is less so as he has managed to offend a BL4 trollslayer and the duel is set at dawn. 

Kronk bravely (to be read stupidly) accepts the challenge and shows up giant gleaming sword in hand taking a huge chunk out of the slayers health right away.  The slayer then retaliates nearly killing kronk and forcing him to use his healing potion.  Kronk swings and the dwarven fighter dodges to the side delivering his axe upside the berserkers head ending his adventuring career right away.

So our first (non fairy) casualty is the result of an angry dwarf.  RIP kronk, you silly stupid man you.

Oh Yes, There Will Be Water...

Being the foolish types that we are we decided to leave the Old World and search for our fortunes in Lustria this time.  Before we begin however I thought a picture of all of the insane amounts of miniatures that we use is required.

There they are in their myriad of cases and foam packed up and ready for game time.  If it wasn't obvious we might be a bit insane to transport this game once a week.  However our insane party now (mostly) has names!  Let me introduce:

Bruce: The utility belt wearing Witch Hunter
Kronk: The every choppy Berserker
Ashley: The chainsaw Warrior from times long forward
Hippie:  The not named hippie.... er druid!

Our session begun with a journey to our nearest harbor which was fairly uneventful outside of a small forest fire.  Once we made it to the harbor everyone spends the day searching for a captain.  One captain had a rickity old bucket of a ship claiming he was the king of the seas, and another choice was a piece of drift wood that we found.  Needless to say we chose door number 3: Arma the barbarian pirate.

Arma's ship has an amazing amount of hull points and an impressive damage output from his cannons meaning that any enemy in our path would be hard pressed to defeat us.  Unfortunately the captain is a bit distracted as his journey time is inexplicably long as we shall soon see...

Month 1
Our journey starts out with a kraken attack, the first of many.  Kronk however is hungry and makes sushi out of one of its tentacles forcing it to retreat.

Month 2
Ashley practices her motherly skills by babysitting the children (why they are on a barbarian pirate ship is more than suspect).  Unfortunately she tends to be a bit rough and after some injuries she manages to anger the mothers as they demand retribution.  Or at least they would if not for her pillow talk skill (oh yes its exactly as you think it is).

Month 3
Our hippie has fallen ill due to being bitten by a poisonous octopus.  Because of this he is bed ridden for the rest of the journey.  He shall be counted among the fortunate...

Month 4
The seas are calm for once and time passes with ease.

Month 5
 A huricane rocks the ship damaging it slightly and leaving the vessel with 20 hull points

month 6
The demon children on the ship surface again leaving toys for poor Kronk to trip over and nearly fall of the railings.  He is so angry that he will be at -1 to hit until the end of the next adventure.

Month 7
Arma's mighty vessel encounters a huge fleet of chaos.  Though the battle seems a tempting test we decide to go around adding several months to the journey.

Month 8
Deeming the chainsaw warrior unfit for child care Kronk the berserker is enlisted to help babysit this time.  Somehow he is competent in this feet and gains some gold.

Month 9
The money lender has stolen from an imperial noble woman who is aboard the ship.  The lack of pay chests after his incarceration in the brig will lead to delays amongst the men.

Month 10
The children get revenge on Ashley nearly sending her over the rails this time on a roller skate!

Month 11
Arma has decided to make a detour to a nearby island in search of treasure.  Amazingly Luigi and Salvatore are hosting a promotional treasure hunt for the nobles of the world and we have stumbled upon it!  Ashley makes it to the mother load first however we all receive more than a fair share of treasure for this excursion.

Month 12
A wave of pure concentrated magic strikes the ship.  Most of the party are uneffected however Bruce ends up gaining a cursed chaos attribute.  From now on the Blood Rage runs through him turning him into a bloodthirsty, reckless warrior in combat

Month 13
The crew celebrates the passing of over a year at sea apparently by having a drinking contest!  The warriors (except the bed ridden hippie), a Lord of Aenarion, an elf and an imperial noble are present for the competition.  In the end only Kronk and the noble were left who passed out at the same time ending in a tie.

Month 14
A flight of dragons swoops down on the ship badly injuring the witch hunter before moving onward.

Month 15
Oddly enough the Arch Bishop of Kislev happens to be traveling with him and Kronk is invited to serve him his dinner.  He is so impressed by Kronk however that he gives him a small cross that is a very effective weapon against the undead!

Month 16
A skaven warprider ship is spotted on the horizon and Arma promptly orders it sunk, thus it is so.

Month 17
Calm seas finally!

Month 18
Fearing a never ending voyage we make landfall at a nearby island only to find that Ashley is up to her hijinks angering an amazon tribe with her pillow talk.  The tribe takes it out on everyone but her and we all flee back to the ship taking arrows and spears in the process.

Month 19
A dying dwarf prospector is found floating on a raft in the middle of the ocean.  Of course he has a portcullis key that he must give to us, because that is what they do.

Month 20
While strolling along the deck Bruce finds out the ship is less than ship shape and steps on a loss plank smacking him in the face!

Month 21
Kronk is asked to serve the Arch Bishop again, this time his conversation skill is far less convincing and he is pelted with potatoes and other such food!

Month 22
The kraken catches up with us again and once again the berserker sends it packing with his gleaming sword.

Month 23
A flock of giant rocs passes near us attacking the warriors!  We fell two of the beasts and take some minor damage before they pass.

Month 24
Our two year mark is the krakens final attempt at scuttling the ship.  Bruce and his mythic sword send him on his way for the last time!

Month 25
We encounter some native while resupplying on a nearby island.  Their primitive offerings were not enough to peak our interest so we leave without our usual display of destruction.

Month 26
Understandably the crew mutinies!  Who wouldn't at this point?  Being that Arma is a BL10 barbarian though we side with him and together put a quick halt to the mutiny.

Month 27
We arrive in the far port of Lustria!  We quickly find our land legs and pick up on a quest as a pygmy burial ground needs to be cleared for the archeologist guild.  Next time we delve into our first lustrian dungeon for the party.

The One That's In Space

So of course inevitably the question comes up: What happens when we put WHQ in the 40k universe?  Well here is our extremely early playtest of just such a set of rules.  in our 40k quest players take on the role of a squad and adventures are swapped with missions.

A few things have changed from the usual such as missions are now themed around a certain alien race each time, certain squad members can not party up with others (ie chaos and grey knights).  Sometimes (such as today's case) mission maps are fully revealed at the beginning instead of revealed during the gameplay. Finally enemies are spawned within a random room rather than right in the squads face.

We were missing a few models so please excuse the proxies and the boards are simply the lustria tile set due to 40k ones not being made just yet.  Our squad was chosen from the inquisition being the Death Cult Assassin (wardancer model), Crusader, Inquisitor, and Banisher (warrior priest model).

We began in the objective room for this mission and had to extract a wounded companion (the inquisition henchman in the back of the squad) to the  exit point.

As you can see from the red line above we had a LONG path to move through in order to get out.  The first set of enemies spawned at the beginning were a single tau stealth suit in the stairwell and a pack of kroot that spawned in the end room.

We moved through the first room which like a normal dungeon room spawns enemies however it spawns them in a random room so three fire warriors spawned behind us.   The assassin and crusader held up our rear as the inquisitor and banisher ran forward with the henchman spawning a few kroot hounds (shown above as hobgoblins).

Little did we know that our escape was doomed from this point on as five gun drones spawned in one path as the kroot pushed forward towards us bringing an inevitable pincer attack towards us.

The kroot edged closer as the assassin and crusader finished up the enemies to our rear and regrouped.

The beginning of the end came fast as first the banisher fell to the kroot only to be revived by a medipack and the inquisitor fell to the pulse carbine fire of the drones being brought back with a medipack as well.

 

The crusader attempted to cover the ground and close with the drones as the rest of us dealt with the remaining kroot however at the worst possible time more kroot spawned in the worst possible position surrounding the crusader and ending any chance we had of extracting the wounded henchman.

We conceded to the superior firepower and abilities of the tau dieing in a hail of kroot riffles and pulse carbines.

Lots of things to fix but some fun things did happen so the rules will continue to change and eventually maybe even be released....

Part 4: Let Them Come

  Today we learn an important lesson that some times you don't go to the dungeon, the dungeon comes to you.  We start our lesson in the Grate room here on the final level of our epic quest.

Moving forward the hippie scries doors early and often to reveal the dungeon without use of the usual encounter phase.

Unfortunately the hippies inpatients leads to the festering pits which trigger events every time a doorway is explored.  Being a rather impetuous hippie he scries the far door revealing the smuggler's den and triggering a cave in!  We all make it out of the corridor before being crushed however it is obvious that the only way out is through the objective room now...

The smuggler's den is a special room that when found creates a special side quest much like the jail.  In this smuggler's den is the undermarket a sort of underground black market filled with outlaw NPCs (which sadly are not painted).  If we decide to enter we risk being attacked however we can also find some good deals on items and equipment.

Knowing the parties lack of people skills however we decide to not massacre, er interrupt, the outlaws unless absolutely required to go that way.

Once again our hippie activates his hippie eye to explore another room in the festering pits bringing another dungeon event our way.  This one happens to open the flood gates in the dungeon reveal the next 2 cards in a random direction which just so happens to be the objective room!

Unfortunately because of this the flooding waters also send all of the rooms contents into our room meaning that we have to fight the objective room monsters on far less stable ground!

 The evil wizard that stole the foolish but less evil wizards plans for slime domination accompanies the tide of 6 slimes, 3 rat swarms and 12 giant rats.  The rat swarms are a new type of enemy that is able to engulf its target warrior into the swarm when being attacked.  Due to this any spells, abilities and attacks that would normally target that warrior have a 50/50 chance of targeting the swarm and vice versa!  It becomes clear that we are about to have a bad time...

Everyone spends the next turn getting up and shaking off the sewage while the evil wizard casts a few magic missiles causing negligible damage.

The hippie throws a warpstone bomb and casts banishment to damage one of the swarms and kill a giant rat.  Seeing the threat our hunter fires his gun and a holy fire amulet into the wounded swarms killing one.

The chainsaw warrior leaps across a pit and into battle with the swarms causing little damage to the tide of rats and suddenly realize just how alone she is...

The berserker engages his rage and promptly misses with all 4 attacks, this is a theme from now on.

It's the vermin tides turn now and the rat swarms engulf both the chainsaw warrior and the hippie as swarms are able to move like large monsters pushing other models aside to get to combat!  The evil wizard unleashes his magic causing minor damage to the berserker and accidently hitting the rat swarm engulfing one of the warriors as well.

  It becomes apparent as well just how much of a threat this room is as the giant rats get lucky and nearly kill the chainsaw warrior.  Along with the burst damage from the giant rats and the nickle and dimes from everything else we are in for a nasty fight for once.

Back to our turn the berserker still sucks at hitting the broad side of a slime.  The chainsaw warrior takes out a giant rat while smaller rats continue to engulf her biting and tearing away.  Meanwhile batman pull out a perfect shot and saves the hippie from the rat swarm!

During the monsters turn the giant rats bring our chainsaw warrior to her knees requiring healing from the hippie druid to stay alive.  This time a slime takes revenge on batman's killing spree by throwing him into the slime pit and causing minor damage.

Before tentacles can further drag him away batman climbs up to the top ledge to slay a few giant rats.  The berserker finally figures out how to harness his anger and HIT both slimes near him slaying them instantly.  The chainsaw warrior is badly wounded still and chugs a few potions between rat bites trying to stay alive.

Batman continues to take magic missiles to the face this time in the monster's phase.  The chainsaw warrior gets tossed into the slime next and giant rats nearly finish off batman.  Everyone is fairly badly hurt at this point, we need to finish this fast!

Between batman and the muscle man the slimes are quickly dropped to one more left.  The chainsaw warrior surgically removes the rat swarm with her chainsaw.

The remaining slime decides to dirty our hippie by tossing him into the pit while the evil wizard panics and fails his spell casting for the first time!

Both batman and the chainsaw warrior rush the evil wizard putting him down and retrieving the wizard plans!  Meanwhile the berserker stays behind and finishes bashing the slime into the ground.  Grabbing the plans we use the hippie's magical egress dust to escape the dungeon instantly and safely return to the settlement above it.

at this point we had a not so difficult descision of selling the plans for 7000 gold or gaining a mythic treasure by returning the plans to their rightful owner.  Morals did not figure into this as the mythic treasure is WELL worth it.  We gain the Heathen Dispatcher for our troubles giving it to the witch hunter.  This weapon has the following bonuses:

+2 damage (+3 against chaos or undead), +1 to hit (+2 against chaos or undead).  Wielder is healed 1D3 wounds per turn during the power phase.

A mighty sword indeed!

On top of getting the mighty mythic treasure batman reveals that he has a dark secret which reads as follows:

Your warrior doesn't believe that he has been getting his fair share of the gold lately.  At the end of the next adventure before the gold is divided up take (BL)D6*500 gold off the top.  This is the amount of gold that your warrior has skimmed off the top as his own share.  Then divide the remaining gold equally amongst the Party as usual (including your warrior).

 As mean as that was he was kind enough to give most of it back to allow us to level up to BL 2!  Sadly we only found one quest this time so there will be no vote for quests this time.  Stay tuned for the next report as we delve for a game into the world of Warhammer 40k....