Sewer Level!

 When we last left our intrepid heroes they had saved the town from a bunch of green skinned squaters (oof that doesn't sound heroic!) and the dwarf was crippled by a whoping -3 permanent toughness penalty from plague bearers!

As a house rule no warriors are to be named before BL2 to avoid getting attached.  As such, the dwarf is being retired and replaced by a shiny new dwarf!  Be not confused as to why this new dwarf looks the same, likely they are twins and this is some kind of parent trap situation I'm sure of it.

As always the rules we use can be found right here.

Everyone restocked in town, did a little gambling and bought as many healing potions and gear as we could with out surprising amount of gold gained (over 500 per warrior from a starting quest!).  We did encounter a slight issue with the swashbuckler having to knock out a random barbarian in the tavern.

We did flub the rules a little after having started on an old world starting quest we decided to relocate the town to Norsca to try out the new expansion.  As such buying a few fur boots and ice spike shoes were essential to avoid some frostbite and stay standing in the ice caverns.

This would all be pointless as our first quest was in the sewers below town: Forgotten Temple, Quest 1:

Per normal operations the skaven have been building war machines beneath the city streets and are readying for a surface invasion.  The city watch know of this and are readying to wipe them out right away.  The engineers guild however have asked the warriors to steal the bluepritns for the skaven warmachiens first before the watch enact their scorched earth policy!

Like a good child my son rolls for the number of turns we get before the watch begin 'helping' (2D6+4.  He gets a roll of 4 leading to only having 8 turns to get in, steal the bluepritns and get out!  If the city watch catch us down here they will consider us traitors and should we slay them we'll only be proving their point.

The good news is we roll up a War Party side quest for the smugglers den meaning that there are 3 extra cards added on to this room with the guard room containing explosives.  In theory we should get these explosives to blow up the boat and stop enemy reinforcements from coming whenever the event die rolls a '1'.  However the shaman has the bright idea of leaving it be meaning when the watch come down on us there's a 50/50 chance they have to clear out that passage first buying us some time!

We find the leaky room next and promptly roll up an unlucky double encounter.  Since everything in this dungeon is skaven you'll be seeing a lot of rats down here.  This time we get a few clan rats, some giant rats and worst of all nine stormvermin!

The biggest change made to the dwarf for this version is the inclusion of his taunt ability which allows all adjacent enemies to not only be forced to target him but have a 4+ chance to be mad and suffer a -1 penalty to hit.  This would prove invaluable through this dungeon yet again.

The shaman started of summoning a wolf and a few clanrats and giant rats went down (several jumping right into the wolve's open mouth with deathleap!).  However combat would soon grind to a standstill when the stormvermin stepped in!

With only four turns remaining until the city watch comes down to 'solve' everything the dwarf finally manages to get a lucky set of deathblows and cleave a swath through the stormvermin!  The amount of bad to hit rolls that this party gets during this session is unbelievable and stalled us out in every combat!

Two turns later despite holding out for some time while taunting nearly all the stormvermin, the dwarf goes down!  Unlike his predicessor though there's not plague effects so he is quickly healed before being brought low again then ext turn.

We call this dwarf jumping jacks!

So most of the way through our very first combat the city watch barge into the sewers!  There are 7 BL2 barbarians.  Our two saving graces are the extra passage way formed by the Smuggler Side Quest and the fact that the leaky room locks both it's doors as soon as the monsters spawn!  Now the watch will have to explore the three rooms on the other side of the docks before they can come say hi to a few adventurers who really shouldn't be medling in this affair.

While we continue to fail at taking out the last stormverming the city watch break down the door to the guard room and immediately encounter a Wolf rat that charges in being a moderate threat even to a party of 7!

As the Wolf rat sat outside attacking the watchmen piece meal it manages to take one down.  At the same time we finish off the stormvermin and move deeper into the dungeon.  Keep in mind at this point the only exit is the spiral staircase so we are soon to be locked into a battle to the death with the watch should an escape route not be found (this would brand us as enemies of the town for sure!).

After clearing the leaky room it unlocks and we gain a Goblin poker (reach 2, double damage against goblins) and  an ornate rusted armor (+3 armor but -1 movement)  We consider the armor but advised against it favoring speed instead.

Good news then because the next card was the Spiral Staircase which per the adventure rules causes us to draw the next card and attach the stairs to it as an extra room.  

The watch continued to hack the wolf rat down to 9 wounds now almost as an artificial clock.

So running into the temple means attacking the majority of the skaven invasion force.  Which in this case are 5 clan rats, 10 giant rats, 10 skaven slaves and all lead by one assassin!

Nothing in this room is all that concerning except the assassin (note its not a gutter runner but a full on assassin!).  This guy does 2d6 damage, has two attacks and with his assassinate ability can ignore both armor and sometimes toughness!

This may be a bad sign though as we go back to the watch who have defeated the wolf rat.  Though it did eat two of them they are still a formidible force, hopefully something in the next room will slow them down.  The ral hope is that monsters do away with them leaving us free to complete our mission.

We take out a few of the riff-rats but it isn't long until the dwarf is brought to zero wounds from the weeping blades suffering -1 Strength permanently! Only a turn later the summoned wolf is eliminated as well.  This battle caught us chugging healing potions left and or right to stay alive!

Meanwhile the City watch proceed through the Slime Channel to find some old bones.  Much like the armor stand in the guard room they decide to just leave it be and continue on their raiding way!

In an attempt to cause some damage the Shaman turns into his Were-Wolf form while we continue to try to survive the assassin's onslaught.  Every so often we get lucky and hit the dodgey thing causing minor damage while also clearing the giant rats and slaves.  I wasn't kidding when I said our luck was HORRIBLE this whole dungeon when rolling to hit!

The city watch finally make it to the end of the passage and encounter a few giant rats, so much for hoping the dungeon would take care of them!  Over a few turns they destroy the rats (or the rats jump on their flails with deathleap either way works).

Finally the shaman strikes the final blow on the assassin and calls forth another wolf.  Now we can just mop up the enemies and get out of here!

Though our rat friends managed to wound the city watch there was no way they would stop them at this point.  After clearing out the enemies in the temple it was clear that we should cut our losses (ie tons of healing potions!) and flee.

But not before we do a few more jumping jacks!  The dwarf and outlaw both go down due to our supplies being low and healing spells just not cutting it against the overwhelmingly bad to hit rolls.

Everyone survived and we did get lucky on the treasures from this encounter since everyone received a dungeon room treasure!  By the end just about everyone got a new present!

The outlaw picked up the Muck Dweller sword which grants him +2 strength and if he's in water or slime +2 to hit! as well as gaining from another warrior Verminous Furs granting +1 Toughness but all skaven gain the hatred rule against him.

The Dwarf Gained the Blood Drinker Sword which whenever it causes damaged deals -1 permanent strength to a montser and can even heal back his lost strength!

The shaman gained an elven dager granting +1 attack as well as regaining his stolen cloak (apparently the Assassin had it!) that was stolen during the end of the last adventure. perhaps the Verminous fur's the Outlaw took were an act of revenge?

With out tails firmly between our legs we get out of there leaving the city watch to wonder who cleared out the skaven in those two rooms?

A New Journey

 Ooooph no updates since 2019?  Welp a lot has happened since then around the world!

Our previous party has long since retired to the afterlife.  The very next adventure took them out though sadly I have lost all the photos and sepcifics of that fateful journey.  Once of our own ranks actually passed (RIP Rob) and we miss him very much.  This very much took the wind out of our sails for over a year none of us wanted to touch the game even after going through covid playing with him over table top simulator (good memories).

We've finally decided to get back into questing with a fresh start and a much expanded game.  Norsca is now a finshed and HUGE expansion, even the dark elves got a small expansion resulting in a ton of new monsters, quests and even a few new warrior types.

So here we are with a new player, new party and ready to explore the old world again.  As usual no warriors are given a name until they earn it by leveling up!  Let's try not to get attached to this possibly cursed party...

As always the rules we use are freely available here please check them out and let us know what you think!

Our intrepid adventures are made up of a Dwarf, Swashbuckler, Outlaw and Kislev Shaman.  We'll go over the warriors in a bit more detail in the next episode.

The warriors were already staying in a town but as per normal in the Old World, Monsters have decided to take up residence and invade.  Now the obvious choice is to beat back the monsters, take back the streets, and divvy up the treasure!

The settlement is represented by a line of streets with 1D2 doors on each passageway.  We start off rolling one doorway under maximum so there are plenty of buildings to clear and all the chances to fail!  Being a starting quest there aren't supposed to be any really challenging monsters to fight and the worst thing we are supposed to encounter is a single minotaur (que forshadowing)...

The first house on the block is the Well of Doom which only contained three orc archers.  The outlaw failed every single ambush roll (not all just because the blog writter forgot about that rule...) throughout the entire adventure.  The shaman opened up by summoning a wolf which would aid us substantially up to a point.

It didn't take long for us to slaughter the poor archers with fairly average rolls and the wolf om-noming on them!  Afterwards we gain a cloak of shadows to protect the outlaw from both missle targeting and giving him a magic resistance 4+!

The dwarf opened up the bloody door with khornate symbols (what is wrong with this town?!?!) to reveal a chest in the next house.  There could be anything in there!  There could be a mimic (no really there could).

This time we only encounter 3 goblin bowmen. They did not take long to chop through.  The swashbuckler failed to wreck face dropping a goblin just to one wound but the dwarf jumped in and cleaved through all three with deathblows!

The goblins were kind enough to provided a venom blade for the swashbuckler which doubles damage after modifiers are applied such as toughness and armor.

The outlaw greedily opened the chest to find within....

GOLD!  But not just any amount of gold a usual roll for gold treasure roll.  After rolling 6 dice a single one came up and the whole roll was lost as per usual...

So with a nice magical weapon and a sack empty of gold we head further down the streets to clear the next hovel of these unwanted squaters!

You may have noticed we use special features such as the chest in dungeons.  Each dungeon room contains a chance to have some kind of feature in it, this time the monsters have errected a baricade to stop our progress.  These blocades can be attacked over as if we had reach 2 (meaning we attack a single space further than normal) however since we are on the attacking side of the barrier we suffer a -1 to hit while doing this.  Moving over the baricade will require both an empty sapce on the other side and full turn of movement.

To add to the party the shaman's den layout requires the orcs to be on a literal level above us causing a further -1 to hit penatly!

The Buckle Swasher started out by leaping over the baricade into a level ground gaining a major advantage, and promptly tickling the orc to near (but not fully) death whil dispatching another.

It didn't take long before we could establish a foothold into the room and surround, then utterly destroy the last orc archer.  Nice try with those baricades guys but no dice! We did manage to get a healing scroll and moved onward clearing the streets from the green skins!

Onwards to door number four!  Seems like we may be unstopable at this point...

Apparently the idea is that if they keep trying the baricade trick it has to work eventually!  

Sure we took a little bit of damage but in no way were we challenged by this one.  By this point we were getting a little cocky.  We thought the orcs had a treasure trove of gold however after failing a roll it turns out there was nothing at all.

Strolling down the streets, humming happily to ourselves and sure that absolutely nothing could go wrong, we approach the next house.

This may look like an obvious trap only because the room feature is labeled as such.  Since it's so obvious we know something is up before going in.  We can expect a trap AND a monster encounter at BL2!

Being overly sure of ourselves we march right in isntead of doing the smart thing of clearing the other rooms and gaining possibly useful treasure...

Time for some humble pie, the trap rolls up a single monster on BL3 table which is asleep in the room.  This turns out to be a giant scorpion, which is terrible at level 1 with toughness 6 and 2D6 damage!  The good news is that as long as we don't roll a 1 or 2 while moving it won't wake up!

The monsters that were rolled up however are not asleep and consist of 5 plague bearers!  These guys are nuts at Lvl 1!  Two attacks, plague (which permanently removes toughness if you drop to zero wounds) and daemonic.  We only have a single magic weapon, no magic spells that damage and three out of four warriors rolled minimal wounds (yes even rerolling 1's!). 

The shaman quickly used his were-wolf form but still failed to damage the plague bearer,  The Swashbuckler got lucky and one shotted a daemon while injuring another.  This would be the most productive turn we have for a while.  The dwarf failed his fear roll and without a magic weapon is at -2 to hit.  Only the Swashbuckler had a magic weapon and this was looking grim indeed.

The noble yet insane dwarf volunteered to take the hits for the team by taunting, round after round.  Doing this all the plague bearers were concentrated on him.

The wolf fell quickly and as the were-wolf form wore off the dwarf continued to drop to zero wounds for multiple turns.  Eventually with a LOT of luck and a dwarf dropped to 1 toughness permanently the plague bearers were finally defeated.

With the daemons defeated after much debate we decided to wake up the scorpion through a brisk stabbing!  Doing minimal damage t he battle began in earnest.  As long as the scorpion couldn't get his sting attack off the dwarf wouldn't start losing strength as well whilst taunting and we were able to keep healing people and stop from having anyone drop permanently.

After a number of rounds we whittled the 20 wounds of the scorpion down and emerged victorious! onward we went with the dwarf crippled permanently but still alive and much heavier sacks of gold!

The next room found us fighting a much more manageble ambush of 10 snotlings!  Though the dwarf went down at least these weren't nurgle based snotling and he just got back up after being healed.  

After the plague bearers and scorpion there's no way we were going down to a few snotlings and quickly hacked our way through them before moving on to the last room.

The circle of power was the last room however only atrap with a thief stealing the shaman's fur cloak!  We finally cleared the town of the menacing monsters, now I think it's time for our dwarf to retire, healing him at the temple would cost more than we can begin to afford!