The Storm of Undeath

The Black Order enters Felstad this week - or more accurately, enters Rîmagrad, in the Order's tongue - in search of an old ally. We're playing Frostgrave: Thaw of the Lich Lord and we're up to Scenario 4: The Storm of Undeath.

In the last few games of the Lich Lord campaign, the Order has done reasonably well for itself against three other warbands: two Summoners and a Necromancer. Under Knight-Commander Tyr, the Order has recovered enough artifacts and riches among the ruins to justify deploying some more elite units, including a couple of Rangers, more Men-at-Arms, a Knight-Initiate and even a mighty warhorse (using the Spellcaster magazine rules).

This time, the Order's attempting to delve further into Rîmagrad to find the source of the undead menace in the city. As the aerial view above shows, we replaced the central plaza in Storm of Undeath with a large multi-storeyed ruin of sorts - perhaps an old forum long since fallen into disrepair. Plenty of treasures in the centre (and corpses).

Trouble isn't far away; the barbarian servants of a Summoner enter the forum from the north-east. The big brute in the vanguard is well known to the Order; that giant axe has claimed several victims in previous skirmishes.

As if on cue, the servants of a Necromancer enter the forum from the north-west. Stealthier than the Summoner's forces, these soldiers are supported by unliving thralls recently raised by the Necromancer himself.

It's not just the Necromancer who has the support of unworldly creatures; the Summoner brings several inhuman horrors with him, one of which attacks the wizard's forces, temporarily breaking free of the spell of binding forced upon it.

Tyr and Casimir seize the initiative. Storming into the central forum, the two knights slam into the Necromancer's forces, killing one and pushing back another. Torrek, however, is sent back limping, dealt a mighty blow by a brute of a man bearing the Necromancer's colours.

Before long, the forum descends into chaos. The Necromancer's forces have seized a pair of ancient relics from the centre, as have the Summoner's servants. The Order's infantry under Reiftyr, captain of the Guard, manage to hold the centre long enough to pluck another relic from the earth. However, as if on cue, lightning strikes the forum, badly wounding one of the Order's apothecaries - and the earth begins to shudder and shake as the living dead claw their way from the earth!

An unspoken truce of sorts emerges as the Order's warriors find themselves beset on all sides by the undead, and the Summoner and Necromancer turn to their own warbands, ordering them to retreat in good order with the treasures they have seized.

Before they turn to leave, the Summoner looks back across the forum to the Order's embattled infantry. With a cruel half-smile, the Summoner speaks a word of power and the air in the centre of the forum seems to split and tear, and from somewhere else something coalesces into reality...

...the spirit of a skinwalker, a wendigo in the tongues of the Far West, materialises in the centre. Lurching forward on limbs held together by skinless sinew and bloody tendons, the skinwalker-demon slams into Vaclav, an Order guardsman, dealing him a near-mortal blow. But before Vaclav loses consciousness, he thrusts his arming sword deep into the beast's gut, spilling entrails and viscera across the earth. The beast bellows, and a second later howls again as Tyr slams into the demon from the left, hewing through the beast's neck with his runic blade. The beast shudders, and in a split second the forces binding it to the material plane dissipate; with a skeletal grin, the beast's animus vanishes, and a sack of rotting offal and gore collapses to the earth in its place.

Hefting Vaclav onto his shoulder, Tyr looks around him; seeing the numbers of living dead beginning to swell, and noting the Necromancer and Summoner falling back in good order, the Order commander grimly calls the retreat.

Post-Game

A pretty brutal game all told. Storm of Undeath requires all the warbands involved to make straight for the centre of the board and grab treasures, trying not to be hit by lightning, cut down by undead clawing their way out of the earth, and avoiding rival warbands. The potential for this to be a total bloodbath was definitely high.

However, in practice, this wasn't too bad a game for the Order or the other warbands. No-one actually died; Torrek was Badly Wounded by one of the Necromancer's servants, and both the Necromancer and Summoner's men absconded with a decent amount of treasure, earning a lot of XP in the process. Tyr and his warriors cut down most of the undead in the central square (fittingly, considering the Order's chief enemies are the living dead).

The real heart-stopping moment was when the Summoner managed to unleash a Major Demon on the table. Things could have gone VERY badly for the Order, especially with most of the melee fighters having suffered more than 50% HP damage by that point! It all came down to Vaclav - pictured above - absolutely fighting out of his skin to deal a mighty 10(!) points of damage to the Major Demon in its first melee. That granted Tyr and Casimir time to arrive and banish the demon for good.

Another event - not pictured above - was that the Ghoul King and his servants actually turned up on the very last turn, behind the retreating Necromancer and his forces. This could have really swung things terribly for the Necromancer, as the Ghoul King is an absolute nightmare to face in melee. However, some judicious use of Fog and Leap saw the Necromancer play pretty deftly to mislead and misdirect the Ghouls in time for the sorcerer to escape safely with the treasure.

All in all, a really good game, and the next scenario - Run of the Rangifer - should be very interesting. Wraith Knights look like a nightmarish enemy to face, and even Tyr - who's pretty beefed up by this point in the campaign, having discovered a Ring of Life and Crystal Rose in this scenario - might find it tricky to take them on.

Whatever the future holds, it's been a blast so far - on to scenario 5!

Here's where the Order stands after this game: