Zach was unable to show, so Bartix the Wizard hung around the background. But Andrew joined us for the first time! He brought Erik the Green, a human Cleric. A party cleric, score!
We started on the Isle of Faeroe, newly cleared of invaders. The players laid out their plan: they would load all of their clan members (both fighters and civilians) onto the half-completed dragonship and make for Hyboria. There they would join with Earl Gaermmund and the rest of the clan. To get half a boat loaded with people to the mainland would take some sort of skill challenge!
There were a lot of things to do around the boat, and these are the skills that the players found to get them there:
Edward the fighter: Endurance checks to row
Erik the Cleric: Nature checks to navigate
Hermiad the ranger: Acrobatics checks to climb the rigging
Mendas the rogue: Athletics checks to climb the rigging
Oddny the paladin: History checks to navigate
Rurik the warlord: Diplomacy checks to motivate the crew
Varin the warlock: Diplomacy checks to motivate the crew
They made six consecutive rolls with only one failure. That got them almost all the way there, close enough to Hyboria to see the invading fleet in the harbor. An albatross circled the ship suspiciously, then landed and delivered a message from Earl Gaermund: the vikings were to land their vessel and help defend the city. Brawk! Hello! There will be more bird messengers, by the way... I am uncomfortable doing an English accent or a squeaky kobold, but I can always do a bird.
With at least 20 Albion warships before them, the players hatched a new plan to cause as much chaos as they could before they landed.
As part 1, Mendas would act as a solo agent to set boats on fire. He armed himself with Edgar's Wavestrider boots and Oddny's Flaming longsword. He planned to run across the water to an enemy ship, cut a bag of boating tar with the flaming sword, throw it aboard, then slice the ship with flame for good measure. To do this he would need an Athletics check for running, a stealth check to avoid detection, and an attack roll to hurt the ship. The boots would normally just let a user skirt the water for a movement round, but their daily power allowed the effect to extend for an encounter. I made a judgment call to limit this effect for fifteen minutes.
For part 2, the rest of the party offloaded all NPCs onto longboats. The Fightin' Vikings made a combat landing in Hyboria Harbor, and the Civilian Vikings went out to look for safety. The adventurers then set their boat on fire and aimed for the fleet! They made another set of skill rolls (though the Motivate the Rowers with Diplomacy tactic was no longer valid, as the rowers had been sent away), and successfully sideswiped two more boats before the fire got out of control.
Meanwhile, Mendas was having middling luck. He successfully set two Albion ships on fire without being seen. But then he failed his Athletics check, flagging behind his original plan. He got to the third boat, set that on fire, and failed Athletics again! Now he could either get to a fourth boat (where he'd be stuck), or abandon his attempt and rush to meet the friendly (flaming) boat. He chose the latter and ran towards the flaming collision.
The rest of the party was drawing some attention from the fleet, and chose to end their strategy by boarding an enemy ship and riding it into the harbor.
They made a final skill roll, got their collapsing boat near an Albion galley, and climbed aboard! They found a party of Orc and Hobgoblin mercenaries their to receive them.
Finally, like more than an hour into the evening, we rolled for initiative.
The monster ship was arrayed with three Hobgoblin archers (what, no Orc missile troops? I had wanted this adventure to be all Orcs) in the back of the boat, aided by Orc minions. Two Orc Beserkers stood ready to absorb the charge. The players acted quickly to take out those aiding minions, with Hermiad, Varin, and Oddny (left with a magic crossbow but no magic sword) hitting and killing. No +2 for me! It was getting pretty clear to me that the party had figured out my minis-shorthand for which orcs had just one hit-point. As well they should: warriors and schlubs would look different in real life.
Edgar and Rurik got stuck in with the heavy Orcs, with Erik throwing his Daily power over at the surviving archer. These orcs lasted quite a bit longer than last game, getting their Warrior Surge off. But the archers continued to pepper the party with arrows.
Finally in the fourth round, Mendas got to the boat and climbed up in the back. With his Stealth roll, the archer was unaware of his presence, and the Sneak Attack damage finished the guy off.
There were now 7 warriors facing four monsters, and we could start to see some good flanks. The orcs and hobgoblins fell and the boat was theirs!
Now there were a lot of places that possessing a stolen Albion corsair could have taken the game, but I had an encounter planned in the city on shore, and it was pretty cool. So in the name of getting to that, I railroaded things along. Maybe a more experienced GM could have worked the plan into the reality of the game; in hindsight now, I have some ideas. But whatever; I said that the players sideswiped two more ships and crashed their stolen vessel into the Albion harbor, where their Earl had asked for their assistance. On the shore they found the city burning, but the Norse had control of at least part of the harbor, and Earl Gaermund was relatively easy to locate, He and the clan were working to drive a wedge into the invaders, and the players saw that their clansmen they had dispatched in longboats earlier had joined the fight.
The Earl had a mission for them: a suspiciously strong band of Orc mercenaries had stormed the city's signal tower. Gaermund suspected that they might be trying to signal a second wave of the invasion fleet, but nothing had been seen yet. He asked the party to storm the signal tower and stop whatever the orcs were up to. The players agreed and set off into the warzone, making some quick stealth rolls to pick through the rubble unnoticed. Varin drew an arrow, but they made it to the entrance of the tower mostly unharmed.
The stairs were unguarded, although the vikings had to cross through the bodies of a previous attempt to storm the tower. Three stories up, the stairway opened into a mammoth room full of orcs and fire!
In the far corner of the room was a great fire pit, designed to flash signals along an island chain back to the Scandi mainland, back before the Norse were pushed out. The orcs had stoked the fire beyond its design limits, and a blaze now overflowed the pit and spilled out onto the stone tile floor. I modeled the fire with flame tokens and a fire elemental in the center of the pit, but I explained to the players that this was a mundane (if large) fire. The room had some partitions and beds... a crew had lived here to maintain the signal fire, and doubtless their bodies were somewhere in the room. Also scattered around the room were chests and crates. Runish text marked the chests as "oil" and the crates as "sand." The boxes had been indiscriminately broken into by invaders ignorant of Norse glyphs.
Finally, a warparty of orcs turned to meet the players: a war-grizzled old chieftan, a shaman softly glowing with mystical power, and 9 orc footsoldiers.
We rolled initiative and got stuck in!
The party charged in, fanning out to encompass the orc threat.
Varin, Rurik, and Mendas met the strongest infantry, including the chieftan, in the center of the room.
Oddny, Edgar, and Erik were engaged by the lightly-armored orc skirmishers, but were giving far more than they were taking.
Varin skirted the edge of the room, cursing the opposing magic-user.At the end of the first round of combat, three orcs were dead, but no-one else that had been hit had been bloodied. The chieftan in particular seemed tough and hard to hit.
Then, as the party watched, the fire began to spread. Flame engulfed every square adjacent to an existing blaze, so that the zone of fire grew out of the corner. The party was concerned, but obviously the orcs had to come first.
We continued the combat, and the skirmishers and minions quickly went down. The vikings now had the numbers advantage, but the two orc beserkers, the chieftan, and the mage were going strong. The orc soldiers were doing decent damage, but the mage kept missing. Meanwhile he was besieged by Erik, Varin, and Mendas, and the flames were creeping up behind him cutting off his escape. So that was that, he was down.
The flames spread again, engulfing a chest of oil. It exploded, sending flame out in fifteen-foot arcs around the room.
On the south side of the fire the flames burned through the wooden crates before them, Sand spilled out of the released bags and stopped the spread, though the fire would obviously go around this obstacle soon. Elsewhere a brazier was overcome, causing a smaller explosion as its wood and oil tipped and spilled over. Someone (Erik, I think) was hit by flames and took 5 damage.
The party concentrated on one of the orc beserkers and brought him down, despite his healing surge. An orc greataxe landed on viking flesh though; these guys were still fighting. Rurik decided that they had the orcs pretty much under control, but the fire was going to kill them if they let it. He braved the fire to see if he could control it, striding into the flames to reach the crates of sand. The fire would do five damage, but he resisted 6 fire! Boo! So he was fine. With a remaining minor action, he threw a sandbag into a nearby square and extinguished the flames. Then, a round later, the flames spread again... but they were not able to spread beyond it.
The fallen body of the mage was next to the flames now, and the party saw a plume of green smoke issuing from his belt. Erik and Mendas rushed over and recovered two pouches of a curious green powder from his belt. This was their plan, then, to seed the signal fire with special green smoke and send a message to the fleet. The vikings pocketed the powder and returned to the battle.
The last orc footsoldier fell, and everyone concentrated on the Chieftan. He was bloodied, then took his healing surge and attacked with renewed strength.
The party dug in, but every sword was needed to take him down. At this point people started looking at Rurik, who was not helping kill anything but fire! He had stationed himself next to the sandbags and was throwing three a round, cutting a line in the spreading fire. He looked at the rest of the party, asking anyone to throw a sandbag if they could! I think Varin and Erik took some minor actions to try and disperse the fire, but the focus remained on the orc war chief. Finally, after several rounds of combat, he went down.
We mopped up by having everyone throw sand. At 21 bags a turn, even this fire could be quelched. Not as good as it could have with a Ray of Frost or a Freezing Cloud, but you know, Bartix can't show up every game! The Orc mage ended up holding a +2 Rod of First Blood, which Varin pocketed. He was also holding that odd green powder, which never saw the fire.
How ironic that stopping a fire still resulted in a pyrrhic victory... the party descended from the tower, but Hyboria was obviously a lost cause. Earl Gaermund ordered his clan to pile into the Bera, their main dragonship. They returned briefly to the Isle of Faeroe to pick up supplies, but then they set off, fleeing from Albion and her allies, to find a new life in the west!
So that went pretty well... I didn't like railroading, but I did like drinking, which is probably the reason I was a tad slow on my feet. Anyway, the fire seemed to work, and we killed a lot of orcs. This may be the last time that there are orcs in the campaign, but I feel like I made good use of them. Thanks to Anthony for taking pictures during the game!
Casualties:
8 Orc Drudges
3 Hobgoblin Archers
3 Orc Raiders
6 Orc Beserkers
1 Orc Eye of Gruumsh
1 Orc Chieftan
26 beers
