So at this point in the campaign, I had written myself into a corner. The next stage of the arc would be the Horde arriving at Freegate and besieging it. I had no idea what this would look like nor how to run something like that.
So I punted.
I spoke with the players and explained I needed to skip over the Siege and narrate the key events because I really had no idea how to run something that large with the Fantasy Hero system. Thankfully they were amenable to this. So here is roughly what I told them. It is only a rough approximation as none of my notes on it seem to have survived, at least nothing in electronic format. I might have some hand-written notes buried somewhere and there might still be something in my pile of rescued but unnamed files from the hard drive crash I suffered in 2014, but right now all I have is my memory.
The Investiture of Freegate
The Goblinoid Horde North [named to separate it from a second Horde besieging the City of Riverbight and rampaging in the lands surrounding it in the southern part of the Crendian Empire] split in two when it reached the southern end of the chasm in which Freegate sat. Both halves numbered over 20,000 warriors, with the eastern half being the slightly larger of the two. Each half marched up its side of the chasm for three days until both reached the points where the two adamantine bridges connected the city on the mesa in the center with the opposing rims. There they arranged themselves to besiege the city, cutting off its escape.
So why did none of the Horde march up inside the chasm or anyone in Freegate escape that way? The bottom of the chasm is over a half mile deep and filled with a dense jungle that appears to be warmer and more humid than the surrounding plains. Unusual roars and cries are occasionally heard from the jungle and large reptilian flying beasts, known as "clakkers" glide in the air above the jungle. The people of Freegate occasionally feed the clakkers, who have learned not to attack people on the bridges. The jungle is extremely dangerous and no one entering the jungle has ever returned. The Horde seemed to be aware of this and avoided the area.
The Siege
Once in place, the Horde attacked the relatively weak Rim Defenses, easily smashing through the fortifications there. [Those were there mostly as access control to the bridges and not defenses strong enough to stop what they were facing.] Then a series of attacks were initiated, with groups of warriors marching the length of the bridges to start attacking the actual city gates.
This is where the Wizards of Outlands University shone. Combined attacks by units of wizards either killed the attacking warriors or pushed them off the bridges and let gravity do the dirty work. This heavily bolstered the morale of the city. Unfortunately, the Wizards knew this was unsustainable - eventually they would run out of reagents for their magics and then the Horde would have the numbers to break one or both sets of gates.
This gave rise to a plan of desperation - the Arch Chancellor of the University authorized the mass distillation of Tim's Double Distilled. This consumed all of the alcohol inside the city [at least all that could be found]. The mass of Double Distilled was used to fill as many glass or ceramic bottles and jugs as the University could procure. While this happened, scrolls of extended telekinesis were mass produced as delivery systems.
The Flight of the Bottles
Four days later, in the early morning before the daily assault along the bridges by the Horde, while their warriors gathered near the entrance to the eastern bridge, tens of Wizards along the eastern walls of the city cast the extended telekinesis spell from the scrolls and as one, each lifted and sent bottles of Tim's Double Distilled across the gap between the city and the rim until the bottle floated over the massed goblinoids. Then one Wizard launched a fireball at the massed bottles, triggering a chain-reaction detonation of all the bottles over the eastern half of the Horde.
The resulting airburst was devastating.
Hundreds if not thousands of goblinoid warriors were killed outright [plus an unfortunate number of the enslaved population of the Bayern District and other places south]. Squadrons of batriders were swatted out of the sky. Many of the immense rolling buildings the Horde had brought all the way from the Great Swamp were damaged or destroyed. The stone fortifications on the rim were heavily damaged, portions blown over into the chasm below. Eastern-facing windows in the city [over a mile away] were damaged or destroyed. Few of the defenders along the wall were injured because they had been warned to hide. [But of course some didn't heed the warning because they thought they knew better than wizards and self-selected themselves out of the gene pool.] Fire, smoke, and dust rose over the eastern rim of the chasm.
An hour later, from the western walls of Freegate, another flight of bottles rose and started its way across the chasm, towards the besiegers on the western rim. Many of the warlords on that side took one look at the approaching bottles and said, "Nope."
Ignoring [and occasionally killing] the shaman leadership of the Horde trying to get them to stay, the warlords turned their troops west and fled the area at best speed. Nearly 50% of the Horde on this side of the chasm broke and ran, heading for the mountains to the west-southwest of the city [an extension of the Worldspine Mountains known as The Spur]. The remainder, barely held together by the religious leadership, flooded onto the bridge, hoping to close with the city and escape the deadly explosion that was immanent.
Seeing this, the Wizard in charge of the attack cast his fire spell early, detonating the bottles before they were all over the rim. This airburst killed thousands of warriors and gouged a huge chunk out of the rim wall itself. Those goblinoids on the bridge were blasted clean off, their bodies falling down into the chasm below, where the things down there ate well.
This second attack broke the morale of the warlords of the Horde. Those on the eastern rim organized their troops and headed northwest, towards the next target on their Grand Quest, the city of Crendia, capital of the Crendian Empire. Any shaman that objected to the Horde leaving Freegate suddenly found themselves on the wrong end of multiple spears or pincushioned by many arrows. The smart ones kept silent, accepting the defeat. They could regain control over the Horde later. Those goblinoids on the western rim still loyal to the Grand Quest [a significantly reduced number] packed up and headed north to march around the northern end of the chasm and eventually meet up with the eastern half of the Horde. The rest fled to the mountains.
The Wizards breathed a sigh of relief. They could not have done a third wave, having used up 90% of the alcohol in the city in these two attacks and virtually all the bottles available. The resulting celebrations in the city consumed the remaining 10% of alcohol [very well hidden away until then] until more could be brewed or distilled.
Against the Horde
Mansion of Illusions
Session 1 [Not Yet Posted]
No comments:
Post a Comment