Ghosts of Saltmarsh - Firewatch Island (Day 8 - part III)

 Day 8 - continued

A few of us climbed down the ladder into the darkness. I cast Light onto one of my holy symbols to illuminate the room below. It was fairly large, with rough-hewn masonry walls with the occasional hole that let in a very little daylight; presumably this meant it was slightly above ground at those points at least. There was an inert skeleton at the foot of the ladder.

The bright light disturbed three people (two humans and a dwarf) huddled in the darkness and they began to wail against who or what we might be; they were very frightened and assumed we were there to kill them. We placated them as best we could and asked them their story whilst taking in the surroundings. We found out that their hermitage had been attacked suddenly yesterday at dusk, by what appeared to be undead beings from the sea, and very few of them had made it to safety. Whilst we tried to gather together their story, the skeleton in a breast plate was looked over by other members of the party. It turned out that the possibly year-old corpse was in armour that had not tarnished at all in that time. The armour was most likely magical and we vowed to return for it later. I took possession of a small gold amulet of an ancient sea god (rays of the sun over an ocean) that was also found on the corpse.

The least fearful of the trio asked after their brother, Aaron - two of them at least appeared to be religious folk. Jenna confirmed that she was a priestess of the hermitage and Barrett was one of her disciples, and that they had sent Aaron to the tower to light the beacon and ring the bell to raise the alarm. We told her that we had not seen Aaron, but then again we had only explored the ground floor. The third person, the dwarf, was trying hard to disguise who he was, but by subterfuge, Gladreth, our wizard, was able to work out that he was Morley Tobe - the dwarf we were looking for.

Whilst examining each person for signs of harm, in case we could heal them to show our good will, we noticed that Barrett was shivering, and his skin was covered in boils and had turned a blue colour. Both he and Morley seemed to be coughing a lot. Jenna appeared unharmed. I tried to persuade Jenna to join us upstairs to separate her from what I thought were two diseased beings, but she said that the dead from the sea would be returning soon (especially as we had been making so much noise upstairs - they were attracted by noise), as it was nearly dusk and she didn't want to leave safety. As we turned to leave and seal them back in their safe haven, Barrett coughed up a gout of blood and attacked Jenna and Morley. We managed to pull them to safety and lock Barrett in the cellar below.

At the point we had to stop play

Jenna started to become hysterical as she wanted to get to somewhere safe from the sea zombies. We decided to re-barricade the doors of the hermitage that we had earlier broken down in order to give the appearance that the doors had not been disturbed since the previous day, and we put down some of the oil of slipperiness that we had found earlier in front of the main entrance and south doors.

As the sun finally set, we locked Jenna and Morley in the kitchen winery swearing we would protect them and took up positions in the main hall ready for combat - most of us were downstairs but our rogue and barbarian made a move upstairs to ward the balcony after Jenna mentioned, just as the kitchen door was shutting, that the zombies also attacked through the roof.

The upstairs doors were all spiked but one of the doorways did not have a door within it, so that would need to be guarded. It was at this point, as it got dark, that we could hear groaning noises and bashing at both the northern main entrance and southern doors.

Upstairs at the point we had to stop

As Dharius and Navda returned to guard the open doorway on the balcony a crossbow bolt from within the room caught Dharius and forced him to retreat. At the same time, downstairs, the northern double-doors and southern barracks doors were smashed open to reveal a large number of the sea-undead beyond. We were surrounded and in for a tough fight.

I was covering the northern doors and as the undead poured into the main hall from two directions, I felt that my gods given powers would be needed more than ever. I channelled my divinity into the Radiance of the Dawn power and saw several of the zombies take radiant damage; one of them crumpled immediately and the others were severely harmed.

As more and more of the drowned dead entered the hallway we had to fight for our lives. It seemed that there were more than one type of zombie; some were much faster and capable than their slower brethren. The fight upstairs went badly for Dharius and Navda, so Dharius called for help. He managed to take down two zombies on the stairway whilst our trusty half-orc fighter passed him on the way up to help with the combat in the balcony rooms.

The fight progressed painfully for us (I had to Heal Gladreth twice and others in the party took damage that I couldn't get to to Heal), but we managed to slowly beat our attackers back; until more undead arrived at the southern and northern doors...

Midgard : Britannia - Roman 300pt starter force

This is the first of two posts detailing the stats for each of the forces I will be using for the first Midgard Heroic Battles scenario. It will be 300 points a side and will represent the first time this particular Roman contingent encounters the enemy and finds out that they have become isolated.

The 300 point starting force consists of 3 units (centuriae) of legionaries, 2 units (centuriae) of formed archers, 2 units (turmae) of cavalry, along with a mounted praefectus, a primus pilus and another senior centurion of the cohort to lead them.

Here is the 300 point army for the first scenario...

Here are their stats and pictures of the miniatures and/or bases created to represent them...

Lucius Valerius Corvus, praefectus castrorum...

Marcus Aurelius Bellator, primus pilus (centurio)...

Gaia Pomponia Thrax, pilus prior (centurio)...

III centuriae of legionaries...

Although I am using figures armed with pila, I am not classing these units as having missile weapons - they are to be used as heavy infantry only.

Centuria III

Centuria II

Centuria I

II centuriae of auxiliary archers... 

I centuria of archers from Gaul...

I centuria of Hamian archers from Syria...

II turmae of cavalry...

Turma I

Turma II

This is the initial force garnered from the Roman legionary and auxiliary cohorts. There are three more legionary centuries, two more turmae of cavalry and four more centuria of auxiliaries (these will be randomly rolled for each reinforcement phase with a preponderance going forward for milites rather than sagittaria). I have more than enough legionary miniatures to make up several more bases but I am limited with archers and cavalry, so I will have to be careful with what reinforcements I am able to give to the Romans.

Next post will hopefully feature their opponents - a fictitious tribe of Britons from somewhere in the midlands of Britannia.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh - Firewatch Island (Day 8 continued)

It feels like it has been a while since the last session of D&D online. Real life has got in the way a little recently but we all managed to meet up again online Thursday night for a continuation of the adventure.

We picked up from where we left off...

Day 8 - continued

After searching the main room we found nothing of value; most everything was smashed as a result, we assumed, of a bloody combat. The only thing of interest was a tall copper column or tube that ran way up into the ceiling with a small hatch in it. The smell emanating from it was overwhelming, so we decided not to investigate it at that time.

Navda, the party's rogue, used his skills to listen and check each of the four sets of doors in the main room for trap or anything to be wary of. As nothing was heard or appeared to be particularly suspicious we decided to enter each room in turn in a clockwise manner to see what we could find.

Screenshot from Fantasy Grounds - our progress on the ground floor so far

 

The first room, in the east wall with the double-doors, appeared to have been the scene of yet another bloody skirmish. A large table in the centre of the room was broken as if a heavy weight had fallen onto it from a great height. All signs of the remains of an unfinished meal were scattered about the broken table; mouldy food scraps and broken crockery intermingled with more blood stains. The ceiling above was gone, so we could see the windows of the level above; the east windows to the outside were open, but those pointing inwards towards the west were made into makeshift arrowslits.

For some reason we decided to skip the second room for now as it was heavily barricaded as if to keep something within. We would come back to it later.

The third door, to the south, had been pulled off its hinges and re-hung. The construction of this room led us to believe that it was what appeared to be a later addition to the hermitage; the walls were not as well made and the roof was made of thatch. The whole room was hung with ragged curtains as if to make individual cells - almost like a barracks - with old bedrolls and so on in each cell. The room was in an absolute mess and there were piles of gore in addition to the usual blood spatters. As we progressed into the room, we heard lots of skittering and squeaking before several piles of rags and bedrolls erupted into hordes of rabid rats.

A short fight put paid to the vermin, but not without a few of us taking a few bites and scratches. A quick search of the room after the rats were dispatched revealed a couple of small vials with a burgundy liquid in them and within one of the curtain poles, a small green charm.

The other door in this room led to the outside. After removing the barricade put in place to stop someone or something entering from the outside, we passed down a small flight of steps and onto a beach covered in flotsam and jetsam. There was a wall to the east which we assumed enclosed a garden (something to investigate later), and other than a large hill/mound all we could find of interest was a set or two of footprints leading up and down the beach and more blood stains.

We made our way back inside the hermitage to the main room to continue our investigations of the lower floor. On our way to the second door in the east wall we decided that we would investigate the smell coming from the copper tube after all and wished we hadn't - it turned out to be a rotted, toothless humanoid head of indeterminate origin. We left it in place and closed the hatch on it.

The barricade into the room was dismantled and we made our way inside what looked like a library of sorts. There were several tables with books strewn all over them and chairs positioned at them, shelving the length to the east wall with many books, and two huge tapestries depicting sea scenes and a sea hag on the north and south walls. A brief search through the blood stained remains in this room revealed the symbol of a sea god within crashing waves on a blood stained green rug and a small piece of damp paper on the table that looked like a map which we grabbed for later perusal.

Happy that we had cleared the east and south walls we decided to take a look along the corridor to the west. It appeared to be a dead end, but the plasterwork turned out to conceal a door at the end of the corridor. We quickly knocked down the false wall and opened the door into what turned out to be a circular tower. The ceiling was around forty feet above us but was covered in a green slime similar to that we encountered in the smugglers' caves further up the coast past Saltmarsh. The barrels and crates within the storage room were severely rotted and decayed, most likely as a result of the actions of the green slime. We quickly gathered some dry, broken furniture from the main room and lit a small fire outside the room to stop the slime from spreading; we surmised the false wall was built to stop its inexorable spread.

The final door we investigated was the last one in the main room on the west wall beside the corridor we had just returned from. The door opened smoothly into a kitchen area that showed signs of fairly recent use. There was nothing of interest to be found in this room except for a small flask of oil that had a hand-written label upon it saying Slipperiness.

The other, locked, door exiting from the kitchen led into what seemed to be a winery. Unfortunately, all the bottles were either empty or smashed and all the other caskets and crates in the room were full of rotten vegetables. Beneath one pile of rotten potatoes we espied a hatch. We pulled up the wooden cover to reveal a crude ladder leading down into the darkness.

Midgard Heroic Battles : Britannia - Briton unit stats

Following on from the Roman stat blocks, here are the leaders and units for the forces of Britannia. Again, I have gone for quantity over quality except for a few units.

Heroes and Leaders : I have created three standard chieftain types, one for each level, that become more powerful in a mystical kind of way. I have also allowed for druids to have magical powers but tried to choose spells that were more psychological than the standard fantasy trope fireballs and lightning bolts etc. in order to make it more "believable"; i.e. the druids cast spells and the warriors' (on both sides) belief in their power is so certain that they gain psychological advantage in warfare.

Troops : I decided to go for a lot more troop types to represent the diversity of warriors to be found in Britannia at the time. I have tried to represent naked fanatic warriors, female warriors and mixed units with hounds in a believable way.

So, there we have it - all the Roman and Briton troop and leader types. I will report on the starter armies in the next few blog entries and hopefully start the gaming not long afterwards.

There are still some more hobby and game related things still to prepare prior to playing the campaign, the most important being...

• Create a campaign map
• Complete the campaign rules - especially casualty recovery and reinforcements
• Paint as many prepped Celt figures as possible
• Complete building the final Briton units
• Source some scenery items - a few buildings, hills and trees for starters

These games will need to be played solo for the time being until one of my sons decides to pop over for a game. At least I will have a good idea of how to play before introducing the boys to the game and it will hopefully run a lot smoother for us if that is the case. I will be running each side according to historical sources as far as I can, but strange situations will undoubtedly crop up in the games that will make them out of the ordinary and therefore more fun.

Midgard Heroic Battles : Britannia - Roman unit stats

The difficult job of allocating stats and points values to each of the units has now been completed for both the Roman and British forces. I tried to go for a feeling that the Romans are more resilient man-for-man due to armour and disciplined training, but not as numerous as the Britons. So, I have made the Roman units more expensive with better stats and traits, which means that they should be quite heavily outnumbered on the battle field.

Here are the stats for each unit type:

Heroes and Leaders : I went for three types of leader for the Romans; a mounted Prefect and two centurions (one significant centurion and the other more generic)...

 

I will most likely need to do a stat block for the unmounted prefect that I have, but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. I think it will just be a case of dropping the Mounted trait, but I will think on it a bit more so that the new commander fits the scenario. I might also add in an optio as a level 1 hero - not sure how to run the promotion side of things between battles yet if there are casualties amongst the commanders, so this might be a good thing to at least have on the horizon.

Troops : Again, I kept things simple with just four troop types; one type for the legionaries and three types for the auxiliaries...

Artillery : There are two types of artillery that I will use for the Romans; a battery of scorpions and ballistae and an onager...

Now that I have the stats for the different unit types, I will need to firm up the 300 point army. I have some new ideas but will most likely go with what I had already thought - one of each leader, three units of legionaries, two units of formed archers and two units of cavalry (I think that makes 300 points or thereabouts).

Now I just need to think about how I am going to play the Britons. I will have their stat blocks in the next post.

 

PS - apologies if the tables above spill over into other parts of the site - I wanted them to be big enough to read without having to enlarge them by clicking on them, to make them easier to see for quick reference.