Historical Holiday Interlude - Warwick

My partner and I got away for a mini-break to Warwick last weekend. We spent four glorious days exploring the quiet town of Warwick and the much busier home to William Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon.

We had a few walks around Warwick town during our long weekend stay; we had the time to look at the two "gates", the Lord of Leycester's house and the castle. We also spent a long, leisurely day in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon where we went all Shakespeare by seeing his Birthplace, Anne Hathaway's House, and paid a visit to the RSC theatre to see a modern rendition of Measure for Measure.

Apologies for the lighting - it was a very sunny day

As this post is to be mostly about the medieval things we got to see on our visit to Warwick, I have only included photos, for my reference purposes, of Warwick Castle itself. The castle, and its grounds, is great for a family day (or two) out; we barely scratched the surface of what was on offer as there are plenty of things to do and see. We watched a rather spectacular falconry display that involved birds of prey from all over the world (the Andean condor is simply enormous), a trebuchet demonstration, and took part in a couple of guided talks which included a potted history of the castle and tales of a few of its ghostly residents.

Inside the castle - Guys tower, barbican and Caesar's tower

The castle started out as a typical Norman motte and bailey fortification completed in 1068. From an information post on the mound, it seems that it was built on or near the site of an Anglo-Saxon burh - I have yet to read up more fully on that. The wooden keep and palisades were rebuilt in stone at a later date and then fell into disrepair before the barbican and gatehouse were constructed in the 14th century. The castle was then added to, and left to go to ruin, at various times over the intervening centuries, culminating in what we see today. 

On this visit, I wanted to find out a bit more about Guy, Earl of Warwick. The reason being is that before I moved to where I currently reside, I lived in Kent. One of my local pubs was called the Guy, Earl of Warwick and there were several other pubs on, presumably, a similar theme - The Bear and Ragged Staff being one of them for instance. Unfortunately, I was unable to get around all of the exhibits, so missed out on that particular period of history. That said, I am assuming that one of the main towers is named after him - happy to be proven wrong if anyone knows if the tower is linked to the pub's namesake...

Guy's Tower

Zoomed in a bit

Guy's Tower from the castle battlements

Our walk around the walls, combined with the potted history tour, led to the other main tower, currently named after Julius Caesar (some kind of Victorian style renaming to make it sound more grand apparently). It was originally named after Poitiers, the site of a battle that one of the earls of Warwick was rather successful in and made a huge fortune in ransoms at, but that was deemed too much of a linguistic mouthful so was changed to something easier to say apparently.

Caesar's (or Poitiers) Tower

I have just noticed that most of these photos are on the wonk. That is my fault as they were taken with my phone camera and it was a very bright day, so I literally could not see my phone screen whilst taking them.

We didn't get to do our usual 4 hour marathon tours of each display and museum within the castle; that will have to be left for a return visit one day. As a result, a lot of the history that I normally pick up on did not get filed away in the old grey matter. So, apologies for the history-lite report.

It would be remiss of me to not include a picture of the rather spectacular trebuchet found within the grounds of the castle. There is a short interactive show about one of the sieges of Warwick castle that included the use of the great trebuchet. The show was a bit meh in terms of the acting, but I guess it was aimed at families with kids. However, the loading and firing of the siege engine itself was good to watch.

Trebuchet

Warwick is a very quiet town (well, it was whilst we were there), so it is a good place to visit for a relaxing weekend away. There is just enough to do to take up your time in an enjoyable way. As we missed a fair bit due to our trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, we decided to leave some of the things to do in Warwick until the Monday, but, unfortunately, almost everything was closed. There are a couple of interesting museums, a number of medieval gates/houses, as well as easily two days worth of perusing at the castle itself to fill your time.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh (#16) - The Emperor of the Waves II

Day 23 continued - aboard the Emperor of the Waves

Navda scouted ahead, he crept down the stairs to below decks, but just scant moments later we heard a cry of alarm. He had become entangled in an almost invisible web. Dharion cautiously approached the entangled rogue and began to cut him loose, but within moments of Navda's arms becoming free a giant wolf spider dropped onto him and bit him. A sling stone from me and a Firebolt from Gladreth killed the arachnid.

Thinking that the danger was over, we began to cut Navda free again but another of the weird gribblies we had previously seen in the cabin on the deck dropped down and sprayed Navda in the same gossamer thin web. Luckily, we were prepared for this and Navda was able to break free almost instantly. I attacked the beast with my mace, but Druss clove it in two with his great sword.

We passed through the curtain at the bottom of the stairwell, and filed into the main area below decks, only to be confronted with a huge swarm of smaller spiders, scurrying hither and thither. They spotted us and made for us so we had to use every means possibly to squash them before they bit us. Unfortunately, our encounters with their giant cousins were not at an end, as another wolf spider dropped onto Dharion. Luckily he was able to finish it off before it caused the party any greater concerns. Drakkon and Navda finished off the spider swarm between them soon after.

Whilst we regained our breath, we decided to carefully burn away any webs we could see and take stock of our surroundings. Around the main corridor/room we were in, we could see six doorways and a hatch in the floor directly below the grate above. We decided to investigate the doors one-at-a-time starting with the one in the left wall, and determined to move around them in a clockwise fashion.

More action aboard the Emperor

A quick look at the large hatch in the floor before we started showed us that it appeared to have been unused for some time. 

The first room was full of leaf litter into which was intermixed a fair amount of human bones. We ignored the grisly contents and after a little searching found a stone-tipped spear and a small wooden shield with a spider-like design on it. We decided to take these items with us and resealed the door.

The second room's door was difficult to push open, much like the door on deck above us. The room was again full of webs, which made progress through the room very slow. We burned the webs as we went and eventually found four cocoons hanging from the ceiling. We decided to cut one down to see whether they contained innocent victims or more spider-like critters that we would need to destroy.

Unfortunately, the cocoons contained grotesque blue-skinned beings with four red eyes, long tongues, and very sharp teeth. As soon as the first was cut open, the other cocoons began to wriggle. Not liking this one bit, I decided to use my Burning Hands spell to destroy them if I could. As fire seemed to have a goodly effect upon the spider webs elsewhere on the ship, I thought that maybe this would be no different. My hunch turned out to be sound as the spell I cast upon the two cocoons within range caused the demons within untold pain as they struggled free from their bonds.

A frantic melee erupted wherein Druss killed one of the beings just before I was struck unconscious by another.

From the tale told after the fight, the demon that struck me down Rampaged and also almost killed Drakkon, but the barbarian struck back at it and killed it. Navda shot the third one and the final demon was killed by Drakkon. Gladreth's Shocking Grasp spell appeared to do very little damage to the demons, so she spent most of the rest of the combat trying to revive me.

Once the demons were destroyed, I was finally brought round and given a Healing draft. I regained my wits and said a Prayer of Healing to restore the rest of my companions.

We searched the room and I was able to find a pair of gold earrings and a jewelled necklace; both appeared to be worth some money.

The third room appeared to be a wrecked bed chamber. The bed and dresser were in pieces and there were more webs everywhere.

Navda realised that clearing out the ship was going to take quite a lot longer than the three hours we were allocated, so he returned to the deck to instruct the dwarf rowers in the jolly boat to return to their ship and inform the captain of the situation.

Ghosts of Saltmarsh (#15) - The Emperor of the Waves I

Day 23 - Salvaging the Emperor of the Waves

The rest of the night passed without further drama. We managed to get a little rest before being roused by the captain to honour the fallen and bury them at sea. The captain lost eight of his crew to the sahuagin raid. He wrote a heartfelt obituary to each and every member of the lost crew members in his log.

Not long after the burials had taken place, a heavy fog rolled in. We feared the worst but all seemed calm until there was a shout from aloft "Ship Ahoy! Off the Starboard bow". The captain furled the sails, not that they were doing much any more, and brought the ship to a halt 500 yards from the ghostly outline of a damaged ship leaning to port. He dropped anchor, and he and his crew studied the ship for several minutes before confirming it was indeed the Emperor of the Waves, the ship that we had come looking for. It was looking a bit worse for wear, with two masts being broken off completely, the guard rails on the decks appeared to have been crushed as if from something large grabbing hold of the ship, and many very worn and damaged hull planks.

We all jumped into a jolly boat along with three dwarf crew members and were told by the captain that the ship would be soon be ours; once we have handed over the treasures requested. The dwarf crew rowed us over to the Emperor, where we climbed the grappling hooked ropes the crew had cast for us.

The main deck was discovered to have many bloodstains on it which we ascertained to be maybe three days old. We split up to explore the open air decks but found nothing of interest except for the obvious beaten-up state of the ship - the lack of two masts and the loose ship's wheel - which caused us most concern; how would we sail it back to port?

After finding out that the ship was not in good shape we decided to go look for what we had been asked to find. The large cargo grate was too heavy to move, and peering into the darkness didn't reveal anything that could be seen. Drakkon and Druss approached the forecastle cabin doors and tried to push them open but they were very difficult to budge. They did eventually manage to open them wide enough to enter the cabin beyond to find it full of large spider webs and a massive pile of junk to the right.

Whilst the two warriors searched through the debris and cleared a path through the webs for the rest of us to fit into the room, suddenly, a brutish creature dropped from the ceiling and took a nasty bite out of Drakkon. Gladreth, who was close to the doorway when the two warriors entered the cabin managed to Firebolt it, and Druss joined the melee too. 

Unknown gribbly encountered on the Emperor of the Waves

I Blessed those already in the room, and after a tough fight, the strange being was finally felled by Druss, but not before a giant spider-like creature had also dropped into the combat. By now, Dharion and Navda had moved up and were able to add their arrows to the fray. 

A nasty, poisonous giant spider thing

Not long after the giant spider dropped from the ceiling, several smaller ones also began to join their larger cousin in what they probably hoped would be an easy hunt for their next meal.

A frantic combat ensued, wherein Gladreth was bitten by the giant spider and fell to the floor paralysed. The party took quite a number of horrific wounds before I was able to offer a Prayer of Healing to get them back in the fight, but the spiders seemed to shrug off most of our attacks; our weapons seemed to cause them minimal damage.

With their renewed vigour, the fighters in the party began to take a toll on the spiders and the beasts were slain one by one; Drakkon slew the giant spider and one of the smaller ones, whilst Dharion and I managed to slay the other two, but none would have gone down without everyone being involved in the fight. 

On board the Emperor of the Waves

With the fight over, we spent some time trying to revive Gladreth. Luckily, she began to shrug off the effects of the poison after ten to fifteen minutes. Whilst she was being administered to, the rest of the party searched the cabin but found nothing of interest within the piles of wood, paper, cloth and other debris.

Midgard : Scenario 3 : Aftermath

The None Shall Pass scenario saw the Britons take heavy casualties, and whilst the Romans appeared to be relatively unscathed, they were almost at the point of being wiped out due to each units' Stamina losses.

On the Roman side, the only unit that didn't take any damage was Gaia Pomponia; Marius Pollux took a wound, the legionaries lost 1 Stamina, and both the archers and milites lost 2 points of Stamina each. The Britons also took plenty of Stamina loss, but as these will be automatically replenished, I won't concern myself with listing those details here...

The Britons' losses (136pts):

• Catuarus 1 (18pts)
• 1x Mounted Warriors (16pts)
• 2x Skyclad (32pts)
• 1x Warriors 3 (22pts)
• 1x Female Warriors (16pts)
• 1x Slingers (10pts)
• 1x Hounds (22pts) 

The Roman losses (77pts):

• Lucius Valerius Corvus 3 (43pts) 
  
• 1x Legionaries (34pts)

This game has thrown a spanner in the works when it comes to reinforcing each contingent for the next scenario. The Britons are not really a problem, but the Roman force is rapidly diminishing in size. I know that I wanted this to become a desperate battle for survival, but if only two or three Roman units are coming to the table then it makes things very difficult for a fair battle. So far, all has worked out OK with the scenarios, but the next one (Take the High Ground) will not work with such a big disparity between the remaining forces. The fifth encounter, Last Stand, is another 300:200pts ratio, so may work depending on the fourth battle's outcome. The final battle of the campaign will be just a straight up battle, so I can fudge the Roman army numbers by saying that reinforcements have come from the Roman lines to help with the beleaguered forces' retreat.

Scenario 4 map - Take the High Ground

The Take the High Ground scenario suggests that the defending army is reduced by 25% that then arrive at a later stage in the game. This may work if I roll that the Britons are the defenders and I can get the Romans into the fight very quickly. There are in-game bonus Reputation points to be grabbed, so this may work if enough casualties are caused very early in the game. But, if it is rolled the other way around, then the Romans will really struggle.

The Romans have the following left in their "pot" from the cohort... 

• 2 x Legionaries
• 2 x Auxiliaries
• 2 x Cavalry 

According to my reinforcements rules, to bolster the forces for the next scenario, the Romans automatically get a new leader and a unit of Legionaries due to the next map location being close to a watchtower. The Britons get 120pts: 100 plus 2x10 for their level of victory. However, this does not seem to be enough to bring the Romans up to speed for this scenario, and nor does my existing Briton reinforcement table seem to give a "realistic" roster of reinforcements for the Britons, so I have re-evaluated the reinforcements lists...

• The Romans gain reinforcements depending upon which Roman camp type they are nearest to...
• Marching camp = 2x random units (roll d6) until all are used up (2 auxilia and 2 cavalry left)
• 1-4 Auxiliary Spearmen (up to 4 units) (24pts each)
• 5 Auxiliary Archers (up to 2 units) (29pts each)
• 6 Cavalry (2 units left) (20pts each)
• Watch Tower = 1x unit of legionaries (2 units left) (34pts each)
• In the final battle they get an onager and/or a scorpio unit in addition
• Depending upon how casualties go, they may get a boost from the rest of the legion that has come looking for them for the final battle
  
• The Britons can recruit from a limitless pool of warriors...
• All removed units are lost
• All damaged units are automatically returned to full strength
• An extra 100 points awarded to spend on new units
• If the Britons win, depending on their level of victory, they will gain a bonus number of reinforcement points equal to the level of victory (0-3) x10
• subtract the points value until all points are used - any left over points are lost 
• Roll 1d6 on the table below to realise troop type...
• 1-3  Warriors 2 (17pts)
• 4-5  Warriors 3 (22pts)
• 6 roll on next table...  
•  Roll 2d6 on the table below to realise troop type (and an additional d6 if a Hero is rolled)...
• 2 Hounds (22pts)
• 3 Female Warriors (16pts)
• 4 Skyclad (16pts)
• 5-6 Slingers (10pts)
• 7 Skyclad (16pts)
• 8-9 Archers (15pts)
• 10 Mounted Warriors (16pts)
• 11 Chariots (24pts)
• 12 Additional Hero
• 1-3 Level 1 (18pts)
• 4 Druid Level 2 (27pts)
• 5 Level 2 (32pts)
• 6 Level 3 (47pts)

As the next scenario is by a watchtower, the Romans gain 1 unit of legionaries. The Britons gain 120 points worth of new troops. As this creates a large points difference that is not suited to the next scenario, I am going to rule that the remaining 2 Roman cavalry units have made their way to intercept the retreating column, with the remaining infantry to join them in the next game. I am also going to rule that the reduced Stamina units are back to full strength for the Romans too - I am going to say that wandering patrols have returned, stragglers from previous battles have joined the retreating army and some of the injured have returned to service. I am going to imagine them as below full strength but, what with their desperation and nearness to "home", they have extra vim (instead of 80 green troops in each century, there are now maybe 50 to 60 classed as veterans, and there have been swaps between units to bolster each other up) and the pick of the equipment left.

The Britons' reinforcements (120pts out of a possible 120pts):

• 1x level 1 leader - replacement (no cost)
• 1x Warriors 2 (17pts)
• 1x Warriors 2 (17pts)
• 1x Skyclad (16pts)
• 1x Warriors 3 (22pts)
• 1x Warriors 2 (17pts)
• 1x Mounted Warriors (16pts)
• 1x Archers (15pts)

The Roman reinforcements (74pts):

• 1x level 3 leader - replacement (no cost)
• 1x Legionaries (34pts)
• 2x Cavalry (40pts)

 The Britons' army for scenario 4 (97/211=308pts):

• Bellicus 3 (47pts)
• Maviloduus 2 (32pts)
• Level 1 leader (18pts)
• 1x Warriors 3 (22pts)
• 6x Warriors 2 (@17 = 102pts)
• 3x Archers (@15 = 45pts)
• 1x Slingers (10pts)
• 1x Skyclad (16pts)
• 1x Mounted Warriors (16pts)

This force is now just over the 300pts limit, but I am OK with that - it is enough to enable me to play Take the High Ground (Scenario 3 from the rulebook).

The Roman army for scenario 4 (85/161=246pts):

• Level 3 leader (43pts)
• Gaia Pomponia Thrax 2 (21pts)
• Marius Pollux 2 (21pts) 
• 2x Legionaries (68pts)
• 1x Auxiliary Archers (29pts)
• 1x Auxiliary Spearmen (24pts)
• 2x Cavalry (40pt) 

The Roman army is now closer in value to the Briton army, so that should make the scenario a little fairer. The Take the High Ground scenario can be played with either force as the defender now, although it will be a little more of a challenge for the Romans - that said, the force without a commander being joined by the cavalry and their new Prefect might make for a better narrative. Hmm, I will ponder on whether to drop the dice roll for game roles and actually play it that way to make a better narrative.

 

For the next blog entry I will need to sort out names and miniatures for the two new leaders, and hopefully get some paint onto a few of the other bases.