Arr,
gather round, ye Beardlings! Here be the third part of the Beard Bunker’s
campaign coverage, and now that we’ve shown you the armies and explained the background, style, and characters of the campaign, we’ll be
starting the story.
The
first campaign game that we played was a roleplaying session, and served to set
up the political landscape and several of the characters’ relationships for the
rest of the story. If you’re thinking of starting your own narrative campaign,
I can’t recommend this step highly enough. You don’t necessarily need to do it
in RPG mode; it could just as well be a conversation. The main thing is that a
setting and characters aren’t a narrative, they’re ingredients for a narrative. Stories are made by people changing
each other and the world around them, be it with big sticks or fabulous
cooking.
Finally,
a reminder: the campaign’s set after the
established fluff of the Warhammer World. It’s our own private storyworld. Where
the GW studio has to take hobbyists and their collections into consideration
when they write this sort of stuff, we have no such limitations. We can do
anything we want to Hochland – it could become the private domain of the de
Crécy brothers, or fall beneath the shiny gold boots of a certain sorcerer of Chaos.
Part the First: the Stormbournes arrive in
Hochland
(as explained by a halfling with a chip on
his shoulder and a half-pint in his hand)
Cedric Sneakfoot had been in Count Ludenhof's "employ" ever since he'd been caught poaching in the Count's estate. |
There I were, lying abed at some ungodly
hour, when one of the Count’s little fireworks goes off. Gods I hate them
things. But he were quite clear: if one of them goes off, I’m to get to the
palace smart quick. So I legs it over there, thinking it’s going be another job
following some noble twerp, or watching a “person of interest,” or maybe one of
his secret jobs, but instead I finds some fat beardy bloke covered in more
armour than a bloody steam tank. The Count’s put a brave face on, but it’s
clear the beardy bloke is making him nervous.
Before I even finds out why I’m there, the
beardy bloke’s talking stern at the Count. “This is your agent? A child?” says
he. Now I’ve gotten used to humans and their sizeist assumptions, and I’ve
grown my goatee for just this reason. Mind you, his beard is bigger than I am,
so maybe by his standards it don’t count. But he’s a nob, so I bows and scrapes
like always, and finally, the Count tells me what we’re about, that is, to take
the beardy bloke – a dwarf noble, he says – to the Tussen College of the New
Sciences. Apparently the dwarfs lent us some sort of stone, and it just got pilfered.
It were only later on, when I knew more, that I realised what sort of trouble
we’d be in if we didn’t find it.
Apparently the dwarfs want to build a load
of watchtowers along the river, no idea why, and one of them needs this special
stone in it to tell them when there’s enemies afoot, and if we didn’t find this
stone, the dwarfs would be wanting to build a tower on part of Tussenhof, which
I reckon wouldn’t be all that popular with the folks what live there. That’s
why the Count’s nervous, I thinks: he don’t want war with our only ally, but he
can’t just sit by if the dwarfs start knocking down our houses.
Anyway, off we trot, and the dwarf tells me
his name: Dwalin Gravenrune. He’s a serious sort, but a straight talker.
The day took a funny turn after that. Quick
version? We worked out that the stone was nicked by a necromancer, and we had
to go all the way to a creepy-looking tower north of Estdorf to get it back. Sortof
walked through a goblin tribal war on the way, and then there was all sorts of
walking dead’uns inside the tower, which meant that a) we knew we was on the
right track, and b) I damn near shat my trousers. By the time we got to the
necromancer, there was dead’uns coming at us from all round, and the soldiers
we’d brought with us looked to be in trouble, and even Dwalin were looking like
he were on the ropes.
No-one pays much attention to the little
folk, though. I snuck round the side and put an arrow right through the
necromancer’s heart. That seemed to sort the walking dead’uns out, and the
dwarf stone was just laying on a table next to some other paraphernalia, so there
you has it, cheers all round, war averted, pats on the back. But here’s the
funny thing: when the necromancer died, two glass jars on the shelf just...
shattered.
I went up and had a peak whilst the others
looked to their wounds. In one jar, there was a scrap of faded black cloth, and
in the other, an old Fleur-de-Lys pendant, both soaked in old, curdled blood.
That seemed a bit off, so I took the cloth and the pendant back with us to
Hergig to show the Professors at the college. I didn’t hear nothing after that.
When I went back to ask about it the other week,
Professor Kartoffelkopf suddenly got this look on his face, and told me not to
worry about it. Well as you know, there ain’t nothing scarier than someone
telling you not to worry, so the next time I saw Dwalin walking up towards the
Count’s palace, I asked him if he might need a local tracker. If something
big’s going on, I reasoned that being the Count’s favourite agent would put me
in harm’s way. Luckily Dwalin seemed keen on the idea; seems I made an
impression. You should’ve seen the look on His Lordship’s face when Dwalin
asked him...
You know, for the first time in years, I reckon
things might be looking up.
Part the Second: things are in no way
looking up
The
academics at Tussen College knew enough to date the Fleur-de-Lys as a design
that hadn’t been popular for over five centuries. They checked what few records
remained from so long ago, and found references to two Brettonian knights known
as the de Crécy brothers. The records said only that they had been involved in
murder and grave robbery, and that they disappeared before the law could catch
up with them. It seemed bizarre that a Brettonian knight would have anything to
do with such crimes. Starting to suspect they were out of their depth, the researchers
sent word to the experts on the dead: the college of the Amethyst Order in
Altdorf.
A
week later, Amelia von Lessing arrived in Hergig, and went straight to Count
Ludenhof with grave tidings. The de Crécy brothers were no mere murderers. Most
of the chronicles of the time had avoided the details so as not to cause
widespread panic, but in actuality, the de Crécys were vampires who had emptied
three towns of their people and besieged Bergsburg with an army of walking
corpses. The siege was eventually lifted by the Knights of the White Wolf, but
Phillippe and Etienne de Crécy were never seen again.
The
meaning of the shattering jars was clear to Amelia. Her research in Altdorf
told of a member of her order, Edmund Schiller, who was sent to Bergsburg to
help the White Wolves kill the vampires. Schiller was never heard from again,
but Amelia could well imagine his fate: chasing the defeated vampires through
the forest, but unable to face them in combat, he had somehow locked them in
torpor using arcane foci – a scrap of cloth from Phillippe’s cloak, a pendant
torn from Etienne’s neck by a passing branch – but somewhere along the line,
Schiller had strayed from the Amethyst path and turned to necromancy; perhaps
it was what he had to do to trap the vampires, knowing that he could never go
back to his order. Perhaps he had done it with the best of intentions, but it
was a corruptive path. Now, at least, he was dead, but the Grand Master of the
Amethyst Order was quite clear: until the de Crécys were slain, the affair
would remain a secret shame; a black mark on the college’s honour.
Amelia
wasn’t nearly as concerned for the college’s honour as she was for the
villagers of Hochland.
Part the Third: things are in fact totally stuffed
Hochland in 2251. Original map sourced from Winds of Chaos. |
It
started off as outlandish rumour. No-one really believed that Praag had been
sacked, much less by the biggest army of Norsemen in recorded history. Then
Archaon’s horde destroyed Ostland and swept through Hochland. Amelia’s search
for the de Crécys was abandoned as, for five gruelling months, she fought as a
battle wizard among Hochland’s soldiery. They didn’t even slow Archaon down.
Hochland in 2253: good times. |
In
the wake of Archaon’s defeat at the gates of Middenheim, Amelia resumed her
search. For months, there was nothing. She began to wonder if releasing the
foci meant anything at all. But then she heard an ugly rumour: some refugees
had been escorted back to their ruined homes in Stöckse, but had not been heard
from since. With there being so few state troops left, she sent word up the
River Talabec and petitioned the Stormbournes for aid.
Hafnir
Stormbourne was uninterested; these were human concerns with no bearing on the
retaking of Karak Hoch. Dwalin thought differently. Archaon had destroyed the
Stormbourne’s watchtowers only months after they’d been built, and with the Empire’s
strength at an all-time low, there would be nothing to stop two vampires making
life very difficult indeed.
In
the end, Hafnir relented, and Dwalin sailed south down the Wolf’s Run with his
new underling in tow.
“Will
this’un be dangerous, milord?” Cedric asked as they stood side-by-side on deck.
“No.
We’re only going to go and have a look.”
“Like
that time we went and had a look for that stone, and ended up fighting off two
goblin tribes and an ’orde of walking dead’uns?”
“Hmph.
You watch that tongue of yours, Cedric Dwarf-friend, or I shall watch it for
you.”
“Yes,
milord.”
Cedric with his new master. Clearly the start of a beautiful bromance. |
* * *
And
that, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the beginning: thanks to Cedric's heroics, the Dwarfs are firm allies of the Empire, and the hunt is on for the newly-freed vampires. It goes without saying
that the violence is going to ramp up quite considerably in the next campaign
post.
As
much as it seems ridiculous to have an acknowledgement at the end of a blog
post, special mention ought to go to Tom, who not only created Cedric
Sneakfoot, but then wrote a hilarious journal of his doings after our game. Jeff
also gets props for suggesting the use of Cedric’s voice in this post. I have
shamelessly stolen some of Tom’s lines to write Cedric’s monologue, and as
such, I really can’t claim all the credit for the charm onslaught that is The Halfling
Experience.
It’s
a shame, too, that in the interests of being concise, I’ve had to omit a lot of
Cedric’s more ridiculous accomplishments, the finest of which being the point
where he defeated an entire army of goblins using a single Strength 3 shot.
Killing Blow + Sniper + a wounding roll of a 6 = 1 dead goblin general. The nearest
goblins then had to take a panic test for a unit being destroyed within 6”
and... well... you can guess the rest.
Aaanyway,
I hope you’ve enjoyed the story so far. How are y’all finding the format? Would
you prefer a more anecdotal style? More focus on the actual scenarios and games
we played? More in-depth stories? If you have feedback, leave it below, and
your thoughts shall be taken on board.
~Charlie
Waoh! That's a nice story in a great background!
ReplyDeleteI'm clearly with this kind of format. Your blog has made me fall more deeply in the ambition of ruling a narrative campaign!
Thanks! It's really shiny to hear that the Beard Bunker could inspire someone to try something new :)
DeleteReally enjoying this blog (found out about it via Pirate Viking Painting, which I found via BoLS).
ReplyDeleteThis post in particular v. good: nicely written and engaging. No need to religiously recount the entire to's and fro's of a particular scenario/game, but it might be nice to see a few pictures of certain key moments (as the models and scenery at your disposal are so good).
Keep up the good work!
You're too kind, sir. We do have a few photos of some of the week's games - I'll include them in Part Four - although we were often so excited about stabbing the snot out of each other's armies that we didn't always have the presence of mind to record the moment!
DeleteHa! A very understandable problem that. Looking forward to pt. 4.
DeleteHahaha, awesome! Well, what can I say other than "Thank ee M'lord for them kind words".
ReplyDeleteThink nothing of it, Mr Sneakfoot.
Delete