Evernight Session 2

Session 2 - October 2, 18:30 - 2200 PST
Players - characters - class
Longarms - Nim - Streetrat (rogue)
Tammy - Bruce - Slayer (monster hunter)
Wildelf -Tarrin - Fencer - played by ZugZug for first 2 hours of the game
Wildelf - Hekdar - Sunpriest (clergy of Solace)
Taran - Elensar - Ranger

The second day of the group helping the village of Roxbury; the locals, now convinced that the orcs are going to overrun their village, are now eager to help by finishing off the barricade wall. The men set to the task of finishing the wall while the women of the village move supplies and bedding into the temple (the strongest building in the town) where they are going to hole up for the next few nights.

Elensar, the elven ranger has been following the orcish horde as it moved down the mountains, he'd seen dozens of patrols and warbands forming as the darkfolk began forming into an army. He followed a trail to the outskirts of Roxbury and spotted a scouting party observing the town.

Hekdar a priest of Solace, felt the need to travel to Roxbury from the town of Aragron, she hired Tarrin to act as bodyguard for the trip, they arrive at the village early in the morning and are welcomed by Adelmar the towns headman. Who is more than eager to have a real Sunpriest in the village.

Nim meanwhile noticed that the villagers had gathered the orc bodies and were piling them outside of the town and preparing to burn them. He came over and scalped the 8 bodies, stunning the villagers who were now convinced that scalping was some sort of Elven ritual. He also stopped the suprised townsmen from burning the bodies and instead had them moved to fill in a gap in the wall. Fearing for their scalps the townsfolk quickly carried out the task.

Elensar carefully moved away from the orc scouts and circled around behind the village and climbed the barricade. He saundered past the working townsmen and approached the group as they discussed what next to do to prepare for the evening.

Hekdar was escorted to the towns temple by Adelmar and observed the women as they prepared for the night. The villagers spirits were lifted by the sight of one of the Sun Blessed and they moved quickly to finish their duties.

Adelmar and Hekdar returned from the village tour and noticed the orc bodies in the wall. Nim explained that they would intimidate the orcs, and Adelmar explained to Hekdar that Nim had the Elven habit of scalping his enemies. Hekdar pointed to the nearby wooden palisade and suggested that the heads being posted on stakes would be more intimidating.

The townsfolk were all shocked to hear a priest of Solace to say such a thing. Just then they noticed Elensar as he walked along the barricade.

The group discuss the orcs and Elensar's scouting information. They then dine with the townsfolk, twelve of who are going to assist them with guarding the village that night.

Tarrin climbs the tower during the meal and stands watch. Shortly before nightfall, Elensar replaces him on watch duty. The other party members patrol the town as they await the orc attack.

--- I was going to run this very large scale battle as a skirmish (using the SW mass battle rules) but the group voted in favor of round to round fighting. ---

Several hours after sunset the orcs attack!

Led by a warchief four groups of orcs attack the village. One group rushes towards the gate, led by the chief and a tree trunk carrying ogre. Two of the orc groups are supposed to break through the wall to enter the East side of the village, while a squad of archers provided cover fire. The command/battering ram group charged up the road.

Elensar opened fire on the orc archers but was unable to hit them at long range. Soon the orcs moved closer and his fire became more effective and one of the archers was slain by a well placed arrow.

Meanwhile Bruce and Nim moved along the inside of the barricade towards the east side of the village. They'd seen the movement of the two groups of orcs approaching the wall and were preparing to stop them from getting over.

Meanwhile an orcish shamen fired bolts of energy at Elensar, but luck was on his side and he wasn't badly hurt by the bolts. He returned fire and wounded the shamen.

Hekdar spotted the battering ram party and prepared for the attack by firing bolts of sunpower at the ogre. He shook off the burning jolts of power and continued rushing towards the gate. Tarrin leapt the fence to rush out and counterattack the orcs.

Now the orc archers had spotted Elensar and let loose a volley of arrows at him up in the tower. He ducked below the wall and the arrows passed harmlessly by. He then popped up and fired another arrow at the shamen, this time killing him.

The ogre arrived at the gate and was promptly held in place by a web of light beams cast upon him by Hekdar. Tarrin sped over to the frozen ogre and attempted to slay him -- note that I don't allow 'final blows' on held opponents after discussing this on the PEG forums He was unable to kill the ogre with his first slash of his weapon.

The battle swirled around the village with a small group of orcs climbing the fence and being stopped by Nim and Bruce in a running battle. Elensar broke his bow string and resorted to throwing rocks at his opponents, scoring a nasty blow on one of the archers.

Tarrin succeeded in slaying the ogre, and as the giant fell before the gates, Hekdar cast another entangle upon the chief, binding him in place in an array of light. Tarrin rushed towards the helpless chief, heedless of the other orcs nearby, he shouted insults at them and waved his bloodied rapier above his head as he charged, intimidating the chiefs two bodyguards.

His shouts had alerted two of the archers who swiftly fired at him. He fell, pierced with two arrows. Hekdar ordered the gates opened and began to charge towards the battle as Elensar threw another rock into the fray, stunning the chief.

Another flock of arrows narrowly miss Elensar.

Hekdar rushes towards the fallen Tarrin as the chief finally shakes off the damage and breaks free of the spell. It cries a retreat to his forces! The orc archers spot the sunpriest and fire a volley at her, wounding her greatly and sending her spinning to the ground.

Elensar scrambles down the tower and rushes over to priestess as the villages run out of the gates and gather up the wounded. He is also spotted by the orc archers and falls to a lucky shot, injured.

The orcs now turn and run back into the woods...the battle is over!

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--This was a huge complicated battle, and I'm sure I can't remember all the details, basically we did the fighting for about 2 hours non-stop. Longarms was a great help as he had the SW rulebook in hand and could help me when there were rule calls (usually something that I forgot).

3 experience points to each of the group for defending the village against near impossible odds (about 2.5 to one).

Admittedly the mass battle rules would have sped this up, but by the same token, it was a lot of fun to have everyone running around in the battle. This time I grouped the orcs and just used skull tokens to represent the majority of them, I would flip them upside down to show if they were shaken, and tilt them if they were intimidated or discouraged. This worked really well and was easily and quickly done without slowing the action.

Teamspeak proved itself once again as several times folks would drop out of the game, but were able to return without incident, also OOC was easily done with teamspeak, though Wildelf couldn't connect to the TS server for some odd reason (firewall I suspect) as he used to be able to connect months ago when I ran a Klooge campaign, and he dropped out suddenly at about 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Good game, but next time I'm going to set some break times!