Episode 3: Raiders

 

Last time, the settlement we were in was under attacks from Raiders, making it harder to get supplies. We could move to a new settlement leaving this one to flounder or we could hunt down these Raiders. We chose to "remove" the Raiders if we can.

 

 The "Raiders" were rolled up to be D6+2 Blunderbusses and D6+2 Chaos Dwarfs. 

We leave town and only need to roll for 1 week of Travel Hazards. We get result 97 Castle Ruins. We can ignore the Ruins and try to complete a Side Quest with no distraction or explore them. Castle Ruins is a small dungeon that upon finding the final room we need to roll a D6. On a 5+, we attach a random Objective Room which will spawn normal Objective Room monster, that pay out of Objective Room Treasure to each player is very tempting! We as a party discussed this. Its a rather small dungeon, that we can use a Luck to make that 5+, a 4+ if needed, or Re-roll a result below 4, at a 2nd chance to get a 5+.  Paying out Objective Room treasure with out having to complete a normal quest would be huge. Its well worth it, so we decide to explore the Ruins.

 Its just dawning on me. Objective Room Treasure is not a thing in normal Warhammer Quest '95.  Black Hills Warhammer Quest doesn't use a treasure deck, but instead a Treasure Table. This allowed us to add way more treasures. Each time a normal dungeon room Treasure is found you roll a D66 on the main table and each time a Objective Room Treasure is found you roll a D6 on the Objective Treasure Table.  Each subsequent table has 36 options (roll D66 to determine the item found) See Main Treasure Table below:

 The Old World clearly uses this table, but we also have a separate Table for "Lustria", "Norsca", and "Sewers". "Caverns" expansion combines all 4 other Treasure Tables into one, as it imagines monsters in Caves pillage Caravans getting treasures from all over the place. The Old World Table has 396 normal treasures (plus the chance at random amounts of Gold or Scrolls of Wizard spells) along with 108 Objective Room Treasures and 16 Mythic Treasures. Mythic Treasures can usually only be earned after completing a Epic Quest (and the party only gets one Mythic Treasure for completing a Whole Epic Quest). Epic Quests are longer more dangerous quests. Each Region (Old World, Lustria, Norsca, & Sewers) has 10 different Epic Quests, each designed for a specific Battle Level Party to face.

But enough with that distraction, lets explore these Castle Ruins.

The first dungeon card is a T-Junction, immediately splitting the dungeon deck in two directions.

 

We head down the left path, leading though an empty Passageway to the Crossroads of Doom.

In this mini dungeon we need to reveal every dungeon card to get a chance at finding a Objective room. As no cards were behind the Crossroads, we decided to skip it and double back to the hallway not explored.

 

Unexplored hallway reveals the Stairway. So far these Castle Ruins are empty of Monsters.

 

 

Yet another empty Passageway.

 

 

We have revealed the last card of this dungeon. Its time to roll to see if we get a Objective Room. We need a 5+ result, with out using luck to get it. If our first roll is a 1-3, followed by a 1-4 we wasted our time exploring this dungeon. The Halfling Thief with 1 Luck rolls. He gets us a 4. By using his Luck, he pushes the result to 5, which means we get the Objective Room and our first fight in this dungeon. 

We roll for Objective Room Monsters and need 3 rolls at equal BL.

Our random Objective Room is Altar of Khaine. This is kinda rough as the party enters on Floor 1 of a room with 3 Floors. Meaning we are usually at -1 to hit monsters above as, as those monsters are at +1 to hit us below them. The 3 monster rolls are:

1) 8 Hobgoblins (who have Magic Ambush A)

2) 4 Orcs and 3 Goblin Bowmen

3) 3 Goblin Spearmen and 3 more Goblin Bowmen 

This could have been way scarier. Had we needed to roll 3 rolls of Monsters at +1 Dungeon Level. The Halfling and Pit Fighter get face planted every turn for the first 3 turns. We are greatly getting helped out by the Warrior Priest's Collar of Zorga. Monsters won't target our healer. The Priest does a good job of getting us up every turn. The Dwarf Slayer has little issue as he got Max Starting wounds when the character was rolled up. We do start to push our way up the stairs clearing monsters, by the time we reach the 2nd Floor its clear we are going to win this fight.

After defeating all monsters we claim our prizes. 

Slayer gets Hammer of Sigmar, Halfling Thief gets 5 Arrows of Obliteration, Pit Fighter gets Holy Symbol Amulet, and Warrior Priest gets the Moon Staff of Lileath.

 Everyone gets a reasonably useful item except the Warrior Priest. The Priest can't effectively use the staff as they don't use Power, however the Staff can be sold for 4 thousand gold! Next time we go to town we should all be able to train to level 2.

Here is a quick pick of the full "Castle Ruins" dungeon.

 

 

 We then continue onto the original Mission  "Raiders".

 

We start room one in the Sewer tile and are immediately attacked by Beastmen, trained Squigs, and their Goblin Handlers.

The Warrior Priest uses their mind control staff on one squig before it can ambush, needing a 5+ roll on D6 to succeed. We get lucky and this works. The Squig will act in the Warrior's Phase as a party member, instead of as an enemy this turn. The other Squig is out for blood and goes after the Dwarf Slayer. Additionally, the Beastmen all through spears as part of this Ambush. I don't think anyone went to zero wounds during the Ambush.

The Priest tries controlling the Squig during the Warrior's Phase. Sadly, its no longer getting +2 to its Squig Attach chart as the Squig Hunters are now its enemies not its friends, so our Squig for a turn spends this time Sleeping.

We do manage to kill 1 Squig, 2 Beastmen, and 1 Squig Hunter in the first turn.

 

The Beastmen do manage to bring the Pit Fighter to 0 wounds, but he is healed back up by the Priest easily enough. On turn 2, will kill 3 more Beastmen and 2 more Squig Hunters.

The one remaining Squig no longer has 2 handlers and ends up taking a nap. The remaining monster don't represent a threat anymore, and we clear them out by end of turn 3.

I apparently forgot to take a picture, but the next room in this dungeon ended up being "The Forge". This room has a chance of flat out killing warrior from fainting and falling in. It was already getting late in the night so we determined it was best to leave this dungeon uncompleted then take our chance in "The Forge". We leave out the exit we entered.

So we would be ready to start in town at the beginning of the next session, we began a journey to a new settlement City (abandoning the last settlement and the "Raiders" side quest).  There were only two Travel event of note. First was finding a Traveling Caravan that had limited items, but had them at a reduced cost. This allowed us to purchase following Market Place items on the cheap.

We got 3 Ropes, so now everyone has one. Lots of Provisions for everyone. Some furs & many Bundles of Arrows for the Halfling. Lastly a Leather Helm for the Warrior Priest. 

 The 2nd notable event being a Wandering Alchemist who sold us "Lab Potions" for half the normal cost (50 gold, instead of 100) but only a max of 3 per Warrior. 

I believe everyone but the Priest bought 3 of these. It takes 1 Movement to drink, then your roll 2D6 to see the result. They are a little random on what happens when you drink them, but most of the time they are helpful, some times do nothing, and are rarely dangerous.

 So as our next session starts, we will be in a City. I'm assuming we should have enough gold (after selling that staff) for everyone to Train to Battle Level 2.

That's all for this post, may your lantern always stay lit.

DeMagic Tutor out.