Skaven camping. Ha!
Perhaps Rufus was wearing shoes
Unlikely!
Campaign game 10: quest for the golem, part 1Vilkas did, in fact, survive... or rather, Jhoira was again able to reach into an alternate future and draw out a
version of him that survived. Of course, this is precisely the sort of thing that caused her to be expelled from Icefall College, and with good reason. If she ever encounters Professor Mira Lund in Frostgrave, the professor will doubtless have something to say on the matter.
Jhoira and her warband took over one of the frozen city's many derelict inns, renaming it 'The Tolarian Academy.' A pigeon loft was installed to allow for easy communication with outlying settlements, and a second barbarian warrior - with the extremely common name of Ragnar - was hired. A short while later, Jhoira's divinatory skills revealed that a strange and powerful artifact was active not too far away. She set off at once.
The warband arrived to find a scene of devastation: bodies were strewn among the ruins, dismembered or simply pounded into the stones. All of them were fresh. No less than three other warbands had also been drawn to this aftermath of slaughter, each led by a necromancer. Could they have been responsible? If not them, then what?
The warband cautiously lurked behind the fallen pillars, trying to avoid attracting the attention of the necromancers. Rufus the apprentice had been practicing his alchemy back at the inn, and had succeeded in creating a demon in a bottle. It should serve as a useful distraction.
Two of the necromancers were substantially more experienced in the art of sorcery than Jhoira, though the third was a novice.
All four warbands had the same goal: to examine the twenty corpses for signs of what killed them (oh, and to rifle through their pockets for loot too).
At the center of the area was this oddly-futuristic ruin. To Jhoira's practiced gaze it crackled with temporal energy.
Jhoira, drawing on her orb of power, sent Vilkas hurtling onto a rooftop with a leap spell. Once there, he examined a dead body... there were no clues, but the man's undamaged backpack was full of treasure! Looking down from the tower, Vilkas saw one of the necromancers leading his group of dead men and - incongruously - bears through the rubble. They too were searching corpses, and discovered a peculiar set of papers [the golem notes!].
Meanwhile, Garthar the thief searched a dead horse while Erik and Torvar covered him with their bows. Sure enough, a man at arms from the novice necromancer's warband began to hurry towards them. He was wounded by bowfire as he approached, then overwhelmed in combat.
The bottled demon had been entrusted to Vorstag the thug, who released it as soon as he could. The entity within proved to be a rather traditional beast with bat-wings and a tail. While the barbarians searched another body (finding more treasure), the demon raced ahead and attacked the bear-necromancer. The two combatants injured each other, but neither was able to gain the upper hand until one of the necromancer's thugs intervened. The demon was swiftly banished.
Stenvar searched yet another body, only to find that the man was still alive! But he was horribly wounded, able only to mutter, "The great metal devil! It killed us all!" before expiring.
Perhaps there was some existing animosity between the necromancers, or perhaps it was simply fate, but the chronomancer warband was largely ignored. While Jhoira's men searched bodies and retrieved treasure, the necromancers fought bitterly against each other. Bears fought treasure-hunting ghouls.
Jhoira and Rufus remained at a safe distance, using leap spells to speed their hirelings across the ruins (though not without injury, since their spells needed considerable amounts of life energy to succeed. No doubt the sheer number of necromantic spells being cast was unbalancing the aether).
Erik felled an enemy marksman with a single arrow, while Vostag, Stenvar and Ulf examined another corpse.
As bear fought demon, Jhoira and her warband withdrew from the field. While they had learned little about what had occurred here (only that some monstrous construct was on a rampage), they had found a considerable amount of treasure [five treasure tokens].
Jhoira advanced to level 8, improving fight, health, elemental bolt and leap. The warband had taken no casualties apart from the temporary demon.
