Thaw of the Lich Lord game 5: Run of the RangiferNow that the Midwinter Pie Festival was over, it was time for the halflings to venture back into the heart of the city. Several miles from their basecamp, they came across a set of peculiar tracks in the snow. The footprints were like those of deer, but the spacing was unusual - almost as if the animal walked upright on two legs.
Following the tracks, the halflings discovered the creatures that had made them.
They were hoofed and antlered like beasts, but they walked upright and wore primitive clothing. Surely these were intelligent beings.
Artifacts of ancient Frostgrave lay on the ground beside them. Did they guard these treasures deliberately? Or were they uninterested in the artifacts that littered their lair?
[note that the goal of this scenario is to
avoid killing the rangifers, which is extremely difficult!]
As Mr Hollowhill observed the creatures, he became aware that he was not the only wizard in the area.
The bear-loving necromancer was here, along with his dangerous henchman Litchfield Tony!
The thaumoturgist they had encountered during the storm of undeath was here also...
...as was a second thaumoturgist Mr Hollowhill had not seen before.
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Still, the area was unusually rich in artifacts. Provided the creatures could be avoided, there should be enough for everyone.
The halfling's crowmaster sent his mechanical bird off to the left, trying to draw the nearest beastmen away from the treasures.
The other wizards were more ruthless, preferring to attack the beastmen head on.
While Mr Hollowhill's plan worked to some extent, the beastmen unfortunately remained too close to some of the treasures. Using telekinesis, he and his apprentice Rufel were able to draw some of the artifacts towards the halfling adventurers, but others were still beside the stamping hoofs of the creatures. It began to look as if a fight was unavoidable.
[
Just then, a shadow fell across the low and feeble sun. Something hideous had arrived: an ancient, twisted shade arrayed in the armour of a millennia past. This long-dead knight moved directly towards the beastmen, passing through broken walls and piles of rubble as though they did not exist. For whatever reason, the wraith had been sent to kill the creatures.
One of the thaumoturgists, reacting instinctively, hit the shade with a 'push' spell, the magical blast knocking it far from its target.
Meanwhile, the other warbands were doing the shade's work for it: the beastmen were falling.
Worse still, Litchfield Tony was advancing on the halfings!
They attempted to defeat him with an age-old trick of halfling combat: weight of numbers. But the drunken ex-pirate knocked down one halfling after another. He was invincible!
But as the halflings retreated before him, a hail of missile-fire from one of the other warbands put Tony out of action. At the same time, the wraith knight was dispatched by a knight armed with a magical sword. In the resulting confusion, Mr Hollowhill ordered a retreat. The halflings left the field with four treasures secured: given the opposition, this was a good haul indeed! Disappointingly, among the treasure was yet another copy of the despicable lich-transformation spell. Were they being printed somewhere?
It was only afterwards that Mr Hollowhill found a reference to the strange creatures in one of his books. They were called 'rangifers,' and were known to nurture a furious hatred of all undead things. No wonder the wraith had been sent to destroy them. All the signs now pointed to the rise of some terrible undead force within Frostgrave. Mr Hollowhill was determined to oppose it.
