Labyrinth Lord Red Tides (3): Robinson Crusoe ville

Zantar

A child is missing from the group that was originally abducted by the seaside bandits. Bruno and Zantar go to "Bandit valley", bringing along all 8 village men. Toshi and Zacary accompany Zantar. Toshi is craven and won't enter the cave. They discover 600gp in 3 foot lockers but the fourth is open and looted. Footprints show up and down a hallway and into the previously unexplored drowning chamber, a cone shaped room with a spiral walkway that decends into a sea water fed pool. It's quickly determined that between all the small holes and tunnels the water level must fluctuate with the sea level.

The missing child is in the
chamber at bottom of the pool. Zantar dives in and recovers the child. After removing a silk string wrapped pouch around the childs neck, it opens glowing red eyes and attacks. Bruno knocks her
into the pool, and Zantar tosses flaming oil on the surface. Regaining the surface and now on fire, the child attacks bruno, bites lump of thigh out. The Pouch around the childs neck is a threatening message by Lo Pan.

Zachary the villager is fearless and checks various tunnels by crawling down them. He finds an escape out into entrance under a bramble bush. Hunting around they find, then lose foot tracks though.

Elrond

Back at the strand the woman and children forage. One brings word to Elrond and Wendyberg of a man on poling boat. He approaches and waves, then Elrond sleeps him and he collapses into the ocean. An adolescent manages to save him, but not the boat. He awakens to Elrond's sword and pleads neutrality. Uncle Chu is from a village about 12 miles to the north west. It's called stormspite, hope, or mostly just the village. A hard scrabble living is to be had there. Elrond impresses (in the imtimidating way "good health benefits if you join us") Chu as a local scout. White port is reported to the northwest about 24 miles and engages in some commerce with the shogunate. There are rumors of renegade Kueh Samurai in the interior of the island who wish to topple the shogunate. Overland routes and sea routes are known to be very treacherous.

Chu recognizes some of the bandits as being exiles form his village, for breaking the few rules (regarding murder, rape, food and water theft, etc). One cries out that he will share info if taken away from the others.

Wendyberg casts discern evil intentions, and finds 3 of the 5 are evil. One not evil is the man crying out. She questions him and he reveals that Lo Pan gathered in the exiles and they engaged in rituals to 'the gods'. Rewards were obtained, random ship crashes and wanders found and taken when needed. The rituals worsened and victims send to the caves. Kwong (the confessing bandit) panics when he finds out that Lo Pan isn't dead and begs to be protected. Wendyberg offers him a holy symbol of the maker and converts him.


The entire clan heads to the bandit valley to take up residence. Water is a scarce resource so far. The bandits try to trade their knowledge for freedom, but Elrond has none of it. He manages to trick them into revealing 2 sources of intermittent water (Rain gathering pools). Rationing is instituted. One of the captives is totally simple and can only say Hodor. They release him and try and chase him off, but he hangs around like a dog and is eventually accepted.

Zantar, Bruno, and Zachary find a grass hut while hunting around the surrounding area with a stout cauldron and rank midden pit near the escape tunnel. They encounter a hunchbacked crone by the name Moshi. She makes fine tea for Zantar and explains she is a trader. Zantar doesn't have enough money for her 'rarities', but she explains she'd be very generous to one whom could find her a husband. She loses her husbands to bad luck and freak accidents she claims, and suggests the gods might be cursing her. Zantar observes it would be unwise to oppose the gods will and then quickly backpedals from her dark look. The hag appears to be a frequent victim of bird dung.

Zantar charms a bandit and sneaks him away from the camp so Elrond won't murder him during his 'escape'. The bandit agrees to woo the fine woman, although is certainly less excited once he sees Moshi. Zantar agrees to return the next day with a priest to marry them.

Labyrinth Lord Red Tides: A rude welcome (2)

Two of our four PC's are from a small town:

Elrond

Elrond Hubbard (elf) is an indentured servant to the village head who discovers correspondence that the village has not met it's tithe quota. The shortfall will be made up for by sacrificing members of the village to the Hell Kings to illustrate the consequences of failure.

Zander

Zander the Hermit (human mage), a shaman who resides near the village and a friend of Elrond help organize an escape of many of the villagers.

A lawful itinerant cleric of the Maker, Wendyberg and her companion Bruno the Hunter (human fighter) are part of an organization set of freeing slaves. They hail from Hohnberg and are culturally opposed to slavery and generally hostile to the Hell King worshipping Shogunate.

The group has escaped onto the ship the Free Gull, and is heading south to the Mandarinate of Xian when a storm storm brews up driving them away from the land. The captain is challenged by the risk of being driven back to the Shogunate, or being driven far enough to sea that the Red Tides will engulf the ship. At last they espie an island of about 20 miles wide, and a beacon of light welcoming them in. Believing it to be a light house of some sort the ship closes in the driving rain, and the dying light of the day.

Shy 200 metres from the shore there is a horrific grinding sound and the boat lurches to a stop. They have hit an undersea object. The crew reports the ship is taking on water and beginning to sink. As the crew prepares the one longboat (insufficient for the entire passenger contingent) the villagers begin to panic.

Zantar, with help from Wendyberg, attempts to light a lantern and signal the shore. Shortly after cries of 'swing to shore' float across the expanse of water.
Elrond attempts to board the first boat, but the crew insist that woman and children go first. They pointedly suggest that if he helps organize the panicking villagers, then perhaps he will get off the boat faster. Zantar, while helping Elrond, botches his diplomacy and ends up enraging the ladies, who accuse him of picking favorites to get off the boat so he can woo them. A quick charm spell on the village elder helps defuse the situation. The village eldar now looks to the PC's often for suggestions and direction.

Meanwhile Bruno goes below to find the holds filling rapidly, and no way to staunch the leaks. He pulls out a rope and barrels and begins to fashion a barrel/sausage link/pool noodle. The crew drop off one load of woman and children and take a second one. After they land the sharp ears of Wendyberg pickup the sounds of battle, quickly ended, and then screaming and crying of woman and children. The men still on the sinking ship all look at each other and jump on Bruno's flotation device and swim for the shore, 200 metres away.

As they approach the shore a gang of 6 men spread out with swords, but Elrond sleeps the lot. A single man escapes as his friends collapse. The woman report that the children where tied together and marched off inland. Bruno the hunter and Zantar take off after the children while Wendyberg and Elrond secure the captives.

Bruno is able to track the brigands to a small relatively hidden gorge. A spikey palisade with 2 guards stands in their way. Once Elrond and Wendyberg catch up the party rushes the pair. One surrenders after the other is slain. He reports that the master Lo Pan and his men take captives into the cave and they are never seen again. He is fearful and repentant and begs to be tied up and spared. There are only eight men plus the master in the cave. He is tied up and smashed in the head to knock him out.

The gorge is sheer on 3 sides and filled with shacks and tents created from ship materials obviously scavenged from wrecked ships. On the far cliff wall, a na

tural cave opening resides. The party bursts into the first room, filled with 4 beds and foot lockers, and an empty weapon rack. Zantar guards this room as Elrond and Bruno hasten forward. They surprise and slaughter one of the two men carrying the rigid restraint device. The other begs for mercy and reports there are 4 men in the next room praying, if the group is quick and quiet they'll be able to surprise them. Elrond gets the man to lead the way, and his scouting is rewarded with a surprise sword thrust taking him in the neck.

The room has a wooden cage filled with the children, as well as a strange pillar growing from the wall. There are carved symbols on it that cause the eyes to hurt and turn away. A battle develops between the group and the 2 fighters and 2 scum with knives. The group is sorely wounded. During the fight Zantar tries to douse an enemy with oil and starts the wooden cage that holds the children on fire. He manages to open the gate and evactuate the children, including using his bedroll to shield a particularly fearful pair.

After the battle Elrond pours oil on the remaining door and floor, raises a rucus and then retreats while firing the room. The party escapes back to the beach with the villagers in tow. The brigand guard at the front gate has disappeared by the time they leave.

Your Imperial Majesty.....

From IV Corp Hq - Burgos
Date: 17 March
Time: 1352
To: Emporer Napoleon Bonaparte presumed at Paris

Your Imperial Majesty,

I write to you to inform you of contact with the enemy. Marshal Victor has done himself great honors in defeating a host of British-Portugese troops in the field. While heavily outnumbered he managed to inflict approximately 8000 casualties to the enemy while losing 4200 valiant french soldiers. Alas great numbers forced him to withdraw in the night back toward Burgos.

We have rumor of the General Wellington operating in the area, and believe him to be to our west with approximately 28000 troops. I hope my next correspondence to report a similar bleeding of the red devils.

The fortresses of Zaragoz, San Sebastien, Pamplona, and Burgos have all been invested by our forces but hold out yet for relief. We have rumor that Catalonia has fallen to the vigorous actions of Marechal Bessieres.

I regret to inform you that the actions of Marachel Augereau have been extremely disappointing. His forces moved with sufficient elan to invest the fortress of Zaragoz, but he has since languished there, not deign to respond to messages requesting his status, nor encouraging him to move on to meet his objectives.
I ask for your imperial majesties permission to replace the command of his troops with a more vigourous commander, and reassign Augereau to a post closer to the capital.....where perhaps he can answer what has been occupying his time and attention.


Respectfully,

Marechal Lefebvre




Our campaign having restarted still is lacking the command for one of the French marshals. It's a bit of a bother as it's a spanner in my master plan. Ah well. I'll give it a few more days in game time for the messenger to reach Paris, and then perhaps the GM will re-assign the command. 

Osric: Wolfsbane (9)

We did some quick out of game shopping and hiring of henchman. A new welcome to the henchmen Archon, dwarf cleric, and Jane, human illusionist. In addition we hired a slew of hirelings (5 carpenters, 5 masons, and 20 porters) to start work on housing in Compliments, along with the expensive Dwarf smith Gideon, who should be able to keep them supplied with tools etc.

On our way back to Compliments one of the porters was dragged off into the trees by a snow jaguar. Though Dan and Jenks were facing the beast, the porter was obviously dead and they decided to leave it to it's kill. Not a super popular move for the hirelings however.

A brief stop in compliments had Renault (Marshal Renault now) give us an update that some outlying farms to the North had been raided and the inhabitants disappeared.  Speaking with animals Jenks had a report that some furry people with big fangs who came along the dark line in the forest (the road) had done it, and they had come from Greenich to the North.

The party (Scabs, Chester, Renault, Dan, Jenks, Jane and Archon) head north. After their first day of marching as they are looking for a camp in the frozen winterscape they hear the calls of wolves. Crap. As an aside our GM LOVES the move 'the grey' and suggested to me if I don't see it soon there will be lots more wolf attacks (at this point it's a bit of a meme in many of his games).

We race towards some tall rocks and propel the squishier members of the team on top. Archon demonstrates himself to be somewhat craven as he scrambles up as well. As the wolves come rushing in Jenks manages to cast a charm spell on what appears to be the alpha wolf. As the group pauses and asks Jenks what may happen, he says it depends on if the wolves follow the lead of the alpha or not.

'Pretty unlikely pal' comes a mysterious voice that Jenks attributes to Archon (the new guy) at first.
Jenks is now subject to a surprisingly well directed 5 wolf pile. During the next few rounds it comes rapidly obvious that these wolves are 1/. totally tough and badass. 2/. start speaking human. 3/. transform into a human shape to try and escape from a snare trap the thieve scabs rigs up.

We are facing were-wolves. We are so toast. Jenks is down spewing bright red blood on the snow. Dan is heavily wounded. The alpha wolf is helping us actively now but Janes single 'useful' memorized spell of colour spray can't affect these monsters.

After a highly touch and go battle, and some late finally decent rolls by the fighters, we find a trapped werewolf to question, and the final werewolf is sent fleeing, pursued by the charmed leader. The trapped werewolf is dispatched fairly quickly after being less than forcoming with information and highly threatening to us.

The leader returns and tells us of what the life is like: No recollection or control for years. He is offered the opportunity to come to town to help leave this life behind but he refuses; he rather likes his current lifestyle. We encourage him to stay with us while we try the belladonna cure (located by Jenks spell).....after all should it fail then he will have more pack members. After treatment Jenks casts PLANT GROWTH on the Belladonna patch which erupts in uncontrolled growth catching and destroying the final werewolf. The 3 afflicted members (Jenks, Dan, and Jane) all fall into a coma.

I'm cut out of the gaming session for a bit as all my characters are incapacitated. Upon recovery after 3 days we get the great news that NONE OF THE CURES WORKED. Detect evil has shown us all to be afflicted. It's 9 days to the full moon and we're 8 from shadowgate. We start hauling ass to the capital city. Dan goes wacky and disappears for a week leaving his gear behind, but finally reunites with us (after apparantly eating all the chickens at a farm by Compliments) just before Shadowgate.

We find a very good, very generous church of good. Galandrel (I think? spelling?) is the goddess of Peace. The priestess offers to cure us but the treatment takes a month, and involves  imprisonment and a heavy cash price of 500g per member. Jenks is cleared out completely to fund 2 cures and Dan hands over an unidentified ring to Scabs to assess and sell. It's been a costly trip to Greenich that didn't even succeed. More ominously there is yet another costly lapse in time before the party can return to the Dark Crypt.

Thrice damn the random encounter tables....although really those are a huge element of the fun in old school D&D.

CinC Lefebvre: First contact

March 10, 1809 
Well, it was not meant to be. Spanish troops have been encountered around Burgos, probably easily brushed away. Victor and Mortier (Red and Rust) have been delayed by the fortresses and are only at Pancorbo. Most troubling is that Portugese/British troops are rumoured at Braganca....on the 7th. This means that Vallodid is no longer possible to capture prior to the Brits arriving.

I have dashed off reports to the commanders to try and stage a trap.  A weak force of mortier will sit at burgos, with his remaining troops resting at Pancorbo. I (yellow) intend to move to Belarado via Longrono (2 days march), hopefully the spanish cavalry currently at belarado gets trapped and can't scout us properly. Victor till take his place at Aquillar de campo, and screen Casstrillo de villavega with his Cav. If all works out properly it will appear to be a corp in Burgos with some screen out.

Ney is moving to Navaleno for the post battle excitement.

When the enemy falls on them along the main road from Vallodid, all the forces on 'march to the sound of the guns' will reinforce from many directions. Hopefully we get a great matchup and can mop the floor with our opponent. It's a bit of worry time wise as it should *just* be possible to get into position if there are no major battles with the few spanish troops in the area. (hopefully they are set to retreating). More of a concern is all our troops are tired. It would be nice to have a day or two to rest prior to the battle.

Regardless of what happens, Ney will be able to resume a drive West on Vallodid, screening our move on Madrid, possibly cutting supply and/or hitting the Brits in the flank.

In other news a mystery force has appeared in Roncevalles. I'm pretty confident that the Spanish shouldn't have been able to sneak through our advance. Rumor has it that there are now Guerrillas spawning. Off goes another detachment....

March 12th

My forces dealing with the guerrilla problem

Well, plans change already. Yesterday we reacted to a bunch of guerrillas spawning and eating messengers. Today some messages then caught up with me, and Victor is already gallavanting down the road to Vallodid. He's one leg away. I'm a little concerned that he will hit the 16k of troops there with his 21k and suddenly find reinforcements pouring in. The other equally scary proposition is the British show up with a counter attack immediately after one battle.

I've instructed Mortier to try and get rid of an irritating Spanish cav division that's hanging out west of burgos, and occupy a position that will cover Victors flank. Hopefully if he gets rolled back the two of us (and Ney when he arrives) can arrest any dramatic problems.

March 13th

The system is on pause. A battle between Victor and Anglo-Portugese forces at Vallodid looms. Apparantly we hold a full corp vs approx 1/2 corp advantage...plus Victors troops hold a pretty decent mix of veteran's.

Mortier is ensconed at Burgos and I'm in close support at Belarado. I may have Mortier start moving west, although it would be nice to know the result of the battle first. If it's a loss, then we should hold tight.

In the Center, Ney has started to shake his forces out and cross the ebro, swing  west and move towards Vallodid. Him and I are both editing a supply line...I don't think he realizes it needs to supply Augereu as well. Speaking of which, it appears VII corp hasn't moved in almost a week. He's besieging Zaragoz instead of leaving some forces and moving on. I need to send him a messenger telling him to get his ass moving. *Sigh*

The battle *may* get played out this week. 

CinC Lefebvre: Phase 2

The campaign kicked off on Saturday morning. True to form for these things there were some initial hiccups as we found a variety of bugs. Troops not moving due to missing paragraph marks in the code, headquarter units able to start sieges by themselves, a failure to mention what the movement rates for different units actually were, etc.

It seems to be running somewhat smoothly. Already on day 2 my fellow commanders have failed to write me about where they are. I can only hope they are roughly where I think they are supposed to be *SIGH*. I've requested updates from them, and I've been sending 3 of them daily updates of my own, so hopefully it catches on.

There really isn't much to report, but I thought that I'd post up the PHASE 2 map I made. All of the preplanning was essentially done on a single, long, night. I needed to send out briefs to all 8 other french players with detailed lines of march, which supply line is theirs, who is allowed to edit that supply line, whom they should be in daily communication with, as well as specify towns to avoid (as their neighbour will be using it).

It was a bit of a whirlwind. Considering the plan never survives contact with the enemy it's probably a bit useless too. Currently it gives me a vague idea where everyone is though, which is handy. More importantly I think supply and traffic issues would have been a disaster for us. There are minor and major roads with limits on men travelling down them, already it's a tight fit and corp are strung out over a few nodes (towns/cities/fortresses). I imagine if there wasn't a good plan everyone would have piled up on each other. A nice feature is more priority that sets which unit will have access to road space before another. I've assigned default priorities to corp to help with the elbow rubbing phenomena.

Phase 2: (IN THEORY)
Red/Rust takes Vallodid and prepares for the arrival of the British from Portugal. It's likely a bit of a foot race so Vallodid may not be captured.

Yellow, the reserve/me, moves to Burgos to wait and be helpful

Light blue, Ney pivots west as zaragoz falls and moves West to hit Madrid from the North......or as more likely will face the Brits as well.

Medium Blue, Augereu, will continue a straight drive on madrid. The Roads totally suck here so he could be stopped cold on the march.

Dark Blue, Moncey, has a tough job to do; swing deep south through the mountains and emerge on the plain south of madrid. I'm hoping that I'm totally prescient and he gets to hit something in the flank as

Augereu pins it in his drive on madrid. Otherwise he has a wide latitude in operations. i suggested he capture the approaches to Ciudad Real to help control the center and East of spain.

Pink, Bessieries, has the widest latitude of all. I basically won't hear anything from him due to communication lags. He is to Capture Catalonia and move toward Valencia. I've instructed him and Moncey to be read to assist one another in case there is a field army West of Valencia (They would need to guard each others flanks in some way.

More updates as they happen....

CinC Lefebvre

Sweet god what have I done. In the spirit of continually taking on things until it's too much I've volunteered to be CinC of the french forces in Gavin's campaign. I spent the last couple of hours planning out which corp/player starts where and giving them detailed directions.

It's all front loaded of course, with the fog of war, numerous days for couriers to race back and forth and the caveat 'no plan survives contact with the enemy' I won't have too much influence after the game progresses. The front loading is a bit intense though....

Here is the map I made up to help my fellow marshals:

 We can see there are 4 depots and a fairly broad advance. There are discreet task forces though. Pink should have fun with an highly independent command. I'm yellow so the chance of communication are slim.... couriers only run along supply lines and can 'see' three legs away from them to find their target.

Blue is tasked with moving through zaragoz and pivoting to hit madrid (I'll do up a phase 2 map soon),. Red/rust need to take vallodid. They also can expect the british to show up around the time they arrive at vallodid. Whoo hoo. I (yellow/reserve) am going to stay close to red/rust. Light blue picots west and comes at madrid from the north so we can expect some help there.

I actually ended up with the weakest/lamest corp of them all. Smallest and with 50% Militia I'm a bit hooped. Luckily Red, Rust and light blue are the largest corp i have. I really do hope I'm right and the brits come racing onto the teeth of my marshals.

Here is the intelligence we've been given for the entire operation:

Marshals of France,
You have been given the task of conquering Spain and Portugal. In their defence, the enemy can muster over 70k men in field armies. Additionally, you can expect every Fortress and regional capital to be strongly held by Garrisons.
Our spies have reported that the British army landed in Lisbon some days ago obviously in response to news of our own preparations. It is highly unlikely that they have moved from that area, although not impossible. We have had no word that they have entered Spain however.
The Spanish Army is in a state of disarray, and is unlikely to provide a long lived resistance. Its field armies whereabouts are unknown but we are pretty certain that the border regions of Aragon and Catalonia are undefended except for troops already mentioned.

Gavin's Penninsular campaign - Marshal Lefebre

Very exciting news! I've been accepted into Gavin's napoleonics campaign. A number of years ago I had the fortune to participate in a game run by Malcom Mccallum War of the Fifth Coalition. He has programmed a web based campaign system that crunches all the boring parts for the GM and is largely used to set up interesting table top games. Gavin and I were fobbed off into Italy and faced each other (as neither of us were set up to play games on the table and were out of town (Malcolm in Victoria, I'm in Vancouver, and Gavin in the UK somewhere). Gavin liked it sufficiently that he was able to get a bunch of back end data from Malcolm, and used his maps/database to create his own variant of the system. Very ambitious, and I'm excited to see what he has done.

The system
First off, take a look at the beautiful maps that Malcolm created himself (MAPS!). A number of internet presences have discovered these maps as great things to use, including Murdoch, for their own naps campaigns.
The system is largely based around units being present at a given node. These nodes (towns, cities, fortresses) are linked by connections/roads that vary in their carrying capacity (minor +/- river crossing, major +/- river crossing). From the players hq (which is a unit as well) couriers are sent with orders to the units, the couriers move at a set speed (3 legs a day). Cavalry moves at 2, infantry at 1 (unless force marching).
The great thing about the system is the fog of war. Messages to your allies move at 3 legs per day. Reports from your troops regarding things they encounter also move at 3 per day. You orders will often take a day plus to reach the troops, who then begin to follow them the following day (typically). It becomes very tough to understand what is going on and we start to get real friction, and tough decisions.

Variations
So far it appears that Gavin has chosen to work with troop numbers (men) as the road carrying capacity. Malcolm used units instead. Also Gavin has made the operative unit a brigade, although it appears that numbers of troops are tracked by battalion. This is likely due to how he plans to do table top battles, but I will have to see.

Malcolms system was a point buy for each division, supply leg, depot, reinforcement, hq, spy, fleet, etc. Gavin seems to be based purely on numbers. Reinforcements occur based on proximity to a supply line and are opposed by attrition (with all it's various modifiers). Malcolm had columns of reinforcements that marched along the supply line to the front. Formations/divisions that encountered them would eat them if under strength.

Gavin has chosen to enact a garrison/guerilla value into areas (provinces perhaps? Maybe individual nodes?) which will affect the likelyhood of loosing a courier. As far as I know Malcolm's system had the courier get through unless blocked by troops. Also his insurgents/rebels were units raised by players that were uncontrolled (run by a computer algorithm) that couldn't be disbanded.

Campaign
The campaign itself is a french invasion of spain. Right now the fellow marshals and I are bashing heads together trying to come up with a plan and elect a CinC (oh the democratic traditions!). I am marshal Francois Joseph Lefebvre and have a pretty piss poor corp. 50% militia, no cavalry. I'm thinking pinning corp while someone does something exciting to save me. We shall see though....