Tyranny of Dragons 2: Catching Up on Things

The Old Gang has met a few times to work our way through the D&D 5th edition feature campaign, A Tyranny of Dragons, and while playing my son pointed out how far behind this blog was.  Here's a quick update for those of you comparing your experience to mine:

After surviving the Cult of the Dragon's full blown invasion of the town of Greenest, my character hit his head on a rock and died.  The party was called upon to save some townsfolk trapped in the old mill, and so elected to slip over the walls of the keep by night.  I failed a climb check and my character plummeted 20 feet to his death.  New character time!

The rest of the party, surviving the simple climb, sneaked out to the old mill only to discover a massive ambush - they fled before it could be triggered. As they climbed back into the keep, all hell broke loose.  The Cult smashed their way inside the inner courtyard, and a huge fracas ensued, with the party barely managing to turn the tide of the fight thanks to the timely intervention of a recently recuperated dwarf fighter named Henry St. John (my new character).  The incursion forced out, the keep settled into for a long siege.

The Cult had other ideas, though.  Their champion, a big blue half-dragon, called out a challenge to the keep; one on one combat.  Hostages were involved, so Henry St. John stepped up, answered the call...and got promptly skewered by Big Blue.  The big old half-dragon was a half-man of his word and left the hostages and the village, the entire raiding party heading off into the mountains well laden with ill gotten loot.

The next morning, the party set out to track down the raiding party, fought through the rear-guard, triggered an ambush, and discovered the valley/headquarters of the Cult.

Interlude:  At this point I have to break to sing the praises of our esteemed DM.  He hand drew and colored a bunch of large maps for each of the major encounters.  The picture below shows the enemy encampment and surrounding environs.  This is a small valley; the blue and red icons are tents, the orangish square jobs are watch towers, and the blue blob in the far back is a large cave mouth.  

The two humans and dragon-kin disguised themselves with looted uniforms taken from the rear-guard and wandered into a party celebrating the successful raid on Greenest.  The dwarf and tiefling necromancer wouldn't pass muster, so hiked up to the northern ridge and selected some largish rocks to roll into the camp as distraction, if needed.

The three infiltrators managed to bluff their way to the back of the camp, free a bunch of prisoners including a scholar who is an expert on the cult, and sound the general alarm.  Just when their cover was about to be blown, the dwarf and necromancer started rolling rocks down into the camp, hooting and hollaring, and raising a general ruckus.  Then they ran like little girls.  In the ensuing chaos, the party rogue snuck into the large HQ tent, and stole a bunch of intel and a big 'ol sword.

After a day of rest (and levelling up), the party returned to the camp, only to find the camp decamped.  The tents were gone, the troops gone, everything above ground...gone.  Curious about what lay inside the big cave at the back of the alley, the party girds their loins and enters...

And that's the end of about three sessions of play.  Overall we're finding fifth edition to be much faster than 3rd or 4th edition, and probably slower than 1st or 2nd?  We're doing a lot more skulking and scouting than stand up fighting at this point, so it's a little hard to judge.

Sci-Fi Skirmish: Shark Attack!

To say I haven't been painting much lately would be a lie - I've painted the kitchen, the bathroom, the garage, etc.  Painting terrain at 1:1 scale isn't as much fun as the 1:100 scale, so no pictures for you on that front.  On the sci-fi front, here's the latest batch.

My Five Parsecs from Home campaign needed a recurring evil empire, and these Aquatic Alien Warriors from Khurasan fit the bill quite nicely.  Being a Yank, the obvious choice for an evil empire is redcoats with white flashing and khaki pants.

The two sharkfaces on the left were a combined heavy weapons team.  I cut the barrel of the long rifle down to size, so it looks more like a well aimed shotgun.  The holder - the shark in the middle - will have a nice bright and shiny lazer sword added at some point.  Right now he just looks like he's practicing his batting swing. The right hand man is the squad leader and likely to be the one character in a group full of mooks.

Two more random figures on order today.  On the right we have a Kurasan Garn Hegemon, and on the right a Ground Zero Games robot.  Full disclocure, I used a painting service for the robot.  It's a small start-up service that goes by the name "My Daughter".  She elected to go with the classic blue/white scheme, to great success.

More Khurasan Figures

Added four more figures to the sci-fi skirmish selection.  On the left we have the last of the alien bounty hunters.  The three figures on the right are part of Khurasan's post-apocalyptic line of figures.  Wolf-skin there doesn't do much for me in a sci-fi setting, but the two on the right are going to make fine sci-fi adventurers.

Sci-Fi Mercs

More painted miniatures ready to roll.  These are more Khurasan figures - the bounty hunter pack 80% complete - for use in some sci-fi skirmishing.  Still haven't run a game of 5 Parsecs from Home just yet, but we're getting closer.

15mm Objective Markers

Nothing fancy this update.  Just a couple of quick shots of my freshly painted scientists from Khurasan Miniatures.  The scientist on the left seems like a bit of a mis-cast - his right eye has a gaping hole where his glasses should be, but it works just fine.  My guy has a monocle instead of glasses.

Tyranny of Dragons, Chapter 1.2

Having escorted a small band of villagers and much needed supplies into the safety of Greenest’s keep, our heroes could spare little time for rest.  Tarbau and Escobar, the ranking officials within the keep, expressed profuse thanks and offered a safe place for a short rest.  First, though, something had to be done about the scaly blue monster raining lightning death down on the gates of the keep.  Our heroes made Grim, their ace archer extraordinaire, as comfortable as possible the hustled up to the uppermost tower  [Ed. Note – Grim’s player couldn’t make it to the game.  Since his character ended last session at 0 hp, it made sense to leave him behind during the session.]

The big blue dragon seen earlier in the day had returned and was strafing the tower with its breath weapon. Keeping its distance, the only real option was to hop into the seat of a lone ballista pn the parapet and take a shot. Ever the bluffer, your humble storyteller cast a quick illusion to make the bolt look magic. Direct hit! Not enough to kill an old brute like the one overhead, the bolt scored enough damage to make the dragon think twice. Aramis followed up with a quick holy bolt of some sort, and that was enough to send the dragon headed for the countryside.

Finally, a chance to rest.  The whole party was depleted of its “until long rest” abilities, and this wouldn’t be the time.  A short rest to patch up the wounded gave the attacking cultists time to get some organization together – a peek from the keep revealed two main clusters of attackers and a tough choice.  Hit the overall commander over in the town square and end this madness?  Or mount a rescue mission to save the scores of folks holed up in the local chapel from the larger kobold and cultist besieging force?

First level with no spells left in the arsenal?   We’ll take the sneaky route and head for the Church, thank you very much.

So Escobar, rotund dwarf and apparent keymaster escorted the group down into the undercroft where a secret door and tunnel would allow the party to slip past the besiegers (almost) un-noticed.  A couple rusted-shut gates and a fight with two mobs of rats later, and the group stood just inside of a fake sewer pipe below the walls of the keep.  Just as they would have set out on their rescue, a kobold patrol blundered by.  With little time to discuss matters, the group ambushed the raiders slaughtering all but one cultist would escaped back into town.

Nothing to do but hustle up and hope to make it back before cult reinforcements. 

At the Church of Chakaal, three mobs block any hope of rescue.  The leader – an armor clad bruiser – had a mob battering the front doors with an improvised ram.  A bigger mob complete with large drakes stood milling about the side of the church, looking for weak spots.  The smallest mob, and the obvious weak link in the siege, was trying to burn down the large rear doors of the church.

I think the DM said Church of Chakaal.  I'm not really
up on my theology of Faerun, but in the campaign that goes
on in my head, the Church is totally dedicated to Chakaal.

Tally-ho. Our four heroes charged into the rear ranks of an enemy twice their number.  Surprise proved telling, as did the smokescreen the besiegers themselves were sending up.  Aramis and Karren, cleric and paladin respectively, swung for the fences, putting the two cultist leaders down on the ground with no time to sound a definitive alarm.  The half-elf quickly snatched up the cloak and scimitar of one of the two human leaders of the enemy mob and barked orders at the kobold ranks, thinning them by half. 

The following conversation demonstrated that comedy lives even in the midst of tragedy.  The party turned to the “face” of the party, Mr. Fast Talk Half-Elf, to convince the townies that rescue had arrived.  But first, Aramis pointed out, you might want to ditch the cultist disguise.

Oh.  Yeah.  So…

“Tell her Liane sent us.”

“Liane sent us.”

“Tell her Escobar sent us.”

 “Escobar sent us.”

“Tell her –“

“Hey!  Who’s got the 17 Charisma here?”

“It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

The door cracked open, revealing a lovely half-elf priestess, a human cleric, and 22 other villagers including the priest and priestess, which the party hustled out the back and into the woods.  A half-hearted attempt to distract the remaining raiders turned into a full blown retreat when the front door collapsed in splinters.

The two dozen citizens might have been safely out of the chapel and into the woods, but they weren’t out of the woods yet. Remember the one that got away?  The cultist that survived the ambush at the back door of the keep?  The now much larger party arrived at the false drain just moments before a large raiding party.  The heroes took up position amid the brush and started to hustle the citizens into the dank tunnel, but it was clear the kobold raiders were going to cut them off before they could get everyone in.

So Raane, the illusionist, quickly hunkered down and cast a minor illusion – a dead kobold farther up the stream valley.  This bought the villagers a precious few rounds in which the aged, infirm, and young could escape.  The sally-port cum escape hatch safely locked and sealed behind them, the group still had no time for rest.  One more encountered loomed, but it was late and the boys (young and old) were too tired to see that one through to the end of Chapter One. 

Three Brothers

Still prepping to run a game of "Five Parsecs From Home", a game that calls out for a bunch of random figures more than a coherent squad of uniformed types.  The failed experiment in tweaking 15mm figures left me with a couple of heavy armored alien types.  To split the difference between affiliated figures and one-offs, I painted up three brothers with very different color schemes, then tied them together with green stripes.  While they make for a nice little mini-squad, they can also be slotted into a trading vessel's crew as the muscle of the group.

Meanwhile, I've been slowly building up more interior terrain as well.  This control panel is a bit of a test piece.  The colors and paint look great...

...but I'm not exactly thrilled with the height of the unit.  Needs more elevation to really look the part of some decent cover.  The figures are supposed to be big, but a knee-high control panel doesn't cut the mustard.  Have to decide between adding a piece of square dowel to double the height, or finding a different material to use for the base.