Kari crouched behind a rough outcropping of stone as her retinue of restless spearmen stood at attention behind the small hill she was atop. The peaceful rolling hills of these farmlands would normally be idyllic, but as night fell and the mists thickened no one could deny a sinister presence settled thickly upon the land.
The scar across her eye had started burning, and Kari knew that always meant trouble. Her caution payed off shortly after when she caught sight of ghoul lights among the broken rocks below. The creatures she hunted may not breath, they may not speak or shuffle like mortal soldiers would, but the sickly lights burning in their skulls made them more obvious than one might suspect of the dead.
A few hand signals in the fading light to the captain of her spearmen and they were on the march. Hopefully it was just one of the probing patrols that had been raiding farms recently, but either way she wanted to finish them quickly and head back to strong walls and warm hearths for the night.
Slipping through the rock outcroppings that may once have been majestic walls from the Barony’s more storied past, Kari finally gained full sight of her prey and initially felt a sense of relief. Shambling and equipped with equipment in bad repair, these reanimated corpses would fall quickly to the disciplined spearmen and her usual flanking tactics. Already tasting the mulled cider back at camp, her breath caught in her throat when she saw the being leading them.
The great antlered helm atop the moving mountain of plate armor might have been enough to give away the identity of the monstrosity that she beheld, but it was the dual axes it wielded that had featured most prominently in the stories circulating about him. Massive for single handed weapons and having claimed countless lives throughout centuries, the storied instruments of death made only one name immediately come to her mind.
Ardus Ix’Erebus. A member of the Deathborn was here? Perhaps this was not just some random raid, but the start of something bigger. She was going to have to play this smarter, maybe ambush his troops and only engage him when he was the only thing left on the field?
She was not going to get a chance to plan, or to ambush the boned horrors stalking the field. For in that mountain of plate armor was a skeletal face, its eyes alight with light and its face twisted into what must’ve been meant as a smile, aimed directly at her.
“Soldiers of the Citadel! Send these bones back into the dirt where they belong!”
((I decided to use my set to start testing out combat. Had Kari and 4 trays of spearmen versus Ardus and 4 trays of reanimates. They met on a battlefield with some scattered rock outcroppings and not much else. Battle was to the death.))
The silence that usually accompanied the mists had been banished by the metered march of the spearmen as they took the field. The rock outcroppings had separated Ardus from his reanimates, though he did not seem worried. Kari hoped to tie him up with the spearmen, fighting defensively to delay him while she eliminated the slow moving Reanimates. Once finished with the chaff, she’d wheel about on the Deathborn and be the hammer to the anvil of the spearmen. Of course, nothing would prevent her from tossing a few daggers his way the whole time….
Her plan seemed initially sound. Ardus eagerly moved ahead while his Reanimates trundled behind. As they approached her Kari dismissively raised her blade in salute and challenge to the seemingly mindless skeletons approaching her.
To her horror, they returned the salute and began to charge. Obviously expecting her to have charged as well, meeting in a crush of flesh and bone, steel and blood, their charge faltered as Kari simply held her ground and launched blade after blade at them, dropping some of their number as the weighted daggers pierced skulls and released the quickly dissipating ghost light into the night.
Meanwhile Ardus moved quicker than his troops, and the spearmen nervously braced themselves. True to the stories about his prowess, the ancient general cut men down like saplings with his axes. The spearmen’s counterattack paid off though, their patient tactics bore fruit as Ardus lost himself amongst their numbers until they in one well-practiced action surrounded him and stabbed over and over again with their spears.
Despite many punctures through the gaps in his plate armor, Ardus seemed to shrug off the wounds and continued decimating the unit. Soon, there were but four men left.
Sensing that her flank was about to break, Kari tried a bit of flanking on her own. As the Reanimates continued their march the elven-trained woman acted as if she would meet their onrushing blades, before breaking to the side and striking the flank of their formation. The sudden change in attack angle caught the dead by surprise and many were released from their slavery.
Her four brave survivors saw an opening as the joy of slaughter seemed to slow Ardus’ blow. Their lightning quick strike seemed to slow him for a moment…. before the cruel being casually butchered the last spearmen.
The fight was coming to an end and Kari knew it. More than survival though, the loss of her men motivated her. She would not see them trapped like the scant few corpses left standing in front of her. They would receive a proper burial, and the story of their bravery this night would not be lost to the lonely winds in this mist cursed valley.
Her sword seemed to resonate with her silent promise and moved with the speed of desperation but the accuracy of disciplined fervor. A haze of bone dust formed around her as the remaining Reanimates were shattered. Behind her she could hear Ardus, letting out a howl of victory as he lifted his blood drenched axes to the pale moon.
She ended it without thought, her body spinning in an unbidden attack as her last dagger flew from her hand and straight into the Deathborn’s triumphant sneer. A sound that was bound to rob her of sleep for nights to come ripped through the night. Where such a blow would have let the small flicker of light in a Reanimate slip into the night and be lost, it bled from Ardus like an artery erupted with blood.
Wounded but still hanging on to his hateful existence, Ardus stepped back into the thickening mists and disappeared. He said nothing, but Kari could tell that they would meet again.
((So as we predicted, Kari being able to melee one group while spamming ranged damage at another target is very useful. It allowed her to eke out the win against the wounded Ardus after he eliminated the spearmen.
Ardus is a damage machine. Didn’t roll a single Mortal Strike, he was just chopping the spearmen to pieces. They did manage to lay some wounds on him with their late initiative attack and the +1 damage modifier. They could have killed him with their quick initiative attack, but didn’t roll enough damage.
Reanimates were tough to use effectively. Their low movement and even lower when charging let Kari really mess with them. The bluffing between the potential of her charging and making their charge useless, or her not charging and just range attacking them making a queued-up melee attack useless, makes it tough for them.
Heroes being able to curved charge an infantry block’s flank even though they had been moving straight on at each other was a fun trick to pull off.
All in all, a lot of fun even just using two units each. Going to need to try with the full compliment of troops!))
Edited by WaywardpaladinSome silly mistakes
