Overlord
The Naga Lady (Mistress of Serpents?) with Focused and Dark Power as starting upgrades
Heroes
One Fist with Mighty
Nanok with Able Warrior
Kirga with Lucky
Zyla with Tiger Tattoo (me, really enjoying Speed 5, 6 fatigue, flight, and ghost)
Week One
We decide to go for the cheap potions in Gafford and so shop the first week. We also buy two rumors: one No News and one that lowers a hero's conquest value by one permanently. We place it at the Shrouded Gulf. This was a mistake, as we didn't realize how nasty sea encounters could be. We should have put it at Queldon flood so we'd be headed towards land-locked dungeons sooner.
Week Two
We hop in the ship and head straight to Cerridor Sea. This is another mistake, since it means we didn't take advantage of the land-locked dungeon next to Gafford.
Encounter: Beastmen aboard the Black Galley in the Dire Straits. We won after taking 18 damage to our sloop. We should have won sooner but I didn't read all of the sections of the rules that talk about sinking ships. We could have easily sunk the enemy ship on the first round, but didn't know that it would kill the leader, so we stuck around to fight so we could get the XP and money for him.
Island Level: Cerridor Sea has a manticore trapped in a cage and controlled by two master sorcerers. He turned out to be a non-issue, as we just never went near him until it was time to free him and get the 1xp.
First: island maps are HUGE. For those who haven't played one, it's 33x27 squares, though only about half of those are likely to be used. There is scrub all over the island, which effectively doubles range for attacks, making running closer to the enemy mandatory.
I flew across to activate a glyph, and the rest of the party went to town. The overlord then spawned some beastmen guards for the glyph and hit me with a couple of his wendigos. On our next turn the rest of the party arrived on the island and the fight truly began. It would have been over really fast, but we rolled at least 5 surges when checking the undying on the two bosses.
Level Two: I don't know it's name. It was a very tight level with water that we could walk through but which would web us if we stopped in it. I ran forward to grab a rune key and then died, while the rest of the party hung back in town again. The overlord spawned, but he did it all outside of a runelocked door, so I just ran up, opened the door, activated the glyph on the other side, and then closed the door. The rest of the party popped in behind the door and killed the boss. We rested before heading to the third level, but the overlord's Mesmerism negated some of those orders. When he gets the upgrade that negates orders on a surge instead of a blank, I bet we'll be seeing a lot more annoying instances of that.
Level Three: There's a master sorcerer hiding behind a rune-locked door, and a pipe organ that can hurt or stun us in the room where the key is. We move forward slowly and eventually win. More stuff happened, but nothing that really sticks in my head. We made sure to always kill the monsters near the organ, so the overlord never got to activate it. We collect our map piece and flee back to town.
Final tally: approximately even with us at 17 and the overlord slightly lower.
Week Three
The Overlord plays A New Law, closing all the alchemists and doubling the price of cannons and weapons. We groan, buy a runeblast cannon for Kirga to man, and upgrade to a galley so we're not so afraid of being sunk. This was another error. We should probably have bought more dice for everyone (Kirga is our only character with 3 dice in his primary attack trait). We could have then explored the land-locked dungeon next to Gafford to get more money for upgrading the ship.
Future Plans
We'll be headed to the dungeon next to us to get me enough money and xp to train Alchemist in Gafford, partially negating the closure of the alchemist shops. Then we'll head across the sea towards Orris and the many dungeons there, with an eye towards completing a new rumor or two and getting all 4 map pieces as well as buying people more dice so we can feel manlier.
