OD&D Session 015: Feral Ape-Women Near YOU

     After creating a power vacuum by assassinating the colonial governor, pinning it on the church, removing the Snake-Cult that was keeping other magic-using variables out of the city, and generally stirring the pot in remarkable and terrible ways, the party has created a game-state that demanded a Battle Braunstein. We convened at 10am today to resolve all the madness that has been percolating. We resolved 5 turns of action, ending on Wednesday, July 17. With a 2.5 hour lunch break between 11:30 and 2pm to grill and just hang out for a bit we still finished at around 5:30. Overall, about 5 hours of active game time, but oh man did a lot of things happen. We had 6 factions turn up to take action:

The Swamp People, a Neutral Faction run by druids that has been conducting friendly relations with their fellow humans in Dschungelberg. Their primary concern is securing their border against the Orcs and the Spongs

The Orcs, who were chased out of the city by the colonial expedition back in May, who want nothing less than to retake their city from the conniving humans.

The Church, shattered by scandal and the burning of their cathedral, plagued with accusations of torturing Lord Barotha to death, trying to restore Law and Goodness to this tumultuous time and place. 

The Mercenaries, who were primarily loyal to Barotha's coffers but in his absence have started considering direct governance. In the last few weeks they have begun a city watch/police effort for the town and are holding the church at arm's length. 

Siegfried von Vemmelmordt, a devious wizard who came to the new world with naught but his two loyal apprentices and in just a few months amassed an army consisting of a charmed goblin clan and a few hundred animated skeletons. Truly on the Gigatrillionaire Rags-To-Riches sigma grindset. What it is exactly that he wants is not clear to be honest. His ways are inscrutable, his motives a rotating cypher of numbers and letters and other alphanumerics that changes hourly forever. 

The Spongs (Short for "Spawn of Kong") are ape-men headed by an Orangutan Wizard named Augustus Proximus, the Top Banana and High Brunkle. They were built using an approximation of the Troglodyte entry from the Monster Manual, they are run by a friend who DMs a different campaign using pause-time for us (AND I HOPE HE WILL RUN AGAIN SOON I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO IVAR), and they are frankly extremely silly. Troglodyte females, unlike most other humanoids, have 1+1 HD and are assumed to be reasonably combat-capable, and this increases the size of his fighting forces noticeably. The Spongs will almost certainly come up later, but suffice to say their goal today was anarchy and suffering and personal profit. 

"210 Feral Spong Women Have Joined the Battle"

Orders were written for a dawn-to-dawn 24 hour cycle, so the log here shows the orders written on Saturday and resolved/reacted to on Sunday, and so forth. 

TURN 1: Sunday, July 14

Prior to the Braunstein kicking off, Siegfried had included in his orders that Friday Night he would sneak into town and use "Transmute Rock-Mud" to knock a mortar off the keep walls, and generally cause large-scale damage to the keep. He produced a gaping hole in the courtyard wall, stripped the walls off the tower, trashed a mortar and injured a half-dozen soldiers, before disappearing into the night. Not a great thing for the clerics and mercenaries to wake up to, but that's life. 

First turn was mostly troop movements and negotiations. Frankly, very little happened. The Orcs started moving all their troops to the war-camp nearest to town. The Spongs maneuvered for future action. The druids Fire Trap Spells on Siegfried's war canoes using trained birds. The Clerics were placing Glyphs of Warding all over weak points in the walls. Things were quiet. Too quiet.

TURN 2: Monday, July 15

Captain Osman Rausch of the mercenary company was found dead, completely drained of blood from two puncture wounds on his neck. The army of Siegfried began marching south to prepare to take potential action against the city. The Swamp People moved their forces in a similar direction. The Orcs used a tactic straight out of the bible and lit fires and made lots of noise in the jungle to make the humans think they were surrounded by a much larger force, as a precedent to opening negotiations with the clerics and the mercenaries. The Spongs sent one army up the river, telling Siegfried they intended to back him and the orcs up against the humans and telling the humans via bird messenger than they intended to help the town defend against the orcs. They sent a second army, with all the leaders and the Top Banana himself to overrun the Library of Shuga-Koth, where Ramsugra the Vampire and Siegfried had been basing their operations out of. With the vampire out assassinating the Mercenary captain and Siegfrieds entire army marching south, it was a cakewalk, the Ape-Wizard headed straight for the deeper levels full of ancient texts and the rest of the spongs set about barricading and securing the library against attackers. 

TURN 3: Tuesday, July 16

The Orcs negotiated a deal with the humans. They offered humans safe passage north to the plains where a new settlement could be founded, free of bloodshed if the humans simply handed over the city. This caused a rift in the mercenary company, with two sub-factions emerging. Lieutenant Marius, by all rights the successor to the void left by Osman's death, was a staunch loyalist to the Empire and, with 50 of his men and 300 of the civilians, demanded that the town must not be surrendered. Captain Thursby, a pragmatic, more experienced officer who recently arrived from the old country to reinforce the troops, saw things differently. Not only was this an opportunity to save the lives of the some 2500-3000 people living in Dschungelberg, it was an opportunity to get out from under the pernicious thumb of taxation that the Empire represented. A fresh, independent start, with him and his men in charge. After the Gideon-esque display of might from the orcs the previous night, the people were willing to leave with him. 

The Clerics saw the hopelessness of the situation and prayed that the Spongs were still coming south to their aid, and set out to join up with the Swamp People in an attempt to flank the enemy. This is where things came to a head. Siegfried, the Spongs, the Swamp People and the Clerics all had an army in the same hex, and it simply made sense to have them duke it out. We laid out the table for a 4-way Chainmail battle, where Siegfried's army was being approached from the west and the east by clerics and swamp-people respectively, and from the north by Spongs. Nobody at that fight knew who the Spongs were there to side with, and everyone hoped it was them. 

The battle ended up being very short, the clerics turn undead wasn't as game-changing as they had hoped, as line of sight in the jungle and the positioning of the skeletons minimized effectiveness. However, 150 archers shooting a volley against 60 Heavy Foot (we used 1:10 scaling) was a bloodbath. The goblin archers and wolf-riders made mince-meat of the clerics, fewer than 50 clerics and paladins survived the battle. The Swamp-people had deployed too far to close to melee distance in reasonable time, but this ended up not mattering, because they had brought all their high-priests. 

Earlier in the game, the Swamp player asked for regular weather reports, as thunderstorms allow the casting of "Call Lightning". I pulled the 7-day forecast for Yucatan, Mexico (1:1 weather achieved!) as this region feels close to the sort of environment that the campaign is taking place in, Gulf of Mexico jungle, and would you look at that:

Whole lotta thunder this week

Call Lightning is a devastating spell. 4 different casts at 6th level and all of Siegfried's soldiers, skeletons and goblins alike, were obliterated. The Spongs didn't raise a finger the whole fight, and afterwards turned around and went home to their newly-claimed Library-Fortress. Siegfrieds apprentices were fried, but Siegfried himself was nowhere to be seen. It is not known where he is, whether he is alive or dead, or what his next moves might be. 

TURN 4: Wednesday, July 17

This was very much an "Aftermath" turn. The loyalists under Lieutenant Marius woke up to the keep surrounded by a very real and not faked army of nearly 1000 orcs, not primed for battle but rather for prolonged siege. The orcs allowed women and children to leave safely and join up with the other humans fleeing north, but the 150 militia and 50 mercenary soldiers were not permitted to leave. The surviving clerics also left to join the caravan north, and the swamp people returned to their home. No reinforcements are coming, and it looks like for the next little while the keep is going to be under Siege. Enterprising gentleman and up-and-coming Dark Lord Blony Tair cut a deal with the orcs, saying that he would personally oversee the docks and manage shipping and trade relations with the old world on their behalf. Some sort of... Union for... Labour? Whatever. 

The mercenaries under Captain Thursby massively outnumber the surviving clerics, the balance of church and state power in this new settlement is decidedly less even than it was when the colonists first arrived in April. There's a decidedly "Frontier" feeling now as the people will have to build a home from scratch in a hostile scrubland instead of simply renovating an abandoned city. 

Just as the game was getting stale for me, this Braunstein completely shakes things up. Siegfried has lost his army, who knows what he'll do next, if he can do anything at all! Now without the mountains threatening time-jail to adventurers wanting to go into the wilderness, a whole new biome of plains and badlands and nomads and horses has opened up for fresh adventures and new discoveries. The Orcs seem interested in running a proper town, which could mean begrudging trade now that the humans are led by a less religious, more pragmatic gentleman. The Spongs are out of the jungle and much closer to everyone else, what will they do? How will new boats from the old world respond to this? The stasis of the gameworld has been completely shaken up and re-organised, and all it cost me was spending a beautiful sunny afternoon hanging out outside with my friends (What a bargain!)

Faction orders have been moved to a bi-weekly instead of weekly schedule to preserve my sanity. We've got some new factions cooking and previously mid-card/sideline factions like the nomads now have the "Big Happenings" much closer to home. Very excited to see how this all plays out in the coming weeks, just when things start to get steady the players can overturn everything for fun and profit. I don't think I can ever go back to conventional adventure design, this is a dynamic structure unlike anything else I've run in my career as a gamemaster. #ThankYouJeffro