Rangers of Shadow Deep - Burning Light - Part I

BURNING LIGHT is the campaign mission that is included at the back of the Rangers of Shadow Deep rulebook. After a few months break, my son Alfie and myself decided it was time to get back into playing some more ROSD... The campaign is potentially 9 games long - so we will be playing this well into next year... I am going to do an overview of our games here as we play them - and due to the mysterious nature of the campaign, and how things play out, there will be some SPOILERS here... so if you are thinking of playing through Burning Light yourself - you may want to wait to read this until after you've had your own experience with the mission!

Our team of two rangers and companions have been sent into the Shadow Deep again... this time to explore the ruins of a convent and hopefully locate a powerful healing artifact - the Decanter of St. Emilia.. Unlike the previous missions we have played, Burning light is not played out in a straight forward linear way. It is up to the players to decide which order to play the scenarios. There is a map of the layout of the different areas of the convent, and once an area has been investigated, then that area can be crossed off and moved through freely. Each scenario is played over 9 turns, and there are 8 event cards for each one - six specific cards for the scenario - plus two mission cards which ramp up the difficulty as the mission progresses... This is a fantastic idea for a game system, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the story develops.

At the very start of the whole mission we are given three possible starting areas. I asked Alfie where he thought we should start, and after studying the map he decided that we should begin in the courtyard of the convent as that would give us more choices of where to move on to for the next game...

The table set up at the start of the game.

The courtyard scenario is played on 2.5' square table. There are five points of interest to search here -  a fountain in the middle surrounded by 4 skeletons, there are two shacks to either side of the center - both with locked doors, a broken cart in the top right corner, and some writing on the wall in the top left corner. Two skeletal knights are also on the table in the top corners...

Entering the courtyard...

Alfie was back with his usual crew: Albert the Ranger, Fern the Woman at Arms, Malvolio the Conjuror and Hattie the Recruit. I had Jennifer the Ranger, Archibald the Archer, Geoffrey the Warhound and a new dude Seb - who was one of the characters from the Blood Moon mission who survived the terror of the werewolves... he is +3 fight, and has a two handed warhammer... Our rangers are now level 6. These are the characters that we will have for the whole mission, unless any of them die - or we find anyone else to help us on the way...

Skeletons guarding a sinister fountain..

Taking on the skeletons... as more skeletal knights approach from the corners..

In the first round we moved cautiously towards the skeletons in the middle of the room - both rangers failing to do any shooting damage... we had more success taking them on hand to hand, taking out two of them straight away... the event card at the end of the first round brought a pair of skeletal knights on to the table from one of the corners behind us...

Take that bone bonce!

In the second round we finished of the other two skeletons that had been lurking in the center of the table... the Skeletal Knights marched towards us from all sides...and then a horrific howl echoed through the ruins of the convent.. (this was the first of the two Shadow Deep Event cards for this scenario) - all our heroes had to make a Will roll or be so frightened that they could only do one action next round... Geoffrey, Fern, Hattie and Arthur all failed their rolls...

Lots of failed Will rolls means only one action for some of us as the Armoured Skeletons attack!

The Skeletal Knights attacked! - They only have one Health point, but they have 13 Armour points, and we really struggled to get any damage done to them... half our team were incapacitated by fear... Hattie was reduced to one Health point, Malvolio didn't even have time to get off one of his Magic Bolts before he was knocked out!! And Geoffrey made a valiant attempt at fighting one of the knights, but despite being backed up by Seb, luck was against him and he was flattened by his boney foe! Despite being injured, Hattie got to the fountain and investigated our first point of interest. She only just made her perception roll - which meant we got to read a clue from the back of the book... if she had succeeded her roll by more points we would have got to read a different clue, which I guess would have given us better information...
So we were two team members down, and one severely injured and we were only at the end of the third round!... That was when three more skeletons appeared from behind us...

Malvolio and Geoffrey are knocked out as even more skeletons turn up!!

We had better luck in round four - Seb and Fern managed between them to smash the Skeletal Knights to dust! Jennifer my Ranger was near enough to Hattie to cast a Healing spell on her - bringing her back up to 6 Health points... Hattie decided to try and keep out of the fighting for now and started moving off towards the writing on the far wall... Jennifer and Fern moved towards the locked doors on either side of the table... and the three skeletons moved jerkily towards Seb who was now all by himself after finishing off the last Skeletal Knight... This was when two slimey zombies decided to emerge from the fountain!

 A Successful strength roll and Jennifer the Ranger forces open the door to a shack - finding a chained up hound inside...

Jennifer managed to force open the door to her shack, and inside was a chained up hound...she released it from it's shackles and it was so relieved it decided it would join us in fighting off the undead! It ran out and joined Seb to take on the three looming skeletons.. Seb was slightly injured during the fight - but the enraged hound managed to finish off all three as they attacked!! Meanwhile as Fern struggled with her door, the two zombies were creeping up behind her... luckily Arthur and Archibald were in positions where they could take them out before they got to her with some fancy shooting! Fern opened the door - an item was inside that may be helpful in the future... unfortunately this was when the second Shadow Deep Event card was drawn... and a large vulture appeared out of the shadows at the back of Fern's shack!

The hound is rescued and runs to help as the skeletons approach...

Two zombies burst out of the fountain and make a beeline for Fern as she struggles to open the door to the other shack...

All the skeletons are dead - mostly killed by our new canine friend! Archibald searches a broken cart and finds a healing potion..

Fern finally forces open the shack door - to find a clue... and unfortunately an evil Vulture too!

Arthur moved into position and shot the vulture in the face before it could do any damage... Archibald ran over and searched the broken cart, finding another useful item... and Hattie made it to the wall with the Runes and investigated that...revealing another clue that will hopefully help us in our search for the Decanter of St.Emilia... This was the end of the sixth round...and that was when a Tortured Soul rose up from out of the broken cart... Tortured souls are essentially ghosts.. they cannot be killed, but they can be given peace if a successful Will or Leadership roll of 20 is made whilst in contact with it. This is worth a good amount of XP. Whilst a Tortured Soul is on the board everyone is at -2 Will.

Hattie makes it to the final clue - and deciphers some runes on the wall...

The Vulture has been killed, all the points of interest have been searched... time to leave!

We decided that as we had investigated all the points of interest in the courtyard, we would leave the tortured soul to haunt the broken cart and leave the table before anything else nasty arrived...
 
There are special rules for recovery between scenarios in this campaign. We rolled for our knocked out companions... they were both ok, but only recovered half their starting points. some special survival rolls were made, and Hattie was given a Healing potion that one member of the team had - so she was back to full points... but Geoffrey, Malvolio, Arthur and Seb are all going into the next scenario slightly battered... at least we have a new doggy addition to our team in the form of Brutus the rescued hound! And we have two vague clues...not sure what they might mean yet, but that is the courtyard explored - from here we can search the Gatehouse, Ruined Chapel, Library, Herb Store or Hospital Ward... Alfie thinks we should go to the Hospital Ward next... maybe we can find some Healing supplies...and perhaps some more clues??...

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I created all the floorplans for this campaign using the fantastic free resources available from

  2 minute tabletop.