Rangers of Shadow Deep - Burning Light - Part VIII

So here we are at the eighth part of the "Burning Light" campaign mission for Rangers of Shadow Deep... there is only one area of the Convent of St.Emilia that we haven't explored... The Gatehouse...

(There are some spoilers here - so if you are planning to play through this mission yourself, maybe don't read this until after you've had your own game experience...)

   

Our current lineup of Heroes:

Alfie's Team:

Arthur - Ranger (level 8)

Malvolio - Conjuror

Fern - Guardswoman

Hattie - Recruit

Brutus - Hound (rescued in the first scenario)

My Team:

Jennifer - Ranger (level 8)

Archibald - Archer

Seb - (a character from the Bloodmoon mission who is now a companion)

Geoffrey - Warhound

St.Doneera - Ghostly Warrior Priestess (who joined us in the third scenario)

The Gatehouse set up at the start of the game...

Three dead bodies are chained up and stinking out this room...

Ogre.

Our two Rangers and their companions ready for action...

As our teams entered the ruins of the gatehouse of the convent...it very quickly became evident that something nasty had taken up residence there... a nasty smell of death was coming from three rotting bodies that were chained up on the other side of the room. The interior designer of this evil decoration suddenly stood up in the center of the room. A very large Ogre.

Two of our three archers - Jennifer and Arthur concentrated their fire on the Ogre, and he went down in the first turn under a hail of arrows. The previously unseen ghoul that was creeping out of the corner to the right was shot by our third: Archibald... So far, so good!

My guys go right...

Alfie's guys go left..

Hattie, Fern, Malvolio and Brutus approach a door in the wall...

Earthquake! - Archibald and St.Doneera loose their next activation...

Our teams headed off in different directions... Alfie's guys towards a door in the left hand wall, and mine towards a hole in the right... suddenly the building began to shake.. It was an earthquake! Archibald and St.Donnera both stumbled and fell, so they couldn't activate in the following turn...

As Alfie's companions struggle to open a locked door
 a Zombie rises up in the corner behind them...

Everyone spread out further into the room - as Alfie's team got to the door, a zombie rose up in the corner behind them... Malvolio, Fern and Brutus all failed their rolls to open the door...

Jennifer the Ranger examines one of the dead bodies...

Seb and Geoffrey moved off into the side room through the hole in the wall to see what they could find... Jennifer made it to the first of the three dead bodies that were chained up as some kind of grim decoration... Finally Alfie's gang managed to break open the door... to reveal a room with four ghouls in it... and something that looked like it might be some kind of treasure in the corner...

As this was all going on, we suddenly heard a deep grunting laugh...and a second Ogre lumbered into the room through the doorway in the far wall...

Oh great... a room full of ghouls!

Another Ogre!!

Jennifer examined the body that she was next to - it was the body of a Lorenthian Royal messenger. She found a rolled up parchment covered in blood in a pouch dangling from his corpse... she didn't have time to examine it properly now though (after the game it would turn out to be a vague clue).. and she bravely moved towards the Ogre to distract it from Arthur who was about to examine one of the other bodies... Meanwhile the ghouls were creeping across their room towards Alfie's companions. Hattie turned and ran at the zombie that was shambling towards her from behind... It wounded her, but she managed to kill it on her next activation...

There was a sudden chill in the room. One of the most dangerous creatures of the Shadow Deep had glided into the gatehouse behind the ogre. A Shadow Knight. Shadow Knights only take half damage from non-magical weapons, so they are notoriously hard to kill... St.Doneera and Archibald were nearby and moved to intercept it. Luckily, St.Doneera's attacks count as magical, so she does full damage to Shadow Knights. Between them they managed to reduce it to a third of it's health.

Seb had picked up a treasure he found in the corner of the room he was in (it would turn out to be some gold - worth XP at the end of the scenario), and Geoffrey ran to help Jennifer fight the Ogre. Jennifer was badly wounded in the struggle, but between them they managed to defeat it. Whilst his was going on, a big scrap was going on between Alfie's companions and the gang of ghouls... it took a couple of turns to beat them...

Taking on a shadow knight...

Arthur searched the body that he was next to, finding a small artifact that would give us all some XP. Jennifer ran over and used her one use frenzied attack ability to help smash the Shadow Knight into dust..

As Seb was moving back into the main room, a set of creepy chains lashed down from the ceiling, catching him up and entangling him...

These ghouls are tough!!

St.Donnera examined the last of the three bodies... of course it turned out to be a zombie. She made short work of it. Seb managed to free himself from the weird magical chains...

St.Doneera takes out another zombie...

Brutus was knocked out, but the ghouls were finally defeated. Malvolio moved into the room to go and retrieve what looked like a treasure in the far corner. This was when three Gnolls scrambled up out of an alcove in the wall.. a Gnoll fighter, a Gnoll archer and a Gnoll sergeant! Ambush!!

Malvolio is just off to pick up a treasure... what could possibly go wrong?

Where did that gang of Gnolls come from!!?

The Gnoll archer started shooting at Alfie's companions as the other two Gnolls ran at them... just as this was happening a cloud of small insects exploded out of a heap of rubbish and swarmed our heroes... Seb and Fern were totally incapacitated and had to miss an activation. This was really the worst time for this to happen!!

Malvolio ran across the room to try and help... and Hattie, who had been wounded by the zombie she was struggling with, ran over to give some back-up to to her friends. They managed to kill the Gnoll fighter, but the sergeant was a force to be reckoned with!

Seb and Fern are swarmed by insects and miss their next activation...

With all the objectives searched, and the start of the final turn, everyone who was near enough moved to try and help with the Gnoll ambush... Hattie was knocked out by the Sergeant...Malvolio and Jennifer managed to get in on the action, and they were both knocked out too!! Malvolio dropped and lost the treasure he was carrying, so we will never know what it was... And then that was it.. we ran out of time.

Jennifer and Malvolio were fine, Brutus was badly wounded and will only be on 2 health for the next mission... but Hattie, Hattie who has been with us from the very start of our missions into the Shadow Deep, Hattie with 14 progression points from 14 survived scenarios...Hattie, named by Alfie (because she had a hat)... Hattie was dead.... Noooooooooooooooo!!!

Hattie! - Noooooooooo!!

And so we have finished exploring the convent. It was now time to decide where we would make our final search for the magical Decanter of St.Emilia. We looked back over all our notes from the clues we had found in our previous scenarios in this campaign. We were 99% sure we knew where to look. We made our decision. We were right!! We found it!! 

Despite the terrible loss of Hattie, and some badly injured heroes, we got enough XP in this scenario for our Rangers to go up to Level 9.

All areas of the convent have now been explored...

So with the Decanter in our possession, we regrouped, healed ourselves as much as we could...and we all stepped out into the courtyard. All we had to do now was get out of this place and get the Decanter back to Alladore. Suddenly we heard a terrifying scream... something was waiting for us in the courtyard....

R.I.P. Hattie - Killed in action.

...

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

  2 minute tabletop.