Tormiel's Demise

Bomilcar's narrative
To my surprise, Ehlessa arrives in Old Hrolmar, muttering something about the tribal seeress telling her to come here. This means that she arrives in time to join in the general festivities of Avan Astran's investiture as Duke. The party goes off without a hitch, even with our general weirdness added to the mix. Afterwards, the newly ensconced Duke passes a letter of introduction to Marion that will gain her access to his old school friend, Baron Priam of Cadsandria, so allowing her to start researching her origins. We all pile onto our galley for the five-day trip, including Ehlessa and Nadjana, the Duke's Pan Tangian bodyguard. He insists that she accompany us "To help keep you all out of trouble." We arrange to meet in the border town of Gorjhan in a year's time for our mutual expedition to the fabled Eastern realms.

Jorthan and Sir Blanque go with Marion to meet the Baron; the rest of us stay in our nice hotel because the local Lawful types might becomes somewhat distracted by a couple of Weeping Waste warriors, not to mention a Melnibonean woman and a very capable woman from Pan Tang. Jorthan and Ehlessa seem to get on fine, even though he was moping for her when she split with him; maybe his time with Merut of Chaos did do him some good.

The others return with rather strange news. It turns out that the University of Cadsandria keeps an isolated tower for particularly sensitive items, according to the Baron - whatever that means. There is a room at the top of the tower that is entirely empty apart from a little box floating in mid-air, inscribed "For the Shadowborn". This causes some consternation, because that is Marion's family name, according to what she was told by Merut. The room is accessible only by a trapdoor that is guarded by a Virtue of Law; Marion has been given the password, the rather barbaric sounding name of "Hawkmoon".

However, there is a complication. The tower was protected by a six-man squad of Lawful warriors, but only one of them is alive, and he is in the care of the Temple of Lassa because he has gone mad. It seems like a sensible idea to go to see him and try to find out what happened to his compatriots. We let the smooth-tongued Jorthan do the talking, and this is what the poor guard says:

"We went to see what was going on in the hills, because of talk about a strange man. He came for us...covered in blood...he should be dead. He was covered in battle wounds! We cut at him, but nothing happened. Then he dragged off my friends, drinking their blood. His axe was so sharp. Then he turned them into spirit owls and they all flew around my head."

And that's it. The rest is dribble and gibbering as he struggles in his straitjacket.

It sounds like not all is well in Southern Argimiliar, and, needless to say, we head off to investigate. It takes us three weeks to get to the southern city of Andlermaign, and on the way we have a couple of interesting moments. At one point, as what passes for the road passes through some woods, we are attacked by a couple of demons, which we dispatch rather easily.

 One of my old Cry Havoc map sheets.

This was just a taster for the main event, which occurs a couple of days later. Two more demons emerge from a pond, while at the same time a familiar looking sorcerer appears on a low rise, accompanied by a couple of Pikarayd bodyguards and an astonishingly beautiful young woman - "A demon of desire!" says Destiny.

Another map sheet...

The sorcerer turns out to be our old enemy Tormiel from Ilmiora, one of the merchant princes who conspired in the deaths of my father and Jorthan's. He was exiled for his crimes, and it seems he fetched up in Argimiliar. He obviously has revenge on his mind, but unfortunately for him, we prove more than a match for his attempted ambush, and as his demons and bodyguards wilt under our assault he tries to leave as quickly as his demon horse will carry him. Destiny does her trademark trick of stopping him with a wall of flame, and gets her water elementals to drown him as we pour all sorts of weaponry in his general direction to get through the demon armour we presume he is wearing. He bursts through the wall of flame, only to be met by Marion and Sir Blanque, who rode around the hill for exactly this purpose, and he goes down. He stretches out his arms towards his demon of desire, but being drowned by water elementals kind of puts a stop to any commands he might want to utter. She just ignores him and he dies rather horribly. She smiles.

Umpire's notes
We have been joined by some friends of the players, three to be exact, which gave us six players in total for this session. I continued to play Bomilcar, but Jorthan, Ehlessa and Nadjana all saw action in their own right. One of the players said it wasn't his cup of tea, but it looks as though the other two will keep playing in the future. I'm pleased with this, because it is kind of wearing trying to run a game and a couple of extra characters at the same time. I've been doing this because three players isn't really enough in a dangerous world like the Young Kingdoms.

I was also pleased to be able to use my old Cry Havoc sheets again. The games themselves disintegrated on me a long time ago, but the hex sheets are still intact, and very good they are too. In fact I was inspired o go online and look to see if anything similar might be available in this new-fangled age of the inter webs, and lo and behold I found this. I've now made an order for more sheets through this site, and will be checking out some of the fan made ones that are available for download. This is a great find - do have look and see what you think!





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