This post has the following content warnings:
I want to just write geopolitics and fight scenes
« Previous Post
+ Show First Post
Total: 228
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

Koldunya Ognya is, as a fellow Lawful Evil monarch, happy to discuss terms for international tariffs and mutual defense agreements with the Order of the Pyre! 

Permalink

... You know our entire purpose is to wipe out demon-worshippers like you, right?

Permalink

Daemon employees, please.

Permalink

We're watching you.

Permalink

... The Church of Pharasma would like to suggest that the Order of the Pyre shouldn't persecute it.

Permalink

The Church of Pharasma is not Lawful, but it admittedly does have Lawful priests, and has been part of a Lawful system of government in the past.

We would still rather not work with you, but we are Lawful, and so can cooperate.

So: These are the required tithe-sharing agreements. We demand all priests in administrative positions above this rank be Lawful. And we're drafting you to help fight undead.

Permalink

... Acceptable given the local apocalypse, the Church of Pharasma supposes.

So, how's the campaign against the undead going?

Permalink

 

Well, as it happens, the first Hellknight scouts made it through the Furrows to Carrion Hill, a bit late.

So. In unfortunate manner.

Permalink

Kolothure does not, particularly, bother to butcher the population of Carrion Hill. They're too weak to be a challenge; to be meaningful, conflict must have the possibility that the weaker side can triumph. Tyranny is not war, it is the domain of Asmodeus; slaughter is not war, it is the domain of the demon lords.

But she's not going to stop other people from doing it. She's Evil, and Gorum doesn't disapprove of picking on the weak, the way He disapproves of very powerful people carefully negotiating to resolve all their problems without any conflict, He's just agnostiic to it. So while she pens up her enslaved undead so they won't pose a traffic hazard, she does nothing whatsoever to stop her necromancer or ghoul minions from doing whatever murdering or oppressing they feel like during the spare hours she is not focusing on intensely drilling them into a ruthlessly efficient fighting force; if she's been hired under terms, she obeys them, but if not, that's fundamentally irrelevant to her nature.

But it is not a decimated population that Kolothure rules over, merely a distracted one, when the Hellknight scouts make it to the north side of the Kingfisher.

At which point she has a new priority.

"SERVE! OR! DIE!"

Permalink

The Hellknight party was sufficiently well-armed and well-armored to go straight through the Furrows like a hot knife through butter; that is, they were mostly adventurer-class, veterans of many campaigns and full members of the Order with Worldwound experience.

Kolothure Hellblade is somewhere on the "legendary hero from a forgotten age" tier, with Remek Czaszar. Razmir and the Whispering Tyrant and, you know, probably Felandriel Morgethai, are stronger than her.

Some of them get away.

Permalink

Okay, this is a problem. It is not really an Order of the Pyre specialized problem, or a Cheliax specialized problem. It is the kind of problem that you hire four to six high-level adventurers to solve.

Any adventurers of appropriate power scale out there interested in doing this? Anyone?

Permalink

Yeah, Kolothure has decided her army isn't scary enough, so she's decided to infect the entire population of Carrion Hill with ghoul fever, on the grounds that (a) anyone strong enough to survive deserves it, (b) anyone too weak will transform into a stronger, scarier ghoul who she can then draft into her army, and (c) Urgathoa might give her some clerics or paladins if she does and then her army will be better at crushing the world beneath her iron boot.

The entire population of Carrion Hill that can get away flees east in whatever boats they can find, or south along the Razmiran Road, or north along it through the Furrows because this still seems better than Kolothure's lunatic tyranny.

Permalink

So, there is a very strange thing about the Order of the Pyre, that may confuse people who go "ah, this is the Chelish puppet state in Barstoi," as so many do.

They are not, technically, Evil.

Lictor Rouen Stought despises the gods and all their works, and, yes, despises Asmodeus. Cheliax is a cruel, inefficient tyranny. The point of Law is Law. Cheliax has a few advantages over other states but is basically a completely dysfunctional disaster.

And, sorry to say this, infecting the entire population of a city ? Is just too evil for Lictor Stought. The armies of the Pyre mobilize and march south in force, to escort the refugees of Carrion Hill into Barstoi and secure control of the city for the forces of Law and order. 

Permalink

EXCELLENT YES, COME TO ME MY ENEMIES, COME, COME

Permalink

The Order of the Pyre has, actually, heard of Kolothure Hellblade. They know, broadly, what sort of enemy she is; they know she cannot be harmed by fire, poison, cold, or lightning, is resistant to all other elements, is impossible for any wizard below Razmir's level to successfully enchant, and in addition to being massively armored and impossible to harm with nonmagical weapons smaller than a ballista had adamantine armor that will reduce the impact of any other blows.

Nonetheless.

The Order of the Pyre?

Has archers.

Permalink

As is usually the case, the fight is a few hundred lesser undead, the Hellblade, and some necromancers trying to stay well out of the way - 

(this time reinforced by a few packs of ghouls, who have not yet learned or relearned tactics, and the reformed Crows, who do not want to be here but have undead on all sides of them)

Permalink

Against three hundred armigers, trained veterans but not at the adventurer level that the Hellknights demand of their full members, a hundred true Hellknights (one in five signifiers, almost always arcane), another three hundred militia archers and slingers, and twenty or thirty clerics of Pharasma. Not the full might of the order, but all the troops they could spare under the circumstances.

Kolothure is not ignorant of tactics, for all her lust for battle, and it is to be expected she will draw up her troops in a reasonably capable formation, lead them bravely, and by her might blast holes in the defensive fortifications of the Order which her troops can exploit. The clerics among their infantry are ready to Bless and Channel, the glaive-wielding armigers readied in a half-moon to defend against superior numbers -

- But the might of the Hellknights is not, largely, drawn up in massed ranks of horsemen, ready to charge into and trample underfoot the ranks of the enemy infantry; the signifiers have not readied fireballs, to blast her formations to pieces themselves. The signifiers have spent most of their spells of second circle on Resist Fire and Cat's Grace or Bull's Strength, most of their spells of the first circle on Magic Weapon, and most of their spells of the third circle on Haste.

And the Hellknight warriors have gathered in a solid square, the most High Priest of Pharasma ready among them, their horses held by their grooms ready to mount, with longbows ready.

Permalink

"FOR GORUM!" as the sweeping shadow lifts herself, an aura of dread and fear surrounding her, great wings blocking out the sky, great blade in a single hand as her steel claws and vicious fangs are drawn back in a shout of joy -

(Kolothure Hellblade: AC 30 [+1 dex, +11 armor, +2 deflection [vs Law], +6 natural armor], DR 10/magic and 3/-, 180ish HP.)

Permalink

"IN THE NAME OF THE LAW!"

And eighty hellknights with hastily-transmuted +1 Composite Longbows shoot her simultaneously.

(Typical Hellknight: +15/+15/+10 [+7/+7/+2 BaB, +3 dex [Cat's Grace], +1 enhancement, +2 Smite Chaos, +1 morale [Bless], +1 haste], 1d8+9 damage)

(summed damage over 1 round, after DR: 605, approximately)

Permalink

They start at quite long range, so she holds out more than the three seconds of concentrated fire it would take to kill her at point-blank range and gives her a few chances to heal herself, but the actual consequences are inevitable. Her necromancers flee when she goes down, and her army either flees, surrenders or, being undead, fights to the last.

(This is why the undead have not previously tried to rule openly, in Ustalav.)

Permalink

And the Hellknights, not having the faintest notion of how to permanently destroy her but knowing The Basics about Why You Do Not Steal Graveknight Armor, will "liberate" Carrion Hill, establish hospitals for those recovering from ghoul fever with glaive-wielding armigers standing by just in case, and then disassemble her enchanted armor and store it in several tanks of acid.

Permalink

Continuing the counterclockwise sweep, one reaches Sinaria, where the Red Witch reigns uncontested, largely because she was the only person on the continent, during the entire Night of Blood, to actually destroy vampires.

(Two of them, admittedly, but it was at that point they broke and run before they learned she'd drained her Devouring Flames power dry doing it.)

The forces Razmir left have been suborned, eliminated, or exiled, but the Red Witch is, by the standards of seventh circle arcane spellcasters, not very ambitious. She sends scouts south to the northern corners of Barstoi and west to Odranto, looking for easy-to-exploit ground, but Koldunya Ognya does not think conquest is a very high priority, not compared to securing her gains and returning to her slaving ways. Ustulav is, after all, of interest to her only as a springboard to return to her home in Irissen in conquest; she is as comfortable returning to her life of slave trading and being named a queen as she is actually ruling her domains, and more comfortable than going off to campaign in dangerous wars at her steadily increasing age.

Permalink

Odranto is not, right now, being tremendously exciting! The young count and his fiancée evacuated to Caliphas after the night of blood with everyone they could take with them (by hired teleport, the roads aren't safe), which is frank cowardice but (people whisper) well, wouldn't you do the same? He appointed one of the barons as regent, but mostly authority has devolved to whoever currently has troops.

Permalink

(There are not, actually, a large number of old and powerful undead in Odranto. There is Malyas the Red Tyrant, and Malyas is enough for any province all by himself, but Malyas does not, actually, care about the recent events, or possibly hasn't noticed them. So far the barons are handling them.)

Permalink

... And as for what will happen when the flotilla bearing the remnants of New Razmiran arrives in Odranto, well, that's another question.

But it hasn't yet. Let's focus on Round One, shall we?

Total: 228
Posts Per Page: