Ship Group Notes – 16th October 2010
By Helen (minor edit by Robert)
Party: Lassa, Erik, Maynor and T’rynn
Opening Note: This is only a transferring of the basic notes I had taken down at the time of the game and will not be quite the same when it is fleshed out and writte properly. :>
We are hunkered down. The main party is on the Wind Saber and still in a defensive mode. T’rynn, who is out at sea in a small sailboat, meanwhile has spotted a small ship. He sends off his hawk to check them out. They appear to be sea elves, so he changes his course to tack over to them. They are fishermen and stop to listen to him. They offer to get him over to a port to get help, but he’s not comfortable with that idea, as he wants to get back to help out all he can with the rest of his shipmates. So he asks them to please go and get the help moving for him, they did offer this to him as an alternate solution. They give him some water and fresh rations as they see that he appears very determined. He pushes his ship free of theirs and winds up his rope then heads back to see if he can help.
The rest of the party and ship’s crew are making small repairs to the Wind Saber and work at getting everyone who was injured patched up and ready for action again. It’s still a stand-off. We and the dark elves are at equal numbers, so we just stare at each other. At nightfall the crow’s nest reports there is a small sail coming in. It turns out to be T’rynn coming back earlier than when we expected him. He tells us that he has help coming but it will be another two to three days before they’ll get here, which is great news for everyone and gives us hope that if we can hold on, we will be seeing some support.
In the early morning – at dawn – we see there is a large ship approaching the island. It’s a large dark elf ship. We guess they sent off their orca for help, as we had sent off T’rynn. Knowing that we cannot hold out against both crews, we decide to slip away and find a good spot we can defend ourselves and hopefully hold out long enough for our own help to arrive. We decide to pull off the last four swivel guns, shot, powder, all important valuables, the cylinder, food and water and the whole crew. We disembark and head off with our ship between us and the dark elf ship, then turn and head off into the forest where we have the best cover possible from the trees and foliage. We have T’rynn’s hawk scouting ahead to find some high ground. He miraculously finds an open spot up above the forest. We get there and it turns out to be a great spot, so we set up the four swivel guns on flat rock / makeshift stands for them. The crew knows it takes about five rounds to do the reloads for the guns. We have no idea from which direction the dark elves will come at us, so have the guns positioned at north, south, west and east compass points. We hunker down and get as much cover set up for everyone using shields, planks and the rock around us and wait.
T’rynn’s hawk finds them and T’rynn figures out where they are coming up toward us. The attack will be coming in from the west. We shift our own crews to cover the west a bit more. Hopefully they don’t know or recognize his hawk. After a while, we hear a weird, low whistling sound, then crossbow bolts. Lassa warns her crew. Still one was hit in the leg by a bolt. He manages to get down behind the barrier. We then get bolts out of the other three compass points. It seems we are surrounded. We just hunker down and wait it out. We rest and eat and wait. The bolts continue to harry us at irregular intervals during the day and the night passes much the same. Then right before dawn we get a massive volley of crossbow bolts fired at our direction. Lassa peeks and sees the dark elves advancing from the west side, out of the woods. Lassa orders the swivel guns to open fire on the advancing dark elves. It appears they are wearing chainmail.
We stand up and fire our first round from our distance weapons. It’s not as impressive as we had wished. They fire on us with something pointy, but only Lassa and Erik are wounded. We fire the last of our distance weapons but miss or do no real damage. The dark elves charge our defenses. We trade blows and it appears they outnumber us four to one now. After a lengthy, bloody battle, Erik has to use a fate point, but we prevailed with taking out seventeen dark elves and only losing ten crewmen. The sun comes up. We start working on healing up as quickly as we can before the next attack begins using any healing potions, poultices and Erik’s skills. We also reload the swivel guns. We know we’re in dire straits, but are determined to last as long as possible and take as many dark elves out with us as best we can. We’re hoping we can last long enough for help to reach us.
T’rynn sends up his hawk and he relays back to him that something large is being off-loaded from the beached dark elf ship. He watches as it’s being wheeled slowly up into the forest. We assume it’s a ballista device of some sort and brace ourselves for the worst. We discuss tactics about the situation, but in the end, figure we will wait where we are for now. We are still surrounded after all. Irregular crossbow bolts are still being sent our way to remind us of our captivity and keep us pinned down overall. We remain under the shelter of the shields, rocks and wood as we rest and eat in turns through the day and into the night.
About three quarters of the way through the night we hear cannon fire from down on the beach. After about fifteen minutes, we realize the crossbow bolts have stopped raining upon us. We think the reinforcements have arrived! The cannon fire is from the east where the boats were resting on the beach.
Maynor is impatient and thinks it’s time to head out to take the fight to the dark elves. He reasons if we can come up behind them when they’re busy with the ship with the cannons, we might be able to make a difference, while paying them back for the boredom. Lassa decides to take everyone and everything except for the swivel guns, shot and powder. We can and will come back for them if we win. We charge out to follow to the west, since that was where their numbers were heavier and find them gone. From their tracks it looks like they went north. We follow. After a bit the tracks turn east. It’s easier to see as the sky lightens. Dawn occurs as we get near the beach and the ships. We see there are an elven ship and a human Empire ship sitting off from the beach. The new dark elf ship has already been sunk with smoke still billowing from the bit of wreckage which is just above the water. There is a fight on the beach with some of the longboats from the Alliance ships pulled up on the beach and their crews in a fight with about a hundred dark elves. We have our party and about twenty crewmen left. The Alliance crew number about sixty high elves and Empire humans. We charge into the battle to help out. After all, they’re here to help us!
We get into a good heavy fight where T’rynn ends up having to use a fate point. The high elves edge over to help us out. All the dark elves are dead or dying. Maynor ends up with nine bodies piled around his feet. We have prevailed and still have the cylinder in our possession. We keep the knowledge of the cylinder to ourselves, as we make our new acquaintances. The sea elf fishing ship encountered the high elf vessel on the way to the port. The elves were escorting the Empire ship. The sea elves relayed what was happening on the island and since the high elves really hate the dark elves, they came immediately to the rescue. This explains why they arrived so quickly.
So, the clean-up commences. We retrieve all our own equipment, bury our dead, and a joint party searches both the beached dark elf ship and the sunken one. We get 2000 gold from the beached ship (we leave the spoils from the sunken ship totally to our rescuers). The high elves lend us twenty crewmen to get our ship ready for sailing and help get the ship hauled off the beach. They take the beached dark elf ship in tow behind their own for later sale. Of the gold we get, thirty gold goes to each of the crewmen, twenty gold each is set aside for the families of the dead crewmen, and the members of the party each get one hundred and fifty gold. It takes us two weeks to get the Wind Saber back to Marianburg. An agent of Richtofen’s meets Lassa when we dock. He bears a letter from Richtofen and wants a full report from Lassa, which she gives him leaving out no details. Afterwards we turn the cylinder over to him. He has an armored wagon ready for it. And he advises us to rest and get ready for a new mission. The Wind Saber is in dry dock getting fully repaired. As a final reward, each of the party members gets a fate point.
And so the story continues…
By Helen (minor edit by Robert)
Party: Lassa, Erik, Maynor and T’rynn
Opening Note: This is only a transferring of the basic notes I had taken down at the time of the game and will not be quite the same when it is fleshed out and writte properly. :>
We are hunkered down. The main party is on the Wind Saber and still in a defensive mode. T’rynn, who is out at sea in a small sailboat, meanwhile has spotted a small ship. He sends off his hawk to check them out. They appear to be sea elves, so he changes his course to tack over to them. They are fishermen and stop to listen to him. They offer to get him over to a port to get help, but he’s not comfortable with that idea, as he wants to get back to help out all he can with the rest of his shipmates. So he asks them to please go and get the help moving for him, they did offer this to him as an alternate solution. They give him some water and fresh rations as they see that he appears very determined. He pushes his ship free of theirs and winds up his rope then heads back to see if he can help.
The rest of the party and ship’s crew are making small repairs to the Wind Saber and work at getting everyone who was injured patched up and ready for action again. It’s still a stand-off. We and the dark elves are at equal numbers, so we just stare at each other. At nightfall the crow’s nest reports there is a small sail coming in. It turns out to be T’rynn coming back earlier than when we expected him. He tells us that he has help coming but it will be another two to three days before they’ll get here, which is great news for everyone and gives us hope that if we can hold on, we will be seeing some support.
In the early morning – at dawn – we see there is a large ship approaching the island. It’s a large dark elf ship. We guess they sent off their orca for help, as we had sent off T’rynn. Knowing that we cannot hold out against both crews, we decide to slip away and find a good spot we can defend ourselves and hopefully hold out long enough for our own help to arrive. We decide to pull off the last four swivel guns, shot, powder, all important valuables, the cylinder, food and water and the whole crew. We disembark and head off with our ship between us and the dark elf ship, then turn and head off into the forest where we have the best cover possible from the trees and foliage. We have T’rynn’s hawk scouting ahead to find some high ground. He miraculously finds an open spot up above the forest. We get there and it turns out to be a great spot, so we set up the four swivel guns on flat rock / makeshift stands for them. The crew knows it takes about five rounds to do the reloads for the guns. We have no idea from which direction the dark elves will come at us, so have the guns positioned at north, south, west and east compass points. We hunker down and get as much cover set up for everyone using shields, planks and the rock around us and wait.
T’rynn’s hawk finds them and T’rynn figures out where they are coming up toward us. The attack will be coming in from the west. We shift our own crews to cover the west a bit more. Hopefully they don’t know or recognize his hawk. After a while, we hear a weird, low whistling sound, then crossbow bolts. Lassa warns her crew. Still one was hit in the leg by a bolt. He manages to get down behind the barrier. We then get bolts out of the other three compass points. It seems we are surrounded. We just hunker down and wait it out. We rest and eat and wait. The bolts continue to harry us at irregular intervals during the day and the night passes much the same. Then right before dawn we get a massive volley of crossbow bolts fired at our direction. Lassa peeks and sees the dark elves advancing from the west side, out of the woods. Lassa orders the swivel guns to open fire on the advancing dark elves. It appears they are wearing chainmail.
We stand up and fire our first round from our distance weapons. It’s not as impressive as we had wished. They fire on us with something pointy, but only Lassa and Erik are wounded. We fire the last of our distance weapons but miss or do no real damage. The dark elves charge our defenses. We trade blows and it appears they outnumber us four to one now. After a lengthy, bloody battle, Erik has to use a fate point, but we prevailed with taking out seventeen dark elves and only losing ten crewmen. The sun comes up. We start working on healing up as quickly as we can before the next attack begins using any healing potions, poultices and Erik’s skills. We also reload the swivel guns. We know we’re in dire straits, but are determined to last as long as possible and take as many dark elves out with us as best we can. We’re hoping we can last long enough for help to reach us.
T’rynn sends up his hawk and he relays back to him that something large is being off-loaded from the beached dark elf ship. He watches as it’s being wheeled slowly up into the forest. We assume it’s a ballista device of some sort and brace ourselves for the worst. We discuss tactics about the situation, but in the end, figure we will wait where we are for now. We are still surrounded after all. Irregular crossbow bolts are still being sent our way to remind us of our captivity and keep us pinned down overall. We remain under the shelter of the shields, rocks and wood as we rest and eat in turns through the day and into the night.
About three quarters of the way through the night we hear cannon fire from down on the beach. After about fifteen minutes, we realize the crossbow bolts have stopped raining upon us. We think the reinforcements have arrived! The cannon fire is from the east where the boats were resting on the beach.
Maynor is impatient and thinks it’s time to head out to take the fight to the dark elves. He reasons if we can come up behind them when they’re busy with the ship with the cannons, we might be able to make a difference, while paying them back for the boredom. Lassa decides to take everyone and everything except for the swivel guns, shot and powder. We can and will come back for them if we win. We charge out to follow to the west, since that was where their numbers were heavier and find them gone. From their tracks it looks like they went north. We follow. After a bit the tracks turn east. It’s easier to see as the sky lightens. Dawn occurs as we get near the beach and the ships. We see there are an elven ship and a human Empire ship sitting off from the beach. The new dark elf ship has already been sunk with smoke still billowing from the bit of wreckage which is just above the water. There is a fight on the beach with some of the longboats from the Alliance ships pulled up on the beach and their crews in a fight with about a hundred dark elves. We have our party and about twenty crewmen left. The Alliance crew number about sixty high elves and Empire humans. We charge into the battle to help out. After all, they’re here to help us!
We get into a good heavy fight where T’rynn ends up having to use a fate point. The high elves edge over to help us out. All the dark elves are dead or dying. Maynor ends up with nine bodies piled around his feet. We have prevailed and still have the cylinder in our possession. We keep the knowledge of the cylinder to ourselves, as we make our new acquaintances. The sea elf fishing ship encountered the high elf vessel on the way to the port. The elves were escorting the Empire ship. The sea elves relayed what was happening on the island and since the high elves really hate the dark elves, they came immediately to the rescue. This explains why they arrived so quickly.
So, the clean-up commences. We retrieve all our own equipment, bury our dead, and a joint party searches both the beached dark elf ship and the sunken one. We get 2000 gold from the beached ship (we leave the spoils from the sunken ship totally to our rescuers). The high elves lend us twenty crewmen to get our ship ready for sailing and help get the ship hauled off the beach. They take the beached dark elf ship in tow behind their own for later sale. Of the gold we get, thirty gold goes to each of the crewmen, twenty gold each is set aside for the families of the dead crewmen, and the members of the party each get one hundred and fifty gold. It takes us two weeks to get the Wind Saber back to Marianburg. An agent of Richtofen’s meets Lassa when we dock. He bears a letter from Richtofen and wants a full report from Lassa, which she gives him leaving out no details. Afterwards we turn the cylinder over to him. He has an armored wagon ready for it. And he advises us to rest and get ready for a new mission. The Wind Saber is in dry dock getting fully repaired. As a final reward, each of the party members gets a fate point.
And so the story continues…