Chapter 2 Part 2: Hysh Continued

(For the preamble and premise, start here) 

The party, gathered at the doorway, is momentarily distracted by the promise of untold riches, but a snort quickly focus their attention to the middle of the room... and upward! There, atop a glittering prize, a blue minotaur glares down at them, preparing to charge. 

An enraged Ogroid Thaumaturge faces down the party

"Run," the Mistweaver murmurs, and she lobs mystic bolts at the oncoming monstrosity before turning to flee herself. She takes shelter behind Kyre, who turns just in time to catch a pummeling from the Ogroid. the beast shoves him back and down between the wizard and the witch. 

The Tenebrael Shard shimmers in the air like a mirage on a hot day and reappears behind the Ogroid, tearing huge chunks of flesh from its flank. Morgwaeth steps forward and contributes her own heavy blows from her glaive. The arcane creature staggers, but does not fall; howling in pain as well as rage it lowers its heavy brow and attempts to gore Kyre where he lay, but the confined quarters makes it difficult to land a blow. It does not get another chance. 

The Uglu assassin and the Hag Queen redouble their efforts, slashing and stabbing, sending the beast reeling into the blade of the Mistweaver. It drops suddenly at their feet. 

The Aelves look at one another, hardly able to believe that they have survived. They carefully regroup at the door to the treasure trove. 

Kyre is the first to brave the shifting dunes of gold, his sword leg threatening to bind and catch with every step. He stoops to gather a fistful of coin, and his face clouds in rage. "Fool's gold!" he sputters, and throws the coin against a wall. 

Suddenly, amidst the coiling mists something moved, a strange figure approaching through the shimmering glare. This was no monstrous foe stepping into the light, however, but another lost soul seeking freedom from this place. Morgwaeth and the Mistweaver turn to fight this new foe, but the hulking figure makes no move to draw his own weapons. "Help me leave this place," he growls, "and I will pay you handsomely." 

Morgwaeth's eyes narrow appraisingly. After a moment, she replies, "help us fight our way out of here, and no debt will be due." 

A wild Darkoath Chieftain Appears 

The party proceeds carefully across the treacherous, glittering piles, new companion in tow, until a new chamber coalesces out of the mists, preceded by a beast's musty stink.  Clawmarks marred the walls, and gold glinted amidst the bones on the floor. From dark corners and piles of refuse tiny corrupted figures appeared, with the faces of grots and the bodies of spiders. They rush the party and attack. 

The Scuttlings defend their lair 

Agile as they are, they are no match for the swift and vicious Aelves, and they tear through the creatures one after another... until blazing shafts of light glare fiercely down from the shattered roof, striking the floor with sizzling points of heat! The party are stunned, but quickly recover, and finish off the remaining hapless Scuttlings. 

Rooting through the bones, the Mistweaver finds a trove of real gold, and nestled in a broken ribcage, an gem in the shape of a heart, shimmering from ash black to fiery red. The Mistweaver gasps, and slips it into a pouch. "The Phoenix Heart," she murmurs to herself. "Now this may come in handy." 

Unable to find an egress from this abandoned nest, the party carefully picks their way across the treasure room to the fork they had passed through earlier, and choose the way not taken. 

They step through a shimmering blue haze and into a profane temple to Tzeentch, and behold a great statue of a daemon lord. At the statue's feet they see two great crystal prisms, each mounted upon an intricate clockwork dais. From these prisms spill a searing beam leaping out like a river of power to scorch the walls black. As they take in the awesome sight, Blue Horrors coalesce in the room in front of the statues, while a Pink Horror steps out of a swirling portal to the left of the adventurers. 

The party is greeted by Daemons in a profane temple

Kyre steps into the door, pivots right, and tears the Pink Horror in two with his murder hook. The Hag skewers one of the Blue Horrors between the prisms. The Horrors caper and launch rainbow-hued fire. 

They feel a horrible high-pitched hum in the air, and a malign darkness seeps into the corners of the room, shadows that portend a growing evil.

One by one, the adventurers enter the temple, killing all of the Blues and the Brimstones they spawn, save for one, that capers out into the hall and harasses the Mistweaver with Blue Fire, finally connecting with a surprisingly heavy blow. 

The Tenebrael Shard, leaving the remaining tiny daemons to his companions, moves to the rightmost prism and, with an effort, turns it so its beam falls upon the statue at the center of the temple. As the beam strikes the daemon statue, a terrible shriek of rage resounds from within, and great cracks begins to spread across its surface. Living flames leap out of the conflagration with a hiss and a sputter. Brimstone Horrors appear at the base of the statue and attack! 

Undaunted, the Shard leaps across from one statue to the other, casually slaying the Horrors that dared to stay in his path, and pulls its coruscating beam onto the statue to join that of the first. 

The beams reveal their quarry 

As the daemonic statue at last shatters apart, blue flames roar up from its sundered remains. Striding forth from amid those spectral fires is revealed the magister of Tzeentch. “You should not have come,” he hisses, “this affair is beyond you.” He favors the assembled heroes with an unsettling smirk, then raises his staff and darts to attack, the stolen amulet still gripped in his twisted fingers.

With a twisted incantation, the Magister vanishes. In his place stands the bewildered Darkoath Chieftain. Before anyone can react, the disciple of Tzeentch reveals himself in the place the Chieftain once stood, right amongst the party! His magical blade cuts a swathe through the warriors around him, then he switches back and cackles. 

Enraged by this eldritch trickery, the Barbarian charges and his War Axe sings, but the Magister seems unfazed, though the wounds cut deep. The Fleetmaster joins him, but his murder hook catches only air, but the Witch Aelf fares better, her glaive scoring a deep crimson line down the Magister's arm.  

Suddenly, one of the prismatic statues moves of its own accord. It catches the remaining pair of Brimstone horrors in its scourging light and incinerates them. 

Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, the Shard steps into nothing and disappears, instantly reappearing by the Magister's side. with a soft chink a length of barbed chain uncoils and wraps around the evil wizard's neck before tightening and severing it clean off! 

The foul creature crumbles to the ground with an agonized shriek. His flesh blackens and withers as if he were being consumed by a raging flame. “My Master will not be stopped so easily, fools! Your world shall crumble!” his decapitated head shrieks from within the swirling conflagration. Within moments nothing of him remains but a gaping skull and twisted bones. Clutched in the charred remains of his finger bones is the amulet, and beside it a gleaming fragment of gemstone that fits perfectly into one of the eight sockets cleverly built into the device. As soon as they put it into place, the tower dissolves in a swirl of light, and they find yourself returned to Hammerhal. The morning dawn light is just breaking above the buildings. 

Chapter 2: The Trial of Hysh

The Tenebreal Shard rises from the floor, one hand against the wall to steady himself. Morgwaeth goes to help him. 

After a moment, the assassin growls, "We must pursue him," and without waiting for assent, staggers through the portal! The witch and the mage look at each other, then follow wordlessly. 

Kyre looks back the way they came, longingly. "Well, I've come this far," he says to himself, then runs into the orange mists. 

The party contemplates a Narrow Ledge

As he emerges, he finds the others examining a strange chamber. As they watch, the sound of clattering gears fill the air, and sections of the floor rotate away until only a narrow ledge remains. As the Tenebrael Shard begins his first tentative steps across that precarious span, an unnatural zephyr begins to blow! 

Despite his injury, the shadow aelf steps nimbly across the ledge. Morgwaeth follows, then the Mistweaver, but just as she steps onto the precipice she is buffeted by a crosswind and slips! Leaping desperately, she catches the far ledge as the cogworks beneath clank and growl like some ravenous mechanical beast. The others help her across and she takes a moment to catch her breath. Then it's Kyre's turn. 

Kyre steps gingerly onto the platform, his leg blade skittering nervously across the smooth steel, unable to find purchase. Wobbling worryingly, he stumbles first, then reaches the other side with a sigh of relief. Sparing the chasm a respectful glance, he then begins to examine the far side of the chamber in earnest. There, amongst the glitter, he finds a shining gold piece, and tracks, possibly of daemonic origin, leading into the shrouded mists to a golden portal. They follow. 

The party meets a Librarian in his study

As the great golden portal swings wide, beyond is revealed a library that seems stolen from some madman's dreaming. The air grows into a thick and a billowing multi-colored smoke and from that fume steps the daemonic librarian of the strange chamber, one digit laid upon his rubbery lips in a mocking appeal for silence. 

With sudden alacrity, Kyre lunges forward, slashing the daemon twice. The injured Shard darts around a pillar, emerging at the creature's flank to add his own red marks. Morgwaeth ululates a high-pitched war cry and joins the fray, her fearsome glaive finishing the Librarian, tearing it cleanly in two with a  wet and monstrous ripping sound. Where once stood a great pink-fleshed being now two smaller blue simulacra took its place. They tell the hag queen a precious secret, an ancient incantation that will still the blinding light of sorcery for a time, then they vanish returning to the shimmering smoke from whence they came. 

The Mistweaver strides imperiously into the library, casting her gaze about, her stillness suggesting a preternatural concentration. Then, at a gesture, the Tenebrael Shard steps forward into the glittering mists, heavy with half-glimpsed shapes and the shattered fragments of memories. The sound of running footfalls soon resolve themselves into those of fanatical cultists, like the ones that attacked them in the tavern far above - or perhaps, by now, elsewhere? 

The party encounters a roving band of cultists

The two groups meet in a vicious clash of steel. The Cultists are quickly dispatched, but not before one of them deals the witch aelf a grievous wound to her flank. In the aftermath, Kyre searches the chamber and finds a bag of gold. The Mistweaver scrutinizes the door and suggests the left most. When the party arrays around it, blinding light engulfs them, a searing luminescence manifested without warning. For a span of time which may have been seconds or centuries they hang in that eerie void, before reality springs back with a roar. They reappear exactly where they stood. Exchanging bewildered glances, they push forward into the next chamber. 

Glittering white and yellow, the floor of this room seems filled with endless piles of gold coins. Before they have time to contemplate their good fortune, however, the party is cowed before the grotesque sight in the middle of the room, facing them... 

(At this point, a short pause while I paint the model I need for this encounter. Will the party survive this new peril? Stay tuned!) 

Chapter 1: The Chase

(For the preamble and premise, start here) 

Drink-addled, Kyre's wild swings with his trusty cutlass cut only air. The others are not caught so flat-footed. Acting with lighting speed, the Tenebrael Shard and the Hag Queen spring forward and dispatch two of the eerie cultists. At this their two companions flee back through the portal, which snaps shut with a sucking pop! Once again giving chase, the quartet see the evil mage disappear down a winding staircase on the other side of Cinderfall Street, and they scramble to catch them. 

Hearing loud sounds of carousing, they burst through the door at the bottom of the stairs to find themselves in a hidden and disreputable-looking tavern. A sign, askew over the door, reads "Bloody Ends." The party looks at one another and enter. 

A quick search and whispered threats reveal a secret passageway past a stack of ale barrels, on the wall opposite the entrance. Squeezing through, they find themselves in a dark and narrow alleyway, where they hear the skittering of little feet and a snicker of cruel laughter... 

The Heroes find a narrow alleyway behind a secret door, 

and are affronted by a swarm of Giant Rats. 

Kyre leaps into the room and cuts down three of the giant vermin, but the last one manages to elude both the Shard's claws and the witch's knives, thought it is so consumed with forestalling certain death that it cannot latch it's teeth around any of the Aelves swirling around the alley. Finally, with a sigh, the Mistweaver steps to the doorway and begins lobbing eldritch bolts at it, until one finally connects and it expires with a heavy sigh of its own. 

Momentarily winded, the group pauses to catch their breath, and the Shard finds a gold piece wedged between two cobblestones. 

They steel themselves for conflict, and open the door at the end of the alley... 

Browsing Olmor's Hidden Shop 

They find themselves in a dark bazaar, full to bursting with all manner of goods. Potions of every color line the shelves of one wall, while a rack of gleaming weapons sits in one corner. In another, an Orruk guard looks up from a dice game and glares menacingly. The proprietor is obliging to the point of obsequiousness until he discovers that none of the Aelves have enough coin, at which point he brusquely shows them a second exit, which reveals stairs leading down from the shop. 

As the party cautiously descends, they are confronted by an orange glow emanating from the doorway at the bottom of the stairs. As they reach it, they see a pair of hideous gibbering creatures standing before a swirling door of fire in the dank chamber beneath the streets, their attention fixed upon the instructions of their master, the sorcerer from the inn. He turns at some instinct, flashes a wicked grin and lifts his staff to attack. Kyre staggers under the force of his sorcerous assault, and can only watch in frustration as he steps towards the portal, the stolen artifact held aloft in his clawed hand. Meanwhile, his grotesque servants turn and approach the doorway, snarling, their silver blades gleaming in the firelight. 

The Dark Gate 

Soundlessly, the Tenebrael Shard steps through the door and vanishes into the shadows, only to reappear at the far end of the chamber, finger blades gleaming as he falls upon the hapless sorcerer. The mage shrieks in fear and pain, and lashes out with his Runestaff as the team charges towards him, sending them all reeling. With a triumphant screech, the sorcerer leaps through the portal and vanishes. 

The two hideous Horrors leap to attack the assassin, and it is all he can do to fend off their attacks, while his exhausted companions rush to help him. Finally, the witch closes the gap and cleaves one of them in two - only to have each half reappear as smaller copies of itself, only blue instead of pink! Together with the remining Pink Horror they overwhelm the Tenebrael Shard and send him to the ground, before turning to the rest of the party, blades and magicks flashing silver and cyan. 

But the remaining Aelves are not so easily cowed, and they too press the attack. The second Pink Horror is buffeted by blasts from the Mistweaver, and as it turns to wreak its vengeance on the mage, the pirate captain lunges and finishes it off with a vicious blow from his murder hook. It too splits into two smaller creatures, whose frenetic capering showers pink fire over everyone in the room. The witch sinks to one knee. 

Finally, the exhausted heroes manage to smash the remaining Blue Horrors, and the even smaller Brimstone Horrors that they spawn. As the last one is skewered by the Witch's sacrificial knife, a sudden silence falls over the small space. 

Kyre looks around at the carnage, at the slashed and bleeding figures of his companions. A grim smile breaks across is face. They have won.  

Chapter 0: The Setup

Three agents from Uglu and a reluctant guide

(For the preamble and premise, start here) 

"No chance, forget it." 

Vizrin Kyre, Fleetmaster and captain of the Hel's Claw, mused wryly that his days of defiant protestations should have been behind him, but here he was, in a smokey dive in a forgotten corner of Cinderfall, sat across a motley collection of Uglu emigres, protesting anyway. He knew it would do no good. 

The other three stared wordlessly back at him, or at least the Hag Queen called Morgwaeth did, and intensely too, a twitchy fanaticism somehow coloring her every expression. Of the remaining pair, the Tenebrael Shroud's face was concealed beneath a dark hood, while the Mistweaver Saih's was inscrutable behind a mirror-sheen mask. 

"I dropped everything, when I was summoned. I brought you here from Uglu, as you paid me to. I found this place - " and here his broad sweeping gesture encompassed his indignation as well as his bafflement "- for you whatever gods-known reason. I've told you everything I know about what's going on. I can help you no more. This is where we part ways; I have a business to run!" 

The Hag Queen smiled icily. "You speak as if it's our choice, or yours. It is not; it is preordained. Look," she says, and points over the elf pirate's shoulder. 

As Kyre turned to look, the sound of revelry at the other end of the bar rose to an exultant cry, as a one-eyed dwarf in a yellow cap triumphantly lifted a strange amulet over his head. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a strange glimmering light coming from somewhere behind the bar. As he turned for a better view, he saw it coalesce into a large oculus, a terrible eye with a pupil of utter darkness. From that darkness came a horrible shriek of laughter and a searing blast of blue fire. 

The dwarf screamed in agony as the flames writhed over his flesh. The unnatural conflagration transformed him in a matter of moments to a bubbling pool of skin and bone writhing pitifully on the floor. The amulet he’d held aloft skittered across the floor, landing right at Kyre's feet. He stared at it, vaguely aware that several others were also looking down at the object. Seized by an unstoppable desire, he reached for it, but a blinding flash of light threw him back. The flash heralded a glimmering eldritch portal, a rift hanging unnaturally in space where there was nothing at all a moment before. A figure in the shape of a man stepped  through the opening, his inhuman eyes fixated upon the dwarf’s amulet. At a gesture, the amuled floated gently and inoxerably through the air, landing in his clawed hand. 

Kyre rose, and heard the trio from Uglu doing the same behind him. His hand burned where he had grasped the amulet; pausing to look, he found a strange pulsating rune mark etched on his hand. 

He looked up again to see a group of warriors in strange avian masks stepping through the portal behind the sorcerer a moment before it closes, brandishing their blades as the wizard darted out the doorway and into the streets of Cinderfall. Kyre drew his cutlass and prepared to do battle, sensing his new companions preparing themselves as well. "No choice, indeed," Kyre mused to himself bitterly, as he moved towards his chosen foe. 

The Aelves prepare to fight their way out of the tavern, while the Magister flees

Peter Cooper's Warhammer Quest Redux: A Playthrough

Preamble and Premise 

Warhammer Quest is a series of RPG-lite dungeon crawlers by the miniatures game behemoth Games Workshop. The original game came out in 1995 and has since become a scarce and unreachably expensive collectors' item. Fortunately, GW revived the concept twenty years later, with the release of Silver Tower (2016). Coinciding with the rebadging of their fantasy brand (from Warhammer Fantasy to Age of Sigmar), Silver Tower chronicled the adventures of an intrepid band of heroes and opportunists as they navigated the magical maze of a demon wizard's lair. 

The following year GW dropped Shadows Over Hammerhal, which retained the core features of its predecessors but uniquely added a Game Master to the mix. 

Silver Tower and Shadows Over Hammerhal are two sides of a coin, therefore; the former a stylish, compact cooperative experience, the latter a much-expanded roleplaying adventure game that set one player apart from the rest. 

Enter an enthusiastic modding community to the rescue. Peter Cooper has painstakingly crafted a full modification of both of these games, allowing them to be played together and solo or cooperatively. Weighing in at an astounding 85,000 words, this project can only be called a new game in its own right, incorporating the best ideas from both Silver Tower and Hammerhal and adding mechanics that fit so naturally they will make players wonder why they weren't there in the first place. 

This blog will chronicle my attempt to play through the entirety of the Sneaky Petey mod. The plan is to include both illustrations and linking narrative text as I go along. Since adversaries are procedurally generated, I will have to periodically pause the adventure to acquire, assemble and paint the various impediments to my heroes' journey, and as a result I anticipate this project will take place over an extended period of time. Hopefully it will nevertheless retain my hobby and gaming attention. 

Wish me luck! 

(eta a disclaimer: much of the writing in this playthrough is not my own; much of it is cribbed and paraphrased from the materials provided by Peter Cooper and the great James Workshop himself.) 

Table of Contents: 

Chapter 0 - The Setup

Chapter 1 - The Chase

Chapter 2 - The Trial of Hysh, Part 1 

Chapter 2 - The Trial of Hysh, Part 2 

Chapter 3 - The Trader's Gate, Part 1 

Chapter 3 - The Trader's Gate, Part 1b

Chapter 3 - The Trader's Gate, Part 2 

Chapter 3 - The Trader's Gate, Part 2b 

Chapter 3 - The Trader's Gate, Part 3 

Chapter 4 - The Trial of Ghyran 

Interlude: The Dank Pit