The Eighth Week
Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down
The wargame is slowing down as the school year starts and work picks up for a lot of us, but still moving, and I’ve got a few weeks of backlog in play reports that’ve accumulated while I’ve been travelling for work. One week fewer now, though!
Annals of War
The Caliph of Thar stands outside his capital, infested by the lizardman scourge, and whispers to the ring upon his right hand: “I wish that a plague would ravage the army of Thrassia occupying the city of Thar.” And reality bends to his command. Though the lizardmen prove resilient, every commander in that host is afflicted, and they are carried off by winged thrassians in flight while the hosts of Thar retake their city and butcher the remaining lizardmen as they waste away from illness.
But to the west, his cause is not so secure: Thar7 had been sent to advance on and pursue the Temahni host it had repelled prior, but now finds itself met not just by Temahni raiders but also by the ordered legions of the Oracle’s crusade, now having reached the south after long journeying. The cavalry of Thar is routed, and limps back to the city with grievous losses, twice terrible for permitting the Temahn to recover those of their kin taken prisoner.
Thar8 rides north from Kirkuk to scout the Temahni homeland while its defenders are absent, and notes a citadel manned by hill folk to their north, quite an oddity. He knows it not, but it is the last of the Oracle’s supply bases, constructed on his long march south.
The great army of Thrassia broken, their God-King incapacitated, it is all that can be done to salvage that position for the intact thrassians to carry their officers north as they flee homeward. Even so, one of his most capable officers looks set to sicken and die if not treated with immediacy, and the only ones who could provide such healing are themselves afflicted. They did manage to make off with the Caliph’s treasury, however, and butchered much of his great city . . . he will feel their bite sharply.
The Pirate King sails west, fighting a southwesterly wind and failing to encounter the Alian fleet that sacked Keelhaul Cove and now holds his treasury. He does encounter the Agrahvan fleet, which has deserted and turned to piracy at their sultan’s demise, but while he would love to hire them his lack of funds prevents that.
The sea-witch who is sister to the Pirate King researches the Rod of Cataclysms en route south, seeking battle with that same Alian fleet and not finding it. Failing to find it, she instead calls down a cataclysm of wrath and ruin on Ali-Aram, which will strike at next week’s ending if she is not slain or the rod broken.
Having failed to recover his treasury, and declined to win plunder, the Pirate King’s bribes and enticements to those who follow him are unravelling, and he will face considerable desertion over the next few months. The loyalty of pirates is a fickle thing, particularly in light of the High Priestess’ offer of amnesty and employment.
Of the High Priestess herself, she supervises the consolidation of the pirate stronghold, and the newly-raised Emir Nazar, well-rewarded for his support. He in turn oversees the interrogation of pirate captives, and acquires the name of one of the Pirate King’s inner circle to be scried. But the heavens and the seas proclaim the doom that comes for Ali-Aram.
Her Vizier musters the forces of the city to seize the suspicious merchant convoy that has lingered in port in Ali-Aram and which his agents now believe has ties to Najran, but they slip the noose, departing in the night apparently for unrelated reasons.
A small fleet of House Khair escort galleys return to Ali-Aram fleeing from the west, where they claim the Steward of the City disembarked and then brutally seized the fortress Naeem Khair was overseeing construction of. Their lord appeared to have been cut down attempting to reach them, but it is unknown whether he survived. His brother is furious.
In the heartlands of Thar, the Oracle and the Kagan muster their forces together at dawn, who ride swift to meet the Thari cavalry come to finish off the Temahn alone and instead find a host to rival the assembled armies of all Thar. The might of Thar is routed and pursued, and many captives taken, and many captives freed, to much rejoicing in the camp of the horsemen.
Temahni outriders also receive the Atlas of Dominion, which has made its way here from further south through varied hands.
Reflections
Wisely but moderately surprisingly, we have yet to see attackers attempt to storm the walls of a city and fail; it has only been attempted with overwhelming numerical superiority. I am glad to see it, though with overwhelming numbers it may still be too easy to win such battles. It is worth further testing, in any event.
More generally, even when maneuvering toward field battles, most armies seem cautious and don’t seek battle if they don’t expect to win handily. The pressures of logistics and supply lines do not seem overly pressing. Perhaps the population densities here are just too high for that to be highly relevant, but while some armies do have high supply costs, they’re not large enough to be truly outrageous, and great quantities of supplies can be extracted via requisition along the way.
The armies’ caution also seems driven in large part by general confusion of what’s going on and what resources their opponents have access to, and even those players getting a broadly applicable report from others are having it filtered through layers of telephone. That said, reconnaissance with close proximity between battalion scale armies hardly ever fails to identify a rival force, so we also haven’t seen armies blundering into one another.
One thing I have simplified without thinking about it too much is assuming that all prisoners can be broken to reveal their full information, after this was uniformly the result for the first dozen that I played out fully. Given a bit of time it’s pretty easy to Intimidate them given the various bonuses involved. I appreciate saving the roll, but if you wanted a quick, single round chance of failure, a Morale roll with them resisting on 12+ would probably be my favored approach (and is something I'll be considering for the future more generally).
Running this takes basically one evening a week from me, which is not awful but starting to get taxing. I’ll have to see if there’s a better way to break it up, other things I can automate, or just time that I can consistently schedule it for.