Tuesday 11 August 2009

Amador - More campaign fluff

Amador fought a battle against a Bretonnian army to take control of the Shrine that Gaizka had been defeated trying to capture from its then Skaven owners. Amador won the battle but was taken as a casualty when a unit of Grail Knights charged into the front of his warrior bodyguard and a unit of Knights Errant managed to clip the units rear with its overrun. The Warriors broke with Amador (despite the carnage that Amador unleashed in a challenge with the Knight Errant champion). Anyway, I wrote this short bit of fluff.

Amador cuffed one of the tribesmen aside furiously. His victory should have been glorious but it had been sullied and now he was raging. He’d returned to the shrine that had seen Gaizka’s defeat to find the ratmen had been routed by a band of Bretonnian Knights, and the witch that led them. During the course of the battle his bodyguard had been outmanoeuvred by the cavaliers and in the carnage that followed he’d been unhorsed. Not before taking the head of some young Knight who fancied himself a hero though. Amador had pulled himself from the dead to see his men cutting down the last of the Knights.
“Did we take any prisoners?” He demanded of no one in particular. A chieftain dared to face his lord’s anger.
“Just the witch,” he answered unsure if that news would be perceived as good or bad.
In an instant Amador’s demeanour changed, his anger cooling to an icy malice.
“Bring her to me,” Amador replied his voice little more than a whisper and he walked off towards the shrine.

The altar of the shrine was all that remained now, the stone that had protected it from the elements had been taken away, presumably by the ratmen. The marble slab was smooth except for a gold filled carving of Loesh the Serpent along its top. Some amongst the tribes knew Loesh as Shornaal and others as Slaanesh but they all paid homage to the same god, though they were servants of Elazar primarily.

Amador turned as two tribesmen approached, dragging a woman along the ground by her arms. The tribesmen wore fierce scowls. Clearly, it had been they who had captured her so in truth she belonged to them but they’d be fools to challenge Amador’s will here. They threw the woman down in front of Amador and turned to walk away. Amador stepped after them, drawing his sword as he did so. Their snub had been petty and subtle but Amador would not let it go unpunished. He’d behead one before either had noticed he followed them. The second spun low to avoid a swipe of Amador’s sword but was too slow to avoid the boot that connected with his face, shattering bone into his skull and killing him in an instant.

Amador turned is attention back to the Bretonnian witch who’d pulled herself up onto her arms but she was too battered and bruised to make it up onto her feet.
Amador circled around her and she stared up at him defiantly. Underneath the bruises and cuts she was probably quite attractive but her auburn hair was matted with blood and strewn with grass and she looked more like a wild creature.
Amador cruelly kicked her arms out from under her and the leering smile on his skull helm matched the one of his scarred face beneath.
“Chain her to my standard,” Amador ordered with a roar. “She will make a fine gift to Loesh!”

*

Amador leapt atop the altar, the standard had been raised there and the witch was chained to the circle and crescent cross. She’d been stripped of her clothing and her dignity but still she stared back at Amador with defiant eyes.
“Blessed Loesh, accept this witch as my gift to you!” he roared to the skies as he pulled a knife from his belt. “May her flesh and her soul sate your hunger!”
He dragged the blade across her neck cutting deep into the flesh and then stepped down from the altar. Her flowing blood quickly filled the recessed carving of the serpent upon the altar. Amador knew that with this offering, his army would be blessed in the battles to come.

3 comments:

noeste said...

Congratulations on your victory!

Nice read aswell, will be interesting to see what comes next!
Does your gaming group use a published campaign setting rules (something along the lines of the General's Compendium, which was released alst edition), or have you made your own?
And how many have signed up for the campaign, and what's sort of the final "goal", is it objective-based, or more of a world domination setting?

Elazar The Glorified said...

Thanks Noeste, glad you like the fluff as well.
Well Mark runs the campaign (and he's doing a very fine job too) and he uses the General's Compendium for some things and his own rules for others. For example unit upgrades are based on what they've done in the battle and Mark's trying to keep them quite characterful. For winning the shrine my general (Amador) got a roll on the Eye of the Gods chart (+1 Attack) which he gets to keep and each unit in the army got a roll as well for the next battle. Both of my infantry blocks got MR(3) so I'm hoping for a magic heavy opponent next time to see their face! Equally, because Amador lost to cavalry in the next battle he has to reroll successful to hit rolls against cavalry models (so he's an infantry hunter next time lol!).
Also, it's a map based campaign, we have a huge map there must be at least 250 hexes on and we have 12 players I reckon although I'm not certain on that number. We randomised starting locations and I managed to get a little 6 hex island off of the mainland that is the rest of the map. So The Devotees are being left to themselves to consolidate their power on the island before I'll have to build a fleet of ships to travel across and start the real campaigning! I think we're just playing more of a world domination goal as you said. At least I'm unaware of any other goal! But we get extra campaign points for writing background stories etc after battles so that's helping me to build up Amador's army as I'm quite the fluff-junkie!
I will be writing another short story for this campaign turn as Isidro Devante's banner also had a battle to try and take control of a Wizard's Tower (grants my army a free sorcerer) sadly Isidro was soundly beaten so Amador might have to work on capturing that instead!

noeste said...

Sounds really cool!
I don't h ave much experience in campaigns, only tried once with friends of my brother and I, where we mixed in the rules for the A Game of Thrones boardgame (which basically is an advanced version of Risk and other strategy games, if you havn't tried it. I highly recommend it though). We didn't have any Game Master, we just had a map, with a couple of strongholds and towns, which were worth x number of army points you could field. Then we used the Order-system of AGoT, every player gives orders to their armies (march, raid, support, defense..), and then we simply fought the battles as Warhammer battles.

Problem was I had made a really poor map, it was too small, and we were placed too close, so after a few turns we went back to painting and playing regular battles. We had some cool fights though, and said we'd try again with a better map sometime, but that's two years passed now, but maybe next summer, when we hopefully see each other in my hometown..

Anyways, do you use the plastic campaign hexes from GW, or have you a drawn map? Chance for a picture of it, for inspiration's sake?