Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal - Session Eight - the Sorcerer's Lair

The FINAL final chapter... 

I'd hoped we'd have finished this last week, alas...  

The Heroes have passed through a Realm Gate found in the back of the House of Venargo Auction Hall. The gate has taken them to the Sorcerer's Sanctum. Their lair that they believe to be under the city of Hammerhal Ghyra.

Arvios Sunhelm - Lord-Castellant of the Hammers of Sigmar - started things off exploring the door on the right, finding a library within that contained the most foul of texts.... He did find a very powerful artifact, that was handed off to Golnir Coalbeard (as he was the only character, at this point, that did not have an artifact!) and then it was never once used in the game... Ah, well....  

Golnir Coalbeard went next and explored the door on the left and found a "museum" of strange and horrible artifacts. He also was successful in his quick search and found a few treasures that were distributed among the group. Some of these DID get used during the game!!

Alnaryn - Aelven Loremaster - went next and... 

WOW!!! What an amazing activation roll!? Unfortunately, there wasn't much she could power with all these sixes... there hadn't even been any hostiles encountered at this point... 

She did open the remaining door in the room... and that reavealed EVERYTHING ELSE (well... almost everything else!) 

So Alnaryn charged off and attacked the Blood Warriors in the room off to the left! hoping to use the door as a bottleneck and trap them in there! 

I think she used a stunning blow and stunned the Blood Warrior in the doorway! 

Vizrin Kyre - Black Ark Fleetmaster - likewise tried to charge across the room and engage the Kairic Acolytes at the entrance of the room opposite! 

Archimaine - the Lord-Castellant's loyal Gryph-hound - tried to block the Putrid Blight Kings in the other room... 

The Adversaries all went and dealt some serious injuries to Visrin Kyre and the Gryph-Hound. 

In the following turn Kyre and Alnaryn fell back to try and hold a line back near the entrance that the fighty people could hold at, and the shooty people could stand behind and blast adversaries from behind... The Gryph-hound was SO injured it didn't have any activation dice to even fall back... and so had to stay where it was... 

Sunhelm had enough actions that he moved up, took a swing at a Blood Warrior, before falling back into line... 

And then everyone poured out of the rooms... 

Archimaine was knocked out by the Putird Blight-Kings, but an Elixir of Life (one of the treasures found in the Museum) was used to bring them back! 

Kyre slashed at Blood Warriors with little effect, their blades just glancing off the Khornite warriors heavy armour... 

Then it was Finnegan's turn to roll a BUNCH of sixes for ... (and a further six from the Destiny Dice pool was used!) One was used to power Sunhelm's Healing Light ability, another was used to Warding Lantern (which stunned three and injured one of the Blood Warriors...

Then he made use of the Ring of the Slumbering King TWICE - which dealt even MORE damage to the Blood Warriors!

The Coalbeard went and blasted away a number of the wounded Blood Warriors (all the ones that weren't stunned) and, I think, the remaining Kairic Acolyte..? 

So in the Adversary Phase all the Putrid Blightkings lumbered out to attack! (All the remaining Blood Warriors were stunned and unable to do ANYTHING!?). 

They dealt serious damage to Vixrin Kyre again... luckily the Healing Light helped with that at the end of the turn and Kyre's magic beans (They had some Treasure that was a back of magic healing... something... that they could eat in an End Phase and pass to any friendly adjacent warriors!) 

Things looked dire... but they all had ANOTHER round of just amazing rolls and coordinated attacks and wiped out the Putrid Blight Kings! 

Then Kyre charged up and attacked the Chaos Sorcerer! 

Before I could even flee with the sorcerer, he was surrounded... 

and then slain, refusing to be taken into custody alive!!!

And there was much rejoicing! 

With the Cult Leader slain and the rest of the cult killed or disbanded and dispersed, Hammerhal was safe once again... for the moment.

I had a LOT of fun playing through this campaign! I'm SUPER STOKED about starting Warhammer Quest: Cursed City next week! 

Cursed City plays quite differently - it's a lot more like Blackstone Fortress. There are custom dice with one, two, or no pips which indicate success, critical success, or misses... there are d6s, d8s and d12s... the better your skill the higher the dice you use (which had a higher proportion of successes and critical successes to misses). There isn't a Player Phase, followed by a Adversary/Hostile Phase, there is an initiative track and, I think, each turn the cards are dealt out onto it, so the order of everyone going is constantly changing and hostiles are mixed in with the Heroes. Gambits can be used to switch positions with enemies... 

Should be a lot of fun! (assuming I can get rats and zombies finished in the next week!). We'll be playing on Wendesday next week, though, because we're FINALLY starting a game of Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound (the Role-Playing Game!) on Tuesday! If all things go according to plan, that will be every other Tuesday. The alternating Tuesdays we will play Cursed City, and on the weeks where we are playing Soulbound on Tuesday, we will play Cursed City on Wednesday! 

(This seems a little convoluted... but I wanted to keep up the momentum and play Cursed City every week, if we could, so we can get through it... but also wanted to keep running SOME of them on Tuesdays, to keep open the possibility that John might be able to join in - as he's really only available on Tuesdays...)