The Darkest Reach – Prologue

I can’t start writing these reports until I delve into my group’s gaming past a little, and lay down some backstory for you all. That’s what this Prologue is.

Inside this box, a world.

Warhammer Quest, Games Workshop’s incredible dungeon slaying board game from 1995, is a big favourite of ours. When we played it, we used the GM rules, allowing the randomly generated dungeon game to be played like a light RPG campaign. I used a mission from the Roleplay Book as a starting point, and kicked something fresh off from there.

As an aid for the players, I would write up a rough ‘The Story So Far’ document for each session. I’ve managed to dig one out for your pleasure, covering most of our Warhammer Quest adventures. Again, it’s rough, so don’t expect a literary masterpiece.

THE STORY SO FAR

A team of adventurers entered Karak-Azgal on a mission to find out the fate of the Star of Dawn and the Grunsson clan.
Lazlow the Dwarf (Kenny) died at the hands of a Minotaur.
The warriors decided to fight on while a man down. Foolishness and arrogance in equal measure. Treguard (Joanne) was bested by orcs. Bala Mory (Louise) and Glorfindel (Richard) fell soon after, swamped by Greenskins in the stinking darkness of Karak-Azgal.

In an act of vengeance, a new team arose.
Thomas the Tank (Louise), Blotto (Kenny), Lego (Richard) and RightGuard (Joanne) ventured into Karak-Azgal.
Ill-prepared to fight, and consumed by grief for his lost cousin, RightGuard fell in the very first hallway. A tragedy. The other warriors returned to Barak-Varr to tell RightGuard’s family the sad news. On the journey home, Thomas breaks both of his legs in a fall.

I’d like to step back in here for a moment to say, yes, these reports are very rough and change tense and everything, yes, I KNOW. But also to just stress that Warhammer Quest is an insanely tough game. It is ROCK HARD. There’s no shame in dying or being party wiped in WQ, because it is terrifyingly hardcore. One more thing – many of the things that happen in WQ are taken from the roleplay book – events in town are randomly generated. Thomas’ legbreaks and the upcoming duels and weddings are all randomly generated from tables and unlucky dice rolls.

Mental. Onwards.

FireGuard (Joanne) is stunned by his brother’s death. He promises his sword to the warriors. Sadly, soon after, he is killed in a duel without ever leaving town. He died fighting for his family’s fading honour. It seems this family is cursed.
Meanwhile, Blotto is press-ganged into marriage.
Firefox, the matriarch of the wizard family of Barak-Varr, takes up her staff for the first time in years and sets out with the other warriors. She has had her fill of tragedy.
Lego is banished from the city after jilting a fair maiden at the altar, because he was busy watching Blotto wrestle in a duel.
A plague then hits the city, and the warriors are forced to flee. All except Blotto.
Blotto stays behind to look after his dying wife, braving the plague. His honour grows at Barak-Varr.
As the sun sets, she dies in his arms

Remember, all of the above comes from tables and dice rolls from the Roleplay Book. Warhammer Quest is a crazy, hilarious game between the dungeons.

By this point in the story, I had decided to start introducing little strands of narrative that were completely my own.

On their return to Karak-Azgal, a Bretonnian guard awaits. He tells them that the Bretonnian Kingdom has interests within the ruins.
Blotto pledges an oath to the Lady, and is now allied to the Bretonnians. He feels a warmth enter him.
The Bretonnian questions Lego’s honour.
Inside the dungeon, the adventurers best Skabnose the Shaman and take his magical book. Skabnose vanishes. The book is returned to the Bretonnians. It seems that the Greenskins and the Hordes of Chaos are looking for the Star of Dawn and the Grunsson clan got in their way.

The journey back to Barak-Varr is fraught with danger.
The city is still stricken with the plague. The adventurers stock up on supplies with great haste, afraid to spend the night in town. Despite their care, Firefox and Blotto catch the plague. They are greatly weakened, but decide to venture out to Karak-Azgal regardless.

This time, in the second deep of the dungeon, the adventurers rescue a prisoner from a cell. He claims to be an Empire historian, by the name of Alberto Laranscheld.
While in battle, the adventurers lose sight of Alberto and he skulks off into the darkness. Finally, the adventurers face off against Skabnose again. The adventurers quickly dispatch him and his Chaos Warrior guard.
Before moving on, they find Alberto Laranscheld. He is a necromancer. But he is a poor one. Tripping over his cloak, and turning his minions into rabbits, it is not long before the Warriors slay him – Lego putting an arrow between his eyes.

The Warriors step inside the void portal they have opened. They go on. And are lost.

Finding themselves in a new area of the dungeon, they almost fall foul of a magical trap that makes it seem they are forever looping in an unending hallway. They come to their senses and find their way through.

They survive almost drowning, battle past minotaur and Chaos Warrior, and pay respects to the Dragon idol of Karak-Azgal. Finally, they free Grunsson from his stone prison, and return to him the Star of Dawn.

He leads them out of the dungeon, and they are hailed as heroes by the Dwarven clans above.

END CAMPAIGN ONE

At this point, I had been enjoying myself so much that I pretty much just wanted to go completely roleplay with the game. I started to create a revenge story, something with a bit of depth and a bit of sadness in there too.

Lego is approached by a frightened man. He asks Lego to assemble the adventurers and meet with him.

The adventurers hear how the man’s daughter has been kidnapped by a necromancer, and is being held deep in Sylvania. He promises great wealth to them if they bring her back alive.

The adventurers travel to Sylvania, and are lucky to make it through those blasted lands alive. Inside the dungeon marked on the map, there is a sad and desolate atmosphere. The adventurers hack their way through the undead and go deep inside.

Passing a mirrored door, for a moment Lego cannot see himself.

Following a cryptic puzzle the old man gave them, they travel on. They see off 3 Minotaurs in strong fashion, and soon find themselves battling each other as the black warp magic consumes them.

Firefox bests her friends, and she alone can pass through a portal designed to receive only the champion.

Once through, she uses her wits to solve a puzzle. This allows her friends to join her, and there they care for a small wounded bird. Lego heals it, and watches as the bird flies off through the rock ceiling of the cave. It was merely an apparition. A sad apparition.

A final battle ensues, with a terrible Wight Lord appearing to attack them. They see him off easily, Lego trapping the Wight Lord with great bravery, while Firefox’s magic kept all things under control.

Then, under the stone floor, they find bones. Bones of the kidnapped girl? No. it seems not. Elven bones.

Lego realises he holds a magical letter. From Gunther Laranscheld. He is taking revenge for the murder of his son. The great Necromancer Gunther Laranscheld has sprung his trap.

Lego fades out of existence, as the realisation seeps in that these bones are his. His friends pick up the bones, but as quickly as they do, they start to forget their friend.

All forget but the dwarf. That noble dwarf remembers that friend they once had. The friend who is long dead, a hundred years or more.

That is where my ‘Story So Far’ sheets end. The rest will have to come from memory.

Gunther Laranscheld had used his enchanted mirror to pull Lego back in time, and imprison him in the past. The other adventurers went back to their lives. Until, that is, a boy pleaded with Firefox to come and visit his dying great-grandmother. The strange old woman lay in bed, about to breathe her last, and persuaded Firefox to rescue a forgotten friend. The old woman enchanted Firefox and the other adventurers with the last of her strength, and sent them back in time.

The adventurers made their way into the past, and found Lego trapped in Laranscheld’s ancient prison. Suddenly they remembered their friend and fellow warrior. A little girl was in the prison too, and they befriended her. She had been held there for years, and knew the way through the dungeon. She seemed taken with Firefox, and asked if she could wear Firefox’s pretty magical ring.

They fought their way through the prison, defeating Laranscheld’s minotaur guardians, until they found what Laranscheld was hiding in the depths of his vaults. Skaven technology. Impossible technology that allows passage through time. (This was a Warhammer Quest map tile that came free with White Dwarf magazine. A beautiful Skaven tile.)

They managed to solve the puzzle of the machine, and shut down Laranscheld’s time portals. Firefox gave the little girl her ring, and sent her off into her own time. A sad parting for the adventurers and the little girl.
The adventurers then returned to their own time, to Barak-Varr.

They came home in time to see a funeral procession underway. The old woman from before, dead now.
Her great-grandson approached Firefox and said “She wanted you to have this”. The ring. Firefox’s pretty ring.

And that was where we left it.

I was delighted with how nicely we’d managed to move from vanilla Warhammer Quest into WQ with more roleplay and then into something approaching true RPG territory. We’d even ended on an adventure that left one of the players (Louise) crying at the sad ending.

I had the taste for a true RPG experience, with the knowledge that I would be playing with a group who would be brilliant at crafting memorable stories.

Which brings me to Rogue Trader. And The Darkest Reach.

And the first part of the campaign report, coming up shortly.