Crusade 1102

The nations were gathering to hit the greenskins where they thought they were safe. The city of Odessa was a major part of the greenskin supply routes and gave them a jumping off point to attack many places.

From the moment we joined up with the main group of forces near Odessa, even before our command tent was complete, we came under attack. Obviously the Greenskins were aware of the troops moving into position and sought to disrupt our preparations before we had time to organise and co-ordinate so many disparate groups.  

The force we met up with consisted of the Vipers, the Gryphons, the Lions, and quite a few mercenary groups. We were located between the Lions and the Gryphons in a position that gave us easy access to both of the main gates but also made us responsible for security at a few smaller gates.

Fighting continued throughout the evening and night. More than once Greenskins broke into the camp, either by waiting until we were distracted by an attack from another quarter or by coming in fast after a lull in the fighting. Forces from the other nations managed to break through to our position and let us know their location which gave us heart but it was touch and go whether we would make it through to sunrise.

We joined the Vipers and Lions on a reconnaisance of the defences of Odessa. We were merged with archers from other units to create a larger archery force though unfortunately the Lions' archers refused to join in, they appear to prefer the chaos approach to battlefield archery. We found few outer defences or defenders but large numbers of defenders in the fort. The combined archers were assigned the primary role of taking out blood hags and similar should they be present. The merged unit worked well, while directed, but we had problems targetting the blood hag that was present though we did hit her a few times which seemed to make her keep her head down. We did have some interesting archery duels with some of the defenders though.

The Nomads found a prophecy about a greenskin leader called the blood queen - the land will be poisoned and the seven blood hags appear before the blood queen can come. To defeat the Queen first need to kill all the blood hags and also need to make a weapon from seven items. What was worrying about this was that the land already seemed to be poisoned, one of the ingredients of healing balms was impossible to find and the few alchemists that had the ingredients found they needed more than usual to make the balm, though this could have been an effect of having Death wandering around all the time.

The other nations' forces fought their way through the greenskin defenders, but at great cost in lives. Among those that fell was Dragon of the Fir Cruthen. As he had been our host for much of the winter a couple of us made our way across for his wake and a chat with friends in the Fir Cruthen host.

As time wore on relations between some of the nations started falling apart. The Lions attacked a Wolf ambassadorial party and they retaliated by attacking a Lion foraging party; peace (of a kind) was only restored by the two nations agreeing to fight an honour battle later in the year. In the meantime the Jhereg and Gryphons were getting angry with one another, but this seems to have calmed down after the death of Peter from the Gryphon's co-op in a tragic shaving accident.

News filtered through that Estragales (the main Gryphon country) had fallen to greenskin forces. The Gryphon forces present thought of returning to fight the greenskins but calmer heads prevailed as there was likely nothing that could be done by charging in recklessly.

The quality of guards on the main gate was generally good but occasionally fell apart. On one noteable occasion four death nights just casually walked through the gate without being challenged and attacked the Viper command barn. The gate guards (Vipers and Lions) then left the gate to join the fight leaving nobody on duty, a gap that was filled by Kyle for a while though he wasn't exactly happy standing there on his own armed to the teeth with the 'bogroll holder of doom' (a very short mace).

Finally everything was set up and ready for the final assault on Odessa. Viper, Lion & Gryphon forces with attached mercenaries moved out together. Archers from the Vipers, Gryphons & the Lion Azure merged together (yet again the Lion archers stayed apart) specifically to hunt special targets and pin them down. The route to the wall was hard fought, opposed all the way, there were many times when we could have used more close combat troops attached to us.

We proved the power of volley fire against a unit that was harassing our force from a ridge line. Nobody nearby could believe we hadn't practiced together never mind that this was Vipers, Gryphons and the Lion Azure working efficiently together. Culhan and Kyle managed an interesting double act on some greenskins that were harassing us while trying to stay out of effective range - Culhan took a shot which hit one in the chest, his mate hit the deck and started crawling towards a tree whereupon Kyle hit him square on the bum.

At the wall our main mission was to target the ballista guarding the gate that was the target of the attack. Unfortunately there was no co-ordination between us and the storming forces so their attacks were never timed to coincide with the times when we had the ballista disrupted (there's something special going on when a ballista decides they'd be better off trying to target a lone archer rather than an attacking force). There was also a blood hag present but yet again we were unable to co-ordinate attacks on her. Generally we were working well as a team - Kyle and Culhan on archery with brother Terrance on close defence and arrow collection.

The attack was concluded when a bunch of the leaders from the Vipers, Gryphons and Lions plus Phoenix Guard attacked from the inside having broken in through tunnels, what was called the 'cake or death' mission. The gates were opened and the defenders surrendered due to an agreement that had been made in advance. Unfortunately Lord Emmerich of the Gryphons fell at the gate. Lord Elsin disappeared into a portal chasing the blood hag who was at that point starting to collect Lion Azure arrows. I certainly hope the survivors of that mission got their cake - they deserved it.

The defenders were taken prisoner (except a joining who didn't seem to like the idea) and we finally moved into Odessa, a free city once more.

Crusade 1102 Piccies

There's not many piccies - but it's an improvement on Prelude.

The Lion Azure command tent	The Viper command Barn	Two pictures, taken from a distance, of the final attack on Odessa. Both involve the archers, but Kyle's absence from them means he was probably off yelling at someone.

Lion Azure Roll - Crusade 1102

It's for real, not part of a game