Renewal 1102

Recruiting hasn't been going as well as we hoped, but we did manage to replace our losses from Summit, though we are down a little on archers.

For this year's festival of Renewal the mercenaries had a much larger and somewhat better organised area due to a few advance scouts from the Black Company and the Lion Azure. We also had a well defined (and fairly defensible) shared entrance marked off by mako screens instead of our usual miles of openings. 

In the camp were representatives of many companies, among them (in no particular order) the Lion Azure, Black Company, Merchant Militia, Acoatl, Helcaraxe, Argonauts and Discordials as well as a few individuals looking for employ. As usual many of the groups in the mercenary camp weren't mercenaries in the true sense but simply groups that are independent of the factions or trying to decide which faction to join. Just outside the camp were the Green Dragon clan, a group of oriental fugitives from greenskin controlled territory. By the end of the festival it looked like both the Argonauts and the Green Dragon clan had formed links with the Wolves, possibly because they were the faction camped next to the mercenaries.

Our first task was to repair the ritual circle (for which we naturally received no recompense from the ritualists who later successfully used the circle). The circle had lost its voice while Nezumi and Shakka were studying the characters written around it as the characters looked a lot like kanji. Nezumi is our best scholar of kanji but also somewhat short sighted, the two may be linked, which meant they had to get very close to the circle and could thus hear its requests for help. To repair the circle we had to find and sacrifice a squeaky, whatever one of those is, in the end we found a small child with a squeaky voice who ran around the circle squeaking until the circle's voice came back.

As the festival was being held on Nomad lands there were many rumours that mercenaries would be attacked for being in breach of the Nomad Lore despite not being Nomads. Luckily this didn't happen.

Instead of trying to set up gate guards as such we set up a gate party each night which served fairly well in providing camp protection though it was difficult to get some of the groups to believe that camp protection was necessary as the mercs in general don't have any enemies. Of course the camp was attacked on a couple of occasions but we survived somehow. 

This festival may have been a turning point in the war against the Greenskins as we started to take the war to them. The combined army split into two forces, each attacking a different Greenskin staging area with the dual intentions of preventing Greenskins coming through them and using them to attack the Greenskin homeland.

Battles

On the Sunday we joined with the Fir Cruthen who, along with the Nomads, Wolves and Jhereg, were attacking a greenskin port. We were merged with the Fir Cruthen archers to provide a larger block of archers than usual. Continuing the 'battle bucket' theme so successfully used at Summit Nezumi had a large basket on his back to hold arrows while also carrying the Lion Azure banner - this gave us an easily visible resupply point for the archers and also made it a lot easier for the arrow collectors when bringing back supplies. The battle consisted of roughly three phases: an open field battle; the attack on the outer defenders; and a running battle in the port. The first phases went pretty simply for us - we simply provided general fire support - though the first assault troops sent in to attack the walls during the second phase had a hard time until someone started using fumble spells on Greenskins preparing to pour boiling oil on them. The third phase is where the power of archery came into its own. The army had been split in two to move down a couple of piers, we were with the Fir Cruthen and the Nomads. We were fighting against what seemed like a never ending stream of Greenskin warriors, mainly heavily armoured orcs, but by coordinating volleys of arrows (and the keyword 'duck' to the troops protecting the archers) the enemy were destroyed with minimal loss to the attacking forces. For a lot of this phase of the battle we were working with the Black Company who did a great job of engaging and holding the Greenskins. On the other pier where the Wolves and the Jhereg were fighting things didn't seem to go so well and we heard tales of large numbers of casualties after the battle, for example the Argonauts lost roughly three quarters of their number. 

Capturing the port and its shipping would allow forces to attack the Greenskins by sea. The Fir Cruthen were more than happy with our work for them, but the usual post-battle party was somewhat muted due to the numbers of lost and missing.

On the Monday we were fighting for the Vipers alongside the Lions and the Algaia (the peoples previously known as the Gryphons). In the opening phases we captured a ritual circle which we then had to hold while rituals were performed to set up portals for us all to move through. The first stages of the battle went very smoothly but the fighting got ever more heavy as we held the circle (part of that being that the portal had to be opened more than once as it could only ship some of the people across each time thus reducing the numbers of defenders available) and the amount of healing available ran down. At first we were merged with most of the Viper archers under the control of their main archery unit, Pluvium Mortalis, but this large unit had to be split up in order to cover different avenues of approach while defending the circle and we ended up controlling some of the Viper archers without any idea of the overall battle plan. Eventually the entire company got wounded out from the front line with multiple injuries that couldn't be healed due to the shortage of healing available at this stage but somehow we all made it through the portal to whatever lay beyond. 

During the battle there were many noteworthy acts of bravery within the company, far too many to list, but suffice it to say that the company fulfilled its contract with honour. Outside the company the sacrifice of the Vipers' 95th Regiment of Foot was most noteworthy, on whose right flank we were anchored for much of the battle at the portal, they were annihilated while holding the portal for others to get through.

All we can hope now is that the portal did what it was supposed to and lets us out to attack the Greenskins at home.

Many people have commented since that 1102 was the year of the archer and others that it was the year of the mercenary. All in all our decision to focus on archery seems to have been exceptionally well timed.

As part of our battle contract with the Fir Cruthen we were given a contract to winter with them once more. This would give us somewhere to rest and train until the 1103 campaign season starts though it would only be of use to most of us if we ever get out of this portal and back to normality.

Renewal 1102 Piccies

Few photos taken, all of merc camp

Around the merc camp - 

Lion Azure tents	Various tents	Acoatl tent
Argonauts' tent	Ryo-oshi, Flossie and Pietor	Nezumi in the Lion Azure pavilion

We had a few problems with the Merchant Militia's Lizardman and his growing pains - 

At this point he thought eating his bonds would be a good idea	Begging for help from Pietor	Showing off his new tail once he'd calmed down a bit

Lion Azure Roll - Summit 1102

Links to other sites with more photos

Twinkle's photos

Hobgob's 1102 photos - Quite a few merc photos, look for the arrow collectors (or arrow wallahs as the archers often call them)

St John's photos - These are the photos from one of the Discordials

It's for real, not part of a game