Renewal 1105

For the festival of Renewal we were off to Estragales deep in AlGaia lands. The Swarm had been somewhat busy in the area with everyone away and it was time for some serious rat hunting.

The Merc camp was setup in two adjacent areas. The Draken, Narod Rodina, and Caliphate in one glade and the mercenary companies, independents, and Silver Oak in another. As groups arrived it became obvious fairly quickly that we were going to be short on space in the main mercenary camp so we ended up running a sort of extension avenue out the back just so there'd be space for everyone and still have room for a fire.

Along with the usual companies such as the Lion Azure, Black Company, Merchant Militia, and groups such as the Discordials and the Wolf Pack we had quite a few new groups with us such as the Brotherhood, many of which joined up with existing companies.

There were rats everywhere and it was very dangerous both in and out of camp. There were attacks on the camps, along the paths and sometimes they even tunnelled in under people's camps or snuck in the back of tents. It got very hairy at times and the camp took quite a few casualties from their attacks. At first the attacks were generally pretty direct but they got more subtle and sneaky as time went on, maybe they were getting desperate.

One afternoon, while it was nice and peaceful there was a sudden outpouring of smoke from Rosalie's tent and we had a bunch of very sick herbalists - had someone sabotaged the herbs?

There were all sorts of problems at Matron Mother Alurethi's party. During an attack lots of people got frozen, turned to statues, some fatally.

People started having strange visions, some were possessed by strange spirits, and didn't see things as they really were. This lead to loads of chaos and even a few cases where friends attacked one another, convinced they were attacking a rat ogre or similar. If it wasn't so widespread this could have lead to some serious issues between friendly groups. As it was we had a bit of an issue when Ogai attacked of the Iron Legion thinking he was a rat ogre and a while later Ogai was attacked by Henry for similar reasons.

Despite the problems with the Swarm the Lions managed to also have a whole heap of problems with bandits and raiders.

The Draken and Narod Rodina formed a formal alliance, the Hei-Ravni.

There were two major battles, both were hard fought, but successful, as we had to fight through the woods and then break into the Swarms tunnel complexes. The Lion Azure fought in the second battle, we were protecting Gen. Donald of the College once again and fought alongside the Vipers, Lions, Fir Cruthen & Hei-Ravni. The intent was that we would act as a mobile reserve but towards the end of the fighting in the tunnels we were spending most of our time bolstering the shield wall. The combination of the various forces was a little unusual but seemed to work very well. The Vipers and Lions formed a solid core with attached light troops, the Fir Cruthen operated as flying wings of skirmishers, and the Hei-Ravni operated as a larger mobile reserve. The Swarm did not go easily and used poisons, gases, and both strange and large war machines against us as well as their usual range of troops.

The Black Company and Merchant Militia took quite heavy casualties in the first battle, the Black Company especially as they lost most of their experienced troops.

There was lots of confusion about what was happeninmg in the Algaian camp regarding King Elsin - he was lost after a cave in during the first battle, then declared dead, then he was alive once more, then we heard he was undead, then finally we heard he was gone and sort of replaced by Hart. It was all very confusing to those of us that were just hearing the rumours that went around.

The end result was some serious damage to the Swarm and at least a couple of their leaders were reported to be killed.

Renewal 1105 Piccies

Looks like this time we have photos and a map as well

Early Morning Mercs (that's all of them, the night before had been a good one)
Relatively early rising Discordial (shock, horror!)	Lion Azure ready to go rat hunting with the General

Main merc camp

The Hei-Ravni (Draken & Narod Rodina) & Caliphate camp

Renewal Map

Click for Larger version

Lion Azure Roll - Renewal 1105

It's for real, not part of a game