Owain<\/strong>, must be postponed while they prepare for war.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nAct III: Gathering Strength<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Bradan<\/strong> rushes from the manor and nabs a horse to race up the hill – he pauses to grab Heddwyn<\/strong> (already on his way up) onto the steed so they can reach the summit. There, in the west, they can just barely make out the distant shapes of the ships. Bradan<\/strong> orders Heddwyn<\/strong> to keep an eye on things – he is unaware that the druid apprentice’s eyes have already whited out as Heddwyn<\/strong> attempts to use magic on the various seagulls so he can look through its eyes.<\/li>\n
- Back down the hill Bradan<\/strong> rushes, pausing to instruct a local boy to join the bard at the top of the hill and serve as a messenger. Into the manor Bradan<\/strong> goes to rejoin Owain<\/strong> and the members of the Council who remained in Bryn Euryn to sleep off their drunkenness where they discuss options: the manor lords are logically going to be resistant to leaving their manors with their warriors, so some convincing will be required. Bradan, however, does not hesitate and lays out a strong strategical reason for doing that very thing – his reasoning is very sound and Lord Idnerth<\/strong> pledges his men to his effort and Lord Berthgwyn<\/strong> (who has joined them) is visibly angry that his men are not available.<\/li>\n
- A decision is made to reinforce Bryn Euryn and draw the Irish here, but they will need more troops so Bradan<\/strong> declares his intention to ride to the other manor lords and plead his case. Owain<\/strong> agrees to this and states that he will accompany to lend his authority while most of the other PCs begin working on reinforcing the village although he takes Angus<\/strong> and Gwion<\/strong> with him.<\/li>\n
- They first ride to Lord Ieuan<\/strong>, who has the largest number of troops present; by the time they reach the manor, word has reached the manor and the warriors are assembling. Ieuan<\/strong> is leery about abandoning his manor despite the persuasive arguments laid out before him. He agrees to provide half of his troops but, if Owain<\/strong> agrees to owe him a Favor, will send all of them. This irritates Bradan<\/strong> somewhat but they need the troops so when Owain<\/strong> gives him a questioning look, he nods.<\/li>\n
- On to Lord Rhodri’s<\/strong> manor they ride where Bradan<\/strong> repeats his plan – despite his dislike of Bradan<\/strong>, Lord Rhodri<\/strong> acknowledges that this is a better option than not and agrees to march with them.<\/li>\n
- Meanwhile, back at Bryn Euryn, Heddwyn<\/strong> has successfully secured a link with a seagull and diverted it toward the Irish. There, he determines there are really two groups present, not one, and they split apart, the larger clearly intending on grounding west of Bryn Euryn while the smaller continues east, likely intending to sweep around the village and grounding away from it.<\/li>\n
- From Rhodri’s, they ride to Lord Brochfael<\/strong> … and find that he and his warriors are gone! None of the manor servants know where he went, only that he returned from the council late that night and then headed out soon after. Angus<\/strong> and Gwion\u00a0<\/strong>are both able to pick up tracks and the latter insists he can track these men; with no reason (necessarily) to distrust Brochfael<\/strong>, Bradan<\/strong> instructs the archer to do that and advise the errant lord of their dire need for his forces. Privately, he also instructs Gwion<\/strong> to report back immediately if he discovers something hinky. The archer nods and heads out.<\/li>\n
- From there, they march to Lord Serigi<\/strong>, who is waiting for them and declares that he will join his warriors to this only <\/em>if Baron Owain<\/strong> agrees to restore him to the Council, thus firing Heddwyn<\/strong>. Barely controlling his temper, Bradan<\/strong> snarls a threat at the lord – there will be no politics here. They are facing utter obliteration. He will pledge his men to this or he will be counted an Enemy who is fair game after the Irish are stopped. Serigi<\/strong> quails before this and relents, but Bradan<\/strong> knows he has made an enemy this day.<\/li>\n
- Back to the village they ride where the troops begin assembling and they learn of the division of Irish forces. Realizing that the enemy are not beaching at the village and attacking, it is decided that Rhos will march to meet the larger of the forces in the west while Adaryn<\/strong> delays (somehow) those in the east.<\/li>\n
- The Rhos warband begins to assemble…now they go to war.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\nGM Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n- Last session was the Meadhbh & Echo show, what with the long fight – this week, it was all Bradan who was driving everything. Although none of the players have complained, as a GM, I’m persistently frustrated that some people just don’t have anything to do.<\/li>\n
- The chase in act 1 was not entirely planned … but neither was it wholly unexpected. Great thing about GURPS Chases – you can drop them in anytime and everything still flows nicely.<\/li>\n
- When intimidating Lord Serigi, Bradan rolled a 3, likely causing the older man to soil his clothes in potential terror, given Bradan’s dual reputations (ruthless against those who are his enemies and a capable war-commander.)<\/li>\n
- Sending Gwion off after Lord Brochfael gives me an excellent <\/i>jumping off point for next week.<\/i><\/li>\n
- Funny moment:<\/strong> Bradan’s player, when his character and Marcus are reunited described the following (transcribed): “Bradan will look over and not believe his eyes at first. He’ll blink. Then he’ll do the cool walk over to Marcus. He’ll stop in front of him, then look him up and down like he can’t believe his eyes. Then he’ll give Marcus a big hug and whisper in his ear, “The dead should remain dead.” He’ll step back, revealing the blood-soaked knife that he’s just thrust into Marcus. At which point, Bradan will blink and shake that thought off.” Made many of us laugh.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Warband Brad\u00e1n ap Cadell (Ronnke) Meadhbh verch Cadell (Melissa) Marcus and Echo (CommJunkee) Heddwyn ap Idris (Gigermann) Aed\u00e1n ap Dewar (Winston) Simple Angus (Herodian) Gwion ap Enfrys (Andricus) Act I: The Feast 11 March, 457 Anno Domini Late in the evening of this day, in Bryn Euryn, Angus is checking in with his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cb_logs","category-casusbelli"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2611"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2615,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions\/2615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.olympusrpg.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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