The Mines of Karak Ture

 

So on the last WE of June, a group of friend and I were able to resume our ongoing campaign of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay ! If you haven't or don't remember much of it, you might want to read the first episode HERE.
Just like everyone on earth, Covid, world chaos and all sorts of non sense have postponed many games andhobby events so after our last game in 2020 it was an absolute blast to get the band back together to continue our adventure where we had left it !
To celebrate this we decided to dress up accordingly so here are our players :
Tauron (elf), Moyra (Elf), Ungrim (dwarf), Torbure (dwarf), Ced (Game master) and Gregor (human, also me)

missing Harandil our mage who was positive with Covid and had to  play via visio the whole week-end, the hero.

To start off, we began with a more pen and paper session with only a river boat  and our charaters.

The party had left Bogenhafen after the attempt from the Lichemeister to take over the city and they had been tasked by the Ture brothers to escort their cousin Gotri to the family mine about 10 days sailing up the river.
The captain Hans and his son Karl were taking them through every sluice and all our heroes had to do was to prepare for their journey, some prayed, some trained, some helped.
The first notable event was finding an empty ship resting on the shore. Gregor and Tauron went to scout and noticed it was abandonned. They secured the boat (which was unattached) with a graplin hook to their own, and went on board. The ship was packed full of the finest Bretonnian wine !
They quickly sensed a danger though and disembarked just in time before the ship moved from the shore and starting pulling their own ship in the stream !
Ungrim tried to sever the rope tying the two ships but he was pushed into the water by the shock and had to be rescued by his companions on land.
That wasn't the most promising start...

Gregor made the best of his time speaking with the captain and teaching Thorbur the basics of writing.

At about half their journey, our adventurers saw some smoke in the distance and decided to investigate. They disembarked further up the smoke trails and once again, Gregor and Tauron went to inspect.
After a good 30 minutes walking they stumbled upon a smoking village and in the middle of it the most beautiful maiden they had seen, tied to a pole and crying for help.

Not long later, a sinister figure, with a thousand mile stare popped in and started setting a pile of wood at her feet on fire !
Gregor went to talk him out of it and tried the most diplomatic approach. After a bit of negociation, the man, a witch hunter, had decided to hold off and let them inspect the surroundings. He would set her on fire anyway though and made that very clear. Our adventurers went to find their friend Moyra, the group's doctor to inspect the bodies found in the village.
They had all been tortured and mutilated before death, she was sure of that, the witch hunter was starting to set her on fire while ignoring her cries for help and blaming him for all the damage around...
This was the last moment to move, should they attack the visibly deranged witch hunter and help the poor girl ?
It only took a few minutes to know they had been right not moving, when the burning body of the fair maiden turned into one horrible demon with wide black eyes, no hair and crab claws for hands ! The demon was shrieking when Gregor attacked it with all his might, only to realise the attack had apparently done no damage despite hitting dead on !
The witch hunter was now annoyed and while calling them amateurs, he beheaded the demon with one cut before leaving, whispering incomprehensible things.

The only major event after that was when their ship got arrested by the river guard looking for heretics and mutants. The captain of the river guard was one particularly nasty individual with his hair on one side and tiny moustache under the nose. 
Gregor had noticed the son of their ship's captain had a slight difformity and he new someone like Captain Ilmer (the river guard) would only be too happy to take that as a sign of mutation...
The party managed to keep the boy out of attention from the guard and bribe them off and lure them into checking the boat full of wine they had encountered days earlier...
The boy would be safe... for now.

At the last sluice, they headed to their destination, they only had 2 days left walking and would soon have the mine in sight !

By the end of the second day, they arrived at the top of a hill where Gotri their guide told them to stop.

Gotri was visibly worried, he could sense something odd in the air, some noise that wasn't familiar and felt threatening. The adventurers discretly moved to the edge of the cliff to take a look...

To their horror, the valley leading to the mine was occupied by a horde of Hobgoblins ! They were in the fort guarding the entrance of the mine, they were coming out of the mine, in the fields around, they were EVERYWHERE !

Gotri was visibly devastated but in a typical dwarven manner, he gathered up his courage, raised his chin up and  thought of their next move.
The adventurers were to stay on the hill to scout the area while he'd take one of the mules and go find the help of his cousins from another mine further. He would be there in 2 days with reinforcements so they had to stay put and avoid the woods to the East at all cost for they were haunted woods.

After waiting for 2 days though, there was no sign of Gotri or anyone. Another day and still noone. They could tell the hobgoblins were getting reinforcements on the other end :

The patrols around their camp were getting closer to their position each day and they wouldn't be able to stay here for long !

While they were debating on their next course of action, some weird figure came up from nowhere and started adressing them. It was a small humanoid, previously a dwarf maybe, the poor creature had tentacles for arms and was absolutely covered in sphincters making disgusting sounds of farts and spitting a liquid they didn't want to know the nature of...
But the worst of it was the creature's voice, so loud and Sigmar be praised SO ANNOYING !!!

"HEY GUYS? *PFRRRT* HOW YOU DOING ! *SPRFFRRRRT* I'M SPHINCTERMAN *PFRRRT* WHO ARE YOU GUYS? WANNA TALK *PFRRRRT* ! 

The sound, the stench, the mere view of him immediatedly gave them all murder thoughts. The poor souls who managed to land a hit on him realised he was protected by some aura and he was releasing miasma that could potentially afflict them with some terrible illness...
It's only after they kicked it off the edge and ran away one of them remembered Harandil their mage should have cast a wall of silence around the creature... 
Its loud shouts had drawn some unwanted attention on them !

Despite Gotri's warnings, the only retreat path for them was towards the woods...

After getting lost and being disoriented, they came upon a tombstone in the middle of a Glade, it had been set for a Hero of a forgotten age...

While they were inspecting the tomb, an apeman jumped from a nearby tree and attacked our friends !

Gregor got some help and decided to push the tombstone aside, only to reveal a secret passage underneath !

Lighting their torches and lanterns, they moved inside to find a passage to the mine and some shelter from the troops above.
They arrived in a small room where an old statue of Grungni was lying on the floor and alcoves in every corner of the room.

(gaming note : in most of the undergound areas, our gaming room would be in the dark with only the players actually holding a torch or lantern having a pocket light to inspect the surroundings, hence the poorly lit photos but with a considerably higher feeling of immersion) 

After raising the statue up like how it had been in the past, they could read a line on the pedestal stating "only the gaze of the pious shows the way"

After inspecting the wall facing the statue and failing to see any device, they did realise the walls at every corner were light and fragile.and it didn't take much for them to break those and reveal tombs in which they found a misterious sword, two scrolls and a giant mushroom that would leave Ungrim glistening with fluorescent spore for a while !
Torbur ad Ungrim took a few minutes to pray Grungni and his infinite wisdom and felt a burst of energy throughout their body...

On further inspection, the statue of Grungni had a devicein each eye that triggered a mechanism when both pressed and which opened the way to another passage...

After entering the passage and walking down the stairs for what felt like hours, our heroes finally arrived to a sinister room. The place wasn't only sinister because of the pitch black darkness surrounding them, it was the aura all around that felt evil and threatening, like the place itself didn't want them...

That's when they found the first door on their path. It had no handle or any visible mechanism and on close inspection, they could read the following :

"I am invisible, my softness licks you whole but when fury takes me, I scream, shout and shatter everything in my path"

After a bit of thinking, it felt obvious it had something to do with wind but just blowing on the door wouldn't open it so they tried magical wind. Looking at the scrolls in their possession, there just happened to be a wind spell they cast and that worked !
The adventurers could hear some noise from the stairs they came from though and they had been followed somehow !

They continued their paths only to find yet another door with the inscription :

"You walk on my head and my hair feeds you.If you walk in me, be careful not to lose yourself for it is dark and you could miss my first"

The riddle seemed to indicate the need for an earth spell but noone in the party had a clue on how to cast one !

While theyr were losing time figuring out how to cast an earth spell at the door, a pack of beastmen appeared round the corner and went to them ! It was quickly dispatched into a mess of burnt hair and gore with a pair of fire balls from Harandil though !

There was more to it than just Beastmen though and the party froze when a terrifying bloodletter appeared.

With the power of the newfound sword they had got in the crypt above, Greor bravely charged the demon and managed to land him some fatal blows !

After that though, the sword repelled Gregor like it didn't want him to weild it.

Gregor handed it to Ungrim who seemed to be accepted as the sword unveiled its power : it was an invisibility sword granting him the power of invisibility whenever he'd draw it !

What a fantastic power !

After this moment of stress, there was just one door left for them to open with the inscription reading :

"You need me to live and I am everywhere, but live in me and I will make you miss your first and die"

The elemental theme to those riddles was still going and a water spell opened the final door...

In the room were three doors facing them. On close inspection, each had a symbol that evoked one of the elements from the riddles before.

They opened the doors in the order of the elements encountered previously, wind, earth, water...

The second the third door was open, a ghostly shape emerged from the fog in the cave on the side of the room. A ship with noone sailing it was now seemingly waiting for them !

As soon as the last member was on board, the ship slowly left the shore to cross the whole cave that was filled with dark waters. the echo and the mysterious noises around them were impressive and got them all very quiet. Some unnatural lights could be seen in some smaller cavities, they were all green but one...

The ship finally landed at the end of the cave in front of an imposing gate engraved with a demon skull and some vines surrounding it.

Gregor and Harandil went to check for inscriptions or mechanisms around the gate but they were irresistibly attracted to the vine and its grapes. It felt like they were chanting "eat me, eat me, eat me..." Up to the point where they couldn't help it and they ate a couple each...
That's when the terrible effect of the berries manifested.
They were not cursed with... A DUCK VOICE
(gamer note : from this moment, both our mage player and I had to speak with a duck voice at all time or we would lose HP's in retaliation, we didn't know how to cure it and of or when it would stop then...)
The noises in the cave were growing louder now and they could sense some agitation in the water now...
While the other members were inspecting around, they tried blowing in to the gigantic horn next to the gate which did nothing until one of the elves did and the light in the middle of the cavern changed colour... The other elf blowed as well and it turned green like all the other lights...

It was the right time to leave now as a frightening creature was coming out of the water and throwing tentacles at them !

The following room was now filled with bright and gigantic mushrooms, all seemingly about to burst from pressure. They remembered their experience with the mushroom at the entrance of the crypt and weren't eager to figure out if these were poisonous or not...

But of course adventurers are what they are, and some heroes at the back couldn't help checking the corpses in the furthest mushroom only to find the corpses weren't as dead as they looked !

The head of the party was battling with a slime and they were trying to repel it with their torches.

After some exploration, they finally found dead ends and a nest they could confirm to be abandonned for a while and they settled to have a break for some food and rest.
(gamer's note : The two characters who had to keep a duck voice finally had the chance to get their normal voice after an unfortunate episode of runs which relieved both players)

With their forces and psychic abilities all restored, there was only path left to explore so they set their way towards it.

However they soon encountered signs of a presence they wished they wouldn't see...

The part of the cave they were it was vast and dimly lit by cracks in the rock and some fluorescent mushrooms, the whole cave was covered in spider web...

And without much of a surprise, they encountered a giant spider.

The threat was short lived though thanks to Ungrim and Gregor

A particularly repulsive discovery was made at the back of the cave, the semi deigested remnants of a human (or was it) in a coccoon left us nothing more than hands covered in goo...

But it had distracted them for long enough to see the real giant spider silently climb down from the ceiling and attack them !

It took the combined efforts of all the party to get rid of the monster. Thorbur had a broken leg that left  him even slower than average for his kin but he managed to reach the fight and prevail.

After a cross section, the party went on to explore the left only to hear familiar sounds...

Behind a crack in the wall they could actually hear and see dwarf miners, they were enslaved by the hobgoblins that had taken the mine but they were alive and others were too. The heroes couldn't do more than give moral suport at the time but they swore to come back for them with help !

Forced to go back and explore some more, Gregor and Ungrim followed a path that took them to a first intriguing then fascinating place glistening from everywhere !
The bowels had lead them to a vein of precious materials some of which even looked like Mithril ! Amongst the bigger crystals they found a gigantic magical axe with a name on it : THORPAL HOLY AVENGER...
It took a lot of persuasion for Gregor and his friends to calm the two dwarves of the team and make them leave the room as the mine fever had caught them !

But eventually, after taking the last exit possible, they ended up in a dead end from which they could hear some booming sobs...
So after casting a silence zone around the area, they broke down the wall stone by stone and entered the jails of the Fortress, they had finally found an entrance to Karak Ture !
Liberating the other occupants of the place, they made the timely acquaintance of Piotr, a frost giant whose wife was held captive by the Hobgoblins. They realised that singing to Piotr had a soothing effect on him and made him more responsive so Turbur who was still crippled from earlier got on the giant's shoulders and sang to him all along...
And guess who was in the cell next door ? A certain slayer named THORFIN who was delighted to get his axe back and be able to use it !

Now with the objective nearly in sight and some back up, the team was fully resolved to put a stop to the infamy !

It was time to cleanse the place from the Hobgoblin presence now, our heroes split up with their newfound friends and started looking for enslaved miners to liberate...

They found the elevator that would take them back to the surface

Step after step, they were wiping the mines of Karak Ture from the hobgoblins

One by one, they liberated all the miners that had been forced to work for the invaders...

But things couldn't be that easy could they ? An imposing silhouette all clad in red appeared flanked by two hulking figures. A chaos warrior and two ogres were clearly not a threat they could take lightly !

Ungrim and Gregor prepared for the fight and their companions were gathering for support...

Despite the obvious set-up, the chaos warrior moved towards our heroes accompanied by his two body guards...

But Grungni must have been on their side this day when Tauron's arrow hit the evil creature dead in the helmet's visor and killed him on the spot ! It made the 2 ogres reconsider their life choice !

With all the miners liberated now, it was time to reclaim the fortress !

Passing by the Chaos warrior's body, Gregor asked Harandil to identify the warrior's armour and it was clearly an item of grand power although definitely cursed.
It was an all or nothing situation here though so Gregor donned the armour, hoping for the best under the worried look of his mage friend...

Harandil and Gregor joined their companions who had gone with the dwarfs on the upper level

Luckily for them, they had already disarmed the traps !

Gregor joined all the miners to the armory to get ready for the final battle

The objectives were clear, the most precious room of the fortress was of course... the cellar and two hobgoblins didn't even have the time to understand to sober up as they were quickly taken care of.

Meanwhile the dwarf heroes accompanied some of the locals to the main room which was guarded by an imposing rock golem. Ut was out of question for any other race than dwarves to enter the room.

As the rock golem made perfectly clear when a bloodletter was sent to scout !

One by one, our heroes were cleaning rooms and getting rid of al lthe hobgoblins, the dining hall was the last room before the throne room...

But this were where the reinforcements were the biggest of course and the resistance strongest.

Eventually though, our heroes entered the throne room where a shaman was giving instructions to its minions and whispering dark curses in front of a sacrificed dwarf on a pentacle.

Gregor got in a little too soon and he received a cripling wound to the leg from a spell that left him unable to walk any further, his armour had saved his life though as the ogres went to finish him off. With the other heroes arriving one after the other, the hobgoblins fled the throne room though, aware that they could never hold the ground now.

Thorbur and Ungrim went to secure the main room and eventually found the secret passage to the treasure room.

To say they were shocked by the riches around would be an understatement there was gold all over the place, and magic weapons too and some weird items that sounded intriguing. Once again, the gold fever had planted its fangs in them and their reason was vanishing...

But their battle from inside the fort had enabled the dwarf forces outside to fight their way in and Gotri and his men had finally reached their objective ! The mines of Karak Ture were in the hands of the dwarves again !
Gotri learnt that his father had been killed in the fight in the mines, like a real king dies and that meant he was now his successor !
There was little Gotri could say to express his gratitude to our heroes. He owed them an eternal debt and they were rewarded greatly with magical weapons, gold and one very odd looking crystal ball with a star in it... what could that be for ?

So with this second episode wrapped, we finally had the follow up to our previous game ! what a fantastic time we had, like always, our beloved Game Master Ced had made everything to make the boards look fantastic and for the adventure to be as thrilling as possible.
Mastering a game that long is not an easy task and finding the right balance between roleplay, fighting, exploration isn't easy, it's also tricky to find the right difficulty that makes the adventure challenging but rewarding too and to me and all the other players it was a complete victory on all points. I'm not bragging here, I'm being grateful when I say not many people have the chance to play games of that quality.
This game was intentionally designed with more combat and more equipment dropped but less XP in mind, it helps all character to develop without levelling up too much to a point it's not challenging or fun anymore.
On a personnal note, I'm very pleased with how Gregor is progressing, he was more into his element here although I like to play on his cocky arrogant side in urban environment too ^^
He deeply disapointed me though in failing to be chosen by any of the 4 magical weapons he found, some of which were stupidly good (thanks to the rolls from our GM's son).
But that's also the fun of it and he should soon move from his pit fighter position to that of a judicial champion MWAHAHA. I love all the aspects of that game, having a story driven game a bit of levelling up to please the player in me and unveiling new mysteries !!!
Of course we're all very eager to move onto the next step, some of us have a little more games under the belt so we're seeing dynamics developping between characters which is good.

I couldn't help but take some scenic shots with all the nice scenery and models around so treat yourself !

Gregor is not done with his adventures, his companions and he have a lot to discover yet !
See you for the next episode !