GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 26: Breaking the Demons

Characters:

Granmarg The Striking Vanguard, The Boulderstruck, Member of the Earthling Triumvirate
Pomegranite The Treefallen, The Spymaster

Mielikki The Field Marshal, Member of the Earthling Triumvirate

Thicket The Grandmaster Terramorpher, Member of the Earthling Triumvirate

 

Atop the Brenther Foothills

The Legs Demon rolled over Mielikki, repeatedly trampling him with its many legs.  It was all he could do to hold the greater demon at bay as batted his tree trunk club aside like a toy.  Still, he managed to buy enough time for his troops to drive off the rest of the demons at a high price in earthling lives.  Since he wasn't winning the duel, Mielikki attempted to win the Legs Demon over with rhetoric.  Asserting entirely not in bad faith that they could live in peace, but it rolled away, ignoring him.  While the main swarm retreated, several demons attacked from range.  Tumours full of toxic gases, razor-sharp bone spikes, and tiny demons that crawled inside the mouth and nose were flung into Mielikki's ranks, killing dozens more of his soldiers.

 
Meanwhile, in the north, Pomegranite led his troops through an abandoned mine tunnel he had learned about at the College, arriving on the hilltop that was now controlled by the earthlings corrupted by the Eyes Demon's influence.  With no sense of remorse, he mercilessly slaughtered these "traitors", then had his magisters bombard the rest of the demon swarms downhill.  Thicket meanwhile lured the Eyes Demon's swarm into an ambush, where hundreds of demons were cut down while the commanders met in a Wizard Duel.

 

Thicket launched earth spikes from all around the Eyes Demon, while it attempted to use a variety of deadly eye beams to fry his brain and turn him to stone.  The duel broke off due to a retreat by the demons, and Thicket emerged unscathed while the Demon had suffered only some minor wounds.  The horde surged forward across the whole of the battlefield, but were mostly successfully driven back.  Mielikki and Pomegranite slew hundreds of demons each, but on the southern flank, nearly a thousand demons slipped around to target the earthling rear lines.

 

The demon commanders launched a wave of barrages, with the Eyes Demon shooting mind-frying beams into Thicket's lines, while the Legs Demon had a swarm of winged demons drop all manner of projectile (including smaller demons) on Mielikki's troops.  Meanwhile, Pomegranite used his Path of Secrets to concoct a vast illusion that tricked two demon swarms into infighting.

 

Granmarg charged his formation into the Fisthorse's swarm, and, considering how badly he'd been injured in their last duel, decided to send out the Young Heron to face the demon commander instead.  The Fisthorse grappled him with its tongue, only for him to sever it with a strike of his sword before decapitating it (de-fistitating it?) with a pair of strikes.  The earthlings capitalized on the disruption in the demons' leadership that came from killing a second commander, with Mielikki advancing into a horde and slaying hundreds while Thicket engaged the Eyes Demon in a second Wizard Duel.

 

Though he won the duel, Thicket soon found that his formation had been entirely surrounded by a clever stratagem on the part of the Eyes Demon.  However, this was all according to plan; he had let himself be surrounded, and his own surprise reserves suddenly emerged from all sides, leaving the demons trapped between two different earthling armies.  The Eyes Demon narrowly managed to escape, but every demon that had come with it now lay dead in the rivers of Bile running down the hillside.

 

Part of the next wave of demonic reinforcements were intercepted by Granmarg, but multiple hundreds still made it through to the battlefield, led by the returning Eyes Demon.  Pomegranite advanced towards it, while Granmarg had his elite troops lay down supporting fire by cutting down and throwing whole trees into the swarm.  To the south, Mielikki charged downhill into the remnants of the Legs Demon's forces with the Young Heron, who had been running all over the battlefield, in the vanguard.

 

The elf and greater demon met in single combat, where the Legs Demon attempted to bowl over his target as it had done so successfully to Mielikki.  Instead, the Blademaster removed a half-dozen legs with a series of rapid strikes before sidestepping out of the way.  Another pass saw the demon begin to slow, a majority of its legs severed, and it made to flee.  The Legs Demon made it only a few feet before rolling to a halt, its legs twitching and stumps leaking Bile.  The Young Heron stepped forward and delivered the killing blow.  Meanwhile, Mielikki's forces dispatched the rest of the lesser demons it had been leading.

 

To the north Thicket's forces continued to push forward, while to the east, Cliffside charged the earthling reserves forward into the large army of demons that had made their way to the earthling rear lines.  His troops were slaughtered, and Cliffside himself badly injured.  If nobody moved back to help him, the Supreme Commander of the Demonwar might be slain.  Which definitely hadn't been the triumvirate's plan all along.

 

 

Notes:

Pomegranite, on killing mind-controlled earthlings: "Damned demons, they made me kill my own people!"

 

How does one target the "skull" of a horse with a fist for a head?  I don't know, that's why he's the Blademaster. 

 

Pomegranite is desperate to get into combat so he can get XP in his combat skill.  Everybody else has already fought a duel, so they're perfectly happy to use the Young Heron.

 

A Wizard Duel isn't a gameplay thing, but it's a term the group came up with for when two combatants just use ranged magic abilities all fight and never make a normal melee attack.