GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 45: Schism

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

 

Sunset

Astraeus breathed out another cone of flame, knocking Garmnrag over, and then followed up with a savage series of kicks that battered his prone form until he was unconscious.  Thicket was also set alight, then hit by a concentrated sunbeam shortly, and fell, unmoving.  A kick that feinted low before rising to his jawline felled Smugbrush.  For all that, more earthlings, now including Mielikki and Pomegranite, rushed in as reinforcements, and they still had more in reserve.

 

With Morkral leading by example, the rest of the earthlings continued to wear down Astraeus, their blows gouging dents into the god's golden body.  Astraeus spun and attempted a knee-strike at the dwarf, but Morkral deflected it with his shields and pushed him off-balance.  Groutite rushed up and slashed twice with his zweihander, severing the gods' neck and finally killing him.  They then smashed the body until nothing remained but some traces of gold dust.

 

Now, though, they had a political problem. Terra's assassination had occurred in secret, and Baelynna had not been accepted as a god by anyone outside of Halberst, but Astraeus had the backing of the Imperial Faith and the assembled armies of the Highland Forests and the dwarves had seen him slain.  While many earthlings no doubt believed that Astraeus was a lesser deity and that Terra was supreme among the pantheon, it wasn't an overwhelming majority.  Worse still, High Priest Friedrich Quarry had all-but adopted the Imperial Faith, along with its doctrine of Astraean Supremacy.  Word of this would reach the populace and worse, Edelina in Lumene.

 

GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 44: Astraeus, God of the Sun and Animals

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

 

Twin Flames

Pomegranite used his Path of Secrets to lure Astraeus into a trap with illusions, but his reactions were strange.  Visual illusions didn't seem to work on the god at all, while tactile illusions stopped working after initial success.  It took the two in combination to finally trick him into a cave, away from the flammable forest.  Granmarg, Thicket, Morkral, and some of their advisors followed him in.  Astraeus came to a halt and spun around, asking who they were.  Granmarg started to say that he was here to put him under, and was then interrupted as the god breathed a plume of dragon's fire.

 

Everyone dove out of the way, just as a second jet of white flame shot out, also centered on Granmarg.  In response, Granmarg charged in, and launched a flurry of punches.  Astraeus expertly parried several of the blows with his bare hands, but the last made it through.  A clang resounded through the cave as Granmarg's stone fist deflected off the god's golden body.  Thicket realized that Astraeus' golden body was a similar (and superior) magic to the reinforced stone the earthlings used to enhance their armour and weapons.

 

Thicket followed Granmarg, trying to keep the Astraeus penned in, but the god retaliated by spinning on the spot and bludgeoning him with a dozen rapid blows that overwhelmed his defenses, and then continued by shooting a beam of pale fire behind himself at Granmarg.  The others did their best to crowd in around Astraeus, but he proved nimble and evaded them, bouncing from foe to foe, firing beams of alternating gold and pale flame at all those around him.  He would before always eventually return to pummeling Granmarg with a strange martial art involving rapid strikes with his fists, elbows, forearms, and knees.

GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 43: Forest Fire

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

 

Anticlimax

Mielikki tried to stop the fighting, while Mindartis turned and zapped Morkral in the back with a bolt of lightning.  In retaliation, King Barrend swung his poleaxe and gouged a chunk out of the prismatic god's thigh.  Felix imbued his sword with magic, and the blade melted away as pure energy took its place.  Realizing that they knew how to get through his defenses, Mindartis flew up and well out of reach.

 

Granmarg had other ideas, and, in a flash of lightning, jumped thirty feet into the air, then grabbed Mindartis in a ring of electricity.  The plan was for this to drag him back down when Granmarg fell, but instead, Mindartis snapped his fingers and the ring, as well as the rest of Granmarg's magic, dissipated.  Felosial the elf shouted something in elvish, and apparently it was insulting enough that Mindartis turned and focused his spells on her, while she acrobatically dodged out of the way.

 

Again, Mielikki insisted that they listen to him.  With Eva dead, they would be unlikely to stop the Void Beast, but Mindartis, as God of Magic and the Void, could help.  They needed to cooperate now, regardless of anything that had happened in the past.  Rather surprisingly, most of those present were swayed.  Hans Hessen sighed and agreed, followed by Rada, who shouldered his hammer.  Felix, only a youth, deferred to his elders, and his sword of light flickered and dissipated.  Barrend and Morkral got into a shouting match in dwarvish.

GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 42: Blood and The Void

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

 

Goddess of Blood

Baelynna swung her dozen swords at Theren in rapid succession while he observed her technique while nimbly deflecting all of her strikes.  He noticed that her many-jointed arms were made of liquid blood, but the joints themselves partially solidified the moment before she struck.  Curzo and Ulrich attacked while she was distracted, casting a barrage of dozens of magic missiles and flinging a weighted wooden scroll at her, but all of the projectiles harmlessly passed through her body.  In return, Baelynna turned and flung a gobbet of blood at Curzo.  The projectile crystalized midair into a cluster of daggers that gouged into his chest and then melted away.

 

While he was still reeling from the new holes in his torso, Baelynna held out two of her hands and squeezed them together, as though she were wringing out a cloth.  This spell caused Curzo's blood to erupt from his wounds, mouth, and eyes.  Theren forced her attention back to him with his own flurry of strikes which failed to wound but drove her further back and onto the dais of her throne.  As she moved, two of her arms swung out at Pomegranite, and he moved to block with his knives.  He had fallen for her feint, and realized too late that the true attack was from the tangle of shortswords she had instead of hair, which cut through his stone armour and deep into his skull.

 

As Pomegranite retreated clutching his temple, Halimath leapt forward into the gap to keep up the pressure.  Aginor cast a cloud of void magic that caught Baelynna by surprise, and in her haste to avoid it she fell over, then scrambled back to her feet, spinning wildly and striking at all those around her in a storm of blades.  Between all these acrobatics, she was left off-balance, which left her unable to defend against Theren.  He leaned down and struck with his sword, severing one of Baelynna's feet at the ankle, which splattered onto the stone when it landed.  She tumbled to the floor, then propped herself up on her many arms like a bladed spider.

GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 41: Driven Into A Corner

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

 

Earth Duel

Thicket couldn't keep up with the human cavalry, and by the time he arrived at the front lines the College's barricades had already been broken through in all but one spot where a pile of horses and bodies filled the street.  On closer inspection, they had been impaled on earthen spikes.  He spotted the magister who had taken command after Eva's death, and strained to remember who she was.  Her name was Fronicka, a human, who bore a brooch of Minerva, suggesting she was a magister of the Path of Earth.  To demonstrate what a real terramorpher could do, he began with his signature technique of flinging stone spikes from her blind spot.

 

Fronicka spun and managed to catch the spikes, then took a step forward and flung them back at him.  Thicket stood still, shocked, as all three spikes slammed into his torso.  In a stroke of luck, they were deflected by his stone armour.  The two then both began to churn the earth beneath each other, and though Fronicka stumbled and fell, Thicket's next spike only grazed her.  With her soldiers flagging, she was forced to withdraw, and the Imperial forces gave chase as their foes routed.

To the east, Mielikki's army exchanged barrages with Mindartis, the former using massed archers while the latter again detonated a single massive orb of magic.  Baelynna advanced and seized control of their rear guard with her compulsion, while Granmarg's troops advanced under bombardment from the magisters formerly commanded by Jasper.  The two forces collided, and Granmarg hunted down their new commander, a magister of the Path of Blood named Madalena.  She barely managed to avoid his first few strikes, then summoned a hammer from the blood of the bodies around them.

GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 40: Mindartis Doltoran, God of Magic and the Void

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

 

Friendly Fire

The enormous glowing orb above Mindartis vanished as he waved one hand and a wide black circle appeared on the ground, surrounding Mielikki and Felosial the elf.  They scrambled out of the way, with Felosial rushing past barricades to Mindartis himself, who was supported by an orcish magister.  Mielikki broke to the left to deal with an old man holding a walking stick.  The prismatic god struck out with one hand at Felosial, dodged both that strike and a bolt of lightning loosed from his other hand.  Mindartis continued his assault with a kick to the neck, but Felosial parried with her bow.

 

On the far side of the street, Mielikki knocked the elderly magister to the ground with one swing of the headsman's axe, and a swing of the man's stick only bounced off of the earthling's hardened stone armour.  Grand Magister Curzo and Barbena the dwarf judiciously avoided the circle and ran to the right, closing with a pale human woman in a poofy dress who bore a painted parasol displaying an echidna.  Felosial, so busy fending off Mindartis' endless wave of attacks, failed to notice when the orc cast a magic missile, and the bolt of magic bludgeoned her right side.  She turned to retaliate, but the orc retreated out of reach.

 

The circle filled in, the ground inside turning black as night, before it expanded up into a sphere and collapsed inward, taking with it everything inside and leaving a perfectly round crater several feet deep.  Another circle appeared under Felosial's feet, and she sidestepped to avoid it, but took a blow to the collarbone and was left reeling.  Barbena won the scuffle on the right, submerging the parasol-wielding magister in sand, and moved to flank Mindartis.  Likewise, Mielikki finished off the old man on the left, and Felosial even managed to take the orc out with an arrow to the throat, though she was then knocked to the cobblestones by a blow from the god.

 

GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 39: The Siege of the Imperial College

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

 

Preparations

For their assault on the College, the army would split in three, with the large vanguard elements flanking the city while the main thrust pushed through the north wall.  Mielikki made a point of running into Pomegranite to inquire about what he had learned from the elves, and the spymaster told him the elven names of the rest of the gods as well as that demons were a creation of Carmenta.  As he had discussed with Granmarg, he left out the fact that the earthlings had been created as a slave race by the dwarves.

 

As they drew near the College's high walls of white stone, Curzo pointed out a particular tower beyond, topped with a polished brass dome, which had been the life's work of High Magster of the Sun Jasper Sunmeadow.  It was a weapon, and would fire scorching beams of sun magic at them until it was disabled.  Empress Edelina might have been able to make use of it, but she was on the west flank. When they were establishing their camp outside of the range of the College's defenses, Pomegranite's chosen scouts reported sightings of a transparent floating elf whose form shifted between the colours of the rainbow.  The commanders assembled and after some discussion it was accepted that, regardless of who (or what) this was, they were acting as an ally to the usurper Baelynna who would share her fate.

 

In secret, the members of the inner circle met, and Uthemar reckoned that this was Medaius, or in elven, Mindartis Doltoran, god of Magic and the Void.  This made things more dangerous; if they failed to kill either him or Baelynna on the field, it meant that their plan to corner her would now likely result in them having to fight two gods simultaneously.  Though they didn't know exactly how strong gods were supposed to be, they did know that they could be slain.