GURPS Fantasy Warriors Session 29: The Bull Demon

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

 

In Search of the Demon Hole

The demons continued to surge into the earthling lines, and with the bulk of their numbers assailing his position, Granmarg's formation in the north were forced into a retreat in which many earthlings were killed.  Pomegranite dispatched reinforcements and without delay Granmarg circled around the side of the main demon swarm, attempting to get close enough to the Demon Hole for his terramorphers to close it without risking another losing battle.

 

The Eel Demon continued to make a lot of noise by the Demon Hole, but didn't seem interested in attacking them anymore, while to the south, Cliffside retreated and Thicket pressed forward, attempting to prevent the demons from grouping up more.  Mielikki's troops continued running north to aid Pomegranite and Granmarg, avoiding battle as they went.  The next few demon waves were repulsed, and the earthlings pressed further in while becoming increasingly surrounded.

Cliffside sustained heavy wounds while his troops broke out of an encirclement that left them far to the rear of the battlelines, but an enormous swarm of demons were in pursuit.  Pomegranite engaged in a series of careful hit and runs on the largest horde while avoiding getting pinned down by their full numbers, successfully whittling them down, while Granmarg continued to harry the flanks while pressing toward the objective.

 

Mielikki stood on the peak of a sand dune, noting the vastly more numerous demons closing in, and he barked orders to his troops before descending into the fray himself.  His tree trunk club felled scores of demons, but that was but a drop in the ocean of their numbers.  Thicket and his men plunged into a valley filled almost to the brim with lesser demons in an attempt to open a path for Mielikki's troops to the Demon Hole, but they only made it partway before becoming stuck and were left fully surrounded.  Fortunately, Mielikki relieved them with a charge into that valley to open up a line of retreat.

 

Granmarg continued moving around the northern flank, picking off a number of smaller packs of demons, while Pomegranite positioned his troops as bait to hopefully draw some of the foe away from Thicket.  They took the bait, but Thicket's formation still barely managed to fall back thanks to the opening Mielikki had established.

 

Twilight turned into night, and given how long twilight was with the sun swollen and red, it meant they had been fighting for too long.  In an attempt to put an end to things, Mielikki assaulted the Eel Demon's position, clearing the way for Granmarg to go for the Demon Hole.  Mielikki swung the Headsdman's Axe they had taken from Luana, but it struggled to injure the Eel.  Instead of being cut, its body deformed around the impact before snapping back into position with a series of jarring cracks.  It waved around its tail, arcs of electricity fanning out, but Mielikki was unaffected.

After another inconclusive clash and a dodged Eel Beam, the Eel Demon made to flee but was captured and restrained by Mielikki's troops.  With one final fatal swing of the Headsman's Axe, he put an end to the last of the greater demons on the field.  Granmarg drew close to the Demon Hole, but as he ordered his terramorphers to begin closing it, an enormous severed head of a bull with multiple suppurating wounds on its skull burst up from beneath the sand.

 

Sealing the Hole

Granmarg, standing at the front of his army, berated the Bull Demon, explaining in an impassioned speech how the demons underestimated mortal tenacity and declaring that they had no business in this realm.  In response, the Bull Demon let out a deafening roar, and so Granmarg rushed forward in a flash of lightning, landing a blow to the jaw before barely deflecting its massive horns as it moved to gore him.  Granmarg stayed in close such that the demon had great difficulty even so much as grazing him, nimbly evading its hammer-like tongue and scything teeth, while inflicting blow after shocking blow.

 

After one final attempt to grab Granmarg with a tentacle that burst from an open wound on its foreheade, the Bull Demon made to retreat, but Granmarg took hold of one of its horns and kept it in place.  Eventually, it roared to call lesser demons to its aid, and when they arrived the earthlings sprung their trap as the remainder of Granmarg's army emerged from the sands where they had buried themselves.  Though many of the demons were slain, the Bull escaped, regrouped, and charged back in for another round.

 

The second duel went little different than the first, and though this time the Bull Demon unleashed its fire breath, it proved no match for Granmarg and was quickly slain.  As night fell, the terramorphers finished filling in the Demon Hole not just on the surface, but for leagues below as well.  Their mission complete, the earthlings now needed to break free of the morass of demons in which they found themselves.  Cliffside and Sigillaria were out of the thickest fighting, and had their College magisters bombard the demons, while the rest struggled against the surging foe.  Thicket and Mielikki held the line for now, while Pomegranite was grievously wounded as he attempted to lead from the front.

 

Notes:

An odd rules quirk, which hasn't been relevant until now, is that really big army stacks with no commander are more difficult to deal with than really big army stacks with a bad-to-average commander.  The way I made the rules, you take a penalty equal to the size modifier of the difference between army sizes, but commanders are limited in how many they can effectively control.  So a 3-stack into a 5-stack isn't that bad, just a -1, but a 3-stack into a 24-stack is at a -6.  However, if there's a Skill-10 commander leading that 24-stack, they can only control 2 troops effectively, so there's no size modifier at all.  This is an oversight but it's also not really relevant outside of the demons.

 

Granmarg rolled a 15 on a command check, which failed, and then used Luck to reroll it.  The results were 15 and 15.  RIP. 

 

There was a turn counter incrementing after every round which was counting whether the Bull Demon had arrived yet.  The players didn't know that, so they (in particular Mielikki) were just paranoid that something was going to happen.

Thicket: "All I do is win so it doesn't matter, I'll fight the big stack".  Said after losing the round prior.

Mielikki got his XP, hooray!

  

"Every time we've interacted with someone and not killed them I've regretted it" -Granmarg 

 

Granmarg kept rolling 1 or 2 for damage in the fight with the Bull Demon.  Meanwhile the demon kept making its (extremely low) hit rolls but every attack was parried.