Sunday, 19 July 2026

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.

Saturday, 11 July 2026

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.
 

Wednesday, 1 July 2026

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.