Here a new player joins the campaign, playing an Elf named Wilh, and one of the magic-users hires a thief retainer named Tricks.

Springswane 16

On a swelteringly hot day, the group sets out to confront the bandits to the southeast and take their tower. It takes until mid-afternoon to spot the tower, guarded by five bandits on the top floor along with a menacing guard dog. Tricks makes an unsuccessful attempt to covertly take out the guard dog, and combat begins proper.

Himbus, Tricks, Uzhor, and Wilh dogpile the dog and attempt to nonlethally take it down while Charles and Darwoshi charge into the tower, finding themselves facing six bandits on the ground floor, with footsteps above suggesting further reinforcements are soon to arrive. Thanks to the Cleaving house rule, they're able to hack their way through the first wave of bandits with little trouble.

The rooftop guards realize what's going on and fire their bows down at the outside group, dealing severe damage. Meanwhile, the bandit leader and four more of his men come down the stairs and enter the fray. Himbus knocks out the dog while Wilh narrowly manages to get off a Sleep spell to subdue the archers on the roof before everyone outside is shot down by a second round of arrows.

The bandit leader, who couldn't make into melee the previous round and was stuck barking orders from the staircase, is felled by Tricks and Wilh's arrows and a flask of burning oil thrown by Himbus. The remaining bandits on the ground floor quickly surrender after their leader's death. Wilh hurries up to the roof to tie up the sleeping bowmen.

While looting the place, Tricks notices that the captain's fancy sword is in pristine condition despite the burning oil. He calls over Uzhor, who casts read magic on the runes engraved on the sword's blade, finding them to be catechisms of the Authority and similar dogmatic phrases of Law. Taking the sword into his hand to study it closer, he finds himself possessed by another entity, which stands Uzhor's body up straight, scans the room, locks eyes with Charles, and demands in the Lawful tongue that the sword be wielded by him. As soon as the sword leaves Uzhor's hand, he regains control of himself back. The sword introduces itself as Haylatron-Who-Thwarts-The-Wicked, and claims to be the sentience of an Angel bound within a +1 longsword (+3 vs the undead!). Charles agrees to wield Haylatron, though there are concerns amongst the party of how Haylatron will react to the Chaos-aligned Hector.

Himbus sets himself to befriending the former guard dog while Charles gives an ultimatum to the surrendered bandits: serve under him, or be killed. After making an example of one defiant bandit by pushing him from the roof of the tower, the rest fall in line. As promised, Himbus is granted permission to dig tunnels beneath the tower, and him and Charles perform a traditional Dwarfish ground-breaking to commemorate their contract.

The experience points gained from the battle and looting the bandit's coffers was sufficient to get Himbus to 2nd level, and for both Darwoshi and Charles to reach 3rd level. Uzhor is less than 500 experience points away from 4th level, which would make him the highest level character in the party.

My Notes

This was a great session, many of us agreed that it was one of the best (if not the best) of the campaign so far. I'm very satisfied with the ever-popular Cleaving rule for the fighters, they were loving being able to hack through multiple bandits a turn.

I was also pleasantly surprised that a combat with over 20 combatants was able to be resolved in under 45 minutes.

Yes it's awkward to start the recaps from session 15, but I don't feel like transcribing everything from my notebook onto the blog. The recap post has a very brief summary of important events.

(NOTE: The campaign uses twelve 28-day months, three for each season)

Springstide 24 – Springswane 3

The party takes a downtime week after returning to Riversmoot triumphant after killing the Manticore. Charles and Darwoshi Revel in town, Uzhor makes unsuccessful attempts to research the Gnoll horde in the northern badlands, and Orlaf practices with his weapons.

Tensions simmer in town as a power struggle forms in the mercenary Red Company. With the death of the Red Lord at the claws of the Manticore, his wizard lieutenant Arasto has proclaimed himself rightful leader of the Company. The rest of the mercenaries aren't buying it.

The party elects to hunt down a fossilized skeleton they unwittingly unleashed onto the outlying countryside from the Tomb of the Serpent Kings with a successful turn undead near a dungeon entrance, as they feel it's their responsibility. The fighters and dwarves stock up on blunt weapons, having learned that other types of weapons do not harm them.

Springswane 4 – 5

On a hot not-June day, the party rides out in search of the skeleton. Their first day of searching is unsuccessful, but they pass by an old stone tower currently manned by bandits, and make a note to come back later. The group crashes in a barn overnight, and searches again the next day.

Around dusk, they find their quarry, mindlessly tearing up fenceposts as it shambles down the trail. After the initial round of attacks is ineffective, Himbus intuits that the fossilized bone is nearly impervious to harm. A harebrained scheme is hatched: Charles, Himbus, and Orlaf restrain the skeleton while Uzhor ties it up with rope. They will bring it to the town's bishop to be destroyed via a high-level cleric's Turn Undead. The party immediately sets out to get back to Riversmoot, not expecting to return until after midnight.

On the way to town, they spot the telltale pinprick red eyes of Fungus Goblins, stalking them through the night and hurling obscene threats as goblins do. Panicking for a moment as Hector is not with them to dissuade his “subjects,” they instead choose to threaten to sic the skeleton on them, knowing that these goblins live in the Tomb of the Serpent Kings and will recognize it. The gambit works; the goblins scatter into the night.

Around 2 AM, the party knocks on the door of the Church, seeking the aid of the Bishop. He obliges, destroying the skeleton with a successful turning attempt.

Springswane 6 – 15

Much reveling is done in town as many characters are close to gaining levels and want the extra XP. Uzhor makes further attempts to research the gnolls but is still empty-handed by the end of the week other than unrelated reports of barbarians swearing fealty to the Chaos-pledged Lord Darkhammer making camp near an abandoned wizard tower.

Charles and Darwoshi announce their intention to wipe out the bandits and claim their tower stronghold for themselves.

The Red Company Power struggle comes to a head as Elizabeth Greenslade challenges the wizard Arasto to a duel for leadership of the Company. Elizabeth effortlessly defeats him, but before the final blow can be struck, Arasto disappears, teleporting away to an unknown destination.

Taking the cobwebs off of this forgotten blog to start using it to talk about my roleplaying game campaigns, as previously promised. We'll start with the open table Old-School Essentials game I run at my FLGS.

Eventually I'll write up a post describing the rat's nest of house rules and third-party content I use for my OSE/BX game, but for now I just want to start going on about the adventures.

The Golden Wyrms

The player's organization, an adventurer's guild based out of a townhouse in the frontier town of Riversmoot.

• Uzhor the Delirious, 3rd level Magic User. The ol' coot seems to vaguely be the de facto party leader.
• Hector, 3rd level Magic User. Affiliated with a Chaos cult known as the Devotees of Night. King of the local Fungus Goblins thanks to some very improbable reaction rolls.
• Charles LeCleric, 3rd level Fighter. Devout adherent of the Church of Law.
• Darwoshi, 3rd level Fighter. Inherited his friend Svelson's stake in the guild after his untimely death.
• Orlaf, 2nd level Dwarf. Party stablemaster who tends to the mules and maintains the wagon.
• Himbus, 2nd level Dwarf. Fell into a fungus-related coma after an early delve into the Tomb of the Serpent Kings, recently recovered (player started coming in again
• Wilh, 1st level Elf.

Dead and Departed

• Axe, 1st level Fighter. Attempted to fight the feared Basilisk of the Tomb of the Serpent Kings and suffered extremely predictable consequences.
• Svelson, 2nd level Dwarf killed by a swarm of sentient flesh-dissolving bubbles in the Incandescent Grotto, the day after closing on the party's guildhouse.
• Binky Barnes, 3rd level Cleric. Was called by his god to move on to new pastures after felling the dread Manticore waylaying the town (his player moved away).

Previous Adventures

• Cleared out recently uncovered Tomb of the Serpent Kings.
• Discovered that the Crown of the Serpent Kings is cursed, the head priest of the local Church of Law offers to cleanse it if the party can retrieve the Tooth of St. Hyspia from an abandoned Chaos cult stronghold in the Incandescent Grotto
• While the party is recovering in Riversmoot from a delve into the Grotto, the local Manticore massacres the townsfolk during a festival. A bounty is posted, and the party decides that claiming it's head is their next goal.
• The party spends nearly 3 weeks preparing themselves for the Manticore hunt, including aiding an eccentric dwarf tinker up in the northwestern hills with building a crude firearm to use against it. The Wyrms travel into the foothills of the Three Crowns mountains in search of their prey, which they find wounded by the Red Lord's doomed attempt on it's life, and finish off without too much trouble.
• While wrangling a unique skeleton that they accidentally released from the Tomb of the Serpent Kings, the party spots a bandit tower, returning a week later to wipe out the bandits and seize it for themselves.

Got more droids on Black Friday and painted them up in time for my FLGS's miniatures day the following Sundays. Didn't have time to base them unfortunately, should be able to by next post.

Tactical Droid

Tactical Droids are awesome, highly recommend if you play CIS.

1. Light grey primer. In retrospect I probably should have gone with white instead.
2. Base coat Citadel Rakarth Flesh. This took a couple coats, and is where I realized that I picked the wrong primer.
3. Layer on P3 Menoth White Base. This paint is very thin in my experience and I use it as a layer, contrary to it's name.
4. Contrast Skeleton Horde all over. The tan seemed a bit flat and I figured this would give it some more depth.
5. Menoth White Base again over most of the model. Overdid it with the Skeleton Horde and used this to clean it up.
6. Even more Menoth White Base, this time as an edge highlight.
7. Macragge Blue for the visor and other details. Macragge is a bit bright to be the proper Separatist blue, but it's what I've got and it's close enough.
8. Army Painter Gun Metal on the stomach grill, eyes, and binoculars.
9. Nuln Oil in the vents of the grill and all over the binoculars.
10. Poke in some Yriel Yellow into the eyes.

B1 Battle Droids

I heavily leverage Contrast paints to churn out tabletop ready B1s, I lack the patience to properly paint 27 B1s. Unfortunately this squad of droids didn't get quite enough contrast because I painted them with insufficient lighting, eventually I'll get around to touching them up.

1. White primer basecoat.
2. Contrast Skeleton Horde all over.
3. Abaddon Black on the rifle.
4. Contrast on the shoulders for squad colors (so far I've used Ultramarines Blue, Blood Angels Red, and Warp Lightning).
5. Yriel Yellow on the squad leader's head
6. Gun Metal on the squad leader's binoculars.

Final Thoughts

I expect few painting posts over the winter, as that means poor weather for priming. However, I'm going to be starting a hex crawl D&D campaign at my FLGS in the spring, and will probably start posting about the construction and planning of my campaign binder.

Didn't get all that much done the past two weeks so I combined them into one bigger post.

Separatist Army Basing

The basing on my Legion army is inspired by the grassy plains of Naboo as shown in The Phantom Menace; I figured green would contrast well against the greys and browns of the droids, and stand out compared to the other armies at my FLGS.

On the models that were primed silver or white, I covered the top of the base with Contrast Warp Lightning, as the first few B1 droids I based have white poking through gaps in the basing (this can be seen on the leftmost red squad B1).

The only other noteworthy thing I did was color the rims of the bases with a Posca paint pen rather than a brush. I highly recommend this, it saves a huge amount of time compared to brushing paint onto the rims.

Saurus Knights

With my collection of Contrast paints growing, I decided to finish some Seraphon I've had in a drawer unpainted for several years. They still need a bit more work, but they feel done enough to post about.

1. Primed light grey using a cheap automotive primer I got from Harbor Freight.
2. Blood Angels Red all over the mount's body
3. Snakebite Leather for the saddle, ropes, and weapon handles
4. Warp Lightning all over the saurus's body
5. Terradon Turquoise on the raised rough scales of the saurus
6. Retributor Armor for metals
7. Abaddon Black on the spear blades, and eventually the claws of the mount
8. Macragge Blue for feathers

Final Thoughts

I only have a couple more planned acquisitions for my Legion army, after that I'm going to move on to collecting Leagues of Votann for 40k. Once I pick that up, I should have much more frequent content.

Didn't get much done last week, so I'm gonna do a larger post early next week with my work from both this week and the previous one.

The past couple weeks I've managed to get some miniature painting done on Saturdays before my weekly D&D session; hopefully creating the expectation of a weekly blog post will help me keep up this momentum.

From this Saturday to last Saturday, I managed to paint and base two units for my Star Wars Legion army. My steps for basing are going to be saved for next week's post since I plan to base the remainder of my army this week.

BX-Series Commando Droids

These Commandos were very fun to paint, and they're annoying little buggers on the tabletop as well. Here's how I painted them:

1. Black primer, I just use a Rustoleum spray can I got from a hardware store
2. Citadel's Abaddon Black basecoat over the whole model to give a smoother, more consistent texture
3. Drybrush P3's Greatcoat Grey over the droid's entire body, trying to avoid the blaster rifles
4. Army Painter's Gun Metal on the squad leader's binoculars, the dioxis grenade, and the vibroswords
5. AP Weapon Bronze on joints, arms, and vibrosword blades. This color was much brighter than I expected. While I enjoy the contrast between it and the black, Citadel's Balthazar Gold is probably more accurate to how they appear in the animated series.
6. Citadel's Ulthuan Grey in the eyes and on the chest light. To color in the eyes, I added a lot of water to the paint and then pressed a very small brush into the eye sockets so capillary action could do the work for me. It could probably use a second coat on most of the droids, but I was focused on getting them ready for a game the following day.
7. Citadel's Blood Angels Red on the vibrosword blades and the chest light.
8. Citadel's Warp Lightning on the Dioxis grenade canister.

B2-Series Super Battle Droids

These B2s were almost trivial; just a silver primer, shaded all over with a mix of Citadel's Drakenhof Nightshade and Nuln Oil, and then Blood Angels Red for squad colorings and the chest lights.

B2 Special Weapons

I'm very satisfied with the B2-HA droid's rocket launcher. I followed Duncan Rhodes' tutorial for a 40k Meltagun, though his came out much more noticeable than mine; I probably thinned down my shade too much. I also had to substitute Citadel's Druchii Violet for Army Painter Red Tone as I don't have that color.

In comparison, the other special weapon took almost no effort: I simply picked out the blaster barrels with Abaddon Black and then poked some Citadel's Mephiston Red onto the ends of the barrels.

Final Thoughts

My droid army is really coming together, very happy to see the results now that everything is painted and many models have basing.

Hey look I have a blog now, only about a decade late to the trend.

Expect a lot of photos of my miniatures and ramblings about my dungeons and dragons games