The Warhammer Fantasy game I'm playing in is not an exception to this, and it's for good reason. Beastmen are a nice, simple low level foe which work well if you're testing out a new game- which we were. I was the "most experienced" because I had run the game once, months ago, but everybody was on a similar playing field when it came to knowledge of the system.
The pitch was simple: one of the player characters had decided to found a mercenary company and the rest of us had been hired for three shillings a day. Most of us had characters pre-generated by the GM. Making my own was fairly smooth, thanks to the Foundry module doing most of the automation, though character creation's relatively simple anyway.
The game started on a dark and stormy night (or maybe it was day- was hard to tell), with the party’s carriage racing through the worst rain we'd seen in a long time. Crammed into the carriage were-
Birgit von Dittloch- the noble who had organized the group. Unlikely to receive much in the inheritance and seeking a way to serve the war goddess Myrmidia, she had come up with the idea of starting up a mercenary company while drinking in a tavern with a wizard acquaintance. Following this, she secured some funding from her father, a martially inclined man who approved of the path his daughter was on (her mother did not), and hired four employees.
Uschi Kalbmann- Dittloch's wizard acquaintance, an apprentice of the Gold College finishing up her instruction in the Lore of Metal from a more established tutor. Dittloch shelled out some additional funds to make sure the wizard was given metal armor instead of the leather the rest of us got, which proved to be a good decision.
Juliana Fuhrmann- the company paymaster, hired for her experience dealing with money under dangerous circumstances. Collecting taxes on the border of Sylvania had made her quite handy at this. This is the character I was playing.
Havelock Holm-Winrich- A Ulrican war priest, who saw the company as a good way to lead a virtuous life of cutting up his god’s enemies with axes.
Anthon Essing- a young roadwarden in training, who decided there was much more potential money in mercenary work instead of just riding up and down the same stretches of road year after year.
The fledgling mercenary band was bound for the town of Trosreut on their way to Bögenhafen, seeking a contract that Dittloch had been told was available. Predictions of a storm had led them to choose the slower coach rather than risk Manann’s rage on the river, but even this hadn’t stopped the storm from disrupting their travel.
Karl, the coachman, rapped on the little sliding window up at the front, and when Dittloch opened it informed her that he’s been hearing noises outside. This was no surprise to anybody; the braying of goats had been following the coach for hours, and any Imperial subject who’d ever stepped out of a city knew that meant beastmen. The shadowy figures of (hopefully) the trees were not improving the mood. Dittloch and the priest chatted a bit about how exciting this was; the rest of the company was less enthusiastic.
Karl’s next bit of information was more concerning, which was that the coach was possibly lost- an understandable problem in the torrential weather, but not one that the party wanted to deal with. It had been hours since they’d seen the river they were supposedly following.
Unfortunately there wasn’t much point in stopping, what with the children of Chaos out and about and no real way to navigate properly, so the coach pressed on through the storm. Of course, this plan was soon derailed by a rock at the same time the cart was.
Having been brought to a stop, and hearing no response from Karl, the concerned party piled out into the rain. The cart’s wheel had been damaged badly by the rock, one of the horses had come loose from the cart, and the coachman had been thrown from the cart to his death.
Unfazed by the sudden demise of their driver, the passengers wasted no time in getting the cart back on the road. Calming the horses took a bit off doing on Uschi’s part, but she eventually managed to lead them back onto the road while the rest of the party pulled the coach onto the road, just before we spotted horned shadows moving in the woods. The party drew their weapons and prepared for a fight.
The first to approach tore out of the woods, head covered in eyestalks, overpowering Havelock and cutting open his left leg. Dittloch leapt to his aid, shouting words of encouragement, and the warrior priest struck back with a vengeance, drawing blood. The roadwarden skewered another one with his crossbow, and the wizard fired off a barrage of conjured iron darts that killed both wounded mutants. On the other side of the cart, Juliana managed to fight off one mutant with her crowbill while another with tentacles instead of arms struggled through the muddy undergrowth. A cow-headed mutant charged straight for Dittloch, and despite slashing at its leg with her foil, she received a horn to the gut for her trouble. Havelock brought his axe down on its shoulder, and the wizard launched a second barrage to kill the horned mutant and the one Juliana had injured. Outnumbered and outmatched, the remaining foes fled into the night.
The priest did his best to patch up the noble (almost killing her with a bad roll before using a fortune point) and himself, while everyone else hitched the horses to the cart again. With that done, somebody remembered Karl’s body was still lying there, and a number of suggestions were made about what to do with it, none of which were implemented; to the best of my knowledge we just forgot about him and left him there.
The party set off again, with the passengers inside a bit more comfortable in the coach now that the priest and roadwarden were outside manning the reins. Outside, however, the weather continued to get worse, and when they finally spotted a structure off to the side of the road, they eagerly sought shelter there. Approaching revealed it to be a coaching inn surrounded by a tall stone wall. Knocking at the door failed to elicit a response, so they elected to try and find another way in. Travelling south revealed a boathouse filled with supplies for the ferry across the small tributary of the Bögen, but all they found inside was a bag of coins and blood all over the room- unnerving, but not much could be done about it.
Going back up another side path to the inn, the party found an unlocked side gate leading into the courtyard, and traipsed into the inn, which had three people waiting inside; a grotesquely fat innkeeper, a reedy and nervous looking employee, and a roadwarden who raised a crossbow the first time we tried to talk to him. The innkeeper proved to be almost as grouchy as he was useless, muttering about how the inn and stables were both full before finally giving us the key to the stables to go see for ourselves. The stables were full, but more disturbingly the roof access hatch was moving- it could have been the wind, but Juliana insisted otherwise and climbed up into the hay loft to investigate.
Finding the dead body of the stable boy, chewed on by humanoid teeth, did not improve matters. She tied a rope around her waist to venture out on the roof to try and find out what had done this, but failed to see anything in the darkness of the deluge. The innkeeper grumbled something about "strange looking bandits" when the party came back inside, but decided to ignore it and have a round of ale (on the company paycheck, of course) and the game wrapped up there.
Everybody seemed to have fun, and everybody agreed the game would have been rather unplayable without the computer handling a great deal of the work. We're likely adding on two more players next time, which I'd be worried about if the combat hadn't gone so smoothly. Beyond that, there's not much to tell. Things should pick up once/if the party makes it to Bögenhafen- but given how lethal combat can be, it's anyone's guess how far the Dittloch Company will make it. More updates will be forthcoming as the game goes on.
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