DF Novices, Team-A, Session 52 - Diary of Yorgen Gant
We played last Tuesday. Here is an in-character report for the last session from the player of Yorgen. As always, I am giving out an Impulse Point to any player who writes a summary for the blog.
Party roster:
Ben, half-ogre barbarian, 132 points (PC)
Doran Longbeard, dwarf knight, 162 points (PC)
Eleanor Bayley, human thief, 191 points (PC)
- Dagne, human cleric, 125 points (NPC Hireling)
Erizax Ofaris, human wizard, 195 points (PC)
Randall, human veteran, 135 points (NPC)
Yorgen Gant, human knight (squire), 91 points (PC)
Ulokk, half-ogre thief, 85 points (NPC)
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Diary of Yorgen Gant:
There are people who, in battle, lose their heads. They are filled with battle lust and throw themselves at the foe, damned be the consequences. I am not one of them. There are people who, in the chaos of battle, are struck with indecision and root themselves to the spot, trying to find order in the haze of combat before beginning to think what they might achieve. I am not among their number. Making sense of the chaos that is battle, thinking through the din of fighting while remaining aware of one's surroundings and keeping oneself alive is a skill that all good warriors must learn... or perish. But to do that, while also keeping in mind the position and condition of one's companions and reading the battlefield like a tome written by a demented scribe whilst making sense of the chaos and deciding, at the speed of a flashing blade, how to proceed and to keep everyone alive while still being victorious is a skill that knights must learn to be able to be called such in the eyes of their peers. It is a skill that can be taught, a skill that can be learned, and a skill that must be practiced and honed. It is a skill as deadly as any blade ever made.
Ser Landonn always held that I had a particular talent for it, a natural gift. In this, my noble knight was not mistaken.
As I fight, my mind refuses to be calm, and my mind refuses to rage. It perceives the battle even as my reflexes strive to keep me alive against my immediate foe, and calmly constructs choices for me to make. The choice, in the end, is up to me and my experience, but it will be there to be called upon. All that requires is tenacity and strength of will. There are indeed such people who will balk at the idea of making a choice for their companions, afraid to make the wrong one, and in their indecision doing worse than nothing at all. I am, most assuredly, not one of them. I loathe such people.
I know now that Ser Landonn apprenticed me to Ser Callowmere for a summer to teach me that lesson. I learned to despise squire Bergholdt for his indecision, his inability to take any kind of responsibility at all for the good of his companions. Perhaps Ser Callowmere hoped my more salubrious example would set his wayward squire straight, perhaps he hoped that I would be able to teach the cowardly cur a few things that could make him a knight rather than a failed squire. But there are some things I cannot do. I can lead a group of levy spearmen, I can rally a cowering rabble of shirkers, and I can even conceive of a way to fight a battle with a small group against a much larger enemy and be victorious... but even I cannot turn Bergholdt from a snivelling toad into a stalwart knight.
Recall, then, that I had become aware that in the tunnel behind me a battle was being waged, and that panic was beginning to grip some of my companions. This would not do. I resolved to exterminate the remaining foe ahead of us and then turn to give heart to the wavering, but even as I began my advance to decide the fight we had comprehensively won, a flight of arrows clattered down the hall towards myself, Ben, and Doran. They came nowhere near us, and I doubt at this distance these arrows would even be able to do more than merely scratch us, armoured as we are, but the risk remained to my companions clad in cloth behind our line. There was nothing for it. Decisive action had to be taken.
I called the order to charge.
This may seem foolish, but to my mind it was a sound tactic. Whatever so frightened my companions was behind us, and thus moving away from it would mitigate their fear and put distance between them and that which had frightened them so. Perhaps it is not the most useful action, to advance away from a threat, but any action is better than none at all to someone wavering in their resolve. Aye, give someone the idea they are doing something to preserve their lives, and they will gladly seize it, no matter how trivial it may seem, and banish for a while their fear of mortality that has so swiftly stolen upon them.
As I charge past, I see Doran cut down the last of the undead and begin to follow me. Ben, equally ablaze with the desire to finish the fight and save his companions, charged to my left. What a sight we must have made. What fear we must have struck in the hearts of these goblin archers, for such they were, as this wall of steel and determined death bore down upon them along the entire width of the tunnel.
My mind, still calmly observing, reminded me of the tunnel to our left flank as we advanced, and I called for my companions to beware their flank. Ben and Doran, eager to get to grips with the enemy ahead of them, ignored this passage and charged past. I was on the verge of diverting to secure the tunnel mouth myself when I could hear Erizax shouting behind me.
"Charge past the tunnel!" this eminent sage advised. Sound advice, for if our group made it past that tunnel it would be no more than another way for enemies to funnel themselves into the tunnel we were defending rather than a way for them to drive a wedge into our group. Thus assured that my companions were right on our heels, we three warriors charged the archers, who loosed another volley which failed to dissuade us from closing with them. One goblin, armed differently from the others with a shield and flail, stepped into my path and came at me, and we joined in a duel while Ben and Doran began to tear into the archers. The cowardly vermin had had their chance to run and chose to come back and squander the mercy we had shown them. Very well, their choice was made. Let them perish then beneath our blades!
For those who have never had to fight a flail, I advise against never attempting it. As I wrote previously, any tool that is doing duty as a weapon is dangerous in a way no weapon made for the purpose can be. Twice I escaped having my head caved in by the spiked menace by the merest of chance, and I could feel my luck beginning to run out. By freakish chance, my duel with the goblin had caused it to step directly behind Doran who, having his back turned to this menace, was utterly defenceless. I called out his name in despair, and the stalwart dwarf turned in an instant, meeting the flail on his shield with a crash of wood and metal that would certainly have stove in his head otherwise. Unfortunately this turned his back on the archers, who wasted no time in firing two arrows into my companion's back.
Like the paragon of dwarven wrath and fury that he is, Doran shrugged off the two arrows striking him in the back is merely stung by impertinent bees, and joined me in fighting this flail armed goblin. Meanwhile, Ben took an unlucky arrow to the face, but seemed to twist aside just in time for the shaft to merely score a bloody welt across his cheek. For a second he seemed to waver, uncertain, until he then began to vent his wrath on the goblin archers. I shall spare you the details of his fury, save to say that a casual swipe from Ben's hatchet seems sufficient to hack a hog in twain. How these goblin vermin fared against him, you can imagine.
I instructed Doran to focus on the archers while I fought the flail armed goblin, worried that they might take a shot at our companions which I still presumed to be right behind us, and cut the goblin down down with one swift slash while splattering his blood along the wall on the backswing. Satisfied that he will rise no more, I finally called out to my companions what was causing them such panic. The sound of fighting was growing more intense, with the clash of steel on steel telling me that Randall and my stalwart friend Ulokk were both fighting for their lives.
"Rat thing!" comes the call back, from both Erizax and Eleanor at practically the same time. Rat thing? What rat could possibly trouble my companions so? The vermin are a nuisance, no doubt, but surely this wouldn't vex them to a degree that they seemed ready to pray for divine intervention.
So I turned then, calling back "What rat thing?!" and froze. I froze for just a moment, seeing doom.
The tunnel was on fire, a blaze consuming the small hillock of corpses we had left where we fought the undead. In the flickering light I could see a giant monster of a rat, moments before it struck Dagne such a blow that her head seemed to burst like an overripe melon. I have seen grievous injuries in my day, but gods above, if she is alive after that sort of blow to the head then she soon will not be, unless we get her to a temple. And soon, at that. Erizax, Ulokk, Randall, even Eleanor... they watched in horror as the monster felled our companion with an almost contemptuous blow, and I realised then that the fight in which I should have been participating was not in front of me at all.
With a cry of 'For Ishtanna!' I raced back to the scene of the slaughter as fast as my burdens would let me, ignoring all else but the beast which will slay us all unless I cut it down. As if through a haze I could hear Ben slaughtering goblins down the tunnel, could see more goblins pouring in through the side tunnel which my companions seemingly failed to pass before being ambushed, became aware of Doran beginning to follow me before being struck in the back and turning to meet the impertinent goblin who had escaped Ben's onslaught.
To my horror, I could see Eleanor firing at the rat beast and her bolt clanging harmlessly off its shield, which it raised with casual ease. To my astonishment, I then see Eleanor rushing up to the beast and trying to lay into it with a knife, forcing it to take a swift step back.
One step is all I needed, running finally past the pool of blood in which Dagne lay, and squaring off against the rat monster, calling on Eleanor to run from it.
This must be my fight. My armour has yet to be defeated, my sword is still sharp, my sword arm is still strong, and my shield is still whole. In this, I am faring much better than most of my companions. So this fight must be mine, and I must be victorious... or perish.
What matters is that my companions live. I have allowed this to happen by failing to clear this place when I had the opportunity, and this is a matter of honour now. I will protect my companions and slay this beast, or die in the attempt.
That too is the duty of the knight.
Alea Iacta Est.
Face me, fiend!
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