Many months before the Eagle shaman the Goblin shaman Grobbo the Red had had a vers similar dream: a woman with light blue skin was appeared in his dream (in contrast to the Thain shaman Grobbo didn't recognize her as an Ice Witch because he had never seen one). The most striking thing about her was the bracelet of shiny blue gems she was wearing. Grobbo immediately noticed that these were huge stomes of the same sort that he was wearing on a small ring that had been passed down from father to eldest sond for many generations in his family.
It was his ring of power, this small ring with the little stone that looked like a piece of an ordinary pebble as you find them in river beds. Only once a year, in the nicht of the first full moon after the shorted nicht of the summer, the stone started to sparkle and shine like the gems in the blue womans bracelet. And Grobbo knew from experience that he ring gave him authority to command others who would never have followed the orders of a lowly junior shaman like him in normal circumstances.
So when the woman in his dream showed him a hill far, far away in the West and told him he would be able to find more of these stones in a little forest on that hill he had immediately collected as many soldiers as he could and set off on the week long journy to the West. In fact, the journey had been so long and tedious (they had to avoid most human settlements to avoid ´drawing attention, and only burnt down and plundered the occasional isolated farm or hunting lodge) that his soldiers patience was running low. And what was worse, with the constant use the stone in his ring of power seemed to loose its strength as the days went on. He would have to find that hill, or he would be stranded in the middle of nowhere far away from home.
The army of Grobbo the Red
Then, only two days before the night of the full moon he was waiting for, his scouts told him that they had seen a hill that looked like the one in his dreams. He knew this was his chance: Tomorrow they would march to the hill to collect more stones of power. And with these, he would have a chance to dominate all the Golin tribes in his region, or maybe even in the whole part of Goblugin he was living in.
Grobbo the Red was so excited about the stones he would soon find that he found it hard to concentrate on anything else [he fumbled on more than half of all the spells he tried cast during the battle...] Little dod he know that he was not the only one who had come to search for the stones - he and his Goblins would have to fight with all their might to even get to the hill, as both a Thain army (pursued by an Empire patrol) and an Undead horde from the occupiers of east Waalford were already on their way to the same hill...
[This game was a battle with four players. We set up in the four corners of the 3x4 map playing field and set the hill with a little forest in the center of the battle field as the target that an army needed to reach to win the game.]
The Thain army and its Empire pursuers, as well as the Isthaki undead horde, were the same we have met in the other battle reports of this series, except that the Thain army had replaced the ballista (unwieldy on the march) with a unit of tribal archers. As in all thei battles, the Eagle shaman had given the aspect 'Eye of the Eagle' to all missile units in his army, extending the reach and accuracy of their arrows. The Goblins under Grobbo the Red consisted of two units each of mutants and Trollbins, an elite unit of Cave Walkers, a small Gobin catapult and two heros as well as Grobbo the Red and his brother Grobbo the Blue.
The Thain Eagles preparing to march to the Green Hill
All armies immediately started marching towards the green hill in the middle of the battle field. The fastest to get there were the leading cavalry units of Khaibar Gunther's army, followed by the first Goblins and the undead cavalry. The undead infantry were slowly advancing in the direction of the Thain Eagles to protect the Isthaki army's flank, while the Thain army (completely on foot, without fast cavalry to take the hill early) marched ahead, cautiosly waiting where the other three armies would clash first.
The undead army - on their right flank the cavalry, on the left flank the infantry (cool special models with ancient Roman shields)
The Eagles were not able to avoid early fighting, though, as the Goblins in their left quickly charged them with Trollbins and the Cave Walkers. Or rather, tried to charge them - an Eagle totem interrupted their advance and gave the Thain warriors the chance for a countercharge that led to a long drwan out melee that lasted for most of the melee.
The Goblins took the brunt of the fighting as their advance units were caught between the cavalry of their imperial and undead foes, with a big threeway melee developing at the corner of the hill. The imperial dragon spewed his fire breath on Trollbins and skeleton riders alike, and the whole melee kept moving back and forth for many hours.
The Thain archers, led by the Gar'nar'og, and the undead infantry are about to clash. In tha background the Thain warriors are closing in on the Goblins.
On the other side of the field the Gar'nar'og had charged ahead to disrupt the steady advance of the undead infantry and give the Eagle archers a chance to pick off some skeletons and hope that they would crumble to dust as their commanding heros were moving farther and farther away. However, this was not to happen and the Gar'nar'og was quickly dispatched by the undead with some help from the imperial dragon rider who flew by to cover both the huge animal and its boney opponents in his firebreath.
The imperial dragon prepares to fry the Gar'nar'og together with the skeleton warriors.
As night fell, few units had fled from the battle and most melees were still raging, but after the death of the undead skeleton general the Isthak army was slowing down visibly, and with the slow advance of the Thain warriors and the heavy fighting that had kept the Goblins busy the imperial soldiers were quite clearly in control of the hill.
It was ironic that as night fell and the full moon rose over the battle field, the green hill was under control of theone force that didn't know what it could find there: the imperial patrol of Khaibar Gunther. Some of his soldiers did discover several of the bright blue stones, but most of them threw them away on the march the next day when they found that the stones looked like ordinary pebbles in the light of day. The skeleton warriors of Isthak had managed to find a handful of the stones while they were on the hill towards the end of the battle, and took some more away from human soldiers they killed on their way back to the besieged city of Waalford. Some of the Goblins had managed to bring two or three small stones to the unfortunate Grobbo the Red (he was devastated to find that others apparently also knew about his secret, and also humiliated by his terrible display of magical inability that he had experienced all through the day). The Thain warriors went away completely empty-handed, having never once even entered the forest on top of the hill. They tried to pursue the imperial troops in the hopes of taking some of the precious stones away from them, but the only Empire troops they managed to find were the battle weary soldiers of Khaibar Ralf von Weppen and their dubious ally Kapitan of the Guard Franz von Krumetur...
Copyright Notice: This report (C) Klaus Herrmanns 2003. All rights reserved. Thanks for providing the photos goes to the Wiesbaden players group. Please only pass this on to others for private, noncommercial use. If you want to use this article elsewhere, let me know koljag@SPAMBLOCKyahoo.com (remove the SPAMBLOCK and the following dot before using the mail address. If you quote me as author and add a copyright notice like this, I'm perfectly happy to let you re-use this article.