After-Action Report: Road to Monsterberg, session 8

Link to the Previous Session! Wherein we met my new character and got invited to the dukal hunt!

The next morning, people wake up and go a-hunting. Wojslav buys himself a nice heavy crossbow and some broadheads, rides out on his horse, everyone else goes as they are. Humorously, Jules just brings a hatchet and his executioner's axe.

Estelle gets to talking with some huntsmen about wild stories and splits from the group (her player was absent).

Meanwhile, Elias holds up the party because he's busy convincing one of the huntsmen to take the midden mutt that Elias adopted during the Teschen bakery heist and use it in the chase, so it learns some basic hunting tricks from the other dogs. Elias actually manages to convince the guy, which is good for the dog.

Unfortunately, in the time it takes to do so, the party have lost track of the hunters who were supposed to lead them to their position. A rather impatient looking fellow in green livery comes out of the forest and beckons them to follow, chastising them for laying about and wasting time. How helpful!

He leads them to a dried out creek bed and the hunt begins. Huh, surprisingly many animals start coming their way...

 

Wojslav prepares his crossbow and reckons he'll shoot mounted, Vuk crouches down with a sling, Elias ties his whip to some trees to use as a line to trip any big game that happens to come the right way, and Jules just crouches down next to a tree on one bank of the creek and tries to fight his headache (Jules is so debilitated from last night's drinking that all the checks he has to roll are at the second highest difficulty if no additional difficulty applies).

 

The first half an hour, there come various small game animals and some fowl. Vuk and Wojslav manage to bag a few rabbits and pheasants, though they also miss their shots at a bunch of elk coming by and some martens...

 

Then come the Wild Hogs. These wild hogs were perfectly content to keep running and ignore the idiots in the creek bed. The party had other ideas. Vuk and Wojslav shoot one boar and just as they're happy that it's almost certainly dead after being hit by a heavy crossbow and a sling bullet, they hear the thing start to squeal in a frenzy and realize why people tend to use spears to hunt boars.

 

Meanwhile, Elias is apparently unhappy that Vuk and Wojslav are getting all the game so far (by virtue of being the only ones with any ranged weapons, but I digress) so he proceeds with his plan to trip the other incoming boar with his whip, which he's tied to the other side of the forest trope that the animals keep using. He actually does so ... and finds himself with a prone, enraged boar a meter away from him.

 

So right now, there are two enraged wild pigs and a bunch of people who are wholly under-equipped for a boar hunt. The pig that Vuk and Wojslav shot charges at Vuk, ready to end him. 

 

Vuk, who I must point out had previously somehow voided a saber charge by one of von Jarashow's horsemen, now crits on his evasion and manages to throw a bunch of river pebbles into the boar's eyes while he dives to the side, blinding it and avoiding an early death while screaming obscenities in Serbian.

 

Meanwhile, Elias tries to keep his boar at bay with his whip, but the angry creature just bites onto the whip and destroys it after a few combat cycles, finally closing the distance as Elias feverishly tries disengaging with it, chucking a hatchet at it, and then scrambling for his messer. 

 

Here, it is also worth pointing out that Elias is almost entirely unarmored, has the frame of a twig, and has a combat skill somewhere around 60, whereas the boar has 73 and is built like a brick shithouse. 

 

Somehow, Elias does not get gored once and keeps fighting back against the boar.

 

Meanwhile Wojslav dismounts, draws his sword, and goes in swinging at the blinded, frenzied pig that charged Vuk. 

 

The Serbian is still on his stomach, trying to crawl away and get up while the angry blind pig keeps pushing him, keeps him prone, but never manages to actually skewer him due to still being blinded. Jules in this time gets up and throws a hatchet at Vuk's boar, nearly taking Vuk's head off with his hung-over aim.

 

Things were going like this for 7 rounds (each with ~3 combat cycles, i.e. turns) and during this time Elias actually manages to get a critical strike in at his boar and tear open its frontquarters, causing it to slowly but surely start bleeding out. Meanwhile, Vuk has managed to take out his shortspear and impale one boar with it, making it terribly ineffective at actually goring anyone. While Vuk feverishly keeps his spear stuck into the boar, Jules is blearily swinging his unbalanced executioner's axe at the pig and missing every strike, while Wojslav pokes both pigs on their rumps with his sword, but doesn't achieve much, visibly.

 

As Elias' pig is almost completely exhausted by blood loss, Elias gets another lucky defense in and manages to get the pig to accidentally skewer itself on his messer while bearing down on him one last time.

 

Meanwhile, in the very last round of combat, a miracle happens!

 

Jules, still so hungover he can barely be considered awake, finally hits. He rolls some abominable damage number with his impractical executioner's axe, and he rolls the pig's head as a random hit location. So Jules ends up cleanly decapitating the one remaining wild pig, much to everyone else's astonishment.

 

...and funnily enough, Elias' family sigil is actually a boar. It's engraved on most of his pouches and his belt (which yes, his player has detailed). Must have helped him solo his pig.

 

Anyway, after all this, things were surprisingly quiet. Several dozen minutes of nothing, interspersed with some small game animals.

 

The party ends up meeting with the chasers as the hunt winds down, who stare at them incredulously for standing around in one of the most dangerous spots possible. It becomes clear that the man in green who led them there was definitely not one of the hunters and likely had some malicious motive. 

 

Unnerving, that. Who might be trying to hurt nice people like our characters?

Meanwhile, as the bodies of the animals are counted, Vuk and Wojslav overhear some people discussing that there is a reward for anyone who bags 5 or more small critters. 

 

Vuk teaches Wojslav the magic of Balkan scams, and the two decide to pool their caught small game and pass it off as Wojslav's to get the reward. Thankfully, the scribe doesn't catch on to the deception or notice the differences in wounds, so Wojslav gets credited the entire catch.

 

And at the Duke's post-hunt feast, all the party gets is a single fox pelt for their troubles, the pigs bringing no prizes besides some hearty meat. It was meant to be a small game hunt, the prizes are for small game!

 

Despite this, the ridiculous story of how the pigs were brought low. Two factors work for us: Elias' family sigil and his unlikely win against the boar, coupled with Jules being an executioner! People see his win as "him performing his duties on a pig", which makes for a riotous laugh at the feast (and earns everyone involved a bit of Ehren in the eyes of the attendees).

 

And that's it for now. 

 

As a side note, the GM has commented that he honestly half expected the party to roll up an encounter of 4 angry bears and end up eaten. Especially sitting at the dried creek bed. 

 

"I don't know how they had such a relaxing time of it thanks to their encounter rolls, with the exception of the pigs which were entirely self-inflicted", as he put it.

Ah, the magic of rolling stuff in the open, encounters included!