Last episode, the Battle of the Delve raged on. Despite the bloodshed around him, Vahid kept his will fixed on his mystical duel with the hdour, holding his spirit servants at bay. The assassin Cicatrix, aided by the treacherous Honest Draigh, tried to take Vahid off the board. His two guardians, Dawa Eyegouger and Elder Kirs, saved his life, but at a dear cost: Kirs was taken by the Lady of Crows, and with him any secrets he had about the location of Stormcatcher’s Crown.
Meanwhile, on the mountain trailhead, Anwen also tasted Draigh’s treachery. She and her fighters were ambushed when the Stormcrows triggered a rockslide before charging into battle. In the fight, Anwen confronted Maël, the Stormcrow’s warleader, a fearsome foe with a powerful array of arcana. It seemed as though her defenders would be slaughtered to a man.
Anwen faced a critical decision: retreat to save her remaining forces, or stand and fight, hoping to slay Maël and turn the tide. Let’s see what you all chose!
True to her Instinct: To refuse to give in, back down, give up. Before we dive back in, one quick bookkeeping note I failed to make any marks on the Delver’s morale clock after Anwen’s miss on the Deploy roll last session, and it seems correct to do so — Draigh’s treachery plus the first bloody exchange (the death of Cerdic Snake-Eye, Maël’s initial success in the fight against Anwen) will mark 2 ticks, bringing the Delver clock to 4 marks.
To get the fiction rolling, let’s trigger a couple of moves and envision their results. First, the Delvers are shaken. If Anwen wants them to keep fighting, she’ll need to make a roll to see if they’ll stand fast.
Anwen triggers Defy Danger w/ Charisma: 6+6+1=13, Strong Hit
They are with her! Next, she can roll to charge in and help Mutra, supported by the rest of the defenders — the first step in turning the tide.
Damage is dealt — Anwen rolls a 9, and Mutra & Co. roll an 8 — enough to fell two Stormcrows. Anwen takes 6, and reduces it to 3 with her armor and shield, leaving her with 7 HP.
Our heroes are on deadly ground. Back to the action!
Scene 5, cont’d: The trailhead
The Delvers fight desperately to gather to Anwen. She can feel their panic, their uncertainty, like a dull pain in her chest. Across the narrow battlefield, in the din and the dust, she sees Mutra the Teeth, surrounded on three sides, with only a handful of fighters around her. Behind them is the town, five hundred souls huddled in whatever safe place they could find.
“This mountain is yours, Delvers! Make them pay for every step!” Anwen cries, and charges forth to rejoin Mutra, not waiting to see who will follow.
But the Delvers are with her, and Anwen and her company fall upon Mutra’s attackers like a thunderbolt. Anwen splinters a Stormcrow’s jabbing spear and hews through him in a single blow. Another Stormcrow lunges at her, his adze seeking vengeance for his comrade. Anwen raises her shield to meet the blow, and the force of it shudders her arm.
Blade bites deep into oak. She wrenches the shield back, trying to pull the weapon out of his hand, but he holds fast and pulls it free, raising it for another strike.
Anwen steadies herself and readies her shield to take another blow. As the Stormcrow prepares to rush at her again, Mutra the Teeth is at his flank — her hammer strikes him across the side of the face, and he collapses like a felled tree. The Peakswoman grins fiercely, showing her black iron teeth. The triumph lasts but a moment. Across the hollow, Maël and the Stormcrows have also regrouped, and Anwen can see the field is scattered with the fallen — more theirs than the foe’s.
The hdour’s champion raises his javelin, its aetherium head gleaming blue-white in the moonlight. He raises it up, pointing it towards Anwen and her fighters. Around him, his warriors take up their warhorns, sounding keening, discordant wails that echo against the mountain face. “Your accursed home will burn, stren! Tor wills it!” Maël bellows, his voice adding to the terrifying clamor.
Prickling gooseflesh runs up Anwen’s limbs, and the smell of burnt metal permeates the air. Maël’s spear tip crackles with coruscating energy. She knows what is coming — she has seen Vahid call upon such power before, and without a thought, she charges. Desperate for any protection from the forces Maël will unleash, she holds her axe forward, its Makerglass blade unbreakable by any craft wielded by man.
Here, Mael is using his second arcana, the Aetherium Spear. He intends to unleash a bolt of lightning (this gives him the weapon tags far, area, loud, forceful) which would be disastrous for the tightly packed defenders. Knowing this, Anwen moves to intercept the attack with her own body, trying to use her axe for some modicum of protection.
From the GM’s perspective, “I use my makerglass axe as a makeshift shield” might be a bit of a stretch, but when you’re pushing the PCs hard, it’s good practice to let them reach a little for solutions. Anwen is triggering Defy Danger here, and there are two relevant dangers — one is to herself, and the other is to Mutra and the surviving defenders. Regardless of the roll, she won’t be able to avoid all the damage — she’s bodyblocking a lightning bolt, after all — but with a strong hit, we might halve the damage.
The dice are really not kind to our heroes this session. This is a pretty catastrophic miss, so Anwen will use her Impetuous Youth move to upgrade it from miss to a Weak Hit.
We’ll envision that this protects the defenders from Mael’s attack, but not Anwen herself — she takes the full brunt, which totals a whopping 15 damage. Normally, we’d halve this with I Get Knocked Down, but you can only trigger that move when you ‘take damage despite your best efforts to avoid it,’ which doesn’t quite match this situation1.
15 damage is more than enough to kill Anwen, but fortunately she can trigger Never Going to Keep Me Down, which gives her an automatic 10+ on her Death’s Door roll. She returns to the land of the living with 1 HP left, but now she has the attention of the Lady of Crows.
Importantly, when you trigger Impetuous Youth, much like I Get Knocked Down, you must choose from a list of consequences, and I chose “you cause collateral damage, endanger others, or otherwise escalate the situation.” For that, we’ll go back to the fiction.
Anwen moves swiftly, crossing half the distance over the broken, rocky ground to Maël and his raiders, before the world dissolves into blinding white light, a thunderous boom, and then silence. When her vision returns, Anwen finds herself on her knees, surrounded by a bloody melee. The Delvers have charged forth to protect her, and the Stormcrows have met them blade to blade.
But Anwen’s eyes are on the Lady.
The Lady appears. Source: Midjourney
Watching over the battle from a cliff above is a figure Anwen knows all too well. The Lady of Crow’s black-feathered courtiers are everywhere, more like locusts than crows. They swarm over every inch of the battlefield, their hungry beaks feasting on Hillman and Delver alike. The cacophony of their cries drowns out everything — Maël’s battle-boasts, the clash of steel on steel, the cries of the dying Delvers as the battle-hardened Stormcrows drive them back.
The Lady of Crows raises her blackened hand, wordlessly pointing down at Anwen’s greatest foe. Maël has come again — he looms over the champion of Stonetop, his aetherium spear held high for a killing stroke. Anwen grasps the hilt of Bearkiller, waiting at her side, in the dust. Putting all her flagging strength into one last blow, she rises to her feet, swinging the blade in a white, gleaming arc towards the nomad champion.
First comes the press of his thrust, glancing off the iron scales at her shoulder and raising a flash of blue-white sparks. Then, her heart rises in triumph as her counter-stroke lands — the blade cleaves through flesh and bone until it meets the ancient metal of Maël’s chain with a resounding tone.
The makerglass, crafted in the elder days by the Stone Lords, cleaves through the ancient, fading magic and releases it in a violent eruption, a shockwave that shakes the very mountain and throws the fighters into disarray. The world spins around her, and Anwen finds herself and Maël falling, clinging to one another in a deathly embrace, until they descend together into darkness.
Scene Breakdown
Two more rolls closed out this scene. Face-to-face once again with the champion of the Stormcrows, Anwen had an opportunity to finally bring down Maël:
She then uses Impetuous Youth once again to upgrade the weak hit to a strong one, meaning Mael would not get a counter-stroke, but has to choose a consequence. In this case, she chooses to have something on her person break, and because of the extraordinary circumstances, I chose the Makerglass axe — unbreakable by normal means, but Mael is not a normal opponent.
It made sense to inflict some damage from axe shattering — the amount of damage doesn’t really matter, since Anwen only has 1 HP, and makerglass cuts right through armor. She then has her second Death’s Door roll, which she must actually make, since Never Going to Keep Me Down can be triggered only once per session:
Anwen triggers Death’s Door: 5+3+Nothing = 8, Weak Hit
The Lady of Crows does not take her, but she is out of the fight. This does not bode well for the defenders — recall that we missed on our initial deploy roll, and they’ve been on their back foot ever since. We’ll take this opportunity to mark another tick on the Delver’s morale clock, putting us at five ticks — only one away collapse.
We’ll revisit Anwen soon, but first, we should check in on Padrig, fighting at Sorrow’s Gate. You might recall back in Session 14.2 that the gate had just been breached by the nomad’s war-beast, an armored Thunder Drake, and through the breach has come one of the storm-marked warriors, another deadly foe. The Delvers have already rolled a miss on their Deploy roll here, so Padrig’s trying to find some way to at least slow down the collapse of this front.
We’ll start with an Order Followers roll to see how the Delvers do here — due to the circumstances, we’d normally give them disadvantage, but Padrig will use his Read the Land move to create advantages that cancel it out.
Padrig triggers Order Followers / Clash: 3+3+1 = Weak Hit.
They deal damage — only 4 HP, reduced to 2 by the marked stormcrow’s berserker resilience, and receive 11 in return. Damage against the Delve defenders is pretty abstract, here — 11 is probably enough to kill two of them, but what we’re really tracking here is how many misses they’re going to roll before the champion is felled.
Scene 6: Sorrow’s Gate
“Hold fast!” Padrig roars down to the defenders. “Raise your spears and hold!” The storm-marked warrior strides through the breach in the barricade. He towers over the defenders, easily the biggest hillman Padrig has ever seen. His fighting leathers are in tatters, rent by the magic that scoured his body with lightning-scars, and he holds a massive, stone-headed maul aloft. The man shouts a wordless challenge to the Delvers, who shrink before him.
From the scaffolding above the gateway, his eyes race over the battlefield, seeking any possible advantage or gambit that might turn the desperate tide. The breach opened by the thunder drake is but a small thing, nearly blocked by the beast’s burning bulk. Such a small thing on which the fate of the town might turn.
“There!” Padrig calls to the defenders below as he and his crew race down the scaffolding. “Put your spears to that gap! Cut him off, don’t let any more through!”
The Delvers take heart, raising their spears — only a few boast spearheads of iron or bronze, most are simple, hastily-sharpened stakes. A few of the bravest among them rush at the storm-marked warrior, while the others scramble to heed Padrig, with a thicket of spears hoping to drive back the stormcrows following their brute into the breach.
Those that faced the storm-marked warrior are threshed like wheat, their shields splintered, their spears sundered. Each blow of the hammer sounds a thunderclap, and the Delvers give ground again and again before his blows.
Pad swears under his breath. His hand goes to the sword at his belt. I am no match for that thing. There must be another way. Another peal of thunder sounds from the melee below.
“Get off the scaffolding!” Padrig shouts to his crew. The archers scramble to obey, climbing up a flight of the rickety wooden stairs to a stone-carved walkway above.
“Now cut the anchors!” He shouts. His men hesitate, uncertain of what he intends, until the old bandit draws his own blade and slashes through one of the hempen ropes that bind the scaffolding to anchors driven deep into the Forge Lords’ stonework.
As the archers draw short blades and swiftly obey, the scaffolding begins swaying alarmingly, shaken by the thunderclaps from below. Tor, watch over this damned fool, Padrig mutters, and then braces his back against the stone and pushes against the timberwork, and his crew up above takes up the task as well with fervor that belies their uncertainty.
After a few agonizing moments, the scaffolding begins to tip. “Spears, fall back! Fall back to the stairs!” Padrig roars, his stentorian2 voice ringing out over the battlefield. As the timberwork picks up speed, the defenders now see what Padrig intends and break into a headlong retreat.
This is a pretty hairbrained scheme, but no less harebrained than Padrig going toe-to-toe with a storm-marked berserker. But harebrained or not, it can be resolved with a Defy Danger roll. We’ll even give him advantage for his earlier Read the Land move — one of the possible questions is “What’s the best place for a trap or ambush?”
Truth be told, I think weak hits are much more desirable for plans like this — it feels silly to get out of them unscathed with a strong hit. So, Padrig’s plan will work, but he’ll take a bit of a beating. To determine exactly how much damage, I checked this handy chart in Stonetop’s play materials:
Source: Stonetop // Jeremy Strandberg
So useful! I rolled 1d8 damage for Pad, totaling 6, and added a problematic wound3to the mix. He’ll have 14 HP left. This might seem like a lot of consequence for a weak hit, but my rule of thumb as a GM is to allow the PCs to have crazy plans that can work, but raise the consequences for failure accordingly.
The stormcrows, drunk on the prospect of their glory at hand, notice Padrig’s gambit too late. The brute turns and sees what is coming, and braces himself defiantly. The few stormcrows that have rushed through the breach as the Delvers fell back continue their heedless charge.
The scaffolding — hundreds of pounds of sun-cracked timber and rusted iron — collapses onto their advance. Padrig waits til the last possible moment to leap, falling into a bone-bruising roll. He pushes himself to his feet — more slowly than he would like — and daggers of pain stab through his arm. Broken. Nothing for it now. He grinds his teeth for a moment before looking to the Delvers, who are regrouping at the bottom of the grand terrace stairs. Among the crush of fighters, he spots Young Brogan, his eyes gleaming gold in the firelight, and the tall Manmarcher Axel, the fighters from Odo’s prison pits gathered around him.
A ragged cheer goes up, but Padrig cuts it short. “Forward, war dogs! And we may well live to see the sun rise!”
Brogan is the first to charge forward, a sword of Delver-forged iron raised high. More follow him, and they charge towards the stormcrow brute as he rises, roaring from beneath the rubble.
We’re triggering Clash here, and Padrig will use his Frontline Leader move to hold 2 Presence, spending one immediately to overcome the defenders’ untested trait. For the next few beats, they have the courage of hardened veterans as long as Padrig fights with them.
Padrig triggers Order Followers / Clash: 6+5+1 Quality = 12, Strong Hit
I rolled 1d6+5 for the Delvers — you generally add +1 damage per additional attacker, and it seemed reasonable that six defenders could surrounded and attack this guy as he crawls out from under the rubble. They rolled the max, which was enough to bring down this threat. We’ll mark the stormcrow’s clock — another of their champions falls.
The defenders, driven to a furor by fear for their homes and a rush of mad courage, fall upon the storm-marked berserker. He lashes out with his bare fists, sending buffets of wind with the force of each blow, and sundering speartips and blades. But the weight of the Delvers’ numbers begins to tell, and the spears, splintered or not, find their mark again and again.
It is Brogan who deals the killing blow, darting into the ring of spears with a predator’s grace. The nomad is bleeding from a dozen wounds, but the storm-spirit raging inside his body drives him on. He hefts a splintered chunk of timber from the rubble, hurling it at Brogan, who nimbly dodges aside, and buries his blade in the stormcrow’s chest, to the very hilt. The young warrior cackles with mad, cursed glee as he pulls the bloodied weapon free.
Pad rushes to Brogan’s side, pulling him back to the safety of the spearline. Through the breach, Padrig can hear the nomads shouting, readying themselves for the next assault. “Well struck, Brogan. Are you hurt? Are you… all right?”
The lad’s eyes meet Pad’s — the golden irises are wide and wild, and for a moment, it seems like Brogan might lash out. But he finds himself. His hand clutches at the potion hanging around his neck for just a moment. “I am well!” he says forcefully.
Pad breathes his relief and then releases him to rejoin his crew. “Spears!” he calls. “With me, to the breach!”
Scene 7: A rocky outcropping
“She is here, Anwen of Stonetop.” Maël’s voice is a rasping whisper. Anwen opens her eyes and tries to rise to her feet, but every movement is agony.
She and Maël have fallen down the mountainside, coming to rest on a jagged slab of slate, 20 feet down the mountain. Below, the firelights of the town twinkle, and Anwen can hear the muted sounds of battle coming from Sorrow’s Gate, at the mouth of the valley.
Maël’s eyes are sharply focused, staring up at someone unseen. Anwen feels a familiar chill in the air. “The Crowmother,” he whispers reverently through bloody lips. “I have sent so many to her embrace, but I have never seen her face. She is beautiful, Anwen. Like you.”
Anwen’s lip curls in a snarl. “Let her take you, then. You have brought nothing but pain and death.”
Maël’s eyes flash defiance. “Are you not a warrior, like me? Is pain and death not your trade?”
“I’m not like you.”
He laughs — a pained, rattling sound. “You will be. You have killed me and taken my powerful fate. When I came screaming into this world, the spirit-talker of my band said great hosts would fall before my blade. Now, they will fall before yours.”
Anwen remembers her meeting with the Lady, not so long ago — in dreams, amidst the ruins of Stonetop. She remembers her voice, as though the Lady was whispering cold breath in her ear. “You still have great gifts to give to me.”
A dark shadow is at the corner of her vision — a hauntingly familiar presence. Anwen does not turn towards it, fearing to gaze directly at the Lady of Crows. Please, don’t take me.The fight’s not over.
The pale, beautiful face turns towards her, and her black eyes gaze on Anwen for a timeless moment. The world seems to fall away, and Anwen feels cold water lapping against her body, as though she were resting on some distant shore.
Then, finally, the Lady turns and faces Maël, who looks deeply into her eyes. “Know this, for I wish someone had told me,” he says, his voice growing clearer, less shaken by pain. “A powerful fate is not a blessing, Anwen. Peace, contentment, love. They are for others. Not such as we.”
With great effort, Anwen fights her way to her seat, resting her throbbing back against the mountainside. “You’re wrong. Those are the only things I’m fighting for.”
“Maybe I am. It does not matter now. I am ready.” The Lady kneels and offers Maël her hand. He raises his forehead to meet her touch, and breathes his last, falling back to the rough stone and lying still.
The Lady rises and turns towards her. “Soon, Anwen. Soon.” The Lady’s voice sounds like her mother’s. Tears well in Anwen’s eyes, to think of her mother, still locked away in Marshedge’s gaol.
“Anwen!” She starts awake to hear her name spoken by another. Baraz kneels before her. She is again clinging to life, on a jagged stone overlooking Gordin’s Delve. The Lady is gone, though her chill remains. Anwen hears the sounds of fighting again, this time louder and clearer, and the smell of smoke stings her nostrils and makes her tears flow. Below, in the town, fires are burning.
“Anwen, praise the Thunderhead for your damned stubbornness! You are alive!” Baraz speaks the words as though he is informing her she lives, yet.
“I am, Baraz, I am,” she says, coughing. How goes the fight above?”
His face falls. “Lost. Once you fell, the stormcrows scattered us. I retreated with a few survivors, but I came back to find you. I didn’t know if anyone yet lived who would.”
“Who survives?” she demands, taking hold of Baraz by his leathers. “Mutra? Padrig?”
“Mutra fell. I am sorry. As for the old bandit, I do not know. There is still fighting at the gates, but the stormcrows are in the town, spreading fear and fire.”
Anwen strikes the stone. “I’m sorry, Baraz. I failed. I couldn’t hold them. But the fight’s not over.”
Baraz smiles sadly. “I know. Come — I can help you climb back up. Then, we must part ways — I must make sure Madame Parvati is safe. Where will you go?”
We’ll close out there — Anwen knows the Stormcrows are in the town. She also knows a storm-marked has appeared at Sorrow’s Gate, and that they’re still fighting there, but she doesn’t know how Padrig fares. She also knows that there are stormcrows loose in the town, setting fires and putting innocents at risk, but they might also make their way directly to Vahid — after all, she knows that the stormcrows have a betrayer in their ranks, and knowledge of their battle plans.
We’ll make Anwen’s dilemma the subject of this episode’s poll. As a gift to the Lady of Crows, click the vote button below to make your choice!
As always, thank you for reading! The Battle of the Delve is coming down to the wire, and perhaps next episode we will see it won or lost. Next episode will be in your inbox on May 19th — until then, the fight’s not over!
I just re-read this move and realized this extra stipulation, and I’m 99% sure we’ve run it wrong at some point in the past, but moving forward, we’ll try to do it right. The best time to start obeying the rules is at the very beginning of the game, and the second-best time is right now.
Padrig is using a move here — the Stentorian ability, which also grants the Command he’s used in the fight so far, also guarantees you can always be heard on the battlefield. Handy!
This is a Stonetop rule we haven’t used too much of — generally, when player characters take damage (sometimes you can forego them when you’re taking damage from a Clash roll), they are also supposed to suffer wounds like broken arms, twisted ankles, deep cuts that bleed, and so on. These have fictional consequences — broken arms can’t bear weight, bleeding wounds cause more damage over time, etc.
Ooh, this is nail-biting. Get some better dice, for God's sake.