The Raid on Ottringham, September 1066

In the first week of September 1066, the harvest was in, and the barns of the north were full. Harald Hardrada brought a fleet into the Humber larger than the one Cnut used to conquer England in 1016, though most of its ships were smaller vessels crewed by men from Norway and the northern isles. 

City of York Embroiderers' Guild's Fulford Tapestry.

The earls Edwin and Morcar had already mobilised that summer to counter raiding on the Humber and in Lindsey. There is no sign their men were seasoned veterans, but on hearing of Hardrada's arrival they gathered a larger force to defend the north. Their other job was to shadow the Danish fleet and deny it supplies from those full barns.

The chroniclers agree that the fleet then made for York. Some add stopping places, and the best known is a landing at Riccall. The exact site of the disembarkation is unknown. One plausible route has the Vikings landing near Spurn Head and working inland through Welwick, Thorpe, Patrington and Winestead to Ottringham, which belonged to the Archbishop of York. These estates were well worth raiding for their provisions.

The Scenario

This is my test scenario, a fictional clash between the Danish jarl Sigard Fairhair and the Saxon lord Edward Edwinson. The rules used were Baron's War 2nd Edition, with the Dark Age army generator. Sigard's crews have landed on marshy ground beside the water, with firm trackways leading to the hamlet of Ottringham and its famous chapel of St Wilfred. Livestock and the church's wealth are the prizes. 

The Game

Turn 1. Calm weather lets the Danes take the initiative, clearing the marsh's edge. Sigard, unwilling to wet his feet, takes the main road to the chapel while his men fan out on either side, hoping to seize the livestock the villagers abandoned when the longships appeared. Edward rushes his men into the village to deny the raiders supplies. His hunters, armed with simple slings, open the action with a hail of stones on the Bondi archers as they cross a muddy field, with little effect.
Objectives: Saxons 2, Danes 0.

           The Danes attack from the River-Estuary 

Turn 2. Seeing resistance, Sigard decides a heavy punch might force the Saxons back and charges up the road with his housecarls into a waiting shieldwall. Overnight rain has left the road slick, so instead of a crushing charge, the Danes slide into the wall (a throw of 1 on the curve roll), which holds. Elsewhere things go better. Geese are rounded up, and the archers push across the Field despite the stones.
Saxons 2, Danes 1. 

Fighting at St. Wifred's. Edwards stands in the background 

and sees an opportunity to kill Sigard (Yellow Cloak)

Turn 3. The main fighting reaches St. Wilfred's, where Sigard's housecarls clash with the northern thegns, and neither side gains an edge. Edward sees a chance to kill the enemy leader, but the crowded streets prove impassable, and he ends up shouting encouragement from behind the thegn shieldwall. On the flanks, the raiders charge and fighting spreads across the village.
Saxons 2, Danes 1.

Turn 4. The fight at the church door continues ferociously, but on the flanks the Danes make gains. They push back the hastily assembled Saxon shieldwall, which holds for a while but eventually folds, given the troops' poor quality. The ceorls flee north from Potters Field, and the raiders follow up, only to be met by stones from the Saxon scouts and driven back. They still manage to grab a young cow from the fleeing ceorls. On the other side of the village, the larger shield wall faces the Hirdmen and holds, despite their better equipment.
Saxons 2, Danes 2. 

            The Danish Hirdman clash 

            with the Saxon Shieldwall 

Turn 5: the tide turns. Now the Danish warriors' superiority begins to tell. The stubborn defenders in the east, a round Potters Field, are swept aside by another charge, leaving only a few weary, shaken men without formation to hold that side of Ottringham. In the west, the larger shieldwall crumbles under sustained pressure from the hirdmen, and the Danes now hold the main road, with an easy route back to the boats if things go wrong. In the centre, the fyrd are badly mauled by Sigard and his housecarls and close to breaking. If they go, the church and all its wealth lie open to looting. 

Saxons 2, Danes 2.

The Saxons' slingers and spearmen flee Potters Field as quality counts.

Turn 6. In the east, the Danish archers coldly finish off the last defenders. The climax comes in the centre. Seeing the thegns falling back, Edward charges in with his own housecarls against Sigard and his bodyguard. At first it works. His household men cut down and push back Sigard's bodyguard, and the church doors are again in Saxon hands, the treasures and records safe from the raiders. Then disaster. Sigard's men counter-attack and, in one astonishing blow, Sigard fells Edward in front of his men. Saxon morale collapses, and the day belongs to the Danes.

Thoughts on the Game

A thoroughly exciting game, and I enjoyed it. My only real problem was off the table. Domestic interruptions meant I had to spread it over several days, though I reckon it would have played in about two hours.

The ending was a nail-biter. Right up to that last dice roll, I thought the Saxons would hold out. The booty

Both sides had gathered, leaving the objectives even, and the Saxons seemed poised to hold the church, the main prize. Then Edward died and the day went to Sigard.

On the 2nd Edition. The layout is a big improvement, and the rules are much clearer. I'd like the QRS to be more informative, though. I haven't picked the game up for a year or so, and a summary of the melee process would have helped. That is easily fixed.

Solo play. 

As usual, I played solo using the rules as written, and found no major hindrance. A few simple additions could make it more unpredictable for a solo player:
An event deck or a d6 event table, with results such as extending the game by a turn, cutting it by a turn, or inclement weather would be obvious addition without changing the games mechanics.
Mobile livestock. Since the objectives here were largely animals, the event deck could move them about.
Chit-draw activation, with each side pulling a chit to say which unit activates. I don't think it's necessary, given the compulsory moves for fleeing and routing troops, but I may try it.

QRS

I haven't played the new Edition of Baron's War, so it was like playing the game anew. The layout and organisation of the Second Edition are a lot better, making play easier. However, I would have liked a more detailed QRS that includes the combat process. 

What's Next

My Barons' War adventure continues. The next step may be a Dark Ages pairing, perhaps involving a Norman retinue so I can introduce some cavalry. My main ambitions are still to fight Edward I's wars in Wales and Scotland, and to have a campaign set in the Anarchy. More on that in a later update, and at some stage I'll run a test game in the core 13th-century period.

London Chronicles - What the Ashes Conceal

After a lot of planning, my Steampunk superhero game, set in 1880 London, finally hit the table. I used SuperMission Force rules by Four Color Studio. I made very few changes to adapt the rules to Victorian London. The main alterations were to the pre-game and post- game sequences, mainly because I wanted to develop a stronger narrative around my characters.

For an introduction to this alternative London and the London Chronicles, see my earlier post.

A TALE OF SHADOW, STEAM & THE UNQUIET DEAD

LONDON, 1880. Fog thick as mourning crêpe rolls off the Thames. Somewhere in Whitechapel, in a warehouse that keeps its secrets locked behind bonded iron, a girl named Clara Ellington waits in the dark — and something far older than the men who took her waits with her.

A Tale of Shadow, Steam & the Unquiet Dead

Dramatis Personae 

THE HIDDEN SOCIETY - Charlotte Holmes, Mr Tonks, The Augmented Man and Voltaire

CHARNEL SOCIETY - Cornelia Ash, The Resurrected Man, Tobias, Emerson and Shamblers

Prologue 

Fog rolled from the Thames like funeral shrouds, and somewhere in Whitechapel, a young nurse named Clara Ellingworth waited in darkness.

Three weeks earlier, Clara had vanished. A volunteer nurse at St Mary's Hospital, she disappeared without a trace, and the Metropolitan Police showed little interest in the case. Her employer, Dr Evelyn Farrow, was less inclined to let the matter rest. Unable to get official help, she sought assistance from the Sherlock Holmes Detective Agency.

At 221B Baker Street, Charlotte Holmes listened carefully to the doctor's account before accepting the case. Accompanied by Colonel Hargreaves, she travelled to the Ellingworth family's townhouse in Holborn.
The house yielded nothing.
No sign of Clara. No sign of her captors. Only dust, silence, and the uncomfortable suspicion that someone had searched the place before them.

As they prepared to leave, however, a figure emerged from the fog.

It was Thomas Ellingworth, Clara's brother.

Gaunt and hollow-eyed, Thomas pressed a hastily written address into Hargreaves's hand: a warehouse in Cable Street. They believed Clara was held there, somewhere on the top floor.
Then Thomas disappeared back into the fog.
The investigation had suddenly become a rescue mission.

Cable Street and its Environs

The Warehouse of the Dead

The warehouse was waiting for them.

Voltaire announced their arrival in characteristic fashion: with lightning. A blast tore away the upper door, and Colonel Hargreaves plunged into a swarm of shambling dead.

Yet the Shamblers (zombies) were not the worst thing waiting inside.

The Cornelias and the Resurrected Man take on Voltaire and the Augmented Man.

The air itself folded, and from a black rift stepped Cornelia Ash—elegant, deadly, and armed with claws sharp enough to open steel. Another Cornelia soon followed, cutting through Voltaire's arm with a savage claw.

Below, Charlotte and her Symbiot took grenade fire from hidden enemies in the warehouse yard. Emerrson had struck as she tried to persuade Thomas to leave the area. The living metal shielded her from the blast, but Thomas was hurled senseless against the brickwork.
Within moments, the rescue had become a battle.

Cornelia's Gambit

As the fighting spread through the warehouse, Cornelia ignored the chaos around her. She had come for something more valuable than Clara: secret Society documents hidden within the safe.

But the Rift is a treacherous master.

When Cornelia opened the warded brass tube to place the precious documents in, a pulse of strange energy swept through the building. The Shamblers convulsed—and turned on their nearest living being - in this case, their mistress.

For the first time, Cornelia was forced to fight for more than the prize she had come to steal. Cornelia's predicament brought her guardian, the Resurrected Man, to her side. To protect Cornelia, the construct had to give up on trying to repel Augmented Man and Voltaire from the warehouse's top floor.

Then came another complication.

Inspector Crale and a squad from Division H burst through the warehouse doors, charging straight into a melee of policemen, gunfire, and hungry dead.
London, as ever, had arrived late—but noisily.

Inspector Crale and Division H Arrive. The Original photo and the AI comic version. 

Still trying to work out the best way to present this story, so here are two of the options.

Clara's Rescue

The police bought the heroes precious time.

Mr Tonks used the distraction to knock out Tobias as the police officers pushed past him, focused on the warehouse's doors and what lay beyond.

Amid the confusion, Colonel Hargreaves fought his way to the top floor and found Clara's cell standing open.

For one terrible moment, he feared they had arrived too late.

Then he saw her.

Clara Ellingworth was alive—terrified and exhausted, but alive.

Cornelia, meanwhile, had decided that discretion was the better part of villainy. Gathering her resurrected servant and the plans, she tore herself sideways through the Rift.

Charlotte managed one final shot as Cornelia appeared fleetingly on Cable Street, but the bolt merely grazed her. A heartbeat later, Cornelia and her monstrous protector had vanished into the Rift, taking the stolen documents with them.

The heroes had rescued Clara.

But they had lost their quarry.

Mr Tonks, after dispatching Tobias, climbed the warehouse's wall to find that Cornelia Ash had already departed.

What the Ashes Conceal

With the fighting over, Voltaire returned to the strongroom to see what else their enemies had left behind.

There, hidden in a barrel, he discovered several small phials of cold grey ash.

It hummed faintly in his hand.

The energy within was neither purely Rift nor purely necromantic. It was something stranger—an impossible marriage of the two.

Something or someone had created it.

Something unnatural.

And whatever that something was, it remained somewhere beyond the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel.

The case was far from closed.

To be continued in The Corpse Engine.

Game Notes

This was the first outing for the Hidden Society and proved an excellent test of both heroes and villains.
Voltaire and Mr Tonks were immediately effective, while Charlotte took longer to master, especially after the team split early in the game. Cornelia Ash, meanwhile, proved an excellent villain—dangerous in a fight but far more interesting when manipulating events from the shadows.

As always, the best moments were the ones I hadn't planned.

Thomas's being knocked unconscious in the opening turn forced a series of oracle rolls and created an entirely unexpected subplot. The longer the campaign runs, the more convincing these decisions become as the characters acquire their own personalities and grudges.

Most surprisingly, Colonel Hargreaves appears to have developed a soft spot for Clara since her rescue. Perhaps her military family reminds him of an old comrade.

Colonel Hargreaves removed Clara to the Diogenes Club safe medical facility, the Sanitorium, but her unstable links to the Rift remain undeveloped. The mystery surrounding her simply never developed.

Inspector Crale, although unsuccessful, remains undiscovered. Something to develop in a later chapter.

Either way, London has not heard the last of the Ellingworth case.

And some ashes are best left undisturbed.

London Chronicles - Charnel Society

The Charnel Society is a secretive and radical splinter of the Blackthorn Necromantic Society, convinced that the convergence of Rift energy and Charnel current represents not a danger but an evolutionary threshold. They operate in absolute secrecy, funded by sources that include — though the heroes don't yet know it — the Moriarty Network.

THE OPPOSITION 

Cornelia Ash

Collector of secrets, mistress of duplicates, allergic to being touched 

Daughter of Cornelius Ash, the unconventional scientist, aka Construct. She was a famous stage star, famed for her Shakespearean roles and well known to London's Bohemian community. She is also the mistress and lover of Lord Grey, and it is rumoured that it was he who exposed her to the rift energies that have changed her both physically and mentally.

Now a cold, precise woman who moves through Rift micro-tears with unsettling ease. Her primary abilities are self-duplication and teleportation— she can generate up to three copies of herself from Rift-folded space, each fully capable and independent. Distinguishing the original from the duplicates is the key to defeating her. She serves as Grey's field commander in his absence and runs the Cable Street operation.

The Resurrected Man 

A construct that does not tire, does not doubt, does not stop.

The Society's most disturbing creation, and in some ways its proof of concept. A living man who died during Babbage's Folly and was subsequently reanimated by a simultaneous application of Rift energy and Charnel current. He is not a Shambler — he thinks, reasons, and feels. He is also not entirely human. His touch can temporarily suppress the life force of living beings, and he heals damage that would kill ordinary men. He is fiercely loyal to Lord Grey, who gave him his second existence, and Cornelia Ash, whom he sees as an angel, the herald of the new beginning.

Tobias & Emerson 

The muscle, not terribly bright and a coward with very good aim. 

Two bonded men. Brothers — or close enough as makes no difference, raised together in one of London's charity orphanages after both lost their families within the same terrible year. Where one grew canny and careful, the other grew reckless and brutal. 

Their linked origin pulled them into the Rift underworld young, firstly undertaking petty work, running messages, standing lookout, doing the small, unglamorous jobs. Finally. Resurrectionists, stealing bodies and killing some innocents to meet the demand for Shamblers. One night a botched job exposed them raw Rift power when a grave held an alien body. Now, with some powers, their fates are permanently bound together.

More to Come

Further members of the Charnel Society, including Lord Morbius Grey, will be introduced as our story unfolds. Cornelia and her allies will make their debut in What the Ashes Conceal.