We ran our test scenario where the heroine wakes to hear the village being attacked by goblins and orcs. The orc chieftain is kidnapping the mayor's son while his warg and warband wait outside. Here's how it went.
Upon being driven awake by a commotion outside, our heroine leaps from her bed and tests her LUCK. Can she don her armor and gather her weapons before being intruded upon by those who are making the martial racket? With ease.
She stands beside the window of her upstairs room and looks across the window to see a gaggle of goblins smashing about and setting torch to thatched roof. Slowly she swings the window open and takes aim. With arrow loosed she reaches for another. The arrow finds its mark and the first goblin falls to his knees. One of the goblin's companions turns to pull him from out of the street in order to preserve a sword swinger for when the archer is found. Another arrow is launched and the second goblin falls victim. Goblin heads swivel to find the source of their woe but to no avail.
Not wanting to press her luck and get trapped in an upstairs loft the heroine dashes downstairs and out the back of the small inn. Where the innkeeper's family has gone is unknown. Reaching the opposite corner of the inn from where she could get a new perspective the ranger shoots another arrow and knocks down one of the goblins that was previously hit. This time for good. Around the building she dashes toward the center of the din and discovers the source.
Outside of the mayor's house a line of 3 orcs stand guard along with a giant warg. Screaming and sounds of battle from inside the house are be heard even over the sounds of the town being torn asunder.
Amazingly the ranger moves into position without being seen. An arrow is knocked, aimed, and launched toward the wickedest beast in view - the warg. She underestimates the distance of the shot. The arrow passes beneath the fel animal and passes through the skin of its far foreleg. With a furious growl that unnerves even the orcs, it leaps into the air like a bucking horse and spins midair. The moment its feet touch the ground it locks eyes with our heroine ranger.
In haste another arrow is fired but it too misses the mark sailing harmlessly into the hazy background.
As the ranger backpedals and draws her longsword the warg falls upon her. The beast grabs her by the armor but even so through its primal strength she feels her STAMINA wane. Then the orcs enter the fray. One of lesser experience would have met their doom in such a circumstance, outnumbered as she was.
As time ticks on the gargantuan wolf tears and rends while the orcs stumble without being able to achieve instant superiority. One of them falls from the point of the ranger's sword as the warg drives her back.
"Ah, he has driven me out of the fray and given me opportunity." she thinks. And she takes it.
Able to put distance between herself and her opponents she huddles amongst the fallen wares of a merchant shop and downs her liquid STAMINA. Refreshed, she climbs to the top of the shop to gain new vantage but realizes that her bow is still on the ground. Cursing her luck she redraws her sword and leaps down upon the now bloody warg. Midair the beast looks up and grabs her and once again throws her to the ground.
Now beyond angry - with a sense of serenity the ranger swings the sword again and again. Warg and orc alike fall to the steel that sings as it finds blood. Upon the last orc the point of the blade is only paused before it finds the thing's wretched heart. A roar erupts from the mayor's house.
A bloodied orc chieftain lumbers onto the covered porch and pauses for a moment in bewilderment. His retinue is gone and so is his mount. As he turns to run away with a young boy slung over his shoulder the heroine sprints in pursuit.
The chieftain attempts to use terrain; tree, rock, and grade to his advantage. Leaping over piles of field stone, around and under great limbs of tree in attempt to shake his pursuer but to no avail he finds himself in a hollow with no easy egress. He fears not because he knows that the human will not shoot while he carries a child. And he believes in his own strength.
Clawing his way up the steepest part of the hollow's sides he begins to put distance between himself and the ranger. The grade was steeper and higher than he thought and the battle inside the house took more out of him than he realized. Breathless he slips and drops the boy.
Absentmindedly the ranger reaches for her bow but it is still on the ground back at the village. With purposeful demeanor she strides forward and falls upon the greater orc with her sword.
With pain and weariness the chieftain turns to fend off the attack with a beautiful short sword obviously plundered from whom and where unknown. While his weapon is beautiful it gives no edge in the battle. He dies and tumbles down the slope of his doom.
Now all that is left here to do is to check for coin, collect the boy and return to the village...
Some notes:
I didn't have stats for a warg so I went with a snow wolf and tweaked from there. It worked very well. The stats for the chieftain too were winged. I just took an orc and put a few points into him. Voila!
The final chase scene was riffed using the chase rules from Spirit of the Century as inspiration. Excellent. More on that in a future post.
Also, we went with the roll-high option for unopposed tests with 15 being the target number instead of rolling SKILL or under.
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