Spellbreakers at Realm's Edge - part 12. The campaign finale!

The Curse of Thelxinoe

Mogrum was subdued and quietly angry. Yesterday had not ended well: The ritual Mogrum attempted was interrupted and spoiled, the scrimshawed bone dissolved into dust as a storm of wild magic was unleashed from it. The crew were painfully aware of how dangerous he was at times like this so out of a sense of self-preservation they held their tongues for once.

A few hours before dawn the Cleavermaws found the wildly spinning Endless Spell Kaptain Mogrum had inadvertently created. Another two warbands had located it as well but the pirates were determined not to let anyone else harvest its energies.

Mogrum planned to destroy them with the very thing they pursued!

~ 🕱 ~

The Cleavermaws gathered in a low ruin. They were uncharacteristically quiet.

An abyssal Cerulean Sun of Shyish swirled and pulsed in the Duskhaven town square. Its dire rays stabbed out into the ruins around it, illuminating an open plaza with it's deathly light. 

The skeletal face that leered out from the broiling orb filled all who witness it with mortal terror.

The Hunters of Gloomfen huddled in a shattered house.

The Shadowflames approached the dire sphere, reinforced by a party of the otherworldly Shadowkin Stalkers.

Narlek Swiftblade, the first of the Shadowkin, stepped out of the darkness and mists of Ulgu and charged Bosun Higgs.

Another Shadowkin Stalker, Iyshak, appeared in a ruined building ahead of the pirates.

Shadowkin Stalker Bekliel tried to hold up the Hunters but he was swarmed and overwhelmed by them.

The Cleavermaws dealt with the Shadowkin (Harald smashed it with his cannon) and watched as the Shadowflames and Hunters fell upon one-another in the darkness.

Kaptain Mogrum seized control of the Cerulean Sun while the Aelves fought and sent it careening through the Aelves of both enemy warbands! A Khinerai of the Hunters was consumed by it.

Arrows darted out from both warbands...

Tark fell in a cloud of arrows.

Harald grunted his disapproval. He wanted to be the one to shoot the Slayers again!

The vicious close combat escalated. Laelanyel single-handedly killed two Hunter Reavers and a Witch Aelf.

And the terrifying aura of the Cerulean Sun took its toll.

Laelanyel the Mistweaver opened a Mirrorpool and fled from the Hunters.

But she appeared too close to the orruk sky-pirates and Mogrum charged her, with a few deckhands in tow. Kutlasses flashed in the gloom.

The short fight was frustrating for the Orruk Weirdnob Shaman pirate as the Mistweaver fell, not to wounds inflicted by his bladed totem-staff, but from the Hunters sorcery, placed upon her earlier in the battle!

The pirate orruks looked on in satisfaction as the Aelven warbands disappeared into the shadows, leaving them in possession of Duskhaven. They could capture the Cerulean Sun in the Dead Man'd Chest at their leisure.

This expedition had started badly but it had turned out to be quite profitable. They only needed to meet up with those merchants who had promised to buy the spell-energy once it was captured and bound into Realmstone in the Dead Man's Chest...

~ 🕱 ~

This was "Dangerous Hunt", a Skirmish Battleplan from White Dwarf (January 2019) with the "Dead of Night" Open War twist card added. Every time we rolled to see if the night lifted the dice failed us, so it stayed pitch-dark for the whole battle, with just 12" visibility for ranged attacks and spells!

The only way to score Victory Points in this Battleplan is with casualties caused by the Endless Spell. As luck would have it, I got to go last in the first battle-round, control of the spell fell to me. So I smashed it through both enemy bands! Happily (for me!) the deaths caused by that were the only ones from the spell as no one else managed to take control of the Cerulean Sun of Shyish! The rest of the game for me was just a matter of making something exciting happen for the sake of the story. I could have just stood back and watched the Aelves kill each other but we wanted Mogrum and Laelanyel to have a final showdown.

~ 🕱 ~

So that wraps up the Spellbreakers at Realm's Edge campaign! It was a lot of fun for such a simple narrative idea: Bounty hunting wizards!

Back in May we read this snippet in the Endless Spells Rules Preview on the Warhammer Community blog, and it caught our imagination immediately:

Endless spells are one of the unforeseen consequences of Nagash’s machinations in Shyish. Where previously spells would dissipate naturally, many now take on a life of their own, roaming the realms and accumulating power almost indefinitely. Some wizards in the Mortal Realms have even taken up work as bounty hunters, tracking them down and dispelling them, while certain examples are as notorious as any dragon or beast that lives in the woods, like the legendary Phantom Blade that cleaves through Ulgu.

Our next campaign will be a return to Tor Megiddo but we will inevitably be back in the Mortal Realms fairly soon after that.