Event write-up: A Crown of Salt and Shadow

Last weekend I went to an AoS-28 narrative event run for the Rollmodels community, A Crown of Salt and Shadow. I had a blast, so I'm going to run through what I got up to and talk a bit about what made it a good event.

The setting

The event was set in Shyish, on the Isles of Munsalvesch. Queen Roswitha, the ruler of the Isles, was dying after a reign that had lasted for as long as anyone could remember. Various factions stood to profit or fall by her death, including merchant houses, the folk of the isles, the forces of law and order, and the long dead, possible mythical king of the pale salt mist.

'In a lost corner of the Dwindlesea, the Isles of Munsalvesch rise above the waves. Clinging to

the rocks, the flotsam and the bones of those who came before, folk have made lives here for

generations.'

Essentially it was a small, fairly self-contained part of Shyish where events could play out without needing to worry about the bigger picture of AoS, though there was lots of scope for players to reference the wider AoS world when designing their warbands. 

Some perfectly normal citizens of the Isles

How it worked

Each player brought a small warband, exactly how many fighters depended how you statted them but roughly 5-15 fighters, with a mix of heroes and hirelings. The ruleset was loosely based on Necromunda but with some changes to focus it more on melee. Each player also got to pick a few special abilities that were unique to their warband, for extra flavour.

We played 5 games over the course of the weekend, some three player and some two player games. In most of the games we were trying to complete contracts, narrative missions that we chose to try to undertake for one of the six factions that underpinned the narrative. Completing contracts benefitted the faction you were doing the contract for, while failing a contract harmed them. Warbands could also gain or lose favour with factions depending on their actions, which affected which contracts they were able to take on. The contract system meant that you weren't necessarily directly opposing your opponent's warband in  a game, though often there were incentives to do so. Many games also included NPCs, which either played a narrative role or were there to offer additional threat or target opportunities. The NPCs had a loose AI system to dictate their actions, but sometimes the event runners would act as game masters and control the NPC movement.

I couldn't find a good photo for this section so here is a placeholder pirate grot.

My warband

My warband were the Gulls, a gang made up of shipwrecked wretches who had washed ashore half-dead on the beaches of Illanmaster (the largest island), and been coerced into joining the gang on pain of death. The gang leader, Brock, was a huge ogor who was once a slave bodyguard to a powerful wizard, but escaped slavery when his master's ship was wrecked near the Isles. Brock's mission in life was to recover a treasure his master had been carrying when he drowned, and the gang were just his tools to help him do that.

I used a good chunk of my warband points to make Brock about as powerful as the rules allowed, which meant that most of the rest of the warband were pretty average. Brock's second in command I made into a wizard, and gave him the ability to empower the feathers that my warband carried to allow them to fly for short periods. 

I'm going to run through the games I played, and cover the narrative that developed and my experience of playing each game.

Game 1: Captain Soulbright's treasure

Narrative

Brock looked at the contract he'd committed the gang too. 'The wreck matches the description! The signs all point to the place! Get in there, and bring the jewel to me!' It had been offered to him by a trader from Illanmaster, but he didn't care about that - this could finally be a clue to the location of the jewel he'd been searching for for years, ever since he'd first come to the Isles. He was going to find that jewel, and when he did there was no way he was going to give it away to some trader.

Brock

The game

I think it was probably complete coincidence that one of the first set of contracts we were offered played so well into my warband's background narrative, but I felt that I couldn't really pass it up! We set up a table to look like a city dock with a wrecked ship that would hold my objective. There were two other warbands on the same table: a skaven crew who it turned out were trying to blow up the shipwreck, and a gang of slug people who were looking for a mysterious book.

The terrain for the event was incredible. This was the board I played on for game 1

Because it was the first game we were all a little bit tentative about getting into too much of a fight, so for the most part we were pretty focused on trying to complete our objectives while staying out of too much trouble. One of my scouts did get beaten up by the skaven early on though, when he got too close and got a good look at what they were doing. I was very focused though on getting the treasure out, so I gave Brock the ability to fly and he flew over to the boat and located the treasure pretty quickly. At this point a spanner was thrown in the works when the slug wizard decided to try out one of their abilities, which turned out to have a huge range and made everyone near (or even not too near) them attempt to hurl themselves into the water. This was not great news for a big heavy ogor on a boat, but fortunately he didn't quite make it into the water, unlike a number of the other fighters on the table who went for a brief swim. 

After that I was in full on 'leg it before something bad happens' mode, and we made out with all my remaining fighters intact, while behind us the skaven blew the shipwreck into smithereens.

The skaven and slug people come to blows (the slug person only looks like a ghost from this angle, they were very sluglike when seen from the front!)

I chatted to the event runners and explained that since the contract tied in with my warband background I wanted to keep the gem for myself rather than fulfilling the contract, and they very kindly obliged me, and gave me a relic (an in-game item) to represent the jewel as well as a new contract, which was called something like 'feed the bone whales'. I decided to interpret this as the jewel whispering to Brock and tempting him to undertake dark deeds.

Game 2: are we the bad guys?

Narrative

Brock gazed down from the jetty into the cold, dark waters below. The chattering crowd bustled past him, but he paid them no heed. His thoughts were with the bone whales off in the mists, with the tentacled beasts that lurked beneath the mud flats, with a power he could not name but knew was there, somewhere beyond the waters. He was intensely aware of the jewel in his inside pocket, fancied he could feel the chill coming off it, could even hear it whispering to him. There were too many people around him, too much life. And the jewel didn't like that.

The game

This game was a whole lot of fun, and probably my overall highlight of the event. The contract I'd acquired as a result of my actions from game 1 required me to push four enemy fighters or NPCs into the water and then have them be eaten by beasts from the deep. I was very invested in completing this to advance my narrative, so when I was looking for a second contract I tried to find something else that would work with it pretty well. What I found was one about bringing relics to a priest to help them carry out a rite to rename a ship. It specified that a small crowd of NPCs would gather to watch the ship being launched. This sounded perfect, as a small crowd of NPCs on a jetty should give me ample opportunity to push them into the water!

Just a normal day on Illanmaster, absolutely nothing bad is about to happen here

This was another three player game, with the other warbands being a gang of zombies who were looking to kill people to attract a sinister mist while also blowing up a warehouse; and some mercenary orruks who were trying to fish something (possibly a corpse?) out of the harbour, and also escort a nobleman to a ship. We also had a whole host of NPCs including a priest, a handful of the city watch, and a load of random citizens of Illanmaster. It was a fully GMed game, and the game master did a fantastic job of controlling the NPCs to promote the narrative.

The game started with all the NPCs having a delightful time watching the ship ceremony. I wanted to get into a good position before starting a fight, so two of my warband headed for the ship carrying the relics they were meant to be delivering to the priest. In the meantime, the orruks immediately succeeded in fishing the corpse (or whatever it was) they were looking for out of the harbour. This of course meant that an orruk was very near the edge of the quay, so, spotting an opportunity to get a quick score, I immediately tried to charge him with Brock. Sadly, Brock rolled a one and didn't make it into the fight. I decided that he would shout an accusation that the orruks were despoiling the dead, in an attempt to avoid everyone turning on him.

At roughly this point several things happened: the other orruks started (not unreasonably) shooting at Brock, but fortunately his high toughness saved him from taking any damage. The orruk captain turned out to have acquired a marshal's badge from his earlier game, so he was able to convince the crowd that he was on the side of the law. However, probably fortunately for me, the entire city watch was then distracted by the appearance of a horde of terrifying zombies from the shadows on the other side of the table.

The zombie warband provided an excellent distraction

Even at this point, things didn't get totally out of control. My minions delivered their relics successfully to the priest, and he withdrew onto the ship to carry out his rite. The orruks shot at Brock a bit more but didn't hurt him, and eventually gave up once he stopped threatening them. The zombie assault continued, but the zombies also rolled some ones to charge, so the watch were doing quite a good job of keeping them at bay. I did manage to shove one poor citizen who made the mistake of standing behind a pillar into the water without anyone noticing, and she was promptly eaten by a tentacle beast.

However, with the relics delivered it was becoming increasingly hard to keep up the pretence of not being the bad guys, and I still needed to feed three more people to the beasts from the depths, so at this point I gave up on subtlety and just charged everyone at the nearest NPCs. Chaos predictably ensued - lots of people fell in the water, though some annoyingly got out again. The zombies dispatched most of the watch, the crowd scattered in all directions, a horrible glowing mist rolled onto the board from the sea end, and the orruks very efficiently ignored the chaos, completed their escort mission, and got out of there.

The orruks were very professional and focused on getting the job done

Eventually my warband and the zombies met in the middle of an increasingly depleted board. We had a brief scrap, and I think one fighter from each side got taken down, but I had met my quota of bodies thrown into the water, and the ship had been launched, so there wasn't much reason to stick around. As we were leaving the scene, the zombies succeeded in blowing up a warehouse, and everyone near it took a bunch of damage and then staggered away.

This zombie spent the whole game on a lovely boat ride to blow up this warehouse

This was all immensely fun - we were playing very narratively with a lot of back and forth and trying to convince the NPCs that we were on their side, and it hit just the right level of silly vs thematic. We had an amazing terrain set up, and the NPC models were great, and it just all really came together.

These four unfortunate NPCs were fed to the bonewhales to complete my contract

Game 3: even death cultists need to eat

Narrative

Laz regarded their boss with frustration. 'We've been sitting around for days, it's time we went out and earned some sigils'. But Brock only grunted, his attention fully focused on the black gem in his hand. Laz shrugged and went out. If Brock wasn't going to take care of things, they would. They rounded up a few of the gang and headed out to earn their keep.

This is Laz, Brock's 2nd in command. My narrative ended up focusing almost entirely on Brock, so I didn't really develop Laz's story much, but I did get this cool photo of them.

The game

After the excitement of the last game, this one was a bit of an anti climax to be honest. We were getting towards the end of the day, so we played a round of two player games to squeeze some extra contracts in. I ended up choosing one of the more mundane contracts, which was about gathering food from piles of weeds spread around the board. Every time I searched a pile of weeds I had a chance of finding some food, but also a chance of disturbing some kind of horrible gribbly. My opponents for the round were a gang of skeletons, who had been busy dispelling stereotypes of evil undead by performing heroic deeds to protect the folk of the isles from all sorts of horrors.

A skeletal man of the people

I was pretty hot and tired at this point, and I think my opponent was in a similar frame of mind, which was probably a factor in us failing to conjure up much of a narrative context for this game. I wanted to use some of my fighters who hadn't got table time yet, so I left Brock on the bench for this game, and that also detracted a bit from my narrative as well as significantly reducing my warband's ability to actually hurt anything.

I started poking at piles of weeds, but rolled very badly and found more monsters than food, so my warband was on the back foot from the start running away from things that without Brock they were struggling to take down. My opponent had much better luck and completed his mission very early on, and it became pretty clear that I was never going to complete mine, so I was mainly focused on damage control and trying to get out of there without taking too many injuries. I think I ended up with a couple of my fighters getting taken down, but it could have been worse.

A moody skeleton

Game 4: the death zone

Narrative

There would be bloodshed. Brock could barely see the capering figures of the opposing gang through the dank fog that surrounded the boat, but he could sense that they were driven by the same forces as he was, to bring blood and death to these isles. Blood and death would draw the mists, and through the mists the king would rise again.

The game

This was the first game of the Sunday of the event, and it was another two player game as we wanted to leave plenty of time for a big game in the afternoon to wrap things up. The narrative of the event had progressed a bit: the folk of the isles were staging a revolt against their oppression, while the queen was attempting a ritual to regenerate herself and stave off death. My warband, however, were pretty committed at this stage to the queen's opposing faction, the king of the pale salt mists. My opponent for this game was also very much on the side of the king, and our respective contracts reflected that - he had to set up traps and lure my warband into them to their death, while I had to get his fighters consumed by a vicious mist that drafted around the table and was drawn towards blood. The board we were playing on had a big boat set up in the middle, so we decided that our fighters would be drawn towards that by the promise of blood, and we'd see where things went from there.

It ended up being a very quick game, which was great as far as I was concerned, because it gave me a chance to have a decent break and take some photographs before we got into the big final game. We all rushed towards the middle, but his fighters were faster than mine so he was able to fill the boat with traps before I got there. I'd brought my least competent fighter along as he was the only one I hadn't used in a game yet, so Brock ordered him to go first onto the boat and clear out the traps. He did manage to do this, but he was left on one wound. I then had a chance to charge in with Brock, but he whiffed his charge and didn't manage to engage (this became a bit of a theme over the weekend). The mist then swirled over the boat, doing a whole bunch of wounds all round, but only actually taking out my fighter who'd been left on one wound. My contract was for the mist to kill more of the enemy than of my warband, so this was starting to look a bit tricky. The enemy then threw a load more traps at me and ran away, and I wasn't able to get to them in time to prevent their escape. So I failed the contract, but it was a fun game, and since we were both fighting for the King anyway I was pretty happy that my opponent had completed his mission.

I failed to take any photos of my game 4, so here's a random shot from another game. I have no idea what was going on here but it looks amazing.

Game 5: the king of the pale salt mist

Narrative

Brock splashed through the shallow waters, blood oozing down his torso from numerous wounds. His master's will was clear: kill all who stood in the way. As a tentacled creature lunged for him out of the shallows, he grabbed one of the gang members who ran beside him and stuffed her into its maw, no longer caring about his gang or even able to tell friend from foe. The mists were coming in.

The game

For the final round of games we were playing out two main narratives. The folk of the isles were in full blown revolution against the marshals, burning Illanmaster to the ground, and trying to prevent the nobility from escaping the doomed city. Queen Roswitha had almost completed her resurrection rite, but her rival, the mythical king of the pale salt mists, was rapidly gaining power. The way this was handled was that each player was assigned to one of four factions: queen, king, folk, or marshals based on their actions during the event so far. There were two big tables: one focused on the queen vs king conflict and one on folk vs marshals. On each table, there were two three player games, with one player from each of the opposing factions on the table and one 'chaos' player from one of the other factions. During the game we were trying to hold objective points to score points for whichever faction we represented. This worked out really well, I don't know to what extent this was planned from the start or whether the event team came up with it on the spur of the moment, but it made for a really fun set of final games. Both boards looked amazing: there was a cityscape for the folk vs marshals game, and a watery table with boats and islands for the other game.

Part of one of the gaming tables for the final game of the event. The central area was used as a very thematic time tracker, with the queen getting closer to the king as the game progressed.

My warband were on the side of the king, and I played on one half of the queen vs king table, against a warband of crabs and various other little gribblies (supporting the queen), and a warband of hardy sailors (supporting the marshals). The game was hard fought and very fun: with no contracts to complete we were full on opposing each other for control of objectives, so there was a lot of fighting.

One of my opponents in the final game had a warband of weird gribblies that included this crab mini

Brock got his fight on and started actually making charges, so much of the game for me was him rampaging about. He started off with a big fight against one of my opponents' biggest heroes, who immediately ate a load of mushrooms to give himself a lot of extra attacks, at which point I was very much fearing for Brock. However, the dice luck was on his side, and he emerged triumphant. From there he fought his way through a few smaller fighters towards the middle of the board. In the meantime my other fighters were grabbing objectives and getting into a few scraps, though we struggled against the sailors who were a bit too tough for most of our weapons to do much. We were doing ok though, I got lucky in that the other two warbands were fighting each other quite a lot, and in fact the queen's faction were unfortunately taken out of the game quite early, which left only two of us competing for objectives. As we reached the last round of the game, Brock was down to one wound after a lot of fights, and was desperately trying to fend off a tentacle monster on one of the objectives. I thought that this could be quite a fitting end for him, but he did just about survive.

It turned out that we and the other warbands fighting for the king had done just enough, and he narrowly triumphed over the queen. On the other table the folk had been beaten back and killed, and all hope on the isles was extinguished as they fell into chaos and death. And a good time was had by all!

Brock trudged on, into the mists. His gang were gone, whether fled or drowned or killed he didn't know. The black jewel fell from his hand and sank into the mud. He didn't need it any more. He could feel the power calling him from within the mists, and nothing else mattered. His strength was failing, ebbing away as the mists swirled round him. There was the mists and the salt and the pain, and there was death, and that was all that there was.

I feel like this photo is a good summary of the state we left the Isles in

What made it a fun event?

Apart from the specific narrative and gaming moments I've tried to bring out above, the things that made it a fun event for me included:

• The terrain. There was a load of terrain, and it meant that rather than use the same boards for every round, the event team were able to create new thematic boards each round depending on the narrative context. 
• The NPC minis. The player warbands were varied and really cool, but there were also a lot of spare minis that were used to represent monsters and NPC characters. Some of these had been converted specifically for the event, but mostly they were just things that people had in their collections. The potential to include NPC minis in scenarios, whether as townsfolk, militia, nobles, wandering monsters or specific characters required by the narrative broadened out the narrative potential a lot, and meant that the game runners had scope to introduce different levels of threat to a scenario without relying on the players to fight each other.

The range of spare minis to use as NPCs and monsters was huge and really added to the narrative.

• The contract system. I've hopefully given a flavour of what this was like with my game reports above, but the flexibility to choose which contract to take and thus set the narrative context for each mission and also influence your warband's alignment with the different factions worked really well for me.
• The grim-dark flavour of the event narrative, and how thematic it all felt. There had clearly been a lot of thought put into this, and things like the art that was used in the event pack and on the contract cards, and flavour text and lore included in the event pack helped to convey the theme and setting and inspire players to put their own spin on it when creating their warbands.
• The other players. Everyone I played against really entered into the narrative spirit of the event, and I didn't get the impression that anyone had tried to min-max their warband stats or was invested in winning at the expense of advancing the narrative in interesting ways.

The event pack and various info sheets used on the day all helped to get across the background lore and grim-dark theme.

I think my main regret from the event was that I never played on a cityscape board, as there was some very cool city terrain that I didn't get to use. But that was entirely on me, as I entirely selected contracts that made more sense to play out on the docks or an island setting.

The boat themed terrain was great too.

This has got very long, so I'm going to leave it there! But it was a very fun time, and a great start to my summer of narrative events.