Into the twisted and swampy forest known as the Gnarls. The nothern part of Cygnar on the way to Five Fingers is densely overgrown and sparsely populated. Make sure you are stocked up before you enter, and that you double the night watch! Rough travel through a thickly overgrown forest track. It’s a fairly travelled road, but bad weather sets in, and its fairly miserable. It gets worse when a posse of Gatormen show up. The Gatormen are willing to be reasonable: Leave both cart horses, and the Gators will let the party run away. We didn’t really expect them to accept the offer, though.
The adventure started with a few natural encounters, not really combats, just things that the Players had to deal with as part of rough travel. Overgrown trails, fallen trees, that sort of thing. A few of them, so they had fallen into a bit of a routine when the real encounter happened. After the earlier simple incidents, the washed-out trail was just another “normal” occurence. This meant that the party was not as organized as usual when the encounter began. In fact, they had split themselves in half, on either side of the river. This allowed the Gators to swarm up between them and keep them apart. This was critical, as it meant half of the party was outside of the area of things like Aura of Protection, Intellectual Leadership bonuses, etc.
In converting the Gatormen from Hordes, I did simplify them a little bit. No Prayers, for example, and the Witch Doctor uses the Beastmaster ability to control the Wrastler as a lesser-Warlock. It was a tough fight, which is what I wanted. The party absolutely butchers normal mooks, so rather than dozens of little guys, I wanted fewer, tougher bad guys. This also meant that people found themselves short of Feat Points, and the Players with lower POW weapons really needed hot dice to be effective. It was good to mix things up, but I will not be doing all-heavy forces of bad guys too often, as it can be frustrating for those low-POW combatants.
Right now, Firstmate Fallingblood is rounding the cape of Cygnar, headed towards the Five Fingers area. If the party isn’t slowed down, they should have a couple of days in advance of Fallingblood’s arrival.
Cast of Non-Player Characters
Gatorman Posse:
SPD:5 STR:8 MAT:7 DEF:12 ARM:16(18 when engaged) WIL:9
Hits: 8
Weapon: Reach, PS:13
Fearless, Amphibious, +2″ move when charging living model
Gatorman Witch Doctor:
SPD:5 STR:7 MAT:6 DEF:13 ARM:16 WIL:10
Full Life Spiral: P7 A6 I5
Weapon: Sacrifical Blade, Magic PS:11
Fearless, Amphibious, Beast Master
Once per turn:
* Zombify: dead Gatorman becomes Zombie Gatorman
* Sacrificial Strike: remove one friendly warrior model within 1″ from play. Target within 10″ and LoS takes damage roll where POW is equal to sacrificed model’s ARM
Blackhide Wrastler:
SPD:5 STR:12 MAT:6 DEF:12 ARM:19
Full Life Spiral: P14 A9 I5
Amphibious, Fearless
Wrastler: full DEF and combat abilities when knocked down.
*Death Roll: Bite attack, knocks down both target and Wrastler, does boosted damage, POW 17(!)
*Rise (animus): may immediately stand up with no penalty
Zombie Gatorman:
SPD:5 STR:7 MAT:7 DEF:11 ARM:16
Hits: 6
Weapon: Reach, PS:12
Map
The Gators deploy in the Deep Water while the Players work on crossing the gap.
