Resuming our ASOBH campaign, our intrepid adventurers faced random encounter with an Black Ork warband. A bit more than the old ‘toll booth shakedown’, these orks were perfectly content to take heads for their belts as silver for their coin bags.
As far as encounters go, this was a straight up brawl. The clerics kept on the straight and narrow, aiming for the gate while the elves and hired ranger advanced through the wooded hills on the right.
Not ones to be shy, the Orks surged to meet them bellowing war cries, bashing their weapons together.
Combat turned into a rugby scrum in the open ground in front of the gate. The adventurers drew first blood, with Norbert the Novice bashing an ork brute to the dirt near the way stone. In fact, it seemed our heroes would carry the day as the orks were consistently sluggish in their combat and movement. Two more orks went down – one to grizzled cleric Lazarus Sturn, the other to the hired ranger’s sword. (earning his pay, that guy.) Even the massive Ork war boss was beaten back as he attacked the exiles. It looked like a black day for the greenskins, except…
Thing about orks is they’re tougher – and stupider – than a wagon full of rocks. They just don’t know when to stay down. And they didn’t.
The brutes from the old fortification finally got into the fight and the raw power of ork muscle began to tell. The ork warriors engaged the clerics, driving them back. In the woods, the huge War Boss just wouldn’t die. Beaten back, knocked down repeatedly, he got up again and again. He kept coming, swinging that massive ax like a harvester trying to beat the rain.
Through brute strength and stubbornness, the tide turned. First Norbert went down, bashed by an ax. Then the War Boss scored a gruesome kill on the pesky Ranger. Lazarus Sturn was felled next, fighting two brutes. The elf rogue dashed in to engage the War Boss as it lumbered toward the elf spell caster. A vicious dance ensued but in the end, the rogue’s speed and cunning was no match for raw orkish rage and savagery.
The last turn saw both the head cleric and the elf caster fleeing the board with the orks braying crude insults at their backs.
The adventurers will definitely need time to recover before continuing their quest to find the Lich King’s Crypt.
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