INTRO
Dark forces stir in the mists of Albion. The local WHFB community has scraped together a cohort to play a year-long campaign using a modded version of the Blood in the Badlands rule set. More than a dozen players starting with 1k point armies are going to eventually (we hope) build to 6k+ mega matches by the final season.
Because of this, I have chosen to field Vampire Counts as this is the only army I can get past 6k points without using named characters and/or proxies (still some unit filler in the skellingtons though).
If unfamiliar with the Blood in the Badlands book, the premise is as follows. Each player creates 3 characters: 1 leader and 2 lieutenants. These characters can then pick fights with the other players, then roll on a chart to determine outcomes – bonuses for the winners such as a free magic item or an upgrade for a chosen unit, demerits for the loser e.g. your general has Stupidity next game.
A smaller campaign would use a map such as Mighty Empires to track battles and progress, but this is unfeasible for the number of participants so we will just be coming up with our own narrative for now and may use the map later down the track.
Here are the three characters I have chosen, with a bit of hastily and drunkenly scribbled backstory:
LEADER:
Vaszoly’s soul entered the world before men had two names. It left the world 28 years later, but Vaszoly remained – bested in a duel by a stranger who had impugned his honour, but not before Vaszoly’s blade grazed a drop of dark blood from the stranger’s cheek. For his mastery of the duel, he was ‘rewarded’ with a second chance. Having scoured the known world for his Promethean creator, Vaszoly the Blood Dragon hopes to find him hidden in the mists of Albion: does he wish to restore his honour or to meet his true death, or does he truly desire answers?…
1st LIEUTENANT: King Lwyd remembers he rode a chariot and sang songs in the valley. He remembers being buried in his eternal resting place with his horses, armour, and cupbearers – to drink with the gods in the land of the young. Thousands of years later what was left of his essence was wrested from these halls and returned to his wretched form in its boggy tomb to serve the will of Nagash. Freed from the control of the Great Betrayer, he wishes to resume his place among the kings of the barrows.
2nd LIEUTENANT: As a boy, Phineas Storch never cared for the daytime – preferring to lure moths through his window with candlelight only to impale them with pins and watch their futile struggles for life as he slowly plucked off their wings over the next few days. The jeers and jibes of the other lads slid from Phineas’ shoulders like rain on a leaf as he knew that someday he would see their names on headstones. The young prodigy was
forced to flee the Imperial College of Apothecaries and Physicians after the dormitory mascot was returned to life after 3 days in the ground by a technique Storch described as “elementary” (the element being the Wind of Shyish in this case). Although now a powerful Necromancer with nothing left to learn in the Old World, Storch is still spurned by his sinister peers for his snivelling superiority complex, and unwelcome at the annual Dark Kabal Ball. He travels to Albion with Vaszoly to seek knowledge (and perhaps acceptance) among the Dark Emissaries, servants of the Shadow.
With this cast of characters, I will be writing narrative pieces to accompany each Battle Report, to be posted in the coming months. I hope you will join us for Blood in Albion.
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