Summon the Pages
Eger, ever the careful planner, spent the next several days figuring out the best way to approach Moorham. He knew in his whiskers that great treasure awaited him in the ruins. Especially after he heard rumors of others searching for something too inside the old town. But he wanted to be ready for anything.
Bagoly was getting inpatient too. He knew for a fact that magic lingered under the broken buildings. He found some of the evidence himself earlier. And his Pages, as he liked to call them, were living, well sort of living, proof of it.
There was an energy in Bagoly’s study, an energy that made everyone feel on edge. Even the otter couple on the ground floor began loudly arguing with each other lately. Something had to be done.
“Something has to be done,” Bagoly said when Eger returned from another of his scouting missions. “We can’t keep not doing anything forever.”
“Don’t confuse me with your fancy words, bird,” Eger replied. “But I agree. Something will be done.”
“Good,” Bagoly said and shut his book, which he took from Moorham, closed. The Pages vanished into thin air. “I’m ready to go.”
“But not to Moorham yet. I have something to show you first.”
“Of course.” Bagoly forced on his most disapproving look and then sighed. “Let’s go.”
There’s no winning with some animals.
“What’s this?” Bagoly asked in the middle of the clearing.
They walked for hours only for Eger to lead him deep into the forest and to a small clearing. Someone set up some targets for archery practice at one end. There were also two sleeping bags at the other end of the clearing.
“This,” Eger said, his arms spread wide, “is our new home.”
“Excuse me? I have a perfectly good home.”
“It’s too small.”
“Too small for a mouse and a small bird?” Bagoly’s eye brows raised.
“It’s too expensive.”
“Not that you contributed anything to the rent.”
“It’s also too far from Moorham.”
“Okay, I concede that point.”
“See, this one is perfect,” Eger said with a wide smile on his face. “I even borrowed a box you can use as a shelf for your books.”
“And if it rains?” Bagoly asked, still annoyed.
“We will figure something out.”
Bagoly had to admit, he slept better under the stars, than he ever did in the last year. He woke with a clear head just as the sun began to rise behind the trees. Eger was already awake, dressed for their first foray into Moorham.
“What are you waiting for?” Eger asked. “Summon the Pages.”
Bagoly did.
Then the odd band walked into the trees, towards the old ruins of Moorham. Some were looking for treasure, some for power, some for their old lives back. Instead they all found trouble…
Reservations
Brund grows increasingly uneasy, watching Fennel slip into Moorham again and again, her fingers brushing the shard as if it alone can soothe her restless pull. He worries not only for her safety amid crumbling walls and opportunistic rogues, but for the consequences of lingering where the ruins themselves seem alive, bending the will of those who venture too close. Moorham, in all its ruin and quiet menace, has become more than a rogues playground: it is a lure, a place where curiosity and danger coil together—and the Scoundrels, along with Fennel, cannot seem to leave it behind.
Ambushed
Brund saw red.
He had warned Fennel—twice, plainly, and with all the patience he could muster—not to linger in Moorham’s rubble and disquiet. The place was wrong. The air pressed close. And now shapes were moving where they ought not to be. Unfriendlies. Closing in.
With a growl low in his chest, Brund hauled himself up the side of a half-collapsed ruin, rotten beams creaking under his weight. From the higher vantage he spotted her: a bow-armed squirrel perched amid shattered masonry, tail flicking, calling orders between shots. Arrows snapped against stone and armour with sharp, mocking cracks. Brund drew a deep breath and let out a piercing whistle that cut across the din. If the Frankish mice were anywhere nearby, they would hear that.
He dropped back down, boots splintering a rotten stair. “Stay ’ere!” he barked at Fennel, not waiting for argument. Then he charged.
Through the churn of dust and splintered timber he saw Pippin and the mice already upon the squirrel, blades flashing. They had her cornered. Blow after blow landed. She staggered. Brund grinned—
—and then blinked.
The wounds were… gone. The blood vanished. The squirrel straightened as if freshly roused. To his left, a small bird shrieked, a thin desperate cheep. Brund turned in time to see it falter mid-air, fresh cuts opening along its wings and breast.
His hackles rose. “Foul magics,” he hissed.
He swiped for the bird, but it darted upward, scattering droplets of red as it fled. Brund lumbered after it for three strides before sense returned; the squirrel was still there, still dangerous. He wheeled back just as the trio crashed into her again with renewed fury. This time there was no miracle. Steel rang, wood cracked, and she went down hard into the dust.
“Good lads,” Brund muttered, already pushing past them in pursuit of the bird-mage. It fluttered low now, weakened, and Brund needed only a final rush to bring it down. The thing fell still beneath his paw.
He turned back to rejoin the fray—
—and found it finished.
The other crew had melted into Moorham’s rubble and reeds as swiftly as they had come. Smoke drifted lazily between blackened walls. Only their own remained.
Jacque de Tunnel stood ahead, swaying slightly. An arrow jutted from his armour, but it was not the wound that hollowed his face. He looked up at Brund, eyes wide.
“Zey ‘av zee Baron,” Jacque said, his Northymbran fractured and breathless. “Ee woz dragged away!”
Brund’s stomach dropped. He followed the trembling direction of Jacque’s paw—toward a tangle of fallen stone and marsh mist. Nothing moved there now. Nothing at all.
He really hated Moorham.
Power
Eger’s eyes sprung open. Then the pain on his head made him close them again.
“What happened?” he croaked. There was no reply.
From somewhere not too far away, he heard unrecognized groans. He smelled a rat, the same one he remembered fighting in the ruins of the old town. The one in the red hat.
Some of the memories of the fight began to come back then. Being outnumbered, stuck out in the open, a huge figure approaching with unnatural speed. Then everything going black just as sharp pain struck his right ear.
Before that he remembered being confident that they got the jump on the others. Those others looked like they knew Moorham quite well. They could have been a good target to ask some questions and maybe even get some answers from. It really seemed like a good plan at the time. Now it all sounded overconfident, stupid, unnecessary.
The smile of the rat in the red hat was the last thing Eger remembered before passing out again.
“He doesn’t look good,” Bagoly said to the small group around him. Obviously he didn’t expect any answers, but he still felt uneasy about the silence that followed.
Eger was laying down on one of the bed rolls of the clearing. He was badly hurt from the last cut of the rat’s sword. Bagoly was confident that Eger wouldn’t die, but he didn’t know how well he would fight after all this. Losing an ear might be too much to overcome.
Their small group ended the evening at the clearing, too tired to head back to his study. He needed all the help from the Pages he could get to make it out of Moorham. Especially with their prisoner in tow. The rat refused to speak any language they tried. Either refused or he genuinely didn’t understand them at all. Bagoly found it hard to tell.
The next morning Bagoly found Eger’s eyes open and the mouse staring up at the clear blue sky.
“At least it hasn’t rained yet,” he said. Bagoly smiled in response.
Eger took a moment to gather his strength and take a sip from the cup Bagoly offered.
“How did they now follow us here?” he asked.
“To be honest, we got lucky,” Bagoly replied. “Hollo found an old cellar, and the Pages managed to pull you and the other in there.”
“The other?” Eger asked.
“Yes. That’s a whole bad news and good news situation.”
“I have time to listen.”
“After both you and me were knocked out, Cinci overpowered that red hatted rat, and managed to tie him up somehow.”
“Is that the bad news or the good news?”
“The good. Unfortunately he speaks no languages we tried, or he’s very good at pretending not to speak them,” Bagoly said.
“He’s Frankish then?”
“That’s the bad news.” And with that Bagoly got into the story of how they escaped Moorham without dying.
When Bagoly opened his eyes, he was still inside Moorham’s ruins, the fighting still going on around him. The first thing he saw was Hollo’s head stuck out from under some rubble. Bagoly couldn’t even fly there, his wings were badly hurting. Instead he limped over the battlefield, hiding behind the rubble and whatever he could find to stay out of reach of those others.
When he got to the hole in the ground where Hollo was, Cinci and Beka were already there. Cinci was dragging an unconscious rat behind him. A red hat somehow sticking to the head of the rodent even as he was pulled through the cobblestone of Moorham. He looked ridiculous. Now Cinci, Beka, and Hollo were wordlessly working together to pull the rat underground. Bagoly tried to help them as much as could. It wasn’t much.
Once the five of them were underground, Bagoly laid eyes on Eger’s unconscious body. The band leader was badly hurt, blood was flowing from a bad cut on his head. Bagoly managed to make some bandages to bind the wound.
Only after that did Bagoly look around. They were in a dark room, clearly an old cellar that has seen better days. The staircase was only a pile of rubble now, and the only way he could see to the surface was the hole they climbed through. The noises from the surface were getting closer as the other band looked for their prey, and their fallen member.
Bagoly heard some water trickling behind one of the walls. Hollo followed Bagoly’s gaze, and squeezed his paper thin body through a crack in the wall. A few minutes later, he broke through from the other side.
“How did you do that?” Bagoly asked.
Hollo shrugged.
Behind the Page, a narrow tunnel led deeper into the darkness. Wordlessly, Hollo and Beka picked up Eger, and started carrying him into the tunnel.
“What are you doing?” Bagoly asked. He got no reply.
Cinci began dragging the rat with him.
“Let me help with that.”
The tunnel went on for miles, it seemed. Yet, somehow the Pages knew their way through all the junctions and dead ends. After a while it became clear that the tunnels were part of some ancient mine.
Bagoly kept walking, every step sending new pain into his legs.
“That’s when the really good news happened,” Bagoly said to Eger.
“Wait, you never told me about any really good news,” Eger replied.
“It felt more dramatic that way.” He shrugged. “Wait here, I’ll be back in a minute.”
Bagoly walked away from Eger and returned a few moments later with something wrapped in a piece of cloth.
“What’s that?” Eger asked.
“Power,” Bagoly replied as he uncovered an ancient tome. It radiated with magical energy.
Game 4 of our Burrows & Badgers 2nd Ed campaign had Aaron, Vincent and myself in a fight over an abandoned farmstead. Whatever Corvitz had seized in Moorham, had a lure. It drew the other warbands to where the Raven had hidden the item, hoping to return to it and study it without the prying eyes of his fellow warband members. The main action happened when Ser Bruin charged Gardallach, ignoring completely Baron Étienne-Lucien de Fromagecourt-sur-Ébrelle, much to the mouses chagrin. The mouse proved a strong little combatant, wounding Ser Bruin before Gardallach took him out, though the Baron will doubtless forget that assistance in the retelling. Brund also had a clash with Duncan, again the Baron charging in, this time the little mouse dispatching the Albian squirrel!
During post game most of my crew got advances. Fennel: Parry; Brund: Enduring; Pippin: Concealment D8; Gardallach: Beguile; Drimbel: Ranged D8; Baron: Move D8. A beguiling fox is pretty cool. Dimbel is turning into quite the archer too.
The Pages of Tome also had some advances: Hollo led most of the band to wander far away and they found an Abandoned Mine. Inside there were a lot of Pennies, Materials, and a Magical Item (Tome of All Knowing). This artefact could play an interesting role in the unfolding campaign. Otherwise:
- Eger and Bagoly both went OOA.
- Eger got his right ear cut off (Sinus Damage -1 Awereness level)
- Bagoly only got a minor injury after getting badly beaten up (Stunned for the next game)
- Cinci advanced and gained a new Strength Skill (Berserker)
In post game stuff I found another warband member… another Frankish mouse, Jacque de Tunnel. He’s lowborn, but at least can translate between The Northymbran dialect and Frankish… more than Baron Étienne-Lucien de Fromagecourt-sur-Ébrelle can do!
Until next time,
Owen