Sounds like a cool setting idea.  

 

Sounds great!  Make sure you do something epic BEFORE they stick your lifeless corpse under a giant mound! 

Alison ran her first sword and sorcery game ever yesterday – ‘Goth’.
 
Above I posted about my PC. The game starts with Safrax returning to the settlement of his adopted clan, the Barenstark Clan of Goths, after some months raiding the Roman provinces of Asia Minor. (The nominal date is AD 210, but this is a pulp S&S game setting, so Alison doesn’t feel tied to real history.) The clan have been in this settlement for the last few years (it’s somewhere in modern day Moldova) and the men have returned for the harvest.
 
After reacquainting himself with his wife Amalfrida, and his children – son Guntheric (8) and daughters Helchen (7) and Sunigilda (5); Safrax spends the next few days bringing in the harvest. The Reik (chieftain of the Barenstark is old and defers many of his duties to his lazy son. This man sends Safrax to lead a boar hunt in the forest across the river, the hunting party composed of young boys(13-14)  learning to hunt and wield spears. When a cornered boar charges most of the boys forget their training and frankly panic, all aside from one lad Eloric (13), who helps Safrax despatch the boar. This boy’s father died in an earlier raiding season and afterwards he sort of becomes Safrax’s shadow around the settlement. Earning the rather dismissive nickname from some of ‘puppy’.
 
Later, towards the end of the day, Eloric says to Safrax that during the boar hunt he thought he may have spotted a man dressed in grey watching them for the trees. Safrax takes Eloric to the Reik to say what he saw and suggests that perhaps the Reik should send some scouts into the forest to see if people have been camping there. However, just then a woman called Boda who had accompanied the Reik’s daughter, Embla (the apple of his eye) to the river, arrived back in camp alone, bleeding from a head wound.
 
She said men in grey cloaks had pounced from the forest and kidnapped Embla, striking Boda with a sword hilt when she tried to intervene. The Reik is distraught and orders Safrax to lead a party of scouts to get on the men’s trail immediately , while he assembles the warband to follow in their wake.
 
The best scout in the clan is Wallia the Sneaky, followed by Soas the Archer. Both are in the party along with Cniva the Giant. Cniva is very tall, very wide and as strong as an ox, and some say unkindly, as stupid. Despite his size, Cniva is surprisingly light on his feet, even carrying his massive club – his favoured weapon. He and Safrax are to provide protection to the scouts, as is Safrax’s best friend, Filimer. Filimer is first cousin to Embla and is hopelessly in love with her. The young lad Eloric the Puppy pleaded to go with them, and Safrax agreed, as the lad is smart and quick to learn, and when the kidnappers are located, he can run back to the warband and show them the way.
 
The trail leads in the direction of the lands of the Wolf Clan of Goths, who do usually wear grey cloaks. Their settlement is some way distant, but the trail leads straight as an arrow to the settlement. The Barenstark have raided Roman lands with the Wolf Clan before, and their relations have always been cordial. It puzzled Safrax why they should have stollen Embla. He was also puzzled by the fact the trail was so clear. He advised the scouts that the party should follow to the side of the trail and not follow it directly, as he wondered if they were being lured into a trap.
 
 After resting briefly at night in the forest they trudged on through most of the night. At daybreak they left the forest and came to a deep pool. Cniva and the lad Eloric stripped off and jumped into the pool – they were hot, sweaty and tired. They were quickly attacked by multi-limbed water imps, with big, sharp-toothed mouths, who tried to drown them. Cniva dealt with this by ripping the little buggers limb from limb, while Eloric was dragged underwater. Safrax jumped in – wearing his mail shirt! – and despatched the imp attacking Eloric with his dagger. With difficulty he swam to the shallows and got Eloric on the bank.
 
They kept on the trail of the kidnappers. Resting briefly they encountered an old woman who lived in a cave. She knew Safrax’s name and also the name of his sword, ‘Glitander’ (Glittering Sepent). “I see things. I know things,” she said. The woman said she could help them recover Embla, but she would only tell what she knew if they did something for her. Safrax agreed, so he and the others went back into the forest and raised two standing stones that had toppled over, restoring a stone circle. It took Safrax, Cniva, Filimer and a lever to right the heavy stones, while Eloric cleared undergrowth from around the circle as the old woman, “Call me Mother”, had instructed.
 
Mother had warned them not to enter the circle, no matter what they saw (Safrax had a vision of Amalfrida begging him to return to her). When the circle was complete a beautiful snow white hart came from the forest and entered the circle. Safrax had to stop Soas the Archer from shooting it. It was clearly a place of power.
 
On returning to Mother, she thanked them and said that it was their supposed allies the Wolf Clan that than taken Embla. So far, Embla was unhurt, but Mother had no idea what they planned for her. She warned that the Wolf Clan had set traps ahead for them, expecting pursuit. She also warned that they had a sorcerer at their settlement – a woman. Mother pressed a small package of herbs into Safrax’s hand. “If you thrust these herbs into her mouth, it will stop her being able to cast spells for a short while. Use that time wisely.”
 
Thanking Mother they carried on. The scouts stayed some distance from the obvious trail but kept it in sight. But the Wolf Clan were sneaky and also set traps off the trail – they knew the Barenstark were not fools. So, on a slight rise some distance from the trail, Soas fell into a concealed pit, which was the signal for a group of warriors in grey cloaks to sally out from a trench and attack. A quick fight ensued, as Walla hauled the unhurt Soas from the pit. Safrax, Filimer and Cniva closed with six warriors. Filimer dealt with his first man quickly, while Safrax took a slight nick before finishing his. Soas got arrows flying and it was soon over. The last enemy took the full impact of Cniva’s club on his unprotected head. (Imagine the strongest man in the world hitting a watermelon with a sledgehammer – urrgh!) They took the grey cloaks.
 
Finally, they came to the Wolf Clan settlement in later afternoon. It looked not dissimilar to their own village, aside from the stake in the centre with people piling wood around it, and Embla tied to the stake! Filimer wanted to go down straight away and rescue the woman he loved, but Safrax said that he remembered such sacrifices normally took place at sundown. They had time to plan. First off, he sent Eloric back to find the warband as soon as he could and bring them here. Then they discussed the problem. As it was late in the afternoon Safrax had hoped to steal in at night and rescue the young woman, but now that didn’t seem possible – Embla would be dead by then.
 
They had some luck. A finely dressed woman went to the stake and ordered Embla to be untied, and under guard she was led back to a small hut towards the back of the settlement. A big man, nearly as big as Cniva and also carrying a big club, was put on guard before the door. Rather than stay still he began to pace up and down before the hut – showing off his importance.
 
“We are going in now!”
 
Putting on grey cloaks, Safrax, Walla and Filimer went as close as they could in the trees before walking into the settlement as if they had every right to be there. Soas took position in a tree with as clear a field of fire as he could. Cniva stood at the edge of the trees as support if needed. Safrax moved to the back wall of the hut and listened. He could hear a woman saying “Come, take this draft, it will mean you feel nothing when you are put to the flame.” Embla refused, slurring her words – she was already drugged. Timing it so the big guard was as far away from the door on his ‘parade’, the three sneaked into the hut. Safrax had Glitgandr in his right hand and the open bag of herbs in his left. As the woman turned, open mouthed at this intrusion, Safrax shoved the herbs into her mouth. Then he and Walla shoved their weapons into her body. She died. Putting a fourth grey cloak over Embla, and the hood over her golden hair, they left the hut when the guard was away from the door. But he turned and saw them.
 
They ran to the trees with the shouting guard in pursuit. Soas put an arrow in his throat, but the alarm was raised and the wounded guard kept coming. Walla and Safrax traded blows, and managed to avoid the big club, but Walla’s javelin was shattered. Then Cniva came from the trees and stood toe-to-toe with the guard and soon smashed his head to a pulp. But more people were coming.
 
They ran. Embla was staggering so Safrax picked her up over his left shoulder and ran. After a while the initial pursuit fell behind, but then they heard a bigger body moving through the trees. As they reached and began to climb a steep rise, they looked back and saw a warband in full gear following them. Lungs bursting, they reached the top and Safrax thought, ‘This is it! We can’t run for much longer.’ Then they saw the warband of the Barenstark burst from the forest and join them at the top of the ridge! As the warband formed up, Safrax asked his friend Wamba the Axeman to detail four good, fresh men to go back with Embla. He also ordered Eloric the Puppy to go with them, much to the boy’s disgust.
 
Wamba was leading the warband – old Reik was not there (understandable, perhaps) nor had his son come to save his sister (far less understandable). The battle that followed was hard but brief. The Barenstark held the higher ground, but the Wolf Clan were furious that their sacrifice had been taken from them. The Wolf Clan pushed the Barenstark from the top of the ridge! In the press, Safrax found himself facing Theodoric, the Riek of the Wolf Clan. Blows were traded and wounds taken. Theodoric fell to the earth, but still stuck up at Safrax, who failed to finish him! Both were now missing their target – both warriors were tired and gasping. Finally, with a hard strike, Glitgandr took the Reik’s head from his body.
 
Safrax lifted Theodoric’s head by his beard and threw it at the Wolf warrior who seemed to be causing the most damage to his comrades. “The Reik is Dead!” The Wolf Clan shieldwall broke and they streamed back down the hill, javelins and arrows following hastening their flight. All the scouts were on their feet still, bloodied but alive.
 
 Embla had been saved.
 
The battle was won.
 
But did they now face war?

All of the scouting party were Hero Level NPCs, aside from Eloric the Puppy who is Rabble Level but with a LB of 3. 

The final fight was an 'informed' Theatre of the Mind: establishing that the Barenstark had brought everyone, while the Wolf Clan had had brought their best who could get ready quickly (they knew they were only after a small group of raiders after all) we rolled in a Rabble v Rabble contest. However, we only used this roll to determine success in the ebb and flow of battle - Wolf Clan won the first roll, so the Barenstark were pushed back off the line of the ridge, Barenstark won the second roll, so held position and started to inflict greater casualties on the Wolf Clan.

So we were using a BoL mechanic, but for something that really called for the battle rules rather than for a smaller fight as originally intended, and were interpreting the roll to decide the flow of battle, rather than deduct numbers of casualties. Then the fight between Safrax and Theodoric determined the end of the fight.

I think that worked well as a quick resolution to the conflict that surprisingly could be interpreted as true to the nominal period of the game. The well equiped, fitter warriors - under the eye of their reik - hit the top of the ridge first and automatically formed a 'boars head' formation, which bit deep into the Barenstark line. Forced back, the Barenstark did not break, but in larger numbers slightly curled around the Wolf Clan wedge to inflict greater casualities on their best warriors. At the death of the reik, the exhausted Wolf Clan broke. Sounds like a battle report from a successful Roman general fighting Germans.

Sounds like a terrific session! Kudos to Alison.