Welcome back to Bogstop – it’s been quite the week here.. *looks at his calendar* Oh, it’s almost been 2 weeks since Black Friday already, huh?

Well, what can I say. A lot has been happening besides waiting for the new goodies to arrive. The Christmas holidays are fast approaching after all, which demand even more prep and attention and with the other weekly KD:M session currently going we just defeated the Watcher this week – so yay. Go team! We had a juiced up Twilight Sword though, so, with several Lvl3 nemesis encounters happening back to back – thanks Black Knight – this fairly under-geared settlement is pretty obviously not going to last long in a post-Watcher-environment, sadly.
I did get my first singular item from the BF sale though – the Satan sculpts. Very heavily pin-up-coded, the twins, aren’t they?

But back to Bogstop – after the lope in Lantern Year 10 we are going back home, hands full with resources, looking to make the best of it.

But, first things first: the settlement event. We get The Plant and the Stone. Not too bad. Whilst we weren’t able to make use of it, it was still a lot better than Plague or Murder.
This Lantern Year would normally also see the Regal Visit story event – and whilst the Black Knight rule book does not instruct you to remove it (unless I missed it somewhere), because I chose to have Slenderman replace the Kingsman nemesis as well, I opted to remove the Kingdom-package from this campaign altogether. Thus, I skipped Regel Visit as well.

We came home with 3 Pelts and Spiral Horns, so I was in fact able to build a full Screaming Armor set. But, with exactly 6 bones from the antelope as well and another 1 in storage, we also found ourselves in a position to both innovate and build the Blacksmith settlement location instead.
That did not feel like too much of a choice to be honest.

With 2 scrap we got from the tree during the last fight and 1 more from our storage, and all the bones from the hunt, we quickly build the Blacksmith – yay.
And whilst we could in theory just about build any single piece of armor besides the head, I talked myself into saving up for an iron based weapon instead.
After that I wanted to innovate – and we got to chose between Partnership and Sculpture. I picked Sculpture – big surprise – wondering what I wanted to sculpt and whether or not I was ever going to see Song of the Brave or Symposium at all this campaign.
I also built a screaming skirt, rebuilt the lost monster grease and 2 more dried acanthus.

Under the watchful eyes of the Feline Entity, we used our endeavors to send Hysteria scrap scavenging, which instantly got her a courage and made her into a matchmaker. Task failed successfully.

Fighting-wise, I had figured, that I wanted another safe fight this year, mainly to get Sir Hermes to his mastery. I picked the Frogdog over the Screaming Antelope in the end, because its hunt was more likely going to be shorter and it had a chance of dropping us a straight up iron from its resources. Dragon King would also be able to do the same, but that Lvl1 did not feel safe to me, so… Frogdog here we come!

The chosen Hunters:
Ragnar (frogdog set, bone dagger)
Sir Hermes (leather set, bone club)
Lelia (various armor bits, blast shield)
Mars (rawhide set, scrap sword)

The Hunt:
As per usual we began the hunt by finding us a black pool to noodle the shit out of. With a stifled squeak, Mars got pulled under, and whilst the deep beckoned further still, I did not feel too adventurous and he just swam back to the surface, another copper in hand.

With Mars retrieved from the pool we followed a path of stone faces with Bloody Eyes (basic HE98) and as we followed the trail to its conclusion we found.. Mars? Bleeding profusely?
Shaken we tried to Dream the Way (basic HE76), which had Ragnar and Mars dream the same things – weird.
Another Interloper stopped us on the way onwards, but we know all too well where those creatures came from so the only option was to attack it. It proved too nimble though, and bit Sir Hermes’ hand before it bounded off into the teeming darkness.
Pushing onwards we stumbled upon Signs of Battle (basic HE59). The bloodied corpse of an unknown survivor was picked clean before we moved on, even if we did not know what it was we took along.
Closing in on Overwhelming Darkness, Lelia had a migraine as what had started as a Euphony of sounds turned into a deafening cacophony for her, wiping her insanity clean.
Overwhelming Darkness also wasn’t kind either. Mars, able to only walk the path of the insane had to lose all survival or die, Lelia and Sir Hermes took arms damage from pushing against this barrier and Ragnar got a -1ACC-token.
At least the frogdog was close at this point, only one more large open area filled with Skeletal Bloom to cross. Of course Mars ate one of them. Why wouldn’t he? Chance of head explosion..? Oh.. His jaw got blocked instead and the +1STR-token would serve as a survival even.

Real quick on the Bloody Faces (basic HE98). That is a really interesting event all in all, seeing how the middle result talked about a red-haired girl in a strangely ornate box – that’s a Gambler’s Chest, isn’t it? It is referencing the comic in the back of the rulebook, the Chest with Aya inside.

Anyway, we found the Frogdog.

3 of 4 survivors started the fight stinky, so a soft clock had started. Sir Hermes and his leather set would be a lot better equipped to deal with that than Mars and his rawhide.
14 cards in the deck, the Frogdog drew Wet Slap – a signature move of sorts, targeting Ragnar. It hit once on a 7+, and Ragnar’s leprosy dulled the blow.
Immediately afterwards, the stank-damage ticked down our armor.

Sir Hermes was about to start of the round with a wallop, but his swing missed entirely. Mars moved up into the heinous origin and got to work. Two hits, the first wound immediately failing, knocking both him and Sir Hermes down. Lelia then ran up to the Frogdog’s side to use her blast shield, but missed.
And only Ragnar, finally, dashing onto a mammoth leaf and jumping into the last free space in the blind spot wounded once, wounded twice. Despite the small triumph we had achieved in the end, the fart was still going to go off though.

12 cards remaining, Mars took a Rotten Emission to the feet and brain, before Ragnar and Lelia were targets of Origin Dream. They both managed to shake off the movement sapping miasma.
More stank damage happened as Mars and Sir Hermes got back to their feet.

Mars tried once again to disarm the current fart, this time it proved enough – just barely, but still enough.
Sir Hermes was next and he also managed to get a hit in, wounding easily in comparison and – should he survive – securing the necessary weapon experience to become a master of his craft. The wound did spread further stink tough.. uh-oh.
Ragnar missed all his strikes and Lelia, despite hitting the monster failed her wound. Leveling her shield proficiency seems to be becoming harder and harder somehow.

10 cards remaining, Tongue Tied is drawn. The monster snatched up Lelia and jumped away from the rest of the group after hitting her twice.

With the next batch of stank damage, Mars was already looking like he was about to start melting. This felt like it would end badly for him one way or another.

Feeling the pressure, for Mars at least, I recalled the previous mantra of “Have no fear” and had Sir Hermes jump into the monster’s rear to.. unga that bunga!
The monster was hit and wounded easily – as it should be for Sir Hermes.
Lelia got picked up in turn, and she moved around to the monster’s side to attack.., and even surge.., yet nothing was to be gained for her.
Mars was up next. Finally! A critical hit! The monster was knocked down. A second wound followed during the same attack.

The Frogdog on the floor, the time was now! Mars surged and hit to find.. the trap. Jumping up the Frogdog went wild – scoring loads of hits on 7+, ultimately dealing a severe injury to Mars’ body. Luckily his dried acanthus could soak it. With 3 bleeding tokens to his name from the hunt phase, he would bleed out pretty quickly though, should his body come up again.
Ragnar still had his act to go through, out for revenge he nipped at the monsters’ Festering Throat, wounding it lightly. He was too far away to attempt to disarm the fart though.

6 cards remaining, the fart was drawn. Oh, no. Static Emission. It dealt monster level damage to each hit location to Sir Hermes, and it further chained into Mars’ legs. That was another severe injury roll for him.., and he rolled a 3 and bled out. That’s his reroll gone. One more attempt – a 5 – Hamstrung. No more fighting arts or abilities for him. That’s one mean fart.
As an AI card we drew Confusion. Without any valid targets, the monster instead backed off to the center of the board and the stink rose around Lelia, Mars and Ragnar.

Stank-damage was already pretty bad before, but Mars was suffering 3 damage per round now. He got lucky though – he rolled arms – the only hit location left he was able to not take a severe at. He survived one more round!

Sir Hermes started off the round with a dash and jumped over the monster, getting the hit with his bone club, and landing the critical hit! The frogdog was knocked down once again and.., Mars and Sir Hermes lost all their stink tokens! A sudden life-line!
Mars took his chances to attack the monster and despite it having +2TGH until the end of the round, he wounded twice.
Lelia tried to follow Sir Hermes’ example and dashed onto the closest leaf for a jump in attack, but she only hit the trap again, ultimately taking 1 hit to her arms.
Meanwhile Ragnar just ran up closer, pumping up his armor in the process, whilst Mars ultimately chose to spend one of his +1STR-tokens via Sir Hermes’ Red Fist (SFA) to surge – managing to land a juicy critical hit, even discarding the freshly added fart.

2 cards remaining, Origin Dream was drawn again, targeting all survivors this time. Each of them rolled between a 5 and 7 though, with a minimum of 2 courage to add to the roll – so, nobody got slowed down this time either.

Stank damage hit again, as Mars was counting his blessings for being stink free all of a sudden, Lelia fell to the floor chocking. She also still needed that wound for her proficiency, but, well.., honestly at this point, I was willing to just move on. This frog, man.., this frog.

Sir Hermes swung. A perfect hit. It was just a wound (on the +1LCK crit no less) but a painful one at least at over 30.
Mars was next in line, he could have finished the fight, but only hitting and wounding once.

With all AI cards gone, Lelia would get a chance for her shield proficiency. Ragnar encouraged her and she attacked. To nobody’s surprise, both her attack and surge missed.
With a sigh, Mars spent his final +1STR-token to attack again. 2 hits, one of which would be the death blow.
Might as well try.., and he failed that wound. Yup. I can’t say I didn’t see that one coming. The second hit wounded at least, killing the monster.

This was supposed to be an easy hunt..!
Sure, nobody died, so it’s fine, yeah, but this was much more tense and felt a lot more dangerous than I had convinced myself it would be. And whilst he was still usable right now – he did not have any fighting arts to begin with – Mars’ potential for growth was severely limited by this fight. Hamstrung is a severe injury you can’t cure easily at all, so, he was turned into fodder, more or less.

For the time being, I collected our rewards. Lelia (Escape Artist FA) hit age 3. But, of course, more importantly: Sir Hermes was a Club Master now! All that extra strength you’d gain on a perfect hit with a club, suddenly meant something (you deal an extra wound to the monster if the wound attempt total equals twice the monster’s toughness or higher) – not to mention the settlement wide foundational club knowledge.
The resource draw was looking good as well, if a little too light on bones. We’d have to see if we were able to build a decent weapon with these. No spine sadly.

And that’s it for Bogstop this time. It was yet another Frogdog without teeth in our swamp. This might just be the retirement-home for Frogdogs.

Mars got extremely lucky back there and he was dead to rights, so, I will see how this is going to backfire in future. For every lucky break I get Partnership is added to a innovation choice? Or maybe my solo-luck taints my rolls for the settlements I play with friends.

For now I am looking forward to next Lantern Year’s Principle Conviction event – that is going to be fun.. unless it burns all our resources. But it wouldn’t do that, would it now? Nah, surely not.

As always thank you very much for your time and don’t underestimate the stank damage,
Amathul