We have managed to hold off the next Killennium from reaching our settlement for the time being, but there will be little time to celebrate as the Black Knight has stirred in its slumber yet again, awaiting new challengers with an ever-growing fervor on the side of the inverted mountain.
That poor pup doesn’t know what absolute freight train is about to hit it though.

On that note, onwards!

The survivors have returned to the settlement!
But before we could celebrate too hard we drew our the settlement event – Murder.
Uh oh..
Highest hunt experience turned out to be Ragnar with 14 hunt xp (Sir Hermes had 13, dodging another bullet on his path to retirement) whilst highest madness was Mars with 15, miles ahead of the next candidate with 8. We did not have any marrow hunger in the settlement to save any of the two.

And just like that Ragnar was killed. This gained us another monster bone for our storage. Hurray?
Because we swore to Accept Darkness the murderer Mars was then ritualistically slaughtered to buff our next departing 4 with an extra 2 survival and 1 armor in all hit locations. For which we also gained yet another monster bone.
It’s not a true KD:M campaign without Murder being drawn at least once.

Sure, what a start to the year.

Second event on the timeline was The Bell Rings. On this 2nd ring we needed to nominate the 2 survivors with the highest courage and understanding respectively. There were a lot of people with 7 courage to chose from, but in the end I picked Celestine for courage and Jerryn, who had the most at 5, for understanding. I rolled a 2 and a 6.., which was the same result: on departure -2 survival and +2 insanity for each of them. Whilst that could have gone better, at least it didn’t impact my early plans for departing survivors.

With events done for the year we found ourselves with an opportunity to build a lantern glaive. Sure, I needed to start work on these armor sets as well.. Marchioness is just… what, 12 iron? No big deal..
At the time we had access to 6 broken lanterns, i.e. 2 iron, 7 bones, 5 hide and exactly 0 organs.

Either way I would need to smelt the scrap to iron, so I got onto that right away. After 2 endeavors spent, a 4 and a 9, we had our 2 iron in the bank.

After some consideration (partially because getting another understanding onto Ruby would have been real nice) I ended up making leather to build that lantern glaive. Whilst it’s yet another weapon for the growing pile, it would be one of the strongest weapons (or at least a crafting ingredient for) in the core game, as well as a spear and an axe with range 2 and sharp. I also rolled for Shrine – a 9 – and we gained even more armor for the upcoming fight. Finally I chanced an augury roll with Ruby – 7 – but she just got a survival from it. Too bad, really.

The Challengers:
Jerryn (Wrath, leather set, 3u)
Sir Hermes (bone club, dragon set, 4u)
Calys (lantern glaive, frogdog set, 1u)
Ruby (Lance of Longinus, rawhide set, 2u)

Sir “no fear” Hermes had to answer the call of the Black Knight again, even as I was pretty sure that between Jerryn and Calys we should already be able to just tear the monster apart this time. Wrath seemed like a hard counter to the Black Knight and his TGH-tokens – and well, you’ll see.
With this team we also did still bring both people we currently had in our settlement with 3+ understanding. And whilst I wasn’t planning on using any of the bell altars, those people would have an influence on the rewards we were able to gain from the fight.

But before we could face off against the doggo, we first had to brave the mountain ascent though. I rolled a 2 and 1 for Jerryn and Ruby – Jerryn lost 2 more survival and gained -1ACC, as Ruby just didn’t seem to care.
Sir Hermes with his 5 and Calys with her 7 instead suffered from the cold taking a -1EVA-token each, which we would sing away on arrival of course.

For level 2 the Black Knight only gains 1 additional card: Unsteady.
This new trait prevents survivors from spending survival whilst they are standing on terrain – so on all rubble.
Its base stats only receive +1DMG instead of the typical +1SPD/DMG combo. It also has 2 more +1TGH-tokens for a total of 6 and a +1ACC-token for good measure.
That’s 7 additional wounds the first time Wrath would critically wound. Our game plan looked to be just that simple for us.

As with any nemesis, the survivors got the first turn. Naturally Jerryn activated and as he saw a great first hit location to go for (with his frogdoggles) he activated Wrath. A clean hit on a lantern 10 was converted to a wound with a 6. And what’s more that was already a crit as well thanks to deadly 3 and the active luck charm. This instantly archived all 7 tokens on the monster and even added a -1MOV token for later.

(I’m not entirely sure on the timing of the new token, I added it and did not remove it immediately. You might be able to stack these effects to your liking, effectively dealing 1 additional damage, but I can’t say I am sure about it, so I did it like that.)

With the monster down to 10TGH and heavily wounded after just a single attack, Jerryn surged. He wounded again, but not critically, and suffered the reaction for it. The monster retaliated with a basic attack, hitting once before picking up Jerryn and sending him flying off as he got smashed into the one elastomere statue we knew about.

Presented with the monster’s backside, Calys took the opportunity to use her new lantern glaive. She scored 2 hits because she was brave enough to walk up to its blind spot, and she didn’t roll any 1s either. With the hits going through, she wounded the monster, but startled the Black Knight charged away from her. With the monster too far away, behind an impassible statue, both Ruby and Sir Hermes spent their time unveiling 2 more tiles of the citadel.

Only 6 cards remaining in its deck, the Black Knight drew Crushing Stomp as its first AI card. It smashed all terrain on its current tile with an incredible stomp before looking out to find a target. And whilst there was a knocked down survivor at the time, Jerryn was too far out of range, so instead its instinct triggered. It stopped just short of Calys thanks to the -1MOV, preventing further knockback.

Jerryn stood up and activated first. We saw the impervious hit location on top of the monster’s deck and he moved up just a couple of steps. He was forced to stop on rubble with his 4 movement, but hopefully he was still too far away to become the doggo’s target this turn or the next.
Ruby took the time to destroy one particular pot that was in the way and Sir Hermes dashed into the opened space. With both his regular movement and activation left, he jumped with the set bonus of the Dragon Armor.
What can I say… I had already forgot about the impervious HL.
He did not crit the Black Knight and the monster performed shockwave. At least the survivors were spread out at that point. The shockwave target was randomized and it landed on Jerryn, knocking him down again and sending flying right up to the edge of the board.
Calys still had her turn, but as she moved up and rolled for her attack a 1 ended the attempt early.

Still 6 cards left, Untrained Slice was up next. The Black Knight moved over to Calys and attacked – all 3 attacks hit her. She dodged the hit to her head and was sent flying into the elastomer statue just behind her.
After coming to a stop she quickly got up with the effect of the frogdog suit.

We began our turn with Sir Hermes dashing towards the Black Knight. The monster got rung like a bell with a perfect hit from the club master! A wound total of 36 did in fact equal to more than double the remaining 10TGH of the monster, dealing an additional wound! It wasn’t a crit tough, so he suffered smash afterwards. This sent him crashing through Calys and both were knocked down again – unfortunate!

Ruby dashed up as well to attack with the Lance of Longinus – 2 more hits. Both hit locations would smash her away on a failure, but that had to be quite unlikely with the 9 base STR on the Lance of Longinus.
Her first hit easily wounded adding the weapon’s -1TGH-token. The second attempt came out to be a 2, and of course, still wounded.

Jerryn activated as well – if he crit the monster now, he would be able to kill it outright. And if he moved just 2 spaces (of his 4) for his normal move he could then dash to the monster and attempt his attack. The plan made, he came running in but he missed! But what’s 1 more surge at this stage? A 5 was enough to hit. But another 5 wasn’t enough to crit! The monster turned and ran Jerryn over in response.

Only 1 card remaining, Untrained Slice came up again. The Black Knight turned on its heel and moved back over to Ruby. Hitting her once on 6+, the monster was aiming square for her head. She dodged the hit, not taking any chances.

The survivors let Jerryn activate first, him hitting and wounding on a 5 yet again. With all AI cards gone, Ruby activated to try and end it. 1 hit and a wound on 4 was all she needed! The monster was defeated!
That final hit location was the one with a 50% chance for an iron, too bad we didn’t crit, but a 4 wouldn’t have been good enough on Wrath either for that. So at least we can tell ourselves we didn’t miss out.

Anyway, before we knew it, the monster had already vanished into the crumbling citadel and left us to find our own choice of spoils as its deep snores gently rocked the loose rubble all around us.

Nobody aged, whilst everyone had dealt at least 1 wound.
We reached level 3 with the Bell of Challenge (I), making honorable (D) even more attractive with a +1STR-token added to the list of bonuses it provided.
Finally we rummaged through the Darkened Workshop. What beautiful artwork!
We rolled a 9, and with 2 people at 3+ understanding it turned into an 11. That’s 3 more patterns for us and 5 understanding worth of basic resources (+1 from the scavenger kit we were carrying).

I took the 2 missing Marchioness patterns and 1 of the count pieces.. the, uhh.., hands.

So, yeah, that fight was over incredibly quick.
Wrath made short work of the Black Knight, which, to be fair, was to be expected, with the weapon being somewhat of a hard counter for this fight in particular.

Filled with new bouts of confidence, I began wondering what to hunt next at that point. Having noticed that Wrath did benefit from the Dragon King’s power cores, being a nuclear weapon, hunting a level 2 DK would give it access to sharp as well. (Adding more deadly to the weapon does nothing, as keywords aren’t additive.)
Not that it needed a STR boost against normal monsters..

Otherwise, there were both the Bullfrogdog and the, as of yet still untouched, Dung Beetle Knight I figured I could go after.

I do have some thoughts on the Dung Beetle at this point, and I probably should have left that one out of the campaign, to be honest. It doesn’t really make sense to start hunting it now, and I can’t imagine it being a good quarry to go for blindly after the *redacted* has been dealt with.
All these random dogs just took up so much of my time – frogdogs, knight dogs, dog people!

But honestly, I should stop stalling and just get it done and head out into the swamps to face a Bullfrogdog next. Besides, I do already have some ideas for a couple cute little props as well..

As always, thank you very much for your time and go and spend some time with that dog in your life,
Amathul