Burnt Offerings, Part 2

For the expedition against Nualia and her allies, I had to choose between three locations: an ancient dungeon, a throne room, and some monster-infested warrens. For various reasons relating to the properties of these locations, I elected to begin with the dungeon.

My very first encounter there was Lyrie, one of Nualia's henchmen. I was pleased; finding a henchman so early in the game would allow me to close out this location immediately so that I could focus on the other two areas. With a difficulty rating of only 9, Lyrie would be easy prey. I rolled Val's 2D10+5 bastard sword attack and ended up with...7. That's right, I rolled 1s on both D10s! Lyrie escaped, and Val was forced to lick his wounds in ignominious defeat. This wretched performance forced me to waste at least a half-dozen more turns searching the dungeons until I encountered Lyrie again and defeated her.

Next I turned to the throne room, where Val's hideous Wisdom roll came back to bite me again and again and again...all because of one card! This card forces you to succeed at a Wisdom check or else the card gets shuffled back into the location deck, possibly to be encountered again. In this case, I hit that card three more times (thereby wasting three more turns) before I encountered the scenario's villain, Nualia, and chased her out of the throne room.

With only one location still open (the warrens), I knew that Nualia and her other henchman, Orik, were waiting for me there. I found Orik soon enough and dealt with him, setting up a second encounter with Nualia. This villain must be defeated twice, once at a rating of 12 and then at 14. I played Val's normal bastard sword attack to beat her at 12, and then, for the second attack, I opted to recharge the card (return it to the bottom of my deck) to get an extra D10 on the attack roll. That gave me a whopping 3D10+5, needing a total of 14 for the win. The first two dice were a measly 1 and 3, so with the +5 bonus, I was only up to 9 with a single D10 to go. I rolled a 5, which gave me just enough to beat her. Whew!

With Nualia defeated, Valeros had saved the town of Sandpoint and brought the five-scenario Burnt Offerings adventure to a close. Below, I've included an image of Val's complete character deck as of the end of this adventure. Bring on The Skinsaw Murders!