I started a new campaign last night using the final update beta. At first everything went pretty smoothly. I chose the company goal of expanding my company to 12 men and by doing local contracts, was able to add some cheap brothers and get there after 8 days or so. That gave my company a big boost in renown and I started getting higher paying contracts which was important because I was pretty wiped out financially after hiring the last few men.
I was getting low on food and cash so I took a lucrative delivery contract that took me to the far north, close to the snow line. I checked the tavern there and they had an interesting rumor about a dead man with a wondrous weapon somewhere to the north. Of course I couldn’t resist the lure and headed right north into the snow to explore. Sure enough, in a snow shrouded copse of trees I found an ancient citadel, which happened to be just full of undead. I was used to the undead in the previous version so I plowed right ahead. I wanted that legendary weapon and what could go wrong, right?
Well, I got the weapon but it came at a very heavy cost:
I lost 6 of my hard earned 12 men in this action. These are not your father’s undead. These undead are the heavily armed and armored remnants of an empire. Basically, they’re undead Romans and most of the ones I encountered are the heavy armor/weapon Ancient Auxiliaries. These are new to the game.
In addition to the Ancient Auxiliaries there was also a Necrosavant (also new). The Necrosavant has light armor but has the ability to teleport so he would pop up behind my line and attack my archers then teleport elsewhere as soon as I brought some brothers over to surround him. His cleaver type weapon caused bleeding and I lost one brother when he bled out (no bandages, unfortunately).
The battle actually went very well at first. I set up a nice spear wall with 7 of my brothers and they repelled attack after attack without taking a scratch and sending many undead to their final rest. Finally though, one of them missed an attack and then they were able to close and do battle with my men. A lot of the Auxiliaries had shields and I only had 2 brothers with axes. Which would be fine except I was fighting in snow, which really slows movement and also increases fatigue. It was a deadly combination.
My recent level 1 hires died first. Surrounded by undead protected by shields they had little chance. After the deaths of the first few brothers, morale on the others started to waver. Suddenly a few men bolted. The Necrosavant immediately teleported over to one of them and chopped him down as he tried to run away. It was an ugly sound. The other runner, who was my 2-hand axe brother, a founding member of the company (so he should have known better), and my best melee guy, rediscovered his courage and rejoined that battle. That was the turning point as he smashed shield after shield. One bother with a cleaver beheaded two undead straight up, even though they still had shields. the rest finally succumbed to my spearmen and it was finally over.
So, very heavy losses netted me a bunch of gold treasures to sell in town and, of course, the legendary weapon. This was the reward for the death of 6 brothers. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t worth so much blood and death.
