Battle Brothers: Raiding the Raiders

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

The Spears return to a border village just in time to defend it against a necromancer and his thralls, then Big Mike gets the company back to doing the regular contracts to regain morale. A gem caravan escort tempts Colonel Vodka to simply steal it but Big Mike keeps him in line.

On the same run a large group of scraggly kids are pilfering a dead merchant. Redbeard single handedly scares them off easily, leaving the Spears free loot. The company is then asked to fight back against the green skin raiders, to destroy a goblin and orc camp in the Western Wildlands.

The goblin camp in the mountains is easy, with Faltran throwing the last goblin wolf rider off a cliff. The orc camp in the swamp is much more difficult as it has berserkers and heavily armored warriors! Redbeard and Colonel Vodka are cleaved to death while Pioyer and Big Mike are beheaded. Emile is lucky all he lost was an ear.

That armor is tough to get through.

Left as defacto leader, Faltran the Drunkard immediately brought the survivors back to the nearest tavern to find better morale at the bottom of many, many jugs of ale. It's surprising they could still fight so well when a band of orcs which had followed them attacked. Fortunately the town militia were on hand to assist and while four militia men perished, no more Spears were lost that day.

Battle Brothers: Picking a Side

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

As the Noble war rages on elsewhere, the Spears next find themselves attacking a bandit forest base - making use of the tall grass to advance out of sight from the enemy archers. Mostly. Russ breaks from cover early and dies for it, as the rest of the company pincer the bandit position and wipe them out.

My battle strategy for the forest fight.

They then hit a goblin camp where a slow, advancing shield wall proves to be a good tactic when lacking war dogs to distract and run down the nimble archers. Alas Fox, poisoned by an arrow to the knee, is run through with a pike in the melee.

On the way back to civilization another acquaintance of Sid, Colonel Vodka, is met at a small village working as a grave digger. He joins the Spears. While Big Mike plays dice with Pioyer (who has a lot more coin than he's letting on), Faltran and a few others patrol around the town and find soldiers of House Grimmund about to hang one of their own.

The soon to be executed soldier, Gaius Caligula Augustus "the Honorable", pleads for help since he is about to be killed for disobeying orders to kill women and children. Faltran doesn't think twice, slaying the Grimmund bastards and freeing Gaius to join the Spears - much to Big Mike's chagrin.

Anomaly at the End of the World

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Monolith patrols were abound in this place, and I managed to down a dozen of them before the high radiation in the area became too much to bear. Decided to withdraw for now, only to find there was no way back! Well shit. Loaded the game from the Warehouse and returned to the Bar where I picked up a ton of quests - the main one being in Radar again, as well as my green scientist suit (good rad protect). Now that I was all prepared I journeyed back to the Warehouse... or tried to - only to find the way there -gone-! Instead I walked down the road, hoping it connected only to fall off the edge of the world and into bytespace. Frustrated by the long loading times and the broken travel links I decided to call it quits here. And so due to this strange anomaly I was hit by another bout of amnesia and blacked out.

Oh man, not this again.

When I awoke sometime later, I found myself near Cordon - as "the Collector". Yes, I love the game so much I'm willing to try it's other mode out still! Seems I traded all my good weapons for a lot of MP3 USB sticks. After the initial blowout in which I was joined by free stalker Petrushka in my hiding zone, I made my way back to Cordon to see Sid. Petrushka didn't follow me and instead died to Colonel Vodka's team. As soon as I arrived, the town was attacked by two waves of mercs! Managed to fight them off and yoink their gear, but Sid was no longer opening his door to me so selling stuff was going to be tricky since not many people here had money (and half of them were dead). Decided to forge my way North again, killing a large bandit group at the farmstead and fortunately finding a pair of veteran free stalkers I could sell stuff too.

Had to eliminate a smaller military team at the tracks crossing (one of whom had invis armor), and found one of the downed soldiers was just wounded. Decided to give him a medkit, and he changed alliance quickly to a free stalker. This was a good call as he had quite a bit of money to buy more gear. Left my new friend and continued on my journey, finding Fox's group under attack by dogs as usual. They had it under control before I arrived, losing only one member. The rest of the road was relatively clear. Also nice to note that "the Collector" difficulty is far easier than "Master" which I was playing before in that there are now 80% less anomalies. Where as before I had to navigate a tight maze in a sea of death, now I can actually just walk down the road which is kind of refreshing. :)

One heck of a Detour

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Since I was stuck in the swamp anyway I decided to visit the Clear Sky base. Apart from a multitude of anomalies and a lone sniper in a tall tower, it was a pretty easy march even in the dead of night. The farmstead was guarded by four more Clear Sky dudes and sure enough they had a working teleporter nearby. Unfortunately everytime I used it, the game would eventually crash when exploring or opening the menu at their base so I elected not to use it. Just as well because the place soon came under attack by a group of snorks and two burers!

The jumping freaks killed two of the guys before I could put them all down, and the dwarves managed to slay a third leaving me with one exo-armored ally. Snuck up to a broken roof while he distracted them and managed to injure one with the Saiga. This one turned to attack me and exo-dude managed to shoot him dead while I did the same for the other one about to kill him. That was cool. After looting what was left (he looted heaps) I decided to sleep till morning since wandering in the pitch black was not fun at all. My nap was interrupted by an emission though (typical) so Exo dude and I waited it out in one of the houses. It was dawn when it finished and as soon as we stepped out we were attacked again by three snorks this time with 2 green swamp fleshes. Killed all hostiles and bid farewell to exo-friend who was left to guard the homestead on his own.

He was like this, only in exo armor. :P

Proceeded North East to the next Cordon exit on the map, stopping atop the sniper tower to shoot a pack of dogs who were going to be in the way. Seemed to be safer to go through the water-parts as there were less anomalies but I had to detour around a heavily radiated village. Found an unusable buggy at an abandoned factory as well as a pack of hostile zombie-cats all of whom met some bullets to the face. There was one last village to go through before the exit and this one was inhabited by more bandits, though very stupid ones. After sniping the first two lookouts I assaulted the compound and managed to flank and one-shot kill every single one of them.

Finally I was back in Cordon, though North of the tracks, so after fighting past a few fleshes and some of Colonel Vodka's reinforcements I was back where I began: at the village, scouting out the military base to the South with my binocs. It was then I decided there was going to be no sneaking. I would need to launch a head on attack, so with grenade launcher and plenty of ammo at the ready took aim at their parked tank.

Southern Circuit

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Blew through Bar pretty quick, though I had to take some time on the Southern border to snipe a whole pack of dogs waiting for me. Tried sniping a wandering Burer too but I ended up having to just run past the telepathic bastard. Pushed through Garbage to Agroprom for a small detour of sniping a military grunt at a toxic lake. Also found myself attacked by a small litter of fast moving cats. Yes. Cats. God damn. Everything here wants to kill me. Fortunately some drop good loot like the bandit bunch I ran into. Managed to pickup a "Bandit Exo-skeleton suit".

Decided to then take a short-cut back to the Cordon via a foresty path filled with anomalies, boars and fleshes. Thought I'd finish off a few quests while I was here only to find I couldn't for some because a) the quest giver had travelled to a different location and b) the item I retrieved and used was so damaged they wanted me to fix it first. Sigh. Fortunately Sid repairs for resonable prices. Got a replacement shottie while I was at it and I also found a fat guy named Tolik bleeding out in the bush, patched him up and helped him get vengeance on the dog pack that got him and his buddies.

I also met a group of three hunters who wanted my help in staving off an attack by bandits near the rail-crossing. I agreed and sure enough a large firefight ensued with the hunters all dying in the first 10 seconds of combat. To make things more interesting a group of wandering stalkers and Colonel Vodka and his squad decided to join in. In the end everyone except for the invincible Colonel and myself were dead.

After the blood bath I had to elude the Colonel with a large detour, then it was time to push back North. My journey was slightly delayed by a heavy storm so I made camp to wait it out near the ruins where Fox's team was - though one of their number had been killed by another pack of dogs. They weren't what I came across when following the road to Garbage though. It was this guy...

Yup. A psuedogiant.

Fortunately I was well stocked on launchable grens and took it down with no fuss. Still high on ammo and supplies, I headed for my next stop: the Dark Valley.

Wrong side of the Tracks

My journal through Stalker Soup - a mega mod for Shadows of Chernobyl! You can follow the rest of the story here!

I must have used up half the ammo I was carrying against the packs of dogs, boars and zombie rats going across the fields back to the rail bridge. Stargazer's pistol was getting good use. I was looking for "Guide" to get me back across the tracks but found him ripped to pieces near an anomaly filled tunnel, and it wasn't long before I found what got him - a bloodsucker, not 5 minutes away from the "newbie" village. Fantastic. In the original game you'd first encounter this thing like 2-3 maps away, but this time it was right here - scurrying half-invisible through the bushes and tall grass. I quickly climbed up to higher -clear- ground and a full pistol clip into its face put it down. Helps that I know how to shoot.

Not wanting to go through the dark tunnel I instead went to the military checkpoint on the road where the colonel offered me safe passage in exchange for vodka. In my previous run through I managed to kill him and his men with a single grenade but this time the good colonel had been buffed up incredibly (possibly god mode) so it sounded like a fair deal. He let me through and I traded some goods with his men before continuing on to clear some shoddy buildings of "flesh" mutants, then went to help a guy named Fox who had been bit by a few too many doggies. After patching him up, the said doggies arrived but were no match for him, Stargazer and Doc who had turned up out of the blue. Explored a nearby house and found a nice stash of medkits too and then... the sky turned red and the ground began to shake. A blowout!?

Yup. Time to run.

Had I known better I should have just stayed in that building but instead I made a mad dash back to the bunker at the newbie village, and everything else seemed to be dashing madly too. When I reached the bridge Colonel Vodka's group was on the run to a nearby factory ruin but one of his troop decided to open fire on me. I put him down quickly and took his gear before his buddies could get a bead on me. Before long I was safely underground (in a bunker with 12 dudes - funny) and the radioactive blowout was finished. Upon exiting I noticed something changed - All the fricking anomalies had moved! Way to keep you on your toes.

While there I decided to try buy a cheap vehicle from Sid - this turned out to be a small white car that was -very- broken. It couldn't even move as far as I could tell. No matter, it was more fun on foot anyway. Colonel Vodka's team was less friendly this time, opening fire on me as I approached for killing their dude. While I got the guy's rifle - he had no ammo for it and I was not looking to fighting a military squad with a pistol and a low ammo count so this time I braved the anomaly filled tunnel and came out the other side hurt, but alive.