Battle Brothers: The Green Sea

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

Unwilling to lose any more cities, Gander marches the Spears back to the Western front - hiring the sell swords Oghren and Adam Chaplin on the way. Even with House Ruhmolt soldiers, the clash against goblin forces costs Emile and Stargazer their lives. Hakon also has his shield destroyed in the melee and his throat cut from ear to ear. Sid is traumatized by the experience.

Despite their victories, word arrives that Reinbruch - a village just across the mountains - has also fallen, and now the horde marches upon House Folsach's stronghold of Lazenfeste. The Spears are contracted to destroy the orcs forward war camp, gaining volunteers Sigmar the vagabond and Bertram the miller to fill out the long axe row at the back. Ironically, the Spears of the Church no longer use Spears.

Maybe this caught the orc warlords by surprise?

The war camp is easily destroyed, but since it was just one of many Lazenfeste falls under siege and the Spears rush to aid it with a company of House Folsach soldiers. They are terribly outnumbered, but find victory on the field, losing Harlech, Oghren and one of Sid's eyes to orc warriors as well as all but one of the House Folsach soldiers.

Battle Brothers: The Ruins of Kragenheim

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

After rescuing the survivors of Stakendorf, Stargazer injures himself while training as the Spears are sent to clear the Ruins of Kragenheim. The resident goblins have superior positioning and a shaman to boot who continually casts AoE root spells. The magic and the net throwing skirmishers makes advancing an arduous task. Hakon is pretty much useless the entire fight as he never succeeds in freeing himself.

The fleet footed gobbos get to work dismantling the rest of the team, dismembering Sir Wilhelm, cutting down Arl Eamon, Reimund, and Gaius, removing one of Raven's ears and breaking Sunbro's elbow before Gander finally reaches the shaman and impales it with the company battle standard. The remaining enemies are subsequently cut down easily.

And their corpses put on display.

Weakened and in low morale, Gander pulls the Spears back to the safer Eastern cities for an easy nachzehrer hunt and to resupply rations. While doing this the horde advances and destroys Gerworld village.

Battle Brothers: Many Masks

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

The Spear's banditry continues as they do the same ruse at Kielseng, before moving on to guard caravans and hunt more dire wolves. On the road, Sahkarov convinces a "war" band of children to disperse shortly before running into House Grimmund soldiers who attempt to arrest Emile. Using their legendary renown, Gander makes them back off.

The very next day they are side by side with the same troops, led by Sir Wilhelm Erkenbrand of House Grimmund (previously of House Ruhmolt, guess they pay better up North?) to successfully defend against more marauding greenskins.

Afterwards the Spears do a bunch of easy envoy escort missions, with Harlech taking the opportunity to learn some moves from Arl Eamon. Gander also spends a bit of coin on upgrading the Spears equipment, including a magic helm, and accepts a task to defend Wiesendorf from roaming bandits - who turn out to be undead!

The Spears still honor their contract, and despite Arl Eamon losing an eye and the enemy necromancer having an undead hero who manages to stand up even after Stargazer beheads him, they undead are no match for the mercenaries. Raven gains a few more coins afterwards by using his juggling talents in the village.

Happy times among all the killing.

Fighting a headless foe takes its toll on Stargazer though, who drowns his nightmares with ale. He is now a drunkard.

Battle Brothers: Skinny Brigands

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

The peace after the invasion is pleasant, but coin hard to come by once more for a mercenary band. Harlech tries his hand at a tournament, jousting against Sir Albrecht but only wins himself a broken shoulder. Raven and Sir Erland also injure each other again when quarreling about status, Emile continues thieving, and Stargazer pockets a magic knife from a corpse in the woods.

To keep them busy, Gander returns the Spears to hunting dire wolves and courier work, as well as "posing" as bandits and raiding Erzberg, slaying a good number of peasants as part of an extortion racket for House Folsach. Gander feels guilty about this afterwards, with Sid consoling him saying money is money.

The ultimate motivator.

Almost right afterwards the Spears are back at Erzberg, defending it from rampaging green skins with the Hungry Hounds and soldiers led by Sir Wilhelm Erkenbrand. There are a few allied losses, and Corynx suffers a broken elbow thanks to a goblin pike. On a more positive note, Sir Erland manages to get a traveling troupe to perform for free upping morale, and Raven Fat Bastard is no longer fat! Needing a more appropriate name, the Spears re-dub him Raven Skinny Bastard.

Battle Brothers: Slightly Winning

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

Camping just beyond sight of the artifact's resting place - the Spears spend a few days in low morale to repair their gear and recover from lesser injuries. Gander then raises the banner and leads the remaining men back into the fray where fortunately the skeletons they previously destroyed were still scattered on the snow.

Using the same tactic, the team is victorious this time with Sunbro again being the MVP, though Agdan falls in battle and has to be re-slain. During this, Stargazer discovers you can actually swipe weapons off the ground - meaning when Agdan reanimated, he was defenseless. A good trick to know for next time.

Because unarmed zombies are not really a threat.

Gander notes none of the brothers who fell earlier are to be found anywhere, which makes him both sad and worried. Still, the gem artifact is located as well as a magical shield which now goes to the second most experienced brother, Stargazer. Finding this rare artifact lifts spirits tremendously.

The Spears decide their next ambition is to end this cursed undead plague, and begin the long march back to hand in the artifact. Rumors in the towns they pass is that they are already "slightly winning"! Gander is happy to hear the company is also now considered legendary.

Battle Brothers: The Nightmare Begins

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

After a nightmarish sleep, Gander is woken up at the tavern by Stargazer who says refugees from all over are claiming the dead are rising across the land. Behind him are the new recruits, Agdan, a cultist friend of Fanatic and Sir Erland an adventurous noble and his squires Gillian Laddersmith and Reimund the Secret Son, a bastard child of the King. Not so secret if it's in his name I guess.

Nightmares involving Rome?

They immediately report in to Faltran, who is still deep in his cups, and decides to ignore the undead threat to do training missions instead: catching thieves and escorting a caravan both proving to be easy. They also accompany Sir Erland's friend Sir Siegfried Baranor of House Ruhmolt and his troops in hunting another nachzerer swarm in the swamp which again is relatively safe given the number of allies.

The newbies do pretty well, despite the "surprise" that any slain human raises as a zombie now and a small altercation between Raven and Sir Erland on who gets to eat first - low born or high born. Faltran lets them sort it out with their fists. Unconvinced by their new commander, Majorn has a quiet discussion with him and Gander or the duty of every living person to fight the undead.

His words took root because not a day later the Spears accepted a contract to defend the town of Wiesendorf from an undead horde marching towards it.

Tripping out at the Cordon

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

Woke up on the road with a guy named Stargazer who apparently pulled me from the wreckage of a "death" truck. He seemed surprised I survived then gave me a raincoat, binoculars, a knife, a med kit (used immediately since I was near death) and a small pistol with 8 bullets and sent me on my way to the "newbie village". This is hilarious, given the amount of hostile wild life I am seeing nearby, not to mention I have to get past a military checkpoint at a broken rail bridge to reach it. Gotta say the anomalies have never looked so good, and dangerous. Fortunately I still have my infinite scrap metal pieces to toss ahead of me just to make sure I'm not walking into anything nasty.

Getting across the tracks turned out to be easy since I spotted a lightly patrolled section atop the hill and I slipped through undetected which is great given that a) the military guys don't like stalkers and b) they are better equipped than I am. Spent all but one bullet on a pack of dogs that caught onto my scent on the other side, and I had to make a run for the village with the left overs in tow, resulting in the death of one of the guards. Was also interesting to note that there was a gangly zombie (which I had never seen before) lurking in the forests nearby and keeping everyone on edge. The guards eventually killed the "Izolm".

He's a handsome fella ain't he?

The other stalkers at the village had a great deal of distrust in me, and sent me to see Doc to take some sort of test. Apparently this involves taking wierd medicine and passing out (again) only to wake up deep in a mine full of horrible beasties including snorks, bloodsuckers, zombies, skeletons, pseudogiants and poltergeists. Thanks guys. At least they provided me with some power armor, a chain gun and decent artifacts to negate the horrible radiation. After massacring all the other hostiles the last section contained a series of lightning anomalies - a good trick given that someone in power armor cannot run. Easy enough to time jumping through the eletrical arcs with the armor off though.

Having passed the "test" I awoke back in the village and see the local trader (bought more ammo - yay) as well as some other dudes to do some random tasks involving retrieving artifacts, saving captured people, retrieving armor from dens of psy-dogs, and hunting boar - all in a lousy raincoat and -still- using Stargazer's pistol. The modders balanced the money in-take/out-take very well. It was around this point last time that I went south to the military camp to wipe them out but given that they have a HELICOPTER lurking around their base (and I still only have a pistol) I thought to instead follow the main quest North to find this "Strelok" person.