Battle Brothers: A Surprise in the Darkness

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

Another caravan contract is drawn up for the Spears, this one much shorter and much safer on paper. Before setting out Tolik the Tiny joins the company, and as expected is made the butt of some jokes courtesy of his nickname and Coppertopper's sense of humor.

Meanwhile Sid is beginning to question how some of these men came here as he recognizes them from another land but such tales are forgotten when in the middle of the night, three of the caravan hands reveal themselves to be... vampires!

Literally a cat out of the bag moment when they show up.

These bastards can vanish and appear at will in a swarm of bats, and as expected hit like a truck. Big Mike gets the Spears to bunch up quickly into a turtle formation which negates their divide and conquer (and feed on the loners) tactics and ultimately leads to the Spears victory, but it isn't without cost.

Gander is traumatized, Sid has a weakened heart, Tartarus has a broken knee and a missing nose, and Coppertopper is dead - being victim #1 when his morale broke and tried to flee from the group.

In light of this Big Mike hires Majorn the Vampire Hunter at the very next town. It's strange since Majorn looks a little bit like a vampire himself.

Battle Brothers: Spear Wall

Part of the Fate of Heroes series - spoilers ahead!

With the string of recent victories, morale is high as a banner for the Spears is created. The Nord Craizee is recruited as the company goes to hunt the rampant dire wolf packs roaming the forests.

The large white flags means their morale is breaking.

These critters are fast, but are easy prey as they keep lunging against the front line spearwall. The same tactic works well on zombies encountered at some random ruins, the only difference is - they get back up, making for a marathon battle but one still won by caution.

The company eventually arrives at Wiesendorf who not only have hauntings at the graveyard, but also a fort of bandits raiding their supply lines. With a quick scouting run it turns out the "hauntings" are also bandits, so the Spears set out to rout both locations.

These bandits are wise to the spear wall method, and counter with delays or ranged attacks forcing the Spears to charge. Ultimately this leads to the death of S***A who is piked while spear walling (pikes out range spears), and Moaning Knight (one of the original three) who takes an arrow to the knee... and another to the face.

Coppertopper the messenger and He-Alve the strange, scaled one are recruited as replacements, but Faltran and Bloodfire know they'll never be able to replace their fallen comrade.

Dragon's Dogma: Placing Ports

Adventures of Skyrim - spoilers ahead! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Near the Greatwall is a mini dungeon called Soulflayer Canyon which serves as a "not so shortcut" back across the map and is home to lots of ugly critters. While traversing it, Barnaby is once again put to sleep by snow harpies and this time since they also manage to ice me and have the rest of the team dealing with goblins one of them picks up the sleeping fool and spirits him away. Presumably to make baby harpies, followed by Barnaby steak. We never see him again.

Easiest cyclops kill in here!

We then journey far past a windy valley that doubles as a bandit camp and encounter our first golem! Again, good idea for this creature - powered by magic immune disks that serve as its weak spots. You can't pick and choose though, you need to get them all - and with one in the palm of its hand and another in the base of a foot it proves to be a good challenge. Eventually we reach the crumbling Bluemoon Tower we had seen all the way from the other end of the bay at Cassardis. I love the draw distance in this game.

If you are wondering why the heck I'm going to these places it's simply to place Port Crystals (as I mentioned to Coppertopper in the comments previously) so that I can just warp back to them later. It's certainly pretty handy for the cascade of hunting quests I've been assigned. Everything from rats to Death. Yes, there is a quest to kill Death and while I know where to find him I don't see how the heck I'm meant to do that one.