Tales From The Beer Cart, Part 4 - Breaking Tharbad, The Battle

Something is coming.
Something hungry for blood.
A shadow grows on the wall behind you, swallowing you in darkness.
The Demogorgon is tired of your silly human bickering! It stomps towards you.

 The Dimensional Shambler bowls into the Gondor foot knights.

 Oddgit and his Greenskin weirdos march across the field toward the Gondor defenses.
In the distance you can see the Shoggoth and the Night Hag sizing up Baron Hawk's Dwarves.

 The Night Hag cackles and prods the Shoggoth on.
The Shoggoth decides to try taking a bite out of the Dwarven lines.
The Dwarves do a quick head count.
Wasnt there another monster with the Night Hag?

 The Xorn erupts from the ground behind the Gondor commanders!  Turn around you humies!
That Xorn is wanting to eat the metal armor from the allies.
If a body happens to be in that armor, well, thats just frosting down its cakehole!

 Meanwhile in northern Tharbad, the Sandworm attacks Wallace and his crew.

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. 
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. 
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

 The Gondor right flank flees before the wrath of the Dimensional Shambler!  Luckily, it doesnt run them down in the pursuit.  But it now eyes the juicy exposed flank of the center.  Oddgit cheers and waves at the Shambler to join in.

 The Oddfellows get stuck in.  Howling mad and frothing at the mouth, they smash into the defended wall.

Oddgit:  Bring me their heads and shroom beer is on me, boys!

Death created time to grow the things that it would kill.

 Boromir slays the Xorn, but not before Mallory goes down.  If he dies, who will write Le Morte D'Arthur?

 In the north, Wallace slays the Worm.
But at such a high cost of Dwarven casualties...

 Merlin casts Forked Lightning at the Night Hag, who returns the favor and casts Steal Soul back at him.

 With the Xorn out of the fight, Boromir saves the center from being flanked.  Of course, that also means he has to single handedly charge the Shambler!  Can even the Captain General of Gondor defeat this monstrosity?

Suddenly the sound of hooves are heard!
 The dawn is breaking and the cavalry is here!  But for which side?

Is it Ringwraiths?  Or perhaps the Rohirrim?

 Along the road the Knights of the Silver Swan gallop towards the battle.
And behind them you can see Citadel Guard Cavalry of Minas Tirith forming up in the open field for a charge.

 These Citadel Guard Cavalry are the mounted version of the Nights Watch that accompany Boromir.  Coming back from a deployment in Harad, they came looking for Boromir after they heard he had gone North on a quest.

 The Knights of the Silver Swan are an order of knights from Dol Amroth, a fiefdom of Gondor in Belfalas.  They joined the ride north when they heard rumors that Boromir had found the long lost Swanfleet Swamp.  Prince Imrahil of Dol Amroth has charged them with searching the Swanfleet for Swan signs.  The Prince believes that the Lady of the Lake has sent them a quest to find her.

There are many coincidences here... The symbol of Dol Amroth is the Swan and Ship.  The name of the swamp is Swanfleet.  Near Dol Amroth is the town Edhellond which means "elf harbor".  Near Swanfleet is the ruins of Ost In Edhil, which means "elf fortress".  Who is this Lady of the Lake anyway?  Merlin would only give Prince Imrahil the most mysterious of answers.

These cavalry figures are Perry Miniatures of course.  These plastic ones will have to make do for now, until I can afford the metal ones that I really want. 

The Knights of Dol Amroth crash into the back of the Shambler.

In the center, the Gondor Knights ride down the maniacal Gobbos.
With that, the evil forces rout and are forced from the field of battle!

Oddgit:  Curses!  My dream of a pile of severed heads is foiled yet again!

Night Hag:  They hurt my friends! Shambler and Sandworm will need some healing spells.  Ah well, back to the swamp.  Maybe some other day we can go back home to Tharbad.

Oddgit:  I know we are not super friendly, but umm... Miss Hag, what exactly happened to all the humies who lived in that ruined city long ago.  Did they kill each other, or did your Chaos spawn beasties kill them?

Night Hag:  Kill?  No one was killed!  We are all still alive and well, though some are forgetful of their human origins now.   Look, Shoggoth over there.... he was the banker.  And Xorn, she was the librarian...

Oddgit:  Wow!  Xorn is a she!

Night Hag:  (shakes her head)  Classy.  Great way to marginalize a startling confession that solves the mystery of Tharbad/Carcosa...

Overview of the newly painted Gondor Expeditionary Force.

Overview of the Beercart Defense Force.

Baron Hawk:  You humans fight well!  I wish you would join us on our journey north.

Boromir:  We are headed north, so looks like we will be road fellows afterall!  I am looking for the fabled city of Imladris, which I hear has the fabled sword of the King.  And Merlin here is looking for the White Towers.

Merlin:  Yes, the White Towers are the key to everything!  In the far future, when Middle Earth becomes Modern Earth, the White Towers will be gone, but the treasures under them will be there.  To mark their location, humans of their time will set up giant standing stones in a circle.  From this henge of stones, I shall finish my time travel magics.  Then, we can correct any mistakes made in history!  Im pretty sure there is another time traveler in Middle Earth, I feel like entire histories of different worlds are being pushed in all willy nilly into our timeline.

Boromir:  And dont forget the Sword, Merlin!  You promised me the Sword.  Whoever draws the Sword from the Stone, he shall be King!  Excalibur!

Merlin:  Actually, Sigmar shattered Excalibur when he used it against the Dark Lord Archaon the Everchosen. After that Sigmar swore off using swords ever again, and stuck to warhammers. But Excalibur was reforged and called Narsil.  But then Isildur took it and broke it by cutting the One Ring from the Dark Lord Sauron's finger.  But that has been re-reforged again and is now called Anduril.  Unless Arthur returns from Avalon and reclaims it, I suppose I can try to get you the sword.  But you must promise to be a good and wise King! 

Boromir: What does it mean to be a wise King?

Merlin:  You will be the land, and the land will be you. If you fail, the land will perish; as you thrive, the land will blossom.  One land, one king!

Boromir:  And you Dwarves?  What great quest leads you north?

Bugman:  Umm...  a beer run.  Because Moria is almost out of beer...

Everyone: ....

~~~~~

So the battle of Tharbad is done, but the Tales from the Beer Cart continues as our little force gets larger.  The Dwarves took alot of casualties in that one though.  Baron Hawks unit is down to 50%, Wallace and his scouts are down to 70% or so.  Good thing, the humies showed up.  Maybe that human wizard can help cast a few healing spells while he is at it.

The King In Yellow... What kind of crazy play can turn people into monsters?  Ok, I want to explore more of Carcosa and its chaos spawned populace.  Now we know where all the weird spawn creatures come from.  Its bad terrible luck, but still, I didnt expect to feel sympathy for them.  I wonder if the Watcher in the Water was a Carcosan?  I mean its a pretty short swim up the river to the West Gate of Moria.

What the heck is underneath the White Towers?  I thought they were Elf watch towers.  Watching what?  And to think the makers of Stonehenge were putting stones up, just to symbolize the White Towers.  If Merlin already knows the future, its because his time travel magic will work, or has worked, and he is moving backwards through time.  But Im sure he already knows that.  Smart fellow. 

So the mighty Boromir and the wise Merlin show up on the blog... with a whole lot of soldiers with them to boot.

Its a straight shot north along the Greenway Road from Tharbad to the Shire. A whole lot of characters are going to be running into each other pretty soon. 

Next post:   Tales From The Beer Cart, Part 5 -  A Sunny Day on the Greenway