I was a teen-level necromancer

Last Thursday we wrapped up the Grenzland Diplomacy play-by-post game we were playing for the last few days. At least for the season.
So the Grenzland campaign (tl.: Borderland) is an ODnD campaign run by Wanderer Bill for the last few years. There already was a lot of history that has been happening in this campaign, and a few months ago he started a sort of Diplomacy-like game, not unlike the games where Dungeons and Dragons originally came from, while running his normal campaign on the side. Multiple players took over different factions in the campaign he had, and we went and were trying to reach our goals and make the best of what we were given when dealing with the others.

That said, I was in the rather fortunate position of taking over Evangus the High-Priest of Set, which according to the notes I received was basically the Big Bad of the setting.

By the way, the strength of Evangus’ forces was determined by random tables in the the White Box. This left me with a level 17 Cleric of Set, with multiple units of mounted troops and infantry, as well as an assortment of high-level clerics. Oh, and 7 spectres.

Yes, I was basically Sauron, even if my realm at that point consisted of 3 villages and a single castle.
In fact it never really increased that much either.

• While I was powerful and knew that I was powerful (with the power of Set behind me, how could anyone stand against me?), I was not quite sure how powerful all the other factions in game were. My first forays therefore were rather careful. My first attempt was to send out a group of four of my spectres with a group of heavy mounted units to raid whatever I came across (think the beginning of Conan the Barbarian) with a group of clerics coming behind to treat the wounded left over by my raids (again think Conan), and to convince survivors to allow the establishment of clerical infrastructure (shrines and churches). Unfortunately that soon hit the problem that this particular way of playing the game was too granular from what I experienced. And really, what did I expect? Those were tactics that might have worked in a roleplaying game, not
• Despite me attacking the place, we left with the agreement to work together in forcing the world into submission under Set. Hardly what you expect from agents of chaos. Except that of course you have to expect the unexpected…
• For what it’s worth Darpantor’s player was perfectly ready to betray me early on, as he wanted to take advantage of me and my forces and then get rid of me. According to him it was about half our common campaign against the forces of order in that he realized that that wasn’t gonna work.
  eyes growing spectral host warily
• We soon enough put together a force to take on the side of Order. Now to be fair, I didn’t have too much skin in the game here. I was mostly working with the alliance of Chaotic Dragon, Goblins, Southern orcs, and Serpent People for ideological reasons. Which meant I was tagging along to further both their goals (especially as the Orcs after a few successes converted to the Cult of Set and therefore also were included in that), and, well, the other reason…
  • Note: I was working with the southern orcs. For whatever reason all orc players were convinced the other ones were an NPC faction and never even attempted to contact each other.
• Also for what it’s worth, while I was of course chaotic and expecting my fellow chaotic Setite-ish-ites to try and backstab me, that never actually happened. I had assumed that I was getting too dangerous for them and that if the forces of Order weren’t gonna get me, that my fellow Setites were gonna backstab me. But as my mission was to spread the belief and Cult of Set around, I did not feel like it warranted any further undue preparation against allies that were still useful.
• The main reason why Evangus became quite feared the more successful we were was a simple one: Set had provided Evangus with a set of spectres as loyal followers. Think my own little force of Nazgûl. Except that in Chainmail/ODnD a figure killed by a spectre (which fights as a balrog) will raise as another spectre. After a few successes my small force of heavy mounted were easily outclassed by the gigantic host of spectres the Chaotic alliance kept dragging around. A high-powered army of flying units that easily could make mincemeat out of everything, and get stronger in the process.
• Bill mentioned that he was rather happy about me not being too shy in using my spectres, but the truth is that I was: I realized early on that I easily could completely fuck up the whole game if I really wanted to and tried to find ways not to. Part of it was of course that my mandate was to force the world under the power of Set, and ruling over nothing but undead wasn’t too useful for my patron. So I was trying to go the diplomatic route as much as possible, trying to convince people to submit to Set instead of outright destroying them. Not that that ever worked with the forces of order, as everyone was too busy being afraid of the evil Necromancer that was taking over the land to even consider giving me the time of day.
• Funnily enough Evangus was not a necromancer, and did never actually do any raising of the dead himself during the whole game. It was just that every battle ended with his forces swelling even more. Something that I could see would become a problem once my character was killed, but to that later…
• One early interaction, (which resulted in my first battle) was with the swamp orcs, who had been contacted by Evangus before the game started, and asked to join his cause. Alex, who played this faction, contacted me early on with a group of orcs, who infiltrated the temple by claiming to be new followers. I was quite aware that there were shenanigans afoot as my local scouts reported orcish troops around my westernmost settlement. So I moved a few troops into the village to see what was going to happen. Alex on his side was not quite convinced that I was actually as powerful as I claimed to be, and as he also was in talks with a nearby settlement of dwarves , decided to side with the dwarves and attack me instead. Interestingly enough we had different points of view from the beginning. Where I assumed a much more neutral point of view, his information indicated Evangus in his arrogance had already spoiled the alliance with the orcs. The resulting Battle of Tersten was a rather short, but drastic affair where my heavy foot troops in the village were reduced by half, the village partially burned down, and pillaged. That is, until the first orcs started to be felled by the one spectre I had moved there. It was a bit of a surprise to me as well that Bill actually did follow the rules as written, and ruled that
  • 1. spectres could only be killed by magic weapons
  • 2. any unit killed by spectres would raise as a spectre.
    The ensuing fight was a massacre, and my punitive expedition towards Bogburg was not a good for Alex either. Clearly intimidated by the power of Set (that is, of the spectral riders) he was unwilling to push any further.
• In fact from the few Chainmail scenarios I was part of this was one where I felt the most threatened.
• That is, I did not quite feel as threatened from a later aerial battle between normal PCs on Rocs, fighting with my flying spectres and actually killing a few of them. On my side I felt like it was going pretty badly for me, but my opponent was a player character whose player had a deeper connection to his characters than I did to my easily replacable spectres. For them the prospect of having their fallen come back as new enemies was rather more horrifying than for me losing (and partially regaining) a few undead.
• in a rather horrifying way I started treating enemy villages as refuel points, and even laid out plans to use my mounted troops and the armies of my allies as potential ways to grow my power exponentially if needed. It never was, but it certainly would have been a memorable moment.
• The whole game came to a lull after our chaotic alliance had their successes. We easily took over the main settlements of the wood elves, took over the already abandoned city of the sea elves, as well as the human settlements.
• While we were busy taking over the settlement of wood elves, the wood elves took over the main fortress of the serpent people, both armies nicely managing to miss each other on the way to their respective headquarters. The wood elves were rather surprised (and suspicious) when they walked into a completely empty Serpent Fortress.
• I had at one point taken a bunch of dwarves prisoner and forced them to walk to my headquarters to press them for more information (I never did manage to figure out where exactly the dwarves had their fortress). This is where the battle with the Rocs took place, and I think my use of prisoners as easy replacement spectres was what made my opponent flee in the end. The dwarves ended in the dungeon of Castle Ombos and…were subsequently forgotten about. I kept meaning to come back to them eventually, but…
• The end for me came rather sudden, with only some meta warning, as Evangus was taken down in a commando action by player characters on the RL table in Hamburg. I had expected that either the forces of Order would try to stand against me, or that the forces of Chaos would try to get rid of the danger I posed. In the end neither did, and it was the player characters that destroyed Castle Ombos and temporarily unalived me. (“What, he’s not dead?!” came the question when I dropped that nugget of information during the wrap-up). This all was not quite ideal. Wanderer Bill and me worked out the design of Evangus’ Castle Ombos the day before the session, and I did not actually think I would bite the bullet quite so fast, but they managed to kill Evangus while I was asleep in RL.
  • by the way, they managed to get rid of the upper levels of Castle Ombos, but they never touched the dungeon and the treasure vaults under Ombos. Hint hint.
  • oh, that also includes the dwarves that never were freed from their prison, as none of the adventurers went down to the dungeon.
  • I was hoping that if they’d manage to completely clear Castle Ombos we could publish what we came up with in Wanderer Bill’s Grenzland zine. The way it ended left half the dungeon untouched so, so it’s effectively still an active dungeon in the campaign world.
• The big issue with Evangus being defeated was of course something that I had predicted from the start, and one of the reasons why I had left spectres all over the place in all the places we conquered: what exactly happens when the one controlling all those spectres gets killed? Evangus did not raise these spectres, he was just the one controlling them. He received command over them as a boon from his deity.
  • The answer we came up with is that depending on random chance all the spectres (and I had A LOT at that point) now had a chance of either doing nothing, starting to wildly attack each other and anyone else, or disappear. While not all spectres survived that, enough did to make multiple cities, fortresses, and villages, as well as the whole forest of the wood elves, into haunted death sites. Which I think is rather fitting.
• Side note: I never actually managed to meet one player’s faction who turned out to play an extraterrestrials. I knew she was in the game, I just couldn’t figure out who she was because she never directly interacted with me. That was a surprise for me during the wrap-up.

So, what did I learn from the game?

• it’s a lot of work, and I think the DM made it more difficult for himself as he decided to respond to player commands in real time
• there are lulls in action that are sometimes a bit disheartening. But there sometimes really wasn’t much that I could do without interfering with plans I already had in progress
• flaking was a bit of a problem, as some people started out enthusiastic but then just disappeared. Or decided that there was no actual way ahead than defending their gains
• I actually do wonder if having such a powerful faction as mine wasn’t a bit of a detriment to the game over all. I guess technically all was set up for an epic battle
• there really was not as much skill involved as I would have liked. I started with a drastically better hand than anyone else, and despite some fretting on my side, never even came close to losing
• That is, in the diplomacy game. My actual loss could barely be influenced by me.
• I think in a game like this it needs to be made clear who the bad guy of the setting is. And yes, in a lot of ways it could have gone different, but I think it would have been better if people already knew about the potential my forces had so they could plan accordingly. As I played it I was too careful. I tried to act with arrogance as much as possible, but from a quasi-reasonable point of view. Think Sauron-sending-an-envoy-to-Erebor kind of arrogant. But that didn’t work, as it stopped the others from recognizing how dangerous I really could be.
• work out your place before it becomes urgent. I originally had thought nobody was gonna visit me all that fast. In the end they did.
• The killing of my character in an interaction between the real life table in Hamburg and the diplomacy game is unfortunate. I don’t actually mind the end as such, but the fact that I didn’t have input in this makes it feel a bit unclean. There also was a small DM mistake in there as I was supposed to have a sanctum I could get to. Instead I just died and Set granted Evangus reincarnation into a new body. This is all together a much nicer hook for later games, but the loss of my player agency is an issue.

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