Dirge for Burkstad

 Twenty three years of anguish and misery is finally over. Incidentally, it took two years and one thirds of a year to complete. 

Lantern Year 22 hunt was against Sunstalker level 2.

We had green savior acting as our evasion tank, and two survivors wounding on 3+ and bow survivor critting on 6+, so we had rather decent chances I would say - considering how terribly Burkstad has fared over their course of existence. 

First hunt space 63, Feet. Fortunately we had one survivor with no insanity, so it wasn't a total party kill, but almost. The three extra events caused us to lose two survivors to the Gambler. 

It's been almost four months since we had our last game, and game set-up had taken longer than our game until that point. That was a little too harsh, so we ended up fudging the results into severe injury rolls, which were adequately punishing - broken leg and dismembered leg. Our entire hunt party was now movement 4 or below.  

Hunt phase also offered us extra disorders - and our legless evasion tank with Rawhide armor got Ghostly Beauty.

Actual showdown started rather nicely, despite our troubles with movement. First and second round gave four and three wounds in to the Sunstalker. We probably could have gotten in a few more if it wasn't for annoyances from ambient lightening - sun was shining always from the wrong direction.

Around third turn, however, our evasion tank fell to mortal terror brain trauma. The savior wasn't able to utter Dormenatus even once. 

Then the game started to quickly fall apart. Next one to go was our death mask wearing bow user, thanks to him being in shadow when he shouldn't have. 

Purvina and Mortis still tried their best, but Purvina couldn't take two Vomit Kaleidoscopes in a row, and Mortis wasn't able to stand the incoming heat from solar track. Heroic efforts only amounted to just over half of Sunstalker's AI deck converted into wounds. 

Along with the survivors we lost: Rawhide boots, 2x founding stone, monster grease, stone noses, white lion coat, lantern halberd and death mask. 

Lantern year 23 had Butcher on the timeline, but since our campaign had been desperate crawling right from the start, I thought it best to permit triggering The Watcher now. Well, I also thought we'd have better chances against The Watcher than Butcher level 3...

And we certainly did wounds in to the cosmic devourer! Three, in fact. 

Three, that The Watcher healed many, many, many times over.

We had lost two survivors on the first round. 

The remaining survivors stood for a bit longer, but that was mostly because of The Watcher not being so interested over knocked down survivors. 

Last survivor to live wielded the Whisker Harp. At this point, the game was more about if Mawilina would get the melody going successfully even once.

And a turn before she died, she did. Despite around her seven -1 strength tokens. Still enough strength left to strum a harp!

Burkstad goes down in style, with a single note that was played in tune.

Phew.

Burkstad was a unique settlement in many ways.

There were many times when the settlement hanged on the verge of oblivion, but somehow it always managed to cling to life. Death count illustrates this point quite well: we lost 39 survivors in total, plus six saviors who vanished. There's two records here, on highest death and savior count. 

Also, it was probably a record-holder for innovations lost to Gorm Climate.

And we hunted Screaming Antelope only once!

Let's do a little re-cap.

-Prologue was one of the toughest so far.
-White Lion year 1 made a total party wipe.
- Year 2 lion and year 3 gorm went fine.
- Loss of equipment and resources to year 4 Butcher, who was thwarted by luring it to the darkness.
- Year 5 lion is a smashing success with only Rib Blade and 3x fist & tooth!
- Year 6 Flower Knight is a struggle.
- Year 7 Gorm explodes the heads of two survivors on the second turn. And still survivors somehow win.
- Year 8 Antelope goes well.
- Year 9 King's Man is a disaster.
- Year 10 White Lion and year 11 Gorm do good enough.
- Year 12 Flower Knight level 2 is barely a victory.
-Year 13 The Hand applauses people dead.
-Year 14 Sunstalker level 1 is a difficult victory, but another Sunstalker next year is an easy one.
-Year 16 Butcher level 2 we manage to bring down to one AI card remaining.
-Year 17 and 18 White Lion level 2's aren't much of a trouble, but yeah... it's year 17 & 18.
-Year 19 King's Man level 2 is brought down to one AI card remaining.
-Year 20 Phoenix level 1 gives Hour's Ring that is immediately scrapped the next hunt phase...
-Year 21 Gorm level 2 is scary but manageable.
-Year 22 Sunstalker level 2 is a total party wipe.
-Year 23 Watcher is a total settlement wipe.