Oh no, Battle Brothers is actually incredibly unforgiving of minor mistakes

"....and that, I'm sure you'll understand, is why I haven't washed my codpiece in fifteen years," concluded Rumjugs with a flourish, downing the last of the gutrot in a single guzzle. An alcoholic? He wouldn't say that, no. Just vastly preferred having recently consumed alcohol at all times and was prepared to sacrifice a range of basic necessities and niceties to achieve it. You couldn't blame him, really. We were all a little shaken after watching Terry barely survive the last fight, although Rick Nipples' constant sobbing over his permanently disfigured face was keeping the boys in relatively good cheer.

As was the promise of our first solid payday in a good while. We'd avenged Bodo against the brigands, completely forgot who Bodo was or why he mattered, and were now heading back west to Kobmanhaven to collect. Back across the marshes, where crows flew overhead like the sky vultures they were. Back through the forests, where the branches themselves seemed to recoil, like arthritic fingers, from the stench of blood and shit and sour porridge that hung over us. Back across the fields, where Jason Of Stathingham got in a staring match with an inquisitive cow for three hours, which was honestly quite quick as far as these things usually go.

Still, an uneventful trip, all told. When we returned, Hakon the councilman wasted no time greeting us with a sack o' coin in each hand and babbling about how we'd stopped the ambushes on the local trade routes. Hopefully this meant we could get some nice hats. The boys had a thing for a nice hats and I wasn't going to be the one to argue.

What we couldn't get was any fresh meat for the band. The local hirelings were all cocksure petty nobles' sons out looking for some excitement, each wildly overestimating their personal usefulness, and hiring even one of them would have cleaned us out. Instead, we paid the local priest to bless Terry's broken nose, then bought some dried fruit and a few rounds for the company. I also decided Rick Nipples had earned himself a weapon for surviving, and also making it all the way back with a maimed foot and a crushed windpipe. I bought him a throwing spear. He can have a permanent weapon when he earns it, and he can earn it by dying.

It was past time we got some more work, and before we knew it, we were out searching for a nearby castle named 'Necrosavant'. Dodgy name, dodgy job, we thought. But what can you do, eh? Took us a day of wandering around in the complete wrong direction - despite very clear basic instructions - before something found us first. Or someone, I should say: a hooded stranger out of the mist, who somehow knew exactly what we were looking for. We gave him the 30 crowns he asked for, he barked some directions, and disappeared. Sure enough, we found the place. We debated going inside, but Wolfgang Silkworm had a thing about massive imposing mortuary-like structures with giant skulls on the exterior being "bad luck", so we left it. Coward.

A few more pints in Kobmanhaven, and it was off to track down a fertility idol someone had stolen from the councilman. On the way out, we slipped a handful of coin to a local lad named Reiner to fill out out numbers. He had his own club, and we'd heard he was the loyal type. Times being what they were, our standards didn't stretch much further than that. We followed tracks east, and soon found the gang responsible for stealing the fertility idol.

There were seven of the bastards, so we had them outnumbered, although not by a number that fit comfortably into any kind of dramatic statement, which was profoundly irritating. We threw ourselves into the fray. Jason was the first one to spill real blood, breaking a nose with his club. The new lad, Reiner, got a decent hit in too, and Rumjugs managed to get himself stunned by a flail wielder. Terry got the first kill as usual, pissing off Jason in the process by taking down the same man whose nose he'd broken. All in all, a reasonably fortuitous start to what we were all sure would be a quick scrap.

And then it happens. Too quick for anyone to register consciously, slowly enough that Excellent Log's parting scream reaches the entire company before he falls to the floor. Then Thillmann joins him, barely having time to brag about how he'd never get fooled by such an obvious feint. We do for two of the bastards, but there's no satisfaction in it, even when Terry puts a crossbow bolt straight through the hand that struck down Thilmann. Poetic justice can feel like a gift from fate until you remember it can only happen if there's something awful to avenge in the first place. What little stock these fickle gods put in mortal life! Reiner eats shit too but, you know, whatever.

We entered the fight as ten men. We leave as six. Thilmann is still alive for some reason which sort of undermines the narrative up until this point but it felt real in the moment. Did I misread a tooltip in the heat of battle? Are the gods playing tricks on me? Am I going to rewrite that paragraph to match the apparent reality of the situation based on my screenshots? Nope, quill and ink is incredibly expensive. Still, we lost a lot of lads. We might leave with the idol of fertility, but the morning is air is pregnant with…tragedy. Shut up. I'm leaving that in. Also, we might boot Rick Nipples into a stream on the way back. It feels like some ugly cosmic joke that he survived again.