"Sharke's Panzerfäuste"
A Flintloque/Panzerfäuste Crossover Scenario by Steve Blease
In the first of their world hopping adventures we follow Sharke and Harpy as they travel to a different reality, that of Panzerfäuste's The Land.
~
“What in the bleedin’ hells was that?!” Sharke attempted to stand and fell on his backside again. He put his hand to his mouth and it came away wet, covered with black blood. He spat on the ground, blood and phlegm scattering on the snowy ground. Lifting his head he saw the scattered bodies of his Orc Rifles, some beginning to move, Harpy amongst them. Drawing a breath Sharke could smell a whiff of ozone, out of the corners of his eyes he caught a tinge of sepia, he recognised the feeling.
“Damnation Harpy. Bleedin’ Magick!” Sharke growled.
“Aye soir”, mumbled the huge Bog Orc, scratching his groin. “That dwarf-humping pointy-eared bastard musta thrown some kind o' magick at us. Last ting oise remembers is we was in the breach at Badajobz, now we’s ‘ere. Wherever ‘ere is?”
Looking around the disorientated section of mumbling confused orcs, Sharke started to take in the alien surroundings, he didn't like this one bit. “C'mon lads, into the tree line, double march ! Move it!”
The Rifles had just reached the thick line of dense trees when suddenly a series of explosions tore up the ground where they had been lying moments before. A terrible roar unlike anything he'd heard before split the air and was followed by a grinding noise surely straight from Haydes.
“Dragon!” screamed Purkinz. Sharke spun round. He beheld something the like of which he’d never seen before. A metal beast with a long snout belching death and destruction, moving along the cold broken ground. Not a dragon, Sharke realized, he knew too well they were all dead after all, but something equally as deadly.
“Look soir! There be one of our lads in it!”, exclaimed Harpy.
Sharke extended his telescope and studied the beast closer. It was clearly not an animal but some kind of machine. Similar to some things he'd seen the Dwarves working on but bigger, much bigger, than anything he'd heard tale of before – and indeed, as Harpy had said, sitting atop it was an Orc. He didn't recognise the uniform, but it was indeed an Orc. In Sentinel's name the beast must be a sodding friendly, an Orc controlling it somehow.
Again it belched flame and smoke from its snout. In the distance an explosion tore the earth apart. Shattered bodies flew into the air – Dwarves no less!
As Sharke looked on, the Dwarves did not run from the strange machine. He shook his head at the futile bravery of the stunties. The strange grey uniformed Dwarves didn’t run at all, in fact they returned fire from their muskets at an unprecedented rate.
“Bugger me soir!” muttered Harpy. “Dat’s a hell of a lot more than the three a minute the best of Wheeling-Turn’s can manage...”
Whilst the musket fire did not appear to damage the machine, it did suceed in drawing the beasts attention, it's snout turning slowly to face them. Then, Sharke noticed, to its flank one Dwarf rose from the snowy grass and held a strange tube with cone on the end under his arm and pointed it as the green contraption.
“What the Hells...” whispered Sharke.
Suddenly the tube let loose a whoosh of flame and the cone disappeared in a streak towards the machine. A huge explosion rocked the target. Metal ripped apart and scattered debris across the snow. Secondary explosions burst into flame. The Orc atop it had disintergrated along with the beast.
“Sentinel’s teeth Harpy! Where in Valon are we?” whispered Sharke.
“Oise dunno soir, but oise gotta be havin’ meself one of them!”
Out of this world...
~
The idea of inter-world travel is not new in the world of Flintloque. Many moons ago I wrote scenario for Orcs In the Hills in which the M16 armed Orcs from Mary Gentle’s book Grunts! appear in Valon. In this scenario the transfer is the other way with Sharke and his loyal band of rifles being transported to the world of Panzerfäuste - The Land.
Obviously in a world were the combatants are armed with 20th century weaponry, Sharke and his boys are at a distinct disadvantage with their Valonian state of the art 19th century black powder weapons. That said, get in a close and three foot of heavy cavalry sword gives Sharke something of an advantage...
Rules Conversions
This scenario can be played with Flintloque, Strange Grogge or Panzerfäuste. Rather than attempt to come up with stats for Dwarf sub-machine guns for Flintloque or Orc rifles for Panzerfäuste I would suggest a simple approach that you double the effectiveness of the C20th weapons so that they have twice the range and twice the rate of fire than their C19th counterparts.
So either allow a Dwarf rifle to be fired twice a turn at twice the distance of an Orc black powder rifle, or half the range of the Orc black powder rifle and allow it to fire every other turn depending on the rule set you use...
The Scenario
Wylde Magick sorcery has resulted in Sharke and his rifles being transported from Valon to The Land. The unpredictable effects of Wylde Magick are such that they may be dragged back to Valon at any moment or cast across the multiverse and end up anywhere, anytime...
A quick recee by the rifles has led to the discovery of a small building in a clearing in the woods that appears to be some sort of forward operations weapons store. Having witnessed the power of the weapons in this strange land Sharke realizes that if he can capture some and return them to Valon, the Orcs could have a decisive advantage in their war against the Ferach.
Terrain
The weapons store is a simple woodsman’s hut in a clearing surrounded by forest on all sides. A track wide enough for a lorry to drive on leads to the building from the southern edge of the board. The distance to the woods from the building is no less than 30cm at any point.
The Gnomes
The store is guarded by six Gnome Milice troopers. The Milice* are a para-military police force of the collaborator government of occupied Dûn-Nomin. They are inexperienced troops armed with rifles, two are patrolling around the hut (opposite sides moving clockwise half way between the tree line and the hut) and four are inside enjoying some looted cheese. The Gnome player cannot shoot until he sights an Orc.
* For Milice troops use the Gnome Chasseurs pack painted with dark blue berets and tunics and khaki brown trousers and puttees. This pack is available from the Wessex Games website.
The Orc
The rifles are the standard unit from the original Flintloque boxset, full rules for them can be found on the Notables Yahoo eGroup in the Flintloque Reloaded section. The Orcs will remain in The Land for 6 plus 1D10 turns before the Wyle Magick spirits them away to who knows where. However the exact number of turns is not know by the Orc player (only the Umpire or Gnome player if you don’t have a third party) This means that they need to capture the weapons store quickly, but may need to hold it for some time after...
The Dwarves
Steiner’s Stuermers are on their way to replenish their ammunition and replace some damaged weapons. They will appear on the southern edge upon the roll of a 6 on a D6 rolled each turn after the first shot is fired. Stuermer’s unit is the standard unit described in the Panzerfäuste rulebook.
Conclusion
Sharke’s Panzerfaust is a bit of a rough scenario as it will depend on what rules you choose to use, but hopefully it will demonstrate the possibilities of crossing worlds and genres in fantasy games. Who knows where Sharke and his lads will turn up next? Sharke’s Mars* anyone?
~
Sharke's world hopping adventures continued on Orcs in the Webbe in 2012 with "Sharke's Aquila".
(*He did not get to the Red Planet until 2013 but that is, quite literally, another story - "Sharke's Barsoom".)
~
Webmaster's Notes
An Orcs in the Webbe Original! "Sharke’s Panzerfäuste" was written exclusively for Orcs in the Webbe's 2009 countdown to Christmas Advent Calendar and was intended to be first published on Wednesday 23rd December 2009. Due to the hand crank driven internet in my home in Taffsea it finally made it up on Christmas Eve morning.
It was absent for several years due to a prior regeneration of the website not transferring everything over correctly, the wrong has now been righted and it returned on the 16th June 2020 as part of Orcs in the Webbe's ongoing Flintloque Archive Project.
Any comments in maroon in the article above have been added by me at a later date to either to provide additional information or clarity. I also may have made small changes to grammar and layout but have not marked these.