I gave the group a little context on the Spanish Civil War, the makeup of the popular forces (who they'd be playing as), and the mission they'd be undertaking. Then I gave them the list of pregens. We had three players, and they selected the following characters for the mission:
- Pvt Tommy O’Connelly, International Brigades (Northern Ireland)
- Miguel Zapata, Photojournalist for Spain and the World.
- Jose Esquella, Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The popular forces had a vague idea of what to expect.
With their objective clear, they shouldered their rifles and headed into the mountains.
The first thing that gave the trio pause during their hike though the Teruel Range was the smoke coming from a burned vineyard, in a valley off the rural road they were traversing. They descended to investigate, wrapping cloths around their faces to avoid inhaling the clouds of ash the wind stirred up among the scorched grapevines.
At the hacienda, they found smashed wine barrels in the basement, and a lone farmer defending the property with an antique shotgun. Reassured that they weren't here to finish the job, he told them what happened: a trio of Fascist soldiers had stormed the property, shouting that the wine was cursed and needed to be destroyed. They set everything on fire and smashed all the barrels in the basement, letting the wine out. Then they moved on, probably to the next valley.
The Republican soldiers reassured the old farmer that they had no intention of repeating the depredations of the Nationalists, and would bring them to justice. They even found a trail of footprints through the ash, leading up over a ridgeline and into the valley beyond.
The vineyard on the other side of the scarp was untouched. The squad decided against descending into the orderly rows of grapes, electing instead to skirt around the edge of the ridgeline to reach the farmhouse on the opposite side. This was the correct tactical choice, as the aforementioned Fascist soldiers were lying in wait, counting on them moving into the exposed field. The players detected the enemy soldiers shadowing them, and resolved to set a counterambush. They mounted a reverse slope defense, hiding in a copse of trees on the other side of the ridgeline. They waited until the Fascists sent a man into the open to investigate before opening fire.
...And missing every shot.
The man on the slope went to ground. The others fired their rifles into the treeline, hoping to cover his retreat. The players fired back with small arms and rifle grenades. They suppressed the men on the ridgeline and wounded the one in the open, then sent a player to flank the exposed position. The pair of Nationalists retreated, leaving the wounded man to his fate.
The injured man was a Moroccan, with the Army of Africa. He issued dire, barely comprehensible warnings to the players about the wine, which was evil and needed to be destroyed. They assumed this was his Islamic superstition talking. They tied him up and brought him along to the farmhouse as a prisoner. It looked like the family which lived there had fled when they saw the smoke rising from the next valley. The real prizes were the bottles of wine they left behind. The Berber was not happy about this, ripping free of his bonds and frantically trying to destroy the bottles. The Republicans pummeled him unconscious and left him tied and disarmed in the farmhouse, continuing onward to the Abbey.
The team decided to approach the nunnery using the Goat Path on the West side of the creek. Their stealthy approach did not shield them from the child guarding it, who ran away shouting when he spotted them. They chased him down and grabbed him before he could get back to the church, and demanded to know if the place was hiding any fascists. He denied it at first, but then admitted they were sheltering a single soldier.
The Republican soldiers snuck up on the building and got a good look at what they were up against. They decided to sneak around and look for a hidden entrance in the back, rather than go through the chapel or climb the wall into the cloistered garden. Their ingenuity was rewarded by a narrow stone ledge on the rock face behind the building, leading to a sally port in the cellar. They listened outside the hidden door, and heard a Nun arguing with a Priest inside. The pair switched between Spanish and Latin, so the team couldn't follow the whole conversation. They waited for the nun to leave before pounding on the door, hiding their weapons out of sight and pretending to be lost, wounded soldiers seeking sanctuary in the church. The priest opened the door and they forced their way in at gunpoint.
Rector Tocino was happy to discourse with the trio of armed Republicans, he just asked that they wait until the Mother Superior returned before issuing their demands. Abbess Dolores returned not long after, accompanied by a handful of Sisters, and a couple local peasant men with muzzleloading rifles. The players demanded that she give up the fascists. She said sure, they're hidden behind that secret door over there. The players approached the foul smelling vault, disguised as a wine cask set in the wall. The Mother Superior explained that this room was used to hold leftovers from the winemaking process, to be used as fertilizer. But it doubled as a priest hole in case the abbey ever got attacked. She wasn't interested in anyone dying to protect the fascist soldier, so she gave it up right away.
Behind the vault door was a stone chamber with a big vat. The Mother Superior told the players the fascist was hiding in the vat. The Journalist Zapata approached it, gun at the ready. A reeking blob of wine, vinegar and vomit burst forth and swallowed him up.
Battle was quickly joined. The Alcoholic Anarchist Esquela fired into the blob and was swallowed up and dissolved. Tommy the Irish Protestant was stabbed several times by the Mother Superior and her crazed nuns, but made it to the sally port without being cut down. The panicked peasants shot at the wine blob, which they had never seen before.
Tommy had a choice. He could carefully sidle along the ledge and potentially get caught by the Sisters, or he could jump into the valley below and potentially break every bone in his body. He chose to jump, and managed to roll as he hit the ground. He crawled into a ravine beyond and hid, until it was safe to limp away.
When he returned to Republican lines, the Brigade Commander judged him unfit for further duty. He was badly injured, and it wasn't a good look for the Republicans to get their foreign volunteers killed. They put him on a boat back to Belfast, and the war was over for him.
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