During a different game session, Josh and Melonie’s party moves its token to Blackrose Prison to complete Quest Step B13 of its Blackrose Brigade guild quest. This begins Quest Step C14 and triggers a dungeon battle quest encounter, so the players proceed to set up the battle.

1. First, the players place each tile in the layout shown by the Blackrose Prison setup diagram on page 45 of the Black Marsh Gazetteer.

2. The players place 3 cache chips in the hexes shown.

3. The players place the objective and other units described by the encounter’s special setup instructions. They deploy the quest unit Zirik to Hex A, with no HP chips underneath. Then, they search the enemy bag for the level 10: High Elf Necromancer and deploy it to Hex B with its full number of HP chips underneath.

4. The players calculate an enemy pool to populate the numbered hexes.

a. This is the final battle encounter of the party’s guild quest. So, instead of using their XP Dial’s value, the players refer to the end of session difficulty tables for its EP value.. This is the party’s first session, it is playing at the Adept difficulty level, and there are 2 adventurers, so the EP value for this battle is 32 (16 XP).

b. Neither Zirik nor the High Elf Necromancer are subtracted from the enemy pool because Zirik, a quest unit, has no level value, and the High Elf Necromancer was already added by the dungeon’s setup instructions and is not part of the enemy pool for the numbered hexes.

c. The players draw the following enemies and deploy them to the numbered hexes in order, which spends all of the EP:

Level 20: Argonian Behemoth (Hex 1)

Level 10: Imperial Enforcer (Hex 2)

Level 1: Redguard Bandit (Hex 3)

Level 1: Hackwing (Hex 4)

d. As instructed by the encounter, the players continue drawing level 1 enemies—without EP cost—until 6 of the numbered hexes are occupied.

Level 1: Imperial Bandit (Hex 5)

Level 1: Mudcrab (Hex 6)

5. As instructed by the encounter, the players calculate a second enemy pool to populate the hexes, which indicate “cell” tiles.

a. The party again uses an EP of 32.

b. The players draw the following enemies and deploy them to hexes. They must deploy 1 enemy to each cell tile before they can deploy another enemy to that tile. The Blackrose Prison rules also require that each of these enemies deployed in a cell has no HP chips underneath it. The players choose to deploy the enemies as follows:

Level 20: Breton Archmage (northmost hex of the 6-hex cell)

Level 10: Redguard Mercenary (southmost hex of the western 3-hex cell)

Level 1: Wood Elf Bandit (southmost hex of the southern 3-hex cell)

Level 1: Orc Bandit (westmost hex of the northern 3-hex cell)

6. The players deploy their adventurers to the entrance tile.

a. The players decide to give the first player token to Josh, so he deploys his chip to the northmost hex of the entrance tile. He decides to switch to battle form.

b. Melonie is next in clockwise order, so she deploys her chip second, to the northmost hex of the second column. She is already in form, and she decides not to switch.

7. The players deploy companions after adventurers. They have 2 sell-sword companions from this quest’s second step, so they deploy the level 5: High Elf Marauder and level 5: Nord Marauder to entrance tile hexes adjacent to the adventurers.

8. The players set the Round Counter die to 1, and the battle is ready to begin!