For being integral starting equipment for a major character, little information is provided about Qulathis’s oaken arrows.
These three little tokens are powerful totems.
So what are these arrows? Why does Qulathis have them? And why are they special?
It’s easy to miss the only mention of them in the rulebook.
At the very bottom corner of page 16, in Step 3 of Getting Ready to Play: “If a player picks Qulathis the Exile, that player also takes the three oaken arrow counters.”
There are only a couple other mentions of them in the books. The first is on Quest Book page 16.
The Quest Book shares some juicy info about how Qulathis stole “an arm-thick splinter of the Oak of Ages Past… and split it into magical arrows”, thus becoming Qulathis the Exile.
Then, on page 27; how to keep track of them in a Decapitation Journey:
Not pictured (because it’s not especially interesting) is that you’re supposed to stash the remaining oaken arrow counters in Qulathis’s character bag if you pause an adventure.
So we’re down to our last resource. The character card:
And there it is. “Oaken Arrows (6+): Discard one oaken arrow counter and make one free Winter’s Call (1+) weapon action. Damage suffered from that weapon action cannot be reduced or ignored.”
How is this information not in the box???!!
Once the three arrows are used, are they gone forever? No! Qulathis has three arrows to use on every adventure. How do I know this? It’s because of WHERE in the rulebook they’re mentioned. It’s in the Getting Ready to Play section. Those steps are followed before every adventure, therefore Qulathis always starts with three oaken arrows. Tricky, huh? There’s a real economy of words in this rulebook. You have to look at what the rule says, what it doesn’t say, and where it says it!
So what are these arrows? Why does Qulathis have them? And why are they special?
To answer those questions, we must look in the rarified pages of White Dwarf magazine…
Here’s the best part about the arrows: they “EXPLODE INTO GREAT TREES ONCE THEY PIERCE UNDEAD FLESH, TEARING THEIR VICTIMS APART FROM WITHIN” !!! “These arrows are both her greatest weapon and the source of her eternal exile.”
How is this information not in the box???!! So cool. That would have completely changed how I imagine combat in the Cursed City, tree-ifying zombies and vampires left and right (max 3 per outing)!
That’s it! That’s the complete rundown on Qulathis’s magic arrows. GW really buried the lead on this powerful weapon. Well, I suppose they do talk more about the Oaken Arrows than any other weapon, but that’s what makes it so curious, and only partially explained.
Now your trips to Ulfenkarn can have an added twist!
1 comment