This custom Act could easily fit into many stories, and would be selected instead of choosing an Act card for Act 1 or Act 2 of a story.

The Story: Traveling in orcish lands is always dangerous, however, the heroes have chosen somewhere especially dangerous to camp on this night.  They are awakened by the sound of battle, find that arachnids have begun to colonize orcish territory.  The orcs are sending warriors to drive out the invaders, and unfortunately for the heroes, their camp has been set right in between the two opposing forces.

The Setup: Unlike most quests, all of the tiles will be set up at once for this quest.  The heroes will all start within one square of the campfire in the center tile.  One lair for the orcs will be set up on the squares marked “O” and one lair for the Arachnids will be set up on the square marked “A”.  Use the Arachnid deck for the darkness.

Special Rules: This quest has a number of special rules that go outside of the normal rules for a quest.

1. Orcs can attack Arachnids, and Arachnids can attack Orcs.  Creatures will be treated as threat 0 for purposes of targeting, and creatures will always target heroes over heroes when given the choice and not already engaged in combat.
2. Treat the entire map as a single tile.  (For example, heroes don’t get to pass treasure freely, and threat is generated as long as creatures are anywhere on the map.)
3. The creature race with less models on the board goes first when turn order is important.  (This allows the “losing” side to attack first.)
4. The game is won by the heroes by destroying both the orc and arachnid lairs.

Notes:

1. This is likely a very deadly quest.  Heroes have to make a decision of which side to attack, while the other continues to build up.  Remember as long as there are two creature types, 2 threat is created per turn.  This could get really ugly as heroes have a long march to get to any lair.
2. Success likely comes from maneuvering to get creatures fighting each other.  Even this might not be enough.  Once we have more rules and such, I’m sure there will be a lot of adjusting to get this to work, likely including removal of the hallway tiles.

Variations:  This quest could easily be adapted to other enemy races.  Want an all out brawl between the Cyclops and the elementals?  Go for it.  Want the story of rats exploring and stumbling on the long forgotten halls of an undead tomb?  That should work too.