Chapter 3: Something in the Shadows

Part I

Bezahltag 14, Sommerzeit 2522

Durak, Rudegar, and Ada accompanied by their newfound entourage of Hanna Proudfoot the halfling prostitute, the eyebrowless prostitute Roz Brauer, Konrad Dienermann (prisoner), Helga Goffhilf (hidden mutation), the older but gorgeous prostitute Agnes Goodchild, the stunning Maglyn Handel, a stinky Faustus Heidigger, the plain-faced Lenora Mandrake, Letty Porsche, and the Talabheimer caravan guard Leo von Siemens met with Alynna and Lord Kultzmann and their entourage of the manservant Loren Zimmerman, the street urchin Fraziska Nil, and Dieter Drucker with three other Stevedore friends outside of Bogenhafen on the roads. Both relayed their stories, with Durak and Rudegar explaining about their adventures in the sewers and Kultzmann and Alynna explaining how they barely managed to keep The Happy Merchant safe in the midst of the violent riot that shook the very foundations of the town last night. Kultzmann then introduced Dieter Drucker and his three stevedore friends, who came to The Happy Merchant looking for Helga after her disappearance in their night. The men faught bravely, and following what had happened in the town, decided it would be best to swear their allegiance to Kultzmann and leave. Despite her well-known love for Dieter, Helga Goffhilf kept her hood down and did not speak with the leader of the four stevedores. This raised Rudegar and Durak’s suspicions about what sort of hideous mutation Helga might have hidden beneath her cowl. Ada even went so far as to tell Dieter that Helga died down in the sewers… leaving some puzzled looks on Durak and Rudegar’s faces. With everyone on the verge of exhaustion, and lacking any adequate means to tranport everyone to Ubersreik, Kultzmann directed everyone to the minor outlying village of Finsterbad, just five miles South of Bogenhafen.

Once there, Kultzmann paid a farmer to rent out a fell field to use as a camp, while he took rooms out at the inn for himself and Alynna. Rudegar and Durak were left in charge of the camp in the field outside of town.

Konigstag 15 to Angestage 16, Somerzeit 2522

Rudegar and Durak took turns between setting up a proper camp outside the town with tents and supplies provided by Kultzmann, aided by their new companions. Kultzmann informed them that he would be meeting them on Festag in the morning for a quick overview of their overall situation. Rudegar and Durak kept Konrad wrapped up in a blanket, unable to move, and the man’s health slowly deteriorated due to the terrible facial wound inflicted on him during Durak’s ’surgery’.

Festtag 17, Sommerzeit 2522

Early in the morning as the sun was coming up, Kultzmann arrived with his manservant Loren with an armful of sausages rolled up in some cheesecloth. The assembled prositutes quickly set to cooking them in their new cooking pots alongside some fresh eggs. As they dined, Kultzmann borrowed Letty Porche’s wagon so that he could meet Durak and Rudegar in private. Durak’s arm had become miserably infected, puffy and stinking. Rudegar’s eyes, which has been bothering him since spending the night in thesewers, began pussing that morning, and were dripping a sticky white snot-like fluid. Closing themselves within the wagon, Lord Kultzman began by giving his armsmen a quick overview of the rumours coming out of Bogenhafen – Ennelein von Helmholtz had expressed interest in Rudegar, the man responsible for the assassinatopm of the Goffhilf family and leader of the teamsters guild had been captured and confessed he had been employed by Ruggbroder to commit the crime, and lastly, that the minor guilds of Bogenhafen have been consolidating power as their larger counterparts and the menial labourers squabble amoungst themselves.

After the gossip, Kultzmann explained to Rudegar and Durak that the whole party would be moving to Ubersreik as soon as the wagons he had commissioned to be repaired in the village were completed. He gave some gold to Durak and Rudegar to help them in taking care of those in the camp and told them to try to keep the prostitutes out of town and in the camp as much as possible. Kultzmann had already heard rumours going around about a camp of wanderers outside of town trying to kidnap young men with their temptresses. In response to an attempted theft last night, Kultzmann also asked Rudegar and Durak to post Dieter Drucker and his three Stevedore friends outside of his rooms as guards. Additionally, Kultzmann asked what they were planning to do with the mutant Helga, claiming she could ruin them all if the girl was discovered… and additionally, what the men planned to do with Konrad Deinermann. Lastly, Kultzmann told the two armsmen of the apothecary he had found inside the town. He told them that the elderly woman should be able to help them with their maladies.

After breakfast the two armsmen went to meet Dieter and his friends. As they finished their meal, Rudegar explained their new duties to them. Durak noticed some of the prostitutes sneaking off, and rounded them up, trying to tell them off for sneaking out of camp. Though he didn’t seem to realise it, they didn’t take him seriously at all, and obviously seemed to consider being confined to the camp a laughable suggestion. Durak had a brief converastion with Ada, asking her to watch the girls and make sure they stayed to the camp, and Ada scolded Durak for his botched surgery on Konrad. Durak defended himself, explaining that life with a scarred face would be much better for Konrad than life as a mutant, to which Ada scowled. Konrad was then unbound and dressed to be taken to the apothocary and have his health tended to. Rudegar and Durak had decided he needed to be in a better condition before he could be submitted to any sort of questioning. Durak then gave the girls some coin with which to properly take care of themselves, and left the camp with Rudegar, Dieter Drucker, and the other three stevedores.

While walking into town, Dieter asked to speak with Rudegar in private. When the two of them were a good ways from the rest of the party, Drucker asked Rudegar why Helga wouldn’t speak with him. Rudegar, shocked, asked Dieter when he had seen Helga, to which Drucker replied “you know… I love her. Even with a cloak over her… you don’t think I could recognise her body?” Rudegar, after a moments thought, quickly began to confuse the young lad seeking advice. After the conversation concluded, Dieter seemed okay with Rudegar’s suggestion that he wait and not confront Helga, but the conversation leant a sense of urgency to the problem of dealing with the mutant hidden in their midst. After dropping Drucker and his men off at the inn, Rudegar quickly shared the information of Drucker’s knowledge of Helga’s presence with Durak.

Thereafter Durak and Rudegar led Konrad, who was trembling with illness, towards the location of the Apothocary as outlined by Kultzmann. Seeing a cat playing with a pile of mouse corpses outfront, Durak tried to stroke it, but the cat just hissed at him. Instead, the dwarf let loose his foot and kicked away the cat’s plaything. The animal stared at him challenging for a moment before darting around the corner of the building. Rudegar made his way into the shop. Inside he found a young man who told them that the apothocary was out in her herb garden and would be gone for a few days. He sold them some remedies for their ailments, and the party bought a bit extra, cleaning themselves out of their gold entirely. The group then began to head back towards the camp.

On their way through the main square, the group saw a priest with a massive beard pull the hood down from a woman’s head, revealing her to be an elf – and Alynna at that! In front of Alynna knelt Jakob Cadbury, an acquaintance of the party from Bogenafen. The man appeared to be swearing fealty to Alynna, something that the priest did not like one bit. Alynna and Jakob quickly ran off, and the priest began rallying the crowd against the outsiders in the village trying to “make off with our young lads!”

Rudegar and Durak did not like the direction the priests ranting was going, and so quickly countered his preaching by getting involved in a conversaiton with the man. After some solid points were made against him in the argument by Rudegar, Father Godeke, the priest of Sigmar, stormed off into the temple of Sigmar. As Durak, Rudegar, and Konrad left from the square, the group came across Felix, the man they’d rescued from the dungeons of Haagen’s manner. The man was clad in the white robes of a Shallyan priest, and told them that some of his memories had returned. He asked the group to meet him at the Inn common room for lunch, as he wanted to speak with them if possible. The blind man then wandered off, after Durak and Rudegar confirmed that they would meet him.

Durak and Rudegar then quickly deposited Konrad Deinermann at the camp and rounded up the prostitutes who had strayed from the camp before returning into the village and meeting Felix for lunch. Ada decided to join them. Felix, having refused meat or fish, was served a bed of lettuce with some vinegar sprinkled on top and wild rice. The others ate fried river trout and wild rice. Felix then told Rudegar, Durak, and Ada that he’d been having terrible dreams about them. Unable to go into great detail, the man simply warned them to be careful.

As they spoke, Durak and Ada noticed a strange red-haired man enter the room staring at their table. The man then declared himself a bounty hunter and declared that he was there to arrest the man with two burnt out eyes name Felix.

Rudegar and Ada wasted no time in confronting the man, telling them that they’d be happy to hand over Felix so long as they could check the authenticity of his paperwork. They then asked the Innkeeper to let their Lord Kultzmann know that they would need his assitance. Kultzmann inspected the warrant and found it to be genuine. Yet not wanting to lose his newfound priest of Shallya, Kultzmann paid Lucius the Red the bounty twice over to hand over the warrant and provided the option of swearing allegiance to Kultzmann as one of his armsmen. With a bit of encouragement by Rudgar and Durak, the man joined up.

Kultzmann then ordered his armsmen to show Lucius where he would be staying, effectively ending their lunch with Felix, who thanked the PCs as well as Kultzmann for protecting him. While the patrons of the tavern seemed to be a bit more suspicious of the group, nobody said anything as Rudegar, Durak, Ada, and Lucius returned back to the camp.

As they showed Lucius to a tent, Ada returned to report that Helga Goffhilf (the mutant she had been hiding in her tent) had vanished. When they questioned Leo, the caravan guard they’d left in charge, he mentioned that he did not see her leave. Many of the prostitutes were also missing at this time. With a bit of tracking skill on Lucius’ part, the group found a trail leading from the backside of Ada’s tent towards an abandoned barn near the edge of the forest.

Ada was first to enter, calling out for Helga. Durak and Rudegar secretly seemed to be relieved at having found a possible solution to their mutant problem. As Durak thought he heard something up in the loft, Ada began to climb up. THey heard a crash and scream, to find that the ladder had fallen backwards and pinned Ada beneath it. Rudegar and Durak rushed in, calling up in the loft, with Rudegar wondering aloud if Helga had gone insane. As one of the rafter collapsed from above, missing Rudegar and sharply grazing Durak’s ribs as he removed Ada from the wreckage, the group began to feel in genuine danger. As Durak removed Ada from the barn, Lucius watched on, curious about the people he’d signed on with.

Rudegar returned back to the camp to find that Letty Porche’s wagon was gone, but didn’t stop to ask questions and took a burning log from the fire. As he set the barn alight, Leo approached hurriedly and reported hearing screams and seeing smoke from the town. Uncertain as to whether or not they should get involved, a few moments later the street urchin Franziska Nil approached Ada and told her that they had her “friend” in the town.

Limping due to their injuries, the group entered into the town, with Lucius and Leo opting to stay behind. Rudegar, Durak, Ada, and Franziska entered Finsterbad to find a crowd gathered out front of the Sigmarite church, where Fathere Godeke held Helga Goffhild bound and aloft in one hand. She was completely naked, and her mutated face and become that of a cat’s.

As Godeke gave a speech about how outsiders were the ones who brought this type of filth into their decent, Sigmar-revering village, Alynna arrived accompanied by Dieter Drucker, who had been guarding Kultzmann’s rooms, and Kultzmann himself. Dieter, upon seeing his true love held up before him by the priest, ran to save her. Ada, conflicted, ran to save the girl as well, stopping halfway, realising that at this point.. any attempt to save the girl was hopeless. After slaying a few of the townsmen, Drucker was pinned down by some of the larger men, and together the two were tied to stake and burnt in the centre of the town.

By this time, Lord Kultzmann and Alynna had joined up with Rudegar and Durak’s party. As they watched on, Ada Maurer began crying, but was comforted by a supportive Rudegar. Moments later, Letty Porsche’s wagon slipped past the crowd, rushing out of the town, with Loren Zimmerman chasing behind calling out – “They stole the gold! Get her!!”

Awoken from the shock of despair, Kultzmann wasted no time in commandeering some of the horses in the village and forcing his armsmen onto them to pursue their amassed funds. As they chased the wagon from the town, Rudegar and Alynna closed the most distance with Porsche, with Rudegar following the wagon off of the main road and onto a small trail in the forest. As he regained sight of the wagon in the forest, it began to take a sharp turn in the road, and suddenly the wagon flipped over and smashed into some trees, flinging the horses off of the hillside on which the trail was located and against the trees below, drawing out the sounds of terrible screams and crashes.

Rudegar was first to arrive a the scene, having barely glimpsed it as it happened. He quickly dismounted and trotted down the hill to check and see if the gold was in fact there, before checking for survivors. As he checked, Alynna arrived with the dwarf Durak on the back of her horse. Alynna set to putting the animals out of their misery, and Rudegar discovered Letty Porsche, direly injured by the accident, and strangely her elbows were tied behind her back.

Letty told them that she had been helped by a man in a dark cloak. The man had asked her to help kidnap Konrad in exchange for help in stealing away all of Kultzmann’s gold. Around this time, Ada arrived on horseback, still distraught by the loss of Helga to the angry mob. As Letty begged for mercy, Alynna heard something in the forest as she moved to euthanise the last horse. From behind a tree stepped a gor beastman. As Alynna drew the others’ attention to their guests, five more gors appeared from behind the trees, seemingly excited by the terrified screams of the last surviving horse.

The following combat moved quickly, with Ada barely able to restrain the horses from bolting. In an attempt to save the gold Durak faught on, but due to his infected and injured arm, fell quickly to a potentially devestating blow that somehow managed to simply knock him out. Alynna faught for a short while before running to a horse and mounting, riding off. Rudegar followed suit, and just as he was about to escape on a horse a spear caught up under the jawbone and slipped beneath it, up and through his mouth, through the skull, and into his brain. It proved to a be a particularly gruesome dismounting blow. Gurgling sounds were heard from Rudegar, who swiftly died just moments later.

Ada, having just witnessed Helga, who she’d attempted to protect, burnt at the stake and just now having seen Rudeger, a man for whom she expressed romantic interests, snapped. With little regard for herself and an amazing feat of horsemanship, she danced her stallion down from the road, in amongst the beastmen, and after a bit of fancy evasive manouevring had the bodies of both Durak and Rudegar tossed over the back of her horse.

Alynna waited patiently with Lord Kultzmann near the road. As the others arrived, Durak woke up to see the distorted face of Rudegar looking blankly down at him with blood and gray matter dripping from his mouth. The sight caused the poor dwarf to vomit and drove him one step closer to losing his grip on sanity. When it became clear that Rudegar was, in fact, dead a stunned silence came over the group. As Ada, in tears, tended to Rudegars body Kultzmann, a few of the Stevedores, and Alynna returned to the scene of the fight to find the horses had been taken, but the chests of gold remained. Quickly gathering those up, the party returned in a solemn mood back to the village of Finsterbad.

Part II
Wellentag 18, Sommerzeit 2522

The entire assembled entourage of Lord Kultzmann stayed in the Hook and Worm Inn following the death of Rudegar. The following morning, they all descended ot the common room to eat porridge, and a Halfling messenger named Albert Rattlescratch (new PC) arrived with a letter for Lord Kultzmann. Kultzmann offered the halfling a meal, and so he sat beside the mourning Durak and Alynna. Albert expressed a strong interest in joining with Kultzman, letting it be known that he had grown wary after many years on the road and had heard that Kultzmann planned to reward those who helped him in his return to his home quite handsomely. When Kultzmann called over Durak and Alynna, he also called over the new halfling.
Kultzmann explained to Durak that he would be left in charge of the group, as the letter Kultzmann had just recieved informed him that he would need to leave Finsterbad with just 2 completed wagons (after Letty’s was destroyed) if he wanted to arrive in Ubersreik in time enough to meet his contact there. Durak agreed, and Kultzmann told him that the gold he would need to pay Cilicia Krebs after she completed the wagon he should comission from her was hidden in a sack buried beneath the campfire of their old campsite. With this gesture, Kultzmann’s suspicions of Finsterbad became apparent to the PCs. Kultzmann also told Durak that the Greenthistles would be sending down some men who wanted to join with his cause, and to gather them up and escort them to Ubersreik. Before going upstairs to his quarters to prepare for the funeral rites for Rudegar, Kultzmann accepted the halfling Albert Rattlescratch into his service and told the halfling to obey Durak. He also announced who would be leaving Finsterbad following the funeral and who would be staying behind:

Durak son of Arlak, Ada Sylvamere, Albert Rattlescratch, Maglyn Handel, Hanna Proudfoot, Lenora Mandrake, Jakob Cadbury, and Lucius the Red would be left behind to wait for the next wagon. The others would be leaving immediately after the funeral.

The collected prostitutes, armsmen, and hangers-on then ascended to their rooms to dress and prepare for the funeral of Rudegar and pack for their departure. The group proceded from the Hook and Worm to Morr’s Garden outside of the village. There, Durak gave a dwarven warchant for the fallen, Alynna spoke of Rudegar’s contributions to the Empire, and Ada knelt before the fresh grave with her face hidden and body trembling. Kultzmann laid a bouquet of flowers on his fallen armsmen’s grave and the prostitutes were all moved to tears, speaking of the strawberry’s that Rudegar had given them just yesterday.

After the funeral, members of the party scrambled for their departure. Durak abruptly found Felix dressed in his Shallyan robes standing before him. Felix told him that he had had more dreams of the dwarf… and that he had hoped the others did not blame him for their friend’s demise. He had not expected witnessing Rudegar’s death in his dreams to come true that very day. Never-the-less, as the man took his leave from Durak he turned back to face him with his eyeless gaze, speaking with complete and steadfast certainty – “You must not be alone at midnight.”

Durak, still a bit shaken by the experience, looked to Alynna who merely shrugged her shoulders. At this point, Albert was wondering to himself what sort of poeple he had signed on with. As Kultzmann’s party left, Leo von Siemens told Durak that it had been an honour to serve under a Dwarf, and hoped to do so again in Ubersreik when the parties were reunited. Kultzmann called back to Durak – “Don’t forget to comission the wagon, Dwarf!” and with that vanished around the bend onto the road through the forest.

Durak ushered everyone to the Inn, where Kultzmann had paid for their rooms and board for a week in advance. Durak then forbade the prostitutes to leave the inn and charged Ada with overseeing them. Ada seemed uninterested, simply locking herself in her room. Lucius wandered out and most of the girls went upstairs. Alynna’s bodyguard Jakob was suffering from the Gallopping Trots, and couldn’t go anywhere too far from his bed or the privy. Thus Durak, Alynna, and the newly sworn Albert headed to the docks to meet Cilicia Krebs.

As the party made their way to the docks, they noticed some kegs and mugs resting on the steps of the temple to Sigmar in the centre of the village. A few of the hawkers were stopped in front of the kegs and sampling some of the ale within them. They quickly invited the Durak, Alynna, and Albert to partake of the ale. When asked where it had come from, the others told them that they had found it here with the mugs, read-tapped for the tasting. They all simply assumed that the priest had left out the ale for the faithful followers of Sigmar.

Not wanting to question a good thing, both Durak and Albert sampled some of the refreshing ale, although Alynna found the whole thing to be a bit too suspicious for her tastes, and avoided having a drink. After one cup, they headed to the docks to discuss the construction of a new wagon.

Krebs agreed to build the wagon at a fair price, and told the dwarf that it wouldn’t be ready for a week because of a lack of skilled labour in the village. Durak accepted, and as they left the halfling Albert asked Cilicia if she was of any relation to Boris Krebs, a man for whom the halfling had a letter. Cilicia told Albert that Boris is her cousin, and that the man lives in the attic above old widow Schwab’s place. She also mentioned that her cousin was a bit strange… and that he had gone to Altdorf to become a student but had returned as a failure.

With that, Albert found his way to the window Schwab’s place, while Durak and Alynna went to check on their comrades in the common room of the Hook and Worm. Albert was greeted at the widow’s home by Schwab herself, and though the woman seemed to be a bit senile, the two hit it off well enough. She sent the halfling up into the attic after Boris who she reported “had been quiet in his studies for the last two days.” Yet when Albert climbed the staircase up into Albert’s room, he found that the room had been emptied of anything other than the furniture, and that it seemed as though nobody lived there at all.

Upon hearing this, a sceaming widow Schwab stormed up to the attic herself, cursing at her luck that her pensioner had left without paying up for this last month. Angry due to her ill luck, the woman was comforted somehwat by the halfling’s conversation and quickly offered Albert some eggs. As the two ate, they discussed Boris, whose family had died in a fire when he was young. The boy had always been a bit strange, the widow said, and he’d had a visiter just yesterday. The man claimed to have spoken with Boris. Schwab never got a good look at the man, who had dressed entirely in dark clothes and had pulled the cowl of his cloak over his face. Having enjoyed both the conversation and food… and feeling quite fond for the widow Schwab, Albert left a few silver coins resting on a small lampstand near the doorway as he made his way out back into the street.

Meanwhile, Durak and Alynna entered into the common room to find only Maglyn sitting there practicing her calligraphy. Alynna complimented her script, which she found to be surprisingly well-formed. Durak went upstairs to try and summon Ada down to accompany him for a free mug of ale in the village centre. She would not unluck the door and simply grumbled in response to any question posed at her through it. After giving up, Durak and Alynna beganto head for the square to look for some of the prostitutes and perhaps get another drink from the free Ale near the temple. As they exited the Inn, Durak bumped into Hanna Proudfoot as she entered. Hanna suggested the three of them go together for some of that free ale down at the temple. While in the village centre, Alynna kept a sharp eye out for the remaining prostitute, Lenora. After a quick look around, she found Lucius the Red wandering around near the wall around the town. The man told her that Lenora had never even returned into the village with the rest of the group and had stayed outside and moved into the fields.

Durak, who had previously seen Lenora speaking with a farmer in the fields, debated retrieving the girl. After considering it, both Durak and Alynna decided they would draw undue attention to the girls activities, and so long as it remained quiet that the situation should be okay. Lucius seemed to be somewhat unfocused, and due to his suspicious behaviour, Alynna and Durak questioned him a bit. He admitted that he had gone to the temple that morning for service and that the priest had not been there. When pushed about his strange behaviour, the man only gave vague answers.

As the group returned to the square for another drink, they ran into the Halfling Albert, who explained partially what had happened. As the group mulled over thoughts of a darkly-dressed man with a hidden face as well as the disappearing priest and students, they decided to try questioning the crowd who was slowly gathering to partake in the free ale about these occurances. Despite their efforts, they discovered little information, save the fact that Albert found that the strawberry hawker had seen the dark-clad man that had visited the student the previous day. The man had simply come into town, gone straight to widow Schwab’s place, and then exited the same way he had come.

As curiousity pricked them ever further, Albert entered into the temple to see if they could find hte priest. Alynna, who had previously had a negative experience of the priest, decided it would be best if she waited outside with Hanna. Durak, tired of Hanna clinging to his arm as they drank, quickly decided to join with Albert. As they explored the building and made their way to the priest’s quarters in the basement of the building, the duo began to feel uncomfortable. The door was lock, and there was no answer behind the door to the priest’s room, so Durak began to attempt breaking the door down.

As they explored, Alynna watched as Lucius the Red entered into he church. She stopped the man to question him, and he told her that he was going to see if the priest was still there, though to be honest he had felt uncomfortable in the temple earlier. After he asked her, Alynna agreed to accompany him. As they made their way down into the temple, Durak and Albert called out at the sound of footsteps. At that point, Durak noticed the blood seeping out from beneath the door he was attempting to breakdown.

Albert, discomforted at the sight of blood, glanced towards the corridor leading to the exit. As he did so, a dark cloaked figure stepped out from behind a turn in the corrider, and flung two darts. One landed in the right arm of the halfling, while the other lodged itself in the neck of the still-badly-injured dwarf. Despite his injuries, Durak resisted the strange feeling that came along with the puncture wound. Albert, on the other hand, arrested into the fuzzy warmth he felt one pricked, and swiftly dropped to the ground.

Upon hearing a body collapse, Alynna felt worried and attempted to move on ahead. As she did so, she failed to notice Lucius the Red pull out a dagger and attempt to slot it between her ribs. Fortunately, the man missed her entirely, and a melee broke out between them.

Durak charged the cloaked figure in response to the darts. Despite this, he could not land a blow, and swiftly was overcome as he was struck time and again by the poisoned blows when stabbed with the cloaked figure’s daggers.

Ada, upon hearing a louder, more armoured body collapse, became markedly more nervous. Yet her foe had been unable to land even one blow on the elf, who nimbly danced around him with little problem at all. Yet when the cloaked figure arrived, Alynna seemed to feel that the situation ahd slipped beyond her means and swiftly escaped back up to the main chamber of the temple and out to the crowd in fornt of it. Though many people did not believe the elf’s cries about the murder of the priest and fighting in the temple, a few of them did decide that it would be best to investigate whatever it was that the chaos-tainted bitch was blathering on about.

As the drunkards entered, they fond no sight of Alynna’s pursuers, but did discover the unconscious Durak and Albert. The two were roused with a splash of water to the face, and one of the drunk men polished off the dor that Durak and begun breaking down. On the otherside, they found the priest. He was on the ground with his stomach torn open and entrails sprawled across the floor. Albert vomitted, and everyone present felt more than a little uneasy. Alynna never saw the body as she had already rushed upstairs to investigate the back entrance to the temple to see if she could catch Lucius and the cloaked figure. After a few moments, Durak joined her and they began to search for the two men.

Rather to get involved in what he rightly felt was none of his business, Albert returned to the front of the Inn to have another free drink… although his curiousness about the source of the ale became further alerted by his knowlledge of the death of the priest. As he drank, Hanna Proudfoot ran up to him and told him that she had shadowed the two men from the temple’s back entrance after she’d gone there after seeing Alynna come out the front babbling about the murdered priest.

Albert, not wanting to get involved, contacted Alynna and Durak, who recruited some of the local militia to help them to capture the two suspects. Albert then moved to the Hook and Worm to get himself drunk with the hopes of forgetting the image of a mean with his intestines torn out. He briefly went up to Ada’s room to se waht she was up to, but the woman was cold towards him. Only after hearing tha t Durak or Alynna may be in danger did she snap out of her depression and run out of her room to join with the others. After arriving at a dock on the river Bogen, she joined Durak and Alynna who led a band of the local militia. The militia men told Durak that usualy the priest of Sigmar had been in charge of their operations, and so they felt disoriented without a leader. As the situation progressed, the militiamen seemed to be looking to the dwarf as their natural martial leader. Lucius and the cloaked figure quickly surrendered, as the others moved to capture them from their hiding place beneath the dock on the River Bogen.

Once captured, the identity of the second man was revealed as Kristis Jenkas, the acolyte who was studying under Father Godeke in the village temple. Kristis denied having killed anyone and told his captors that he had simply taken part in a plot to capture of Durak and Alynna because Lucius the Red had told him of the warrent he held for their arrest. Durak, furious over Lucius’ betrayal, searched the man’s belongings to find a warrant offering 1000 gold crowns each for Rudegar, Alynna, or Durak delivered alive to his manor house in Bogenhafen. The exact amount of the bounty was kept quiet by Alynna, the only member present capable of reading.

Durak ordered for the two men to be shakled up in stocks in the centre of town until the situation could be further investigated and the militia men complied. The party speant the rest of that evening drinking in the Hook and Worm and considering their current situation. Just as Alynna reminded Durak of Felix’s advice that he not be alone at midnight, the prostitute they had not seen all day, Lenora Mandrake, ran into the common room out of breath with a terrified look on her face.

“THEY’RE COMING! THEY’RE COMING! BEASTMEN ARE COMING FROM THE WOODS FOR THE VILLAGE!!!”

As people began to panic, Durak, Albert, Alynna, and Ada headed towards the gate to see if they could coordinate some kind of defense against the Beastmen. As they made their way past the town square, they found the crowd to be in a hushed, almost terrified silence.

In the commotion, one of the kegs had been knocked from it’s place on the stairs and broken open. There, amoung the ruins of the keg, was a glowing green warpstone. Terrified, for a moment everyone stood still, with a shocked look on their faces, surrounded by the commotion of the rest of the village learning of the impending beastmen attack.

At that moment, the full moon settled directly over head and all of the humans present collapsed to the ground, their flesh shifting as though another person was trying to climb out of them from within. Durak also fell to the ground, and Alynna, Ada, and Albert were driven one step closer to madness by the unsettling mass mutation taking place around them.

Part III

Aubentag 19, Sommerzeit 2522

For a brief moment that midnight, Durak’s face distended and his body stretched out. He seemed to resemble a perverse cross between a giant snake and a scraggly-bearded dwarf. Then, curiously enough, his body returned back to normal. This went relatively unnoticed, as many much more disturbing mutations were taking place upon the hapless human’s littering the village square before the Temple to Sigmar.

Through the chaos in the village, Rudoulph came running with a red-heared man beside him to ask Durak and his companions to man one of the towers bordering the river, to cover the escape of the villagers to the far side of the river Bogen using the fishing boats. The man introduced himeself as Markus and explained that he would be joining them in the defense of the tower near the river. Durak, still somewhat in shock over his recent near-mutation experience, did not respond. Alynna, realising there wasn’t a moment to spare, quickly took charge. She accepted the Rudoulph’s request. As Rudoulph was leaving, he overheard Lucius the Red and Kristus Jenkas’ pleas for help. Rudoulph called over his shoulder for the party to do what they would with the two criminals.

Albert, terrified at the prospect of having to fight beastmen, immediately ran to the Inn to prepare his pony for a swift departure from the forsaken village. Hanna Proudfoot, taking advantage of her dwarfy-warfy’s impaired condition, began stroking Durak’s chest whilst clinging to his arm, whispering into his ear that she would gather the prostitutes at the Inn, but was waiting for his orders on what she ought to do with them once assembled. While all of this was happening, Alynna approached the two men in the stocks – Lucius the Red and the Sigmarite Initiate Jenkas. With a brief speech outlining her reasoning, Alynna explained that she would provide the two men with the mercy of not being eaten by the beastmen. Around this time, Jakob Cadbury arrived looking pale-faced, roused from his room in the Inn where he had been confined due to his recent bout with the Galloping Trots. He witnessed his leige lady dispatch of Lucius the Red and Kristus Jenaks with her sword, still held in the stocks. With that, everyone moved towards the tower the party had been assigned to defend.

As they left, Durak came to and told Hanna to collect the prostitutes with the rest of the party’s belongings, as well as the terrified halfling Albert, and meet him near the back tower behind the Inn, in case the group needed to make a hasty escape from the village. Alynna and Jakob Cadbury broke off from the main group to investigate the Widow Schwab’s house. The widow was nowhere to be found, and Alynna and Jakob made their way up into the room in the attic where Boris Krebs had been staying. Unable to read the markings on the floor, Alynna copied them down on some paper before rejoining the party sometime later at the tower.

At the tower, the new red-headed man Markus, Durak, and a recently-arrived Ada Mourer managed to coax Albert to get off of his pony and up onto the tower, where he would be best able to take advantage of his skills with the sling. Markus and Durak joined him on the tower, with Ada remaining at it’s base, slinging her maul over her shoulder quite casually. On the docks, the vallagers were scrambling to load up as many of the non-mutants as possible onto fishing boats which seemed to quickly be overburdened by their weight. Albert caught sight of a strange rowboat floating out towards the centre of the river, in which stood a single dark-robed figure.

As Alynna and Jakob arrived from their jaunt into the Widow Schwab’s home, Markus sent Jakob to gather up heavy metal objects from the inn and stables in a sack. Durak told the prostitute to join Jakob in this task.
As Alynna mounted the tower, the party spotted four beastmen swiftly approaching near the riverbank. The group was made up of two very large beastmen with intimidating horns, one with somewhat smaller horns, and lastly a beastman lacking horns altogether. Early in the fighting, the defenders had poor luck and this caused the beastmen to sorely underestimate their capabilities. The two beastmen who managed to scale the 10ft village watchtower were quickly slain by it’s protectors.

In the midst of the their melee, some of the party noticed that the fishing boats bearing the villagers to the others side of the river were capsizing halfway across, with people swimming and floundering about in the water. The few houses on the opposite shore were in flames, with those villagers left behind on the docks of Finsterbad crying out in hopelessness at their one hope of escape was thwarted before their very eyes. Albert at this time became fixated on the figure in the boat as it moved closer to the docks of Finsterbad. The halfling swiftly began launching slingstones at the figure, leaving the single remaining beastman to his comrades.

As Ada, who had joined battle in a frighteningly determined manner, seemed poised to dispatch of the last beastman, a militia man arrived from the gates, begging those present to aid them in holding the walls towards the front of the town. The party told him they would follow shortly after having taken care of the last beastman. Seeing that the militiaman would not leave empty handed, Jakob Cadbury, who had just arrived with a sack filled with iron goods, was ordered to accompany the man back to the front gates.

With the death of the final beastman, Ada was soaked in blood, having smashed each of the beastmen’s heads with her maul. In a disturbingly eager yet casual gait, she made her way towards the main gate on the outside of the walls.

The party then drew their attentions to the cloaked figure on the boat, which had now just docked and was swiftly making it’s way into the village. The party gave chase, and the villagers on the docks swiftly stole the boat and began rowing out into the river.

The cloaked figure moved very quickly for a man, and desperately avoided being caught up with the party by breaking into a house through the window. As the party closed in, the main gate, which had now been burning for some time, burst open. Twenty head of beastmen flooded into the village, quickly overwhelming the remaining militiamen as the sounds of screaming villagers and fighting men alike filled the air. The figure the party had been chasing swiftly fled from the house and into the midst of the battle, entering the ranks of the beastmen.

At this point the party decided to abandon Finsterbad, and rushed back towards the tower they had been guarding. There, as they attempted to cross around the tower via the river, they spotted some creatures moving beneath the water. Terrified, Albert ran his pony through the water and out of the town ,bolting as fast as he could. Alynna and Markus climbed the tower and jumped off at the farside, while Durak was too slow to react. A moment later, three River Trolls emerged from the waters of the river Bogen, with a distinct stenching filling the air. After one of the trolls vomitted acid at Durak, but he was a hair too far away and almost none of the acid reached him. Terrified at their presence, the dwarf ran as fast as he could.

Meanwhile, Albert was riding as fast as he could to escape from the wreckage once known as Finsterbad. As he made his way through the fields on his pony, a man waved him down, but the halfling would have none of it. Thoroughly terrified, he kept on riding.

As Durak retreated from the River Trolls in a panic, the prostitutes, hiding behind the inn, followed the dwarf as he ran past them. As they fled, Durak caught sight of a large bonfire in the village centre, but was unable to get a good look at the procedings. At a tower near the front of the town, this group of Durak, Hanna, Maglyn, and Lenora descended into the farmlands surrounding the town, away from the madness taking place within the walls of Finsterbad.

Outside of the town, Alynna and Markus stumbled upon a man in the fields. The man seemed a bit strange, ranting and raving about killing the beastmen in their sleep, and taking out as many of the injured ones as possible. Taking a firm hand with the man, Alynna and Markus kept him at sword point, and discoved that he was the missing student, Boris Krebs. Shortly thereafter, Durak’s party joined up with Alynna and Markus, and joined up in the questioning of the man. Not really trusting him, they party heard out the man’s plans to attack a small camp of the beastmen that had been left behind this time around because of their involvement in a previous raid. Alynna, Markus, and Durak thoroughly questioned the man, but couldn’t seem to get many straight answers. He did reveal that he had been recruited somehow, but claimed to want nothing to do with it, hence his desperate plea for the help of the party.

Around this time, Albert realised that he was riding alone in a forest which was probably filled with beastmen. Frightened out of his wits, he swiftly remembered “what a fine, strong fighter that Durak fellow is!” and decided to seek out his newly found Dwarf-friend. Riding on his pony, the halfling quickly found the group of escapees and joined in their ranks.

Upon finding out that the new man, kept at Markus’ swordpoint, was Boris Krebs, Albert delivered the letter he had been carrying for the man from Altsdorf. The letter was written in a strange script, that nobody in the party recognised. When asked as to it’s contents, Albert ‘translated’ the letter aloud to the party. When asked who it was from, her refused to answer.

While the party never trusted the man, his promise of a weak beastman camp and the possibility of gold was too good for them to pass up. After having dug up the gold Kultzman and left for them buried near their old campsite in the fields, the group, led by Krebs, made their way into the darkened forest.

Ada Mourer, who had joined with Durak as he escaped near the front of Finsterbad with an unconscious Jakob Cadbury over her shoulders, scouted ahead with Boris to see if the camp was as he reported it would be. True enough, she claimed there on the ruins of Letty Porsche’s old wagon slept eight or so injured beastmen. With that, the group’s armsmen stealthly desceneded upon the camp, dispatching of the inhabitants with little trouble. Within the ruins of the wagon they found a small chest filled with gold and a crate filled with books. Boris, the first into the wagon, was visibly excited at their sight. When told by Durak that he could only take 2 or 3, as he would have to carry them, he resentfully chose 5 of the books and wrapped them in a cloth draped over his shoulders.

The party then began to make their way towards Ubersreik in the dark of early morning, away from the smoke and firelight rising from Finsterbad and in pursuit of their leigelord, Kultzmann.