Chapter 4: Sonnstill Curiosities

Part I

Aubentag 19th – Marktag 28th, Sommerzeit 2522

Durak, Alynna, Albert, Markus, Lenora, Hanna, Maglyn, and Boris all ran from Finsterbad until dawn, around which time they arrived at a coaching inn named the The Tall Horse located on the road between Bogenhafen and Ubersreik. The party spent sometime recooperating from the physical and psychological strain of the terrors they had experienced before setting off again in the direction of Ubersreik, hiring on a pair of Estalian coachmen to take them on their way. The total gold from the money intended for the wagon and the chest taken from the beastmen’s camp was around 248 gold crowns, after expenses for their rest and passage were taken out. The party stopped at a coaching inn named the Five-Points Stag one day’s ride outside of Ubersreik and decided to stay two nights, with the hopes of doing a bit of research on local gossip so as not to enter the town completely ignorant of the current situation. It was agreed that Maglyn, Alynna, Durak, Albert, and Ada would take private rooms, while the others would be sleeping in the dormitory of the otherwise empty Inn.

Late that night, Alynna woke to the sounds of people shuffling about downstairs. After listening for a moment, the noises seemed to be the sound of other drunken party members making their way to their beds.

Backertag 29th, Sommerzeit 2522

That morning, the party came into contact with more of the staff, who had mostly been in their quarters before their coaches arrived. They found that the Inn had been incredibly quiet lately, as fighting concerning a border dispute with the neighboring fiefdom over a mine in the Hagercrybs had spilled over into the vacinity.

The Landlord, Angela Klein, asked to see Durak in the morning. Over breakfast, Angela explained ot the Dwarf, for whom she seemed ot have much respect, that her ruby ring had disappeared over the night and that she would like if he could toa bit of an investigation into her own staff as well as his followers to see if he could recover it for her. She asked him to be discreet, as her husband, the Gatekeeper and Smithy of the Inn, would not respond well to finding that the ring was missing. After asking the woman some questions, the Dwarf found that a spare key to the Landlord’s chambers could be found hidden in the smithy, and that it was missing this morning.

While Durak spoke with the Landlord, Albert, disturbed by the fact that Alynna was having her unwitting armsmen Jakob taste her food for poison, decided to get to know the bartender a bit better. After a brief discussion about Rattlescratch family news (the bartender had recently seen one of Albert’s sisters headed North to follow up on word of their brother they’d not heard from since the Storm of chaos), the bartender slipped a note the Halfling that he said he found at the table after the party had finish with their supper. The tender said that he naturally assumed that the note belonged to the messenger and Albert took it off him without saying otherwise.

When Albert left the table, Alynna was a bit taken aback to find that one of the maids had the audacity to sit down at the table beside Jakob. The two quickly took to one another, with the girl naming herself as Ulla baker and wasting no time in wrapping Jakob around her finger. As the two flirted, Albert made his way back to the table where the main party was eating, asking Boris Krebs about the note he’d just recieved from the bartender, as it was in the same strange script the letter he’d previously carried to Krebs was written. Krebs snatched the letter and quickly spoke under his breath, “Not now. I’ll come to your room after breakfast.”

Suddenly, a woman barged into the room, shook Ulla by her shoulders, and dragged the girl out of the common room, grumbling about how she’d teach the nasty thing “a lesson”. Angela, the landlord, watched on amused, while the bartender simply shook his head. Jakob seemed a bit shocked. While most people were watching this commotion, Albert happened to notice a tall black-haired man wearing an apron observing the proceedings with a sneer on his face from one of the windows behind the bar.

With that, Albert moved up to his room to wait for Boris, while Alynna continued to rest in the common room with Jakob by her side, and Durak, not telling the others about the situation concerning the stolen ring, walked to the smithy in order to begin his investigation. At the smithy, Durak had a good look around and discovered the location of where the key had been hidden, he discerned that someone who had been wearing a men’s set of working boots was probably the culprit responsible for having taken it. Just as he made this discovery, one of the Inn’s grooms introduced himself as Edmund Snickett, and asked the dwarf what he was doing there.

The dwarf claimed that he was merely interested in the facilities and checking to see if they were up to par. Edmund seemed to accept this, as it fell in line with his stereotypical understanding of dwarfs. Yet not wanting to take any chances, the youth told Durak that he’d best check first with the Smithy, Klaus Klein. Edmund also asked Durak to tell Lenora that Edmund wanted to see her. With that, Durak headed towards the gatekeepers house to speak with Klaus. Durak’s conversation with Klaus was brief. They briefly discussed the smithy and Klaus gave the dwarf permission to do as he would. Durak discreetly studied the man’s shoes and decided they were too large to have left the prints he suspected belonged to the person who had taken the extra key to the landlord’s quarters.

Meanwhile, Boris finally arrived in Albert’s room after 20 minutes or so of waiting, translating the note for the halfling. The note was translated “one day’s ride out on the edge of the forest, you’ll need your protection.” Boris’ impaired psychological state became more evident after he read the letter, inissting that Lenora Mandrake was responsible and that she had been talking to “them”. He also began speculating about “their plan”. Albert, also a bit disturbed by the news, told Boris that they should alert Durak of their newfound news. On their way down the stairs, they ran into Durak, who had just finished talking to Klaus Klein in the gateman’s house. After teling Durak about the note, the Dwarf ushered both Boris and Albert around the edge of the front courtyard to the side of the building near the vegetable patch. Just as the halfling was about to explain the situation, Boris’ eyes went wide and face pale. The other two watched him like a man gone insane as Boris crept steadily towards the vegetable garden, urging the other two to be quiet.

When Boris pointed out a blood stain near the base of the Inn, beside a recently dug-up part of the garden, the other two caught on. After a moment or so of digging, they came across a body.

It was about this time that Albert completely lost his calm and rushed for the stables to saddle up his pony. Durak stayed near the newly found body with Boris, and Boris kept asking the dwarf for permession to hide the body. Boris seemed to think that it would be better to know that there was a killer without letting the killer know that they knew. While at times the logic seemed clear, his ranting was certainly ahrd to follow.

As Durak tried to come to a decision about the body, her heard a large metallic clanking sound come from somewhere inside the Inn. Without thinking, Durak rushed inside, leaving Boris alone with the body. At the metal clanking sound, Albert only mounted his horse faster, preparing to leave, desperate to get away from the dead body. Alynna also heard the noise, and came down from her room to investigate. She was first to arrive in the kitchens to see Jakob kneeling on the floor and bleeding form the head, with Ulla standing behind him and a man with dark hair and an apron,who apeared to be a chef, watching home.

Alynna asked what happened, and Jakob told her that he must have nudged some of the hanging pots and caused them to fall down one to his head. While Alynna didn’t believe the story, and seemed suspicious of the chef, she simply took a washcloth to Jakob’s head, escorting the boy out. Durak arrived to ask what had happened, but by that time most things had already been sorted out.

Through the windows from the kitchen, Albert had mounted his pony and was desperately attempting to flee. The land lady told her husband Klaus not the open the gate. Albert offered the man 5 gold to open it, to which the man began to respond… until his wife whispered something in his ear. At this point the man’s face went red and he charged the halfling. The halfing evaded skillfully with his horse, and proceeded to lead the man around the inner courtyard as he desperately tried to catch up with the halfling.

Durak came outside to try and calm things, with Jakob and Alynna watching from the main door of the Inn. Despite his efforts, a fight began to escalate between Klaus and Albert, and only after Durak pulled out his axe and threatened the participants would the other two sotp trying to kill one another. Albert had ricocheted a bullet off of Klaus’ forehead with his sling, while the Blacksmith hadn’t been able to lay a finger on the halfling. In an attempt to sort things out with regards to this ring issue, Durak called down Ada and everybody else and told them to bring their belongings in order to hold an open investigation into the ring and murder. Soon enough, Ada arrived to keep the halfling at bay while Durak picked through others’ belongings.

Before he could properly look through anyone’s belongings, Lenora discovered that the reason for the search was the missing ruby ring. In a moments time she produced the ring from her bags and handed it to Durak, explaining that the ring had been given to her by one of the stable boys, Sigmund Gruenwald, after they had flirted earlier that evening. The boy seemed to expected some sort of sexual recompense in exchange for the gift, but Lenora forcefully denied him. She explained that after slapping him, the boy came to his senses, and then burst into tears, running out of the courtyard where they had met. Lenora said that if Durak doubted her story, ask Edmund, the other stableboy, as she suspects that he overheard the late-night exchange.

Lenora’s story checked out with Edmund and the ring was returned to Angela Klein, much to her delight. Now that the ring had been found, Albert was even more desperate to leave, and other members of the part were beginning to see things from his perspective.

Unfortunately, the matter of Sigmund Gruenwald’s body, slit at the throat and drained of blood, buried in the vegetable patch raised even more questions. As Alynna, Durak, and Angela Klein searched the Inn for any signs of bloodied clothes or murder weapon. During this time, Ada stood guard over the still-mounted Albert, who was begging to be allowed to exit the high walls of the Five-Points Stag and be on his way. Ada also knocked out Boris Krebs, who had taken to raving and ranting about the evil that Lenora’s presence was and the impending doom that would surely fall upon them all with the setting of the sun.

After they found nothing in the Inn after hours of searching, Boris came to. Whispering to the Halfling, “the only one of you fools who understands me”, Boris explained that he was carrying a certain book he had hoped to keep away from Fein, the leader of those responsible for the fall of Finsterbad. Albert let Durak know of these suspicions, and with them Durak realised that they’d never come around to searching the belongings of the travellers. Meanwhile, the Estalian coach-drivers were drinking wine, playing dice, and making jokes about the absurdity of the current situation. As Durak made his rounds, when he reached Lenora’s bag the girl asked to speak to Durak alone. Alynna and Durak looked through Lenora’s belongings around side of the Inn. There, they found a book bound in some strange kind of leather. The tome was entitled “The Codex of Unspeakable Damnation”. For a moment, the Elf and Dwarf pair looked back and forth from the disturbing looking book, to the young prostitute with a large mole on her face standing before them.

The girl burst out into explanations, explaining that she’d seen the title of the book while Boris was reading it and that she was already terrified of the obviously insane man and felt that he should certainly not be reading any kind of book like that! She didn’t know what else to do but steal the book from him.

Ada simply said, “So you do know how to read.” The girl had just confirmed one of Boris’ claims about her.

As they came around form the side of the Five-Point Stags, Alynna and Durak found the front gate had been opened, Admitting eight members of the Roadwardens and four figures riding on two horses. A tall young man with blonde hair and blue eyes led the gelding carrying both his slight frame and that of the blind Shallyan priest Felix. On the other horse rode Loren Zimmerman and the young urchin Franziscka. Angela Klein had already told the men of the murder, and the wardens swiftly began escorting everyone into the common room for an investigation. Rather than being caught with their newly found book, Durak promptly presented the book to the leader of the Wardens, explaining where the tome had been found and bringing up Lenora’s explanation for it’s theft. With a blank face, the leader of the Warden group told the Dwarf that they would deal with this matter later on, during an ‘interview’.

With that, all present were collected into the common rooms. Three guards stood at the main entrance, two guarding the balcony, and one man could be seen patrolling outside the windows. The captain sat in the private bar room, calling people in one at a time to interrogate them. Once in the common room, the man accompanying Loren, Franziscka, and Felix introduced himself as Zane Leopold, the man Lord Kultzmann had rushed to meet in Ubersreik. As the four spoke, the party soon learned that Lord Kultzmann’s father had perished in his sleep, and that Roland Kultzmann’s older half-brother Heiser was pushing his claim to the Kultzmann feifdom in the Stirlands. In order to prevent any rival claim being made, and in order to present a unified front, Heiser’s ‘assistants’ (in fact relatives in the Reikland nobility looking to gain a puppet in a neighbouring province) sought to kidnap the base-born Roland Kultzmann and force the man to support his elder brother’s claim.

Thus, Kultzmann had been captured in Ubersreik. Shorlty thereafter, men who were known to be sworn to Kultzmann also began disappearing. Franziscka explained that she had been following the men… and that it always happened when they were alone. She also explained… that whatever had been taking the men was not natural. If pressed, she began to look terrified, at which point Loren hugged her, and the girl clammed up.

After learning about what had happened in Ubersreik, the party seemed even more disheartened. They summarised the happenings since their arrival at the Five-Points stag, and once they came to the issue of “The Codex of Unspeakable Damnation”, Zane stopped them, eyes wide.

“We need to get out of here. They’ll have already sent for the witchhunter in Ubersreik. It’s only a matter of time. Ever since the disappearances of Kultzmann and his men, with only us surviving, somebody started a rumour that we were the ones behind it. THey wouldn’t even let us travel outside of the town without the escort of the Roadwardens. We need to escape.”

The party quickly began hatching schemes to escape form the common room, but every idea seemed to lead to ending up outside the walls of the Inn and being rundown by the roadwardens. The party seemed to believe that they were incapable of martially overcoming their guards, which didn’t seem to be untrue, given the grizzled, hardened look of their custodians. As they planned, a knock came at the gate. Some servants, escorted by guards, took in the new guests, and these individuals were also herded into the common room. The party was shocked to find Elise Magirius and two armoured guards enter into the common room.

Elise was also surprised, and exceedingly displeased. The gave the party word of Bogenhafen, but refused to leave from earshot of the guards, and was relatively cold to the party. She seemed to want to have nothing to do with them. Unable to rally Elise to their cause, the others went back to plotting their escape.

After three quarters of an hour, one of the guards realised that the Captain’s interrogation of Lenora Mandrake was taking inordinately long. One of the guards decided to check, and quickly ran out, eyes-wide, calling out “He’s dead! She must have killed him! He’s dead!”

Durak went to look at the body of the Captain, and found a man strangled around the neck, with his body bloated and throbbing. The sight was too much for the dwarf, who shook violently himself for a moment, quickly closing the door. Despite the death of their leader, the guards didn’t want to let the others leave the common room. They seemed unsure what to do. After a moment, Durak told the men to stand down and that for the safety of everybody they should be leaving the Inn. The guards refused. After a moment, Durak simply walked by the guard.

As Durak walked past him, the Warden lost his resolve. Sheathing his weapon, he told the others to prepare their wagons and to leave the Inn. The other guards ran off to search for the missing Lenora Mandrake.

As he collected his belongings, one of the guards asked Durak to repeat from where ‘that book’ had been found. When Durak revealed that it had come from Boris Krebs, the warden promptly walked to Boris Krebs and stabbed him through the heart with his sword.

The others loaded into their coaches and left the Inn, deciding to ride through the night, camp, and arrive in Ubersreik the following morning in pursuit of Kultzmann. Before leaving Ubersreik Loren, Felix, Zane, and Franziska had found that Kultzmann was being taken to Dunkelberg in the South of the Reikland, and they did not want to let the distance between them and their Lord grow.

Roughly an hour after leaving the Inn, the horses began to drop to the ground, dead. Albert examined his pony, quickly determining that it had been poisoned. With time, the others died as well. Elise Magirius, who had decided to travel with them, was also stranded horse-less. After a bit of discussion, they decided to walk the rest of the distance.

Bezahltag 30, Sommerzeit 2522

They arrived outside the gates of Ubersreik very early that morning and camped until the gates opened at dawn. Moving quickly, not wanting to attract any attention, they withdrew the coffers filled with gold that Loren had deposited in secret and swiftly took the ferry across the river. On the opposite side, they left through the Southern gate, and just outside of town bought a large wagon and mules from a farmer who had just unloaded his goods at market. That day they road on to Stimmigen.

In Stimmigen, Durak was appointed Sergeant of Kultzman’s troops (currently numbering 1 – Ada Mourer).
Through Loren Zimmerman, Albert took on the role as Lord Roland Kultzmann’s Herald.
Lastly, Alynna was entrusted with investing and trading with the gold in the Kultzmann treasury, as a Merchant working under the Kultzman banner.

Additionally, Maglyn Handel bought a few books in Stimmigen, and has taken on a role as a secretary and treasurer in the Kultzmann house, keeping a record of it’s members and finances.

The Estalians also signed on, giving their names as Rodrigo and Ricardo Sanz. Both men picked up quickly to the fact that although the Kultzmann house doesn’t have a nobleman, that doesn’t stop it form having a ridiculous amount of money.

Thus, at this point the party consists of: Albert Rattlescratch, Alynna Sylvamere, Durak son of Arlak, Zane Leopold, Loren Zimmerman, Felix, Maglyn Hangel, Franziska ‘Zimmerman’, Ada Mourer, the Widow Schwab, and Rodrigo and Ricardo Debonito-Sanz.

The following day, the party would leave for Dunkelburg.

Part II

Konigstag 31, Sommerzeit 2522

The party arrived in Dunkelburg from Stimmigen with no problems. They were joined on the roads by many others from the countryside leaving early to gather in Dunkelberg for the coming Sonnstill festivities. Zane Leopold began wearing the colours and crest of another noble house from the North, which Albert recognised as a minor noble family from the Nordland. In their Kultzmann livery, the party began to act more like a noble house in seek of their master, with Zane seemingly operating at the helm as a custodian-like envoy from an allied family. Upon their arrival in Dunkelburg, Zane put up the characters in the second best Inn in town (the best was full with nobles on holiday), The Fruit Barrow. Alynna would sleep in the same room as Maglyn, Durak woulds sleep in the same room as Jakob, and Albert woulds share a room Loren Zimmerman. Zane proceeded to move on that night without telling anyone where he would be going, but leaving orders with Durak to recruit members for his militia and the others to attempt to gather information on the whereabouts of Kultzmann in the town. In order to avoid being alone, Zane brought the Widow Schwab along with him.

That evening in the common room, Albert attempted to gather some information on the town, and ended up in a long conversation with a refugee-turned-hunteress named Carlott. The woman was far from thin, but despite that Albert proceeded to get drunk and after delivering the information about the town and possible recruiting locations that he recieved to Alynna and Durak, went home with the fur-clad huntress. Her family members seemed a bit out of sorts to see her come home with the halfling, but none dared stop the chubby woman in her sport.

Durak found himself being watched by a suspicious male Elf listening to a halfling tell stories and sitting near a human nobleman. After some chatting with the Innkeeper, Durak struck a deal with the keeper to allow ‘True Schweindorfer men – the REAL Dunkelburgers” Durak recruited into the Kultzman armsmen to stay in the Fruit Barrow’s dormitories or stables at a reduced rate.

Alynna engaged the ’suspicious’ elf in conversation, discussing their shared hometown of Marienburg. When Jakob revealed some jealousy, Alynna sent the boy off, who promptly went over to Durak. Durak questioned the boy about the other elf, and Jakob only fed Durak’s suspicions by telling him that he recognised the tattoo on the elf’s arm as a sign of trouble. This caused Durak to call Alynna over and tell her to avoid getting too close to the “suspicious Elf.” After Alynna went right back to said elf to continue her conversation, an annoyed Durak and Jakob went outside to spar a bit before returning to their rooms to retire.

Angestag 32, Sommerzeit 2522

The next morning, Durak woke early and had some breakfast with Ada before the pair decided to go out recruiting. Alynna woke a bit later and joined them at the table, before leaving with Jakob to follow Loren and Maglyn to the merchant’s guild.

Durak found the Nordslager district of Dunkelburg to be relatively unwelcoming in the early morning. The only people on the streets seemed to be drunks who couldn’t quite make it home the night before. Durak and Ada approached the only Inn they could fine, which had the picture of a Hare painted on a sign above the door, although the Hare looked more a woman than an animal and was quite obscenely portrayed. After knocking on the door and waiting for a short time, an eyeslit opened and a hungover croaked out, “Yeah? What is it?”

Durak proceeded to explain his desire to work out some sort of deal in hosting Armsmen in the Inn recruited from the refugee community. While the man behind the door expressed some interest in such a large transaction, he never seemed to warm very much to the dwarf and maul-weilding woman standing beside him. The innkeeper explained that he woudln’t be able to put anybody up until after the Sonnstill festivals, as he was already booked. With that, he slammed the eye slit, and before walking away, Ada made a violent gesture towards the door with her maul, letting one of her disturbing smiles slip whilst in the act.

Meanwhile, just as Alynna was beginning to feel more like an outsider than anything else at the merchant’s guild, somebody sheepishly approached and asked who she was and what her business might be. After hearing the name, the clerk ran off to collect a man named Nigel Reisltin. Nigel told Alynna that he occasionally did work for the Sylvamere’s in Dunkelberg and that he would have to report Alynna’s presence to her brother in Altdorf. Alynna asked if the man would enclose a personal letter, and when he said yes, Alynna swiftly wrote a cursory summarisation of her events since leaving Altdorf a month earlier, and handed it off to Nigel in a sealed envelope.

Albert woke later than the others, and beneath a bearskin in an unfamliar bed. Sneaking out and dressing himself, the halfing crept from the house, past his bedmate’s family members (who all stared perplexedly at the halfling wearing a Herald’s livery creeping out of Carlotta’s room). Somewhat frumbled, Albert took the the streets and began making his way towards the Fruit Barrow for some breakfast. Along the way, he past right by Durak and Ada. While neither Durak nor Albert noticed one another, Ada called on Albert and soon he joined with them. After the halfling patted down his clothing a bit, he decided to join Ada and Durak in their recruitment tasks and take his breakfast from one of the many stalls that could be found in the Auslandermarkt that seemed to take up so much space in the newer, shabby part of town.

The trio of Durak, Ada, and Albert travelled together ot the fighting pits at the heart of the Auslandermarkt to recruit new members for Kultzmann’s armsmen. After a bit of time, Albert came into contact with somebody who seemed to be of considerable influence at the pits, named Herpin Kroppen. Kroppen told Durak that he would release six of his top fighters in exchange for Durak putting in a fight in the pits. After some hestitation and a great deal of encouragement from Albert, Durak agreed.

The trio then set out ot the entrance to the Auslandermarkt, where they recruited for most of the day. In the end, 5 fresh lads were recruited and told to meet them the following morning at the Stimmigner gate. As they recruited, Alynna was asked by a man named Paschke Bugmann to investigate the market a bit and see what sort of taxing system seemed to be in place. Alynna passed by the others as they recruited, keeping an eye out on the markets and eventually noticing some form of an administration whose members were carefully disguised as customers.

Durak, Alynna, Albert, and Ada all returned together to the Fruit Barrow Inn and had supper together. A pitfighter named Josi stopped by to discuss the terms of her coming employment with House Kultzmann, and while at first she seemed timid, did not seem to doubt the fact that she would be able to best Durak in their coming one-on-one combat. After supper, Albert and Alynna decided to head over to the Lavender Inn, the only Dunkelburger Inn of higher quality than the Barrow. Much of the local nobility had gathered in the Lavender Inn due to the coming Sonnstill festivities, and the party hoped to sniff out some hint of their own Lord Kultzmann’s whereabouts.

Sadly, their efforts were wasted. Alynna briefly met a disgruntled noble maiden named Klare Stillwright, but after discovering Alynna is a “tradesperson” and when Alynna’s servant Jakob deigned to share a table with Klare and Alynna, Klare had enough and quickly returned back to her kin. Albert had little luck finding any information, but did secure a dinner date with a Halfling servant named Betsa for the following day.

When they returned to the Fruit Barrow, everyone retired.

That night, Durak woke in the stables in his torn and tattered nightshirt with blood dripping down his face and the front of this chest. Beside him lay a dead horse, it’s neck twisting at an unatural angle and it’s chest and stomach thoroughly gnawed upon. Durak vomitted. Then he proceeded to clean himself up, remove any evidence of his presence, and woke the Innkeeper to alert of “an animal attack”! The Innkeeper sent for the groomsmen who took care of the dead horse’s body, while the Innkeeper fretted about what he would say to Lord Paracelsus, the owner, in the morning.

Festag 33 Sommerzeit, 2522

Orders came from above to buy a boat. Alynna took care of this after a decent amount of trouble. Durak avoided drama concerning the horse he killed and tore apart with his teeth. During the day he went recruiting. A few new members joined the group and the pitfighting match for the Sonnstill festival between Josi and Durak was agreed.

The party found that Kultzmann was being held by House Quintis, as that afternoon invitations arrived inviting them to the house for a dinner. They briefly met lady Quintis, who offered them quarters and board out of an apparent respect for house Kultzmann. The meeting was cold and awkward. Alynna would stay at house Quintis while the others would remain at the Inn.

When going back to the Fruit Barrow, everybody who’d had even only a sip of alcohol seemed to be ridiculously drunk. Durak, Albert, Ada, and the militiamen all went off to the fighting pits to drink with the pitfighters. After they left, Alynna read a note Kultzmann had slipped her warning NOT to drink the ale. Alynna sent Maglyn to go tell the others. Her attempts were unsuccessful.

While alone in the room, Alynna caught sight of a pale arm reachign up from her shadow as though trying to grab her. Frightened, she ran into the common room and continued her packing with an over-eager Jakob watching over her. That night she slept at House Quintis, sharing a room (but not a bed) with Jakob.

Sonnstill, 2522

The next morning Alynna was summoned by Lord Kultzmann to meet a country nobleman named Loeb Maslin. As Lord Maslin’s request and Kultzmann’s insistence, Alynna was charged with discovering the whereabouts of Maslin’s lost daughter… who had disappeared after investigating the Neuemarktplatz during the previous night. Lord Maslin also told Alynna of a book she could find on the shelves of one of House Quintis’ private libraries.

After the meeting, Alynna found the book Maslin had alluded to was in fact the Codex of Unspeakable Damnation. The book had been fit within the cover of another book. After butchering a number of other books in an attempt to re-hide the Codex within the library, Alynna eventually just slipped off with the book. On her way back to her room, she witnessed an outburst of a still-drunken Lady Quintis throwing her wine glass against the wall and striking a servant before her. Back in the room, Alynna hid the Codex beneath her matress and went off to find Durak and Albert to report the need to find Lord Maslin’s daughter.

Durak woke that morning to the sound of Felix’s voice. After a bit of prodding, the eyeless priest of Shallya managed to wake both Ada and Durak. Maglyn stood beside the man, and had helped him to find his way to the Fighting Pits, where the whole of the militia had gotten drunk and consequently slept the previous night. Curiously, Albert was not to be found sleeping alongside his new Ogre friend, Changil. Felix led Ada and Durak off to the temple of Shallya, while Maglyn helped to direct the militiamen back to the Inn where they would be served a late breakfast.

On their way to the temple, Felix ambiguously made reference to his apparent knowledge of both Ada’s and Durak’s mutations. This unsettled both of them, but not so much as the chamber they would be led to beneath the temple to Shallya. Once they arrived, Felix opened the door to a room filled with 20-odd men, women, and children who suffered from a variety of mutations. Felix then asked them to smuggle the afflicted to Nuln, where he knew of a women capable of performing some operations that could give these people a normal life once again. He also told Durak and Ada that the surgeon may be able to do something for them, as well. Durak agreed.

At the entrance to the temple, Durak and Ada ran into Alynna. Alynna asked to speak to Durak alone and told him of the Codex. Durak told Alynna to destroy the cursed book. At breakfast in the Inn they heard rumours of Witchhunters in town. Durak practiced in the early afternoon for his fight against Josi. Later the party poked around the market, and left Ada to observe a house just outside the market they suspected of having something to do with some kind of overseeing organisation for the market and perhaps the disappearance of Lord Maslin’s daughter.

At the fight that evening, Durak seemed to have the upperhand in the Pits. While the match seemed to be equal overall, both combatants struggled to land a strike, and when they did, it was clear that the Dwarf’s axe was doing far more damage than the young human girl’s rapier. All at once, the earth began shaking beneath everyone’s feet and some market stalls collapsed. In the distance they could hear the sound of a building collapse.

From a crack in the masonry beneath the floor of the Pit, a large-horned beastman of tremendous size lept into the fighting ground. Alynna and Jakob ran to help Durak and Josi, stranded with the monster. By the time they arrived, Josi and Durak had nearly finished slaying the beast. The crowd above was going wild. When they won, Durak promptly sought out Herpin Krappen to collect on his militia recruits. The man was hiding from the crowds demanding their pay, as Krappen had established 10 to 1 odds against the Dwarf and Human. Krappen sent for the men to join Durak in Kultzmann’s militia… and was offered a job himself. Krappen accepted, and seemed more than willing to skip town.

Durak and his entourage of admirers and militiamen accompanied Aynna back to house Quintis, where the guards at the main gate watched the strange party swimming through the Sonnstill festivities of the evening with great caution. As Alynna entered, Lord Maslin asked for news of his Daughter. Alynna went to her room, burned the Codex, and returned to Durak. The party then went to the house where Ada was still keeping watch.

The raid on the house was quick and to the point. Changil the Ogre busted in the doors. Alynna collected on a ledger accounting Quintis financial overseeing of the technically illicit Neuemarktplatz. Drunken courtiers populated the ground floor of the townhouse, drinking a strange wine and copulating before the intruders with only a dreamlike awareness of their presence. Changil watched on with delight. Durak first checked the cellar, where he found a woman of full-grown proportions but standing at a 3′-4′ scale completely nude and hanging in an oversized birdcage. The girl introduced herself as a daugher of the House Quintis and Durak broke her free from the cage and called up for a cloak to over her.

The party then moved up to the first floor, where they came across a disturbing sight. There, in a collapsed bed and a puddle of his own urine… beside a mountain of dirty plates, lay the supposedly-dead Lord of House Quintis. Laying across his massive stomach was a nude girl with the same dreamlike state in her eyes as the courtiers below. She washed the soft, blubbery white flesh before her with a disturbing sensualism.

After being called by Alynna.. the girl seemed to snap out of it. Lord Quintis seemed to believe that the party before him was an emmisary from his wife, and asked them to request to the Lady Quintis that she meet him again. He expressed a genuine loneliness… and ignorance of the oddity of his horridly obese circumstance. The party played along, and having gathered up evidence of Quintis wrong-doing, chaos-taint, Lord Maslin’s daughter, and the reportedly dead and previously unknown Lord Quintis and his daughter, decided to go to the House Quintis and threaten blackmail.

The gambit worked, with Lady Quintis giving up custody of Lord Kultzmann in exchange for the financial ledger and secrecy concerning her husband. Lady Quintis denied knowlege of a daughter and seemed to be eager to see the backs of the party who had discovered the contents of that townhouse. She watched Durak and Alynna departure alongside Lord Kultzmann and their entourage with an almost palpable loathing.

At the Inn, Alynna recieved a letter from Marienburg, requesting her immediate return to the family’s main house. The Elf, unable to travel due to the current Sonnstill festival, joined in the festivities only after packing her things alongside Jakob to leave together in the morning.

That night, Kultzmann’s house drank in the common room of the Fruits Basket Inn. Durak, seemingly addicted to the strane and over-powering ale that had been turning up, ended up returning to his room with Hanna the persistant Halfling that evening. In the midst of their recreation, Durak was shocked to see the tiny and seemingly mutated daughter of Lord and Lady Quintis perched on his windowsill and watching him coupling with the halfling.

Unable to control himself, Durak’s hands closed around the delicate halfling’s throat, squeezing with all of his considerable might. Then he blacked out.

Part III

Wellentag 1, Vergeheim 2522

The following morning, the Durak awoke beside the cold body of a halfling with large black blotches covering her crushed throat. Unsure what to do, the dwarf went to the temple to Shallya. There Durak met Felix, and they discussed what happened. The dwarf felt guilty and seemed bent on accepting responsibility for his actions. The priest blamed the corrupted text that the dwarf had come into contact with and claimed that in destroying the book, Durak would vindicate himself. Uncertain of this logic, Durak asked to be left alone.

Meanwhile at the Fruits Basket Inn, Lord Zane Leopold, Albert Rattlescratch, and the Widow Schwab returned from House Teutogen. Zane immediately went to find Lord Kultzmann. Albert went to his room, only to find strangers sleeping there. Having a closer look, he realised that many of those sleeping were not sleeping, but in fact dead. They all had the tell-tale bruises of strangulation on their necks.

Entering into hysterics, Albert searched desperately for Durak, “the only sane person I know.” While panicking, Albert caught sight of Alynna Sylvamere on ther way to the docks, and she told him that she suspected Durak was at the Temple to Shallya. Albert went to the temple, and after a brief conversation with a very calm Felix, decided to take shelter in the temple. Upon learning of Albert’s arrival, Durak decided to find out what had happened to his comrade. Durak and Felix both seemed to feel that the small daughter of the Quintis family was to blame for the bout of deaths that took place at the Fruits Basket the previous night.

The pair returned to the Fruits Basket Inn to try and take care of the mess of dead bodies. On their way back, they ran into the tall Leo von Siemens and the shorter Faustus Heidigger, faces they’d not seen since Finsterbad. Alongside the two was a new face, that of a tall Northerner who Leo and Faustus said could be very sneaky. The three had broken out of jail during the earthquake yesterday, and were returning to re-enter Lord Kultzmann’s service.

Inside the inn, Kultzmann informed Durak he was leaving to go to the countryside. He asked for one squad of the soldiers to protect him, under a corporal of Durak’s choosing. Durak selected that squad to be led by Carlotta and some 9 others to serve under her, including Josi Neumann. Kultzmann then ordered Durak to rescue the son of the Burgomeister Meyer-Olden, who had been kidnapped by some Tilean Mercenaries and was being held in the Nordslager district of Dunkelburg. Durak would use his other 10 men for that mission.

Albert cooked breakfast with Changil the Ogre and Carlotta in the kitchen. Durak took Hanna’s body out to the pile of bodies behind the Inn. The Innkeeper asked the dwarf to take his wife out, as well. Hallodor and his tall and short jailbreak friends finished taking all the bodies ouside, and went to the kitchens for breakfast. Herpin Krappen returned with some carts. Ada and some of the recruits took care of hiding the bodies in the city.

Kultzmann left with his attachment of the guard. Durak and Halldor waited together for Ada to return. Albert convinced the Innkeeper to sell the Inn and join them in their journey back to the Stirland. When Ada returned with Herpin Krappen, Krappen led the party to an abandoned house from which they could observe the house where the Tileans were staying. On the way there, Durak could see the house where he and Alynna had found the mutated Lord Quintis… it was burning to the ground.

When sent on reconnaissance, Halldor looked at the wrong house. Later, with a bit of help from Herpin Krappen, he was poised on the roof of one house, ready to leap from one to the other. Durak watched with most of the entourage from the abandoned tenement across the way. Two men watched the house from the opposite side. Changil the Ogre stayed at the fruits basket alone. He took somebody’s horse out of the stable and ate it.

Durak decided to strike at night, from 3 sides at once. Changil arrived in the evening, hidden by the darkness and guided by Herpen Krappen. The group attacked all at once, with Albert spreading the message from the back of the house to the front, to Halldor waiting on the roof. Durak and Ada killed the dozing guard at the back of the house in 2 simultaneous and brutal blows. Then the Sergeant, his Corporal, and 6 other men entered into the kitchen. Meanwhile, Changil the Ogre burst through the shutters of a window in the front of the house, and the ex-pitfighter and ex-merchant’s guard accompanying him rushed into the house to meet battle. Halldor lept from the roof of one house to the other, and nearly killed himself in the process.

From the roof of the house, Halldor made a lot of noise, and dropped into an empty bedroom through a hold in the thatch roof. There, he snuck through many rooms on the second floor, only to find that they were empty.

Meanwhile, Durak went upstairs with Ada, posting some recruits at the back entrance to the home. Once there, Durak and Ada (with some help from Halldor) forced two Tileans to surrender, although Ada attacked one of the Tileans after he surrendered his weapon, causing him to jump out the window to his death. The other was knocked unconscious by the flat of Durak’s axe. Halldor went downstairs to scout a bit more, and found another staircase leading into the cellar of the house. Durak then gave him orders to join in the fighting taking place at the front of the house. Halldor told 2 of the trainees to join him, and they obliged.

In the front room of the house, Changil had killed one of the 2 men there with his first, brutal blow. The two men accompanying him were struggling with the large guard dog and the other, very tall Tilean mann. In a percision shot through the thick of the melee and the wreckage of the window shudders, Albert managed to crush the shoulder of the guard dog, effectively incapacitating it. With the dog knocked out of the fight, and Changil and Halldor on their way, the last Tilean attempted to bolt.

He didn’t make it very far. After 4 strikes, the man’s left leg and right arm were a bloody ruins.

Durak had the bodies collected. Changil set to cooking the guard dog on the fire. The Burgomeisters son was rescued from the celler and returned to the Burgomeister by Herpin Krappen. Durak left one man behind to burn the house down after Changil finished eating his dog. The party returned back to the Fruits Basket and spoke with the Innkeeper.

The Innkeeper had sold the Inn, and told the party he had reserved rooms for them at The Hound and the Head Inn near the docks. They would stay there until the barge was ready. When selling the Inn, the Innkeeper found strange men from Bogenhafen asking about Durak son of Arlak. He had later witnessed a girl with a mole on her face poking around the barge.

Together the party moved to the Hound and Head in the late night, to wait a few days until the renovations on their barge were completed.