30th Kaldezeit IC 2522

The adventurers stand at the top of the wide stairs leading down to the square facing the docks at Delberz. People swarm to and fro across the muddy cobblestones—smelly peasants, gangs of beggars and urchins, teams of stevedores unloading goods from ships. Slop rains down from upstairs windows. Crates and bulky shapes covered with canvas cover the docks that run along the river. A town crier standing by a statue of some past Emperor shouts the day’s news.

duCourt attempts to read a letter he has written to Werner Stoltz back in Middenheim, but is interrupted by a lice-ridden beggar, who accosts Lavarar for money. Lavarar throws him a few pennies but it only seems to encourage him, and while Lavarar is lucky enough to avoid a lasting reminder of his attentions, Bierschtein is not so lucky and gets a bad case of the itches.

The group avoids the attentions of several beggars and run for a pub that Fitzue knows on the waterfront—The Yellow Bucket. Inside, the noise of the docks abates somewhat, and they exchange greetings with the owner, a long-haired fellow in his 40s (with excellent teeth) by the name of Theoderic Bischof. Bierschtein organises a bath and goes out back to rid himself of his new affliction in what turns out to be a filthy bathhouse. Fitzue takes his leave to visit his old teacher of magic, Hieronymous Blitzen, who lives on the outskirts of town.

Fitzue’s visit is non-productive, as he refuses to reveal any specifics about his adventures, and Blitzen’s reaction is to eventually show him the door—their relationship somewhat cooler than when they last met.

Back in the Bucket, duCourt reads the others the letters he has composed—one to Werner Stoltz appraising him of their progress, and another to the last know location of Wolfhart Reise, which is full of threats. Later these are taken to the town’s Temple of Sigmar to be sent off.

To Werner Stoltz: “Your Erudite Holiness,

Yours etc etc”

While drinking the tavern’s hard cider, a bald-headed man in a long black leather coat at the bar suddenly looks strangely at Lavarar and seems to recognise him. He steps forward and greets Lavarar warmly as ‘Eldred’, his cousin, whom he apparently has not seen for some time. Lavarar tries to cover himself by referring to a recent bump on the head, but the fellow—who introduces himself as Gunnar— sits and orders a round of beers. When they arrive he slips something in Lavarar’s drink, makes effusive excuses and leaves. DuCourt tries to follow him but loses him in the crowd.

Lavarar tips out the drink, but a small wax tablet falls to the floor. On it is enscribed ‘Be on your guard, the Ordo Fidelis is watching you. Dock 3, midnight. A friend.’

On the recommendation of various sailors in the pub the adventurers book passage on the Maria Borger, a small riverboat owned by Bernhard Dampfler.

That evening at midnight the adventurers go down to dock three and await ‘Gunnar’. Out of the mist on the river comes the sound of rowlocks, then a lone row boat. Once at the dock a dark-coated figure climbs out of the boat. duCourt confronts him alone initially, but one by one the other members of the party step out of the shadows to ask questions.

It transpires that the man is Gunnar Krauthosen, a witch hunter and member of the Ordo Fidelis, the mysterious organisation the adventurers first heard of in Middenheim. It seems the Ordo, who are dedicated to hunting down the agents of Chaos, have been keeping an eye on the adventurers to judge them as possible members, even though some suspect them of being too ‘mercenary’ to join. duCourt and the adventurers do nothing to dispel this impression, and remain confrontational and independent in their conversation with Krauthosen.

31st Kaldezeit IC 2522

An hour past dawn, and the adventurers are aboard the Maria Borger and sailing south down the River Delb. The day passes without incident as the boat passes various villages and common river traffic.

32nd Kaldezeit IC 2522

Another day of sailing southwards.

33rd Kaldezeit IC 2522

In the afternoon the adventurers spot what appears to be an empty riverboat floating towards the Maria Borger. As it comes close a gang of pirates springs up from concealment, some raining arrowshot upon them as others throw grappling hooks over the Borger’s gunwales. The adventurers get a few effective shots off, including a powerful magic missile from Fitzue, and the pirates try to break off the attack, having obviously encountered more than they bargained for. The boats bump together however, and the adventurers leap on board the pirate riverboat and begin dispatching the hapless attackers. Three escape and swim for shore, though one receives an arrow in his arm as he escapes.

The adventurers tether their newly acquired boat to the Maria Borger and after some haggling, agree to sell it to Dampfler for 200gc down payment and another 230gc once they reach Altdorf.

Later that day, they come across a wrecked and obviously sinking vessel, the Divine Retribution, near the riverbank. Blood stains, a corpse, and scattered coins can be seen on the angled deck. The adventurers draw up to the boat and jump on deck, duCourt heading into the cabin. There he encounters Krauthosen lying amid wrecked furniture. Krauthosen suddenly begins gabbling incoherently, then screaming something about someone deserting him, and the infection taking hold, and that they will not get ‘it’—and horrifically, he suddenly digs his fingers into his chest and pulls it apart, revealing a gaping maw lined with teeth and a huge, slavering tongue which shoots out to grab duCourt. duCourt stumbles backwards out of the cabin and manages to shut the door, but the tongue follows him on deck, slapping about like the giant tentacle of some monstrous aquatic beast.

After a frantic fight the thing that was once Krauthosen is dispatched. The adventurers search the boat and discover a thin rope leading from the cabin window down into the river—pulling it up they find a waterlogged valise that contains a strange wooden half-male, half-female mask.

That evening, they arrive in the small village of Halbherzig, noticing a few vessels at the docks including a gaudily-decorated showboat. While Dampfler and his men busy themselves with the boats, the adventurers repair to the inn, the Shooting Star, and its taproom. There they see various peasants at the tables, a well-dressed Bretonnian fellow playing solitaire with cards, and a group of burly men, three of whom they recognise as the survivors of the pirate encounter. While the others sit up at the bar and get themselves food and drink, duCourt goes to confront them. He plays it cool, taunting them until the men rise with cutlasses drawn, then promptly kills one and beheads another. The survivors run for the door.
Tossing the innkeeper some gold crowns, he joins the others as a tavern girl takes a mop and bucket to clean up the mess.

duCourt chats with the Bretonnian, one Louis-Philippe Cheauteau, and plays a few good-natured hands of cards with him. Fitzue sits at the bar cradling his stew and beer and says nothing. Bierschtein chats with the barmaid.

A bit later, a beautiful woman wearing an emerald-green dress, wih long raven-black hair and skin the colour of fresh cream, enters the bar, looks about and approaches Lavarar. Over a few drinks she reveals that her name is Fran Poppenbutel, and she is recently arrived to be betrothed to a local wine grower. She flirts outrageously, and eventually organises a later clandestine meeting with Lavavar.

After she leaves, a huge irate fellow bursts into the room and accuses Lavarar of flirting with his “beloved little flower,” then suddenly bursts into tears. The adventurers are by now suspecting that this entire sequence of events is a setup, and check on Lavarar’s room, which sure enough has been ransacked.

Finally, a cultured-looking fellow enters, introducing himself as Hermann von Wolkenstein, the leader of a group of players whose showboat is at the docks. He invites the adventurers to a preview performance of his new play Sigmar’s Folly, which he explains is a little controversial for the locals and his wish is to test it out on some cultured folk like the adventurers. They agree to meet him in an hour at his boat.

However they have no intention of doing so. Instead, the adventurers return to their rooms and soon after, when all in the inn have retired, they set up an ambush for the company they expect. Sure enough, in the early hours they hear the footsteps of an invisible visitor, who turns out to be von Wolkenstein creeping about under cover of an invisibility spell. After a short pursuit and the slamming of a couple of doors in true ‘Bretonnian farce’ style, a battle is joined between the adventurers and all of the members of von Wolkenstein’s troupe (including the attractive woman and the huge man) in the back corridor of the inn.

Things go badly for the theatre troupe and the woman is the only survivor. The adventurers truss her up and take her with them down to the troupe’s boat, which they proceed to ransack, and discover evidence that they were all members of a Slaanesh cult.

Suddenly, the proceedings are interrupted by the arrival of the local constabulary. They stand on the dock as the adventurers are caught in the middle of stealing from a boat, covered in blood, with a tied-up hostage. Things don’t look good.

26th Kaldezeit IC 2522

Their Drakwald guide, Wolfhart Reise, decides he has done quite enough and informs the adventurers he will meet them later outside, if they survive what they are getting into. After some nervous preparations, the adventurers slowly shove the stone lid of the sarcophagus and peer inside—it is empty, but a narrow, roughly excavated tunnel leads down and into the hard clay of the hillside. Lavarar volunteers to take point, and with a torch held out in front of him and a rope tied to his foot, hops into the sarcophagus and squeezes full-length into the tunnel. After some minutes of squirming through the claustrophobic passage, fighting down the urge to panic and no doubt permanently affected by the experience, he emerges though a grill into the floor of a small, dark cell and is hit by a melange of horrible smells—decay, excrement, dirt and rot. Looking through a grill in the cell door he sees a vaulted, smoky underground chamber lit by a central fire around which three hunched, cloaked figures are gathered.

His companions follow, beginning with Fatuus, who unfortunately cannot brave the tight space of the tunnel and begins to panic, screaming as he finally struggles out the other end. This alerts the cloaked figures, who turn to reveal diseased and pock-marked faces and lunge towards the cell with rusty swords and flaming torches brandished. The first pulls open the door and strikes at Lavarar with his flaming brand as the other adventurers emerge through the tunnel.

Other doors in the central chamber open and a melee ensues between the adventurers and five of the diseased men and their robed leader. A sixth man runs for a pair of double doors, opens them and invites in a group of six ghouls—crooked, skinny, misshapen humans with feral eyes, sharpened fangs and hands and fingers that have stiffened and hardened, with fingernails growing into great tough talons which constantly secrete viscous black venom—who join the battle.

After a viscious melee the adventurers are victorious and the rabid men and ghouls lying in various pieces upon the flagstones. The adventurers search the various rooms, finding an antechamber beyond the double doors that leads out into the fresh dawn light, revealing the chambers to be those of an ancient barrow. Other, ransacked and collapsed barrows are scattered over the large clearing.
In the ghoul’s antechamber they find gnawed bones and a rag doll. In the other rooms, they find various cultist personal items, and a letter to a certain Jurgen—probably the robed leader—revealing that a cultist group worshipping Nurgle—The Three Moons—is in Marienburg attempting to track down this Child of the prophecy and enslave him to their master.

At the end of the main chamber is another pair of double doors inscribed with the three circles of Nurgle. Beyond these the adventurers find a horrific ‘altar’ of rotting bodies over which floats a flame-like apparition that looks disturbingly like vomit. The adventurers attempt to displace the altar with a grappling hook but the ‘flame’ is seemingly strengthened—eventually they light a tapestry, throw it into the room and burn everything. An otherworldly howl comes from beyond the doors as they do so. The adventurers rush out of the barrow as it collapses around them.

27th Kaldezeit IC 2522

After resting, exhausted, in the clearing, as duCourt returns to the monastery to discover Wolfhart Reise gone, the adventurers spend a day at the ruins prior to moving on the next morning. Since all their food had been spoiled by Fatuus’s misfiring spell, duCourt goes into the forest to find some food and to the surprise of all manages to track and kill a deer.

28th Kaldezeit IC 2522

Refreshed, the adventurers set off south along the overgrown path leading from the monastery. After a few hours walking they come across five bloated, rotting corpses hanging by ropes from a tree. These they cut down and cover with tree branches by the roadside. Later still, they hear a voice up ahead crying “Help, in the name of Shallya!” They hide in the undergrowth and soon a middle-aged peasant with painful swellings around his mouth staggers up the road, clearly feverish and in the last stages of some horrible disease. Lavarar is the first to step out and shoot a crossbow bolt into the man, followed by a magic dart from Fitzue. Despite his piteous pleadings for help—punctuated by violent sneezes which spray pus over a wide area—he is soon shot down by the adventurers, and given a wide berth as they continue on down the road.

By the evening they emerge from the forest, unnerved by rustlings in the trees and the sense of being watched, and look down a hill to the village of Besdahl. They find an inn—The Shining Griffon—and talk briefly with the cheerful innkeeper, who gets them pots of Besdahl Dark, some of his famous hammer-shaped sausages on a bed of twin-tailed comet-shaped mash, and prepares rooms for the party.

The adventurers visit the small temples of Sigmar and Shallya in the town, which appear to be run by an old husband and wife—the Guffs—who, while friendly (the predictable comment about the elf’s ears generates the usual sigh from duCourt) have little information or help to offer. Though they do learn that a middle-aged villager who likes to go hunting occasionally on the outskirts of the Drakwald hasn’t been seen for a few days …

29th Kaldezeit IC 2522

The next morning the adventurers head off on the road to Mittelweg, which they reach after a day of walking.

30th Kaldezeit IC 2522

Just before Delberz in the late afternoon, the adventurers come across the aftermath of a clash between beastmen and two travellers. Three dead beastmen, one dead horse and one dead man lie in the road. A wet cough alerts them to a second man lying propped up against a tree, bleeding to death with a dead beastman beside him. His name is Jost Wechsler and he and his brother were on their way to the next village to see their mother for her birthday.

The adventurers manage to bring him back from the brink of death, and take him and the body of his brother (Lavarar suggest dragging it along the road, and when the others protest he clarifies “face up, face up!”) to their mother’s house. When they get there Frau Wechsler is grateful and gives them each a hand-embroidered hankerchief.

At the stables, they soon discover that Reise has beaten them to it and taken their horses. After a minor altercation with the stabler, who seems unrepentant, they go to find rooms for the night. After avoiding The Leaning Rooms—the innkeeper looks wistfully at them from the doorway as they pass—they choose The Yellow Cup.

The adventurers head down to the docks to see if they can book passage down the River Delb and eventually to Altdorf.

20th Kaldezeit IC 2522

In a rare show of generosity the landlord of The Drowned Rat has musicians playing as the adventurers gather on the rainy night of 20th Kaldezeit, two days into winter, and discuss their plans. A scruffy urchin comes up to their table with a message from the missing Cylarus Lynx, who has decided that adventuring is too dangerous and he’s going back to student life.

While deciding whether or not they should track down the crime boss ‘Big Otto’, a haggard fellow leans over Lavarar’s shoulder from the next table and suggests that they not say that name too loudly. Lavarar tries to use his streetwise charm to continue the conversation, but the man tells him to bugger off in no uncertain terms.

Soon after a scrawny little fellow introducing himself as Jekil Hoefler walks up to their table and offers them information on Big Otto in return for a gratuity. The adventurers agree and he asks them to meet him outside in five minutes. As they get up to leave, they notice the haggard man has left his table. Fitzue goes upstairs to check if he is there, duCourt waits just inside the main door of the tavern, and Lavarar and Bierschtein go outside into the rain to see Hoefler lurking at the corner of the tavern in an alley. When Lavarar crosses the muddy road to see further down the alley, he spies two thugs, who rush forward—one meets Bierschtein’s hammer, the other Lavarar’s sword. duCourt and Fitzue hurry to join the melee.

One of the thugs is soon gravely injured and the other gives up, warning them about Big Otto and that he knows that they killed his men. The adventurers get Otto’s whereabouts—Blacksmith Lane—tell the thug they’ll be coming to see him, and let both of them free.

21st Kaldezeit IC 2522

After an uneventful night the adventurers head for the Temple of Sigmar and finalise their arrangements to head south following their mysterious map.

22nd Kaldezeit IC 2522

Provisioned and on riding horses loaned by the Temple, the group sets off in the early morning of an unusually warm winter’s day. They walk their horses through the cobblestone streets of Middenheim and through the South Gate, past the huge line of refugees camping down the causeway waiting to get into the city, past the squalid shantytown at the base of the Fauschlag, and south along the Altdorf-Middenheim road and into the forest.

After three hour’s riding the adventurers reach the town of Schoninghagen, then after another three and a half hours the crossroads to Grunbentrich, where swings a rusty gibbet with a long-dead occupant. Continuing south another hour and a half, they reach a walled coaching inn called The Squeaky Gibbet where they stay for the night. The owner, a big hairy bear of a man called Walosk, walks over to greet them, talk about the regular beastmen raids hereabouts, and offer the special for the evening—stuffed quail, mouse, and cauliflower surprise (“what’s the surprise? There ain’t no cauliflower!”) duCourt and Lavavar play a few hands of Sigmar’s Folly with two young nobles and win 28 Crowns; Lavarar chats up a barmaid (whom he later meets in the hayloft over the stables), and Fitzue introduces himself to a mysterious traveller, one Wolfhart Reise. Reise is an ex-Roadwarden for hire and the adventurers engage his services for the trip south and into the Drakwald for 10 Crowns.

23rd Kaldezeit IC 2522

At dawn the next morning the adventurers meet Reise in the courtyard and the party continues south on a day still warm for this time of year, passing through Malesdt and staying the night at Sotturm.

24th Kaldezeit IC 2522

A wind picks up and the chill of winter is back. The party reaches Delberz, and after stabling the horses and paying their respects at a small roadside shrine to Shallya, head east across the fields and under the forbidding forest canopy of the Drakwald. That night by the campside Lavarar, who is on watch, is awaken from dozing by a tickling sensation and to his horror, confronted by a huge bloated spider hanging over his head, which lunges down and bites him. The rest of the party (save duCourt) wake to his shouts and the spider is soon dispatched, but not without wounding and paralyzing Lavarar and beginning to wrap him in a sticky shroud.

During the fight Fatuus attempts to cast a spell but something goes wrong and all the party’s food is spoiled.

A hard lesson about staying awake on watch is learnt.

24th-25th Kaldezeit IC 2522

The next day the adventurers reach the Delberz hills, and some relief from the oppressive atmosphere of the forest. At the end of the second day travelling east across the hills they come upon a crude slab of stone ringed around with arcane and ancient symbols; it seems to be dedicated to some god of the old faith, but it is difficult to tell what the markings mean. Suspicious stains upon its surface suggest someone has been using it recently for sacrifices, most likely animals, but it is hard to tell for sure. Using this as a convenient marker they head directly east back into the forest.

26th Kaldezeit IC 2522

In the late afternoon the adventurers make out a column of smoke rising from the forest several miles east and head for it. Later, as the sun is setting, Reise suddenly halts the party and signals for quiet; ahead the adventurers just make out a figure passing through the forest, and can hear the sounds of drums and guttural roars in the distance. Eventually the party sneaks up to the edge of a large forest clearing, where on top of a low hill are the remains of a walled stone compound, now long fallen into partial ruins. They scout around the clearing, ambushing and killing with arrows and crossbow bolts a beastman scout on the way, and sneak up to a break in the wall. Inside the compound is a damaged abbey building with a collapsed roof and several shattered outhouses. In the courtyard before the abbey there is an enormous bonfire around which are some twelve beastmen, two of them particularly huge. A few hapless peasants, some still alive, some dismembered (and some both), are tied to a wooden lattice; the beastmen hit drums, roar and gorge on human flesh as they stalk around the fire.

Fitzue casts a Marsh Lights spell and sends the lights off down the path to the south when the beastmen guards at the gate have seen them—one of the leaders and four beastmen pursue the lights. Then the party begins attacking the remaining beastmen with missile fire. The leader—a beastman covered in running sores and polyps, with a tentacled arm clutching a two-handed mace—is killed first, and as it collapses several horrific little foot-high humanoid creatures burst out of it, gibbering and cavorting and reveling in the bodily fluids. After a battle the other beastmen are killed, and after a short break to crack their necks and test the sharpness of their sword edges, the party run for the only remaining intact tower. Lavarar rips open the rusted iron door and the party rushes in, Reise protesting that “he was not being paid well enough for this kind of work!” At the top of the stairs they find six dessicated corpses hanging from the tower rafters. There is no time to solve the mystery however, as the remaining beastmen return and charge the tower. Lavarar hits one with a crossbow bolt through the window, while duCourt shoots arrows at the leader as he comes up the door and charges up the stairs. He is hit by a blow from duCourt at the top and falls back down, taking the other beastmen with him, and it is not long before they are finished off.

Safe for the moment, the adventurers check the area. The surviving peasants are blessed by Bierschtein and given Sigmar’s mercy, and he also busies himself with taking down the corpses in the tower—who were monks of the abbey—and disposing of them with proper ceremony. Lavarar opens an old chest in the tower and discovers a mouldering book, which goes part way to explain what happened there. It appears that some sort of plague was killing the clergy, and that this group of monks locked themselves in here to escape it.

Eventually the party enters the abbey building itself, to find it horrifically defiled. Upon the altar, the gibbering, sharp-toothed creatures that burst from the beastman gleefully cavort in a pile of faeces and intestines. They are soon dispatched, oil poured over the altar and the stone cleansed with fire. Bierschtein begins to do what he can to clean up the church, while duCourt examines the altar, and soon finds a protrusion which he turns, revealing a hidden passage below the altar leading down into darkness and a pair of doors.

The party descends into the abbey catacombs. Past the defiled doors they find a tomb chamber, a thirty foot corridor lined with skeltons resting in alcoves, clutching swords to the chestplates of their decaying armour. Beyond that, a staircase leads down to a room where the walls list the names of those monks who died and were buried here, and there are two stone slabs strewn with a few old gnawed bones. Another staircase leads further down, and at the end of a narrow passage they reach a circular chamber dominated by a stone coffin. Around the walls a frieze depicts warriors of Sigmar in battle against the forces of chaos, the victory of the Empire, the building of the abbey and dead warriors being placed to rest in these catacombs. Against the wall they find a pile of bones and old armour, and among them and ornate sword enscribed with Sigmar’s twin-tailed comet.

The stone slab of the coffin is covered with handprints in mud and dried blood that look like it has been opened from without … and within. Carved into the stone lid the party finds an inscription proclaiming the return of Sigmar in the form of a child, bearing the mark of Sigmar’s might on his breast, that will come out of the West and bring justice, peace and prosperity back to the land.

11th Kaldezeit IC 2522

Robert Lacy d’Aghuillam duCourt, Lucidius Lavarar and Fatuus Fitzue cradle ales around a rickety side booth at the Drowned Rat, pondering their next move.  In the corner, a booze-addled voice rises above the general din: “great wobbly mutated things they were! I’m not going down there again, not on your life!” The adventurers invite this drunken loser to their table, and soon discover he is one Wilmut Eckhardt, once city sewerjack, now professional drunk. He raves about ‘men the size of rats! Hold on, I mean rats the size of men!” and eventually agrees to draw the adventurers a map of where he encountered them during the recent siege.

In the meantime, a priest of Sigmar enters the bar. As a ragged toast of “to Sigmar” is raised in the tavern, he strides over to the adventurers table and introduces himself as Wolfgang Bierschtein, sent by the High Priest of the Temple of Sigmar and High Capitular of Nordland, none other than Werner Stoltz, to summon them to an interview. After a beer together, they all leave the Drowned Rat, leaving the sodden Echkhardt to his task.

Through the streets of Middenheim, through the crowds of old residents going about their lives and new refugees from the country side milling about in confusion, the adventurers walk until they come across a knot of people shouting and throwing stones at someone. A man has been tied up against a building with the crudely scrawled sign ‘BEESTMAN’ around his neck, and two fake horns tied onto his head with a piece of string. The adventurers rescue the hapless victim, who turns out to be a moneylender. Robert extorts some crowns out of the man for rescuing him and he is set on his way.

At the impressive Temple of Sigmar, the adventurers are shown into a library and meet Werner Stoltz, who asks them about their progress in tracking down the murderer of Father Dietrich and the stolen icon of Sigmar. The adventurers manage to negotiate 50 crowns out of him ‘for expenses’.

As they leave, they encounter Odo the Eyeless, a blind priest with a habit of lingering on the steps of the temple and raving about prophecies and religious scripture to passers by. He grabs the party and marks them as being watched by Sigmar.

Back to the Drowned Rat, Eckhardt has had no luck drawing a map and offers to take them roughly to the area where he saw the ratmen. In the lowering dusk the adventurers are led into a filthy back alley, where Eckhardt unlocks a sewer grating and they all descend into the disgusting, stinking, disease-infested world of Middenheim’s sewers.

Eckhardt takes them through a maze of passages and through a large intersection room, down rusty ladders to a lower level, then leaves them to their fate. Continuing on, the adventurers come across a man sitting on the sewer walkway catching his breath. This is Cylarus Lynx, a student now forced to fall back on his previous occupation of bodyguard while the city is in chaos after the Storm of Chaos. He was part of a group of thugs hired for some dirty work in the sewers, but at the last minute he decided to back out and has got himself lost. He joins the adventurers.

Eventually the group comes across an opening in the sewer wall covered by a dirty sheet. duCourt goes on ahead up a narrow ascending passageway, but sets off a tripwire alarm that rings a small bell. There are sounds up ahead. duCourt returns to the group and they all decide to continue up the passageway. In a small chamber at its end a table has been upended and three thugs wait for them behind it with crossbows. A melee ensues!

duCourt rushes the table and attempts to push it and the thugs back with no success, and is soon locked in combat. Fitzue sidles around the edge of the room, past a door, preparing to get in range for a spell. Bierschtein and Lynx rush forward to engage the other thugs. Another thug enters from the side door and shoots a crossbow bolt into Fitzue.

Eventually, after several wounds on both sides and several deaths on the thugs’ side, one thug is alive and questioned. It seems they were hired by one ‘Big Otto’ for some grunt work—digging and guard duty—within the sewers, but know little else of their situation. Recently they had cleared an area of the sewers and the sounds ahead had convinced them all that the work was becoming too dangerous. The adventurers get this information and let the hapless thug go.

Onwards, the adventurers search a couple of rooms and some cells, recognising to their surprise that this is the same set of rooms where they fought a nest of skaven some ten years ago. They find a rough altar to some skaven god and a sacrificial dagger in a niche in the wall of that room. Also from this room a low, narrow, rough passageway leads into the darkness.

duCourt again takes the lead and, at the end of the passage, finds himself on a ledge overlooking a large dark chamber. Suddenly he is hit by a dart in the neck and slumps into unconsciousness. Lavarar pulls him back out, thinking “that’ll teach the cocky Elven bugger”. The adventurers decide to rest for a time until duCourt wakes.

Eventually he does and the group continues down a side passage they passed earlier. This comes onto onto a rope bridge spanning a high sewer, and then to a long corridor where rubble has recently been cleared away. Following this they come into a large sewer junction where many pipes meet and water cascades down the walls to the floor below, where a ten foot high rat creature is chained to the wall. Across from them and higher up, a wiry man dressed in a rat costume—fake snout, claws attached to his feet and hands—raves at them about the huge creature’s beauty and magnificence.

“Isn’t he BEAUTIFUL!!!?” he cries repeatedly in a cracked, ratty voice. 

While the rat ogre strains at its bonds and roars at the adventurers, they shoot missiles at the assassin, who eventually is pinned to the wall by an arrow from duCourt. At that moment the rat ogre breaks free and charges up a ramp towards the party. Bierschtein is frozen in fear and soils his britches. “You’re never gonna live down your first night on stage, Schteinie,” says Lucidius.

The other adventurers, after a desperate battle, manage to destroy the creature—the final ‘blow’, a sleep spell by Fitzue, who has been been having amusing difficulties touching his past victims to cast that particular spell during the entire venture. “I have the touch!” cries Fitzue, victorious at last.

The adventurers search the dead assassin and find the stolen icon of Sigmar. They also find it had a false back and also on the man’s body is a map; a map showing the location of ‘the honoured dead of Sigmar’.
Hacking off the head of the rat beast, they return through the sewers and eventually to the Temple of Sigmar.

12th Kaldezeit IC 2522

Dawn finds the adventurers shaking the bloody severed head out of a sack at the feet of the just-woken Stoltz at the Temple. It makes an impression.

The adventurers are tasked with entering the Drakwald and finding this lost tomb and what rests there. The urgency of the task is compounded by the fact that Odo the Eyeless had just yesterday had a vivid vision from Sigmar referring to a group of adventurers who would  find such a place. That they would “find the path hidden behind Sigmar’s image” and “go into the darkness to find that which was lost”. Surely the adventurers are following Sigmar’s will?

12th – 19th Kaldezeit IC 2522

The adventurers stay at the Temple of Sigmar to rest and recuperate and heal their wounds. Some go off to complete their training to enter new careers. Lavarar wanders from one Middenheim brothel to the next trying to decide whether to spend his hard-earned crowns somewhere decent or risk yet another bout of the pox, until eventually, wracked with indecision—and perhaps with exhaustion—he returns to the monastic discipline of the Temple of Sigmar.

4th Kaldezeit IC 2522

Robert Lacy d’Aghuillam duCourt, Elven noble and duellist, Lucidius Lavarar, raconteur and charlatan, and Fatuus Fitzue, journeyman wizard, find themselves in the smoking ruins of the small town of Untergard in the aftermath of the northern invasion known as The Storm of Chaos. Conveniently, it appears they were far from their usual haunts in Middenheim during the recent siege by the Chaos Lord Archaeon and his Chaos hordes.

And yet in Untergard their conscience is pricked once again—or is it simple self defence?—and they find themselves defending the local villagers from an attack by mutants. Hailed as saviours, the local priest—father Dietrich—asks them to retrieve a sacred icon of Sigmar that rests in the town church, now overrun with beastmen.

The adventurers rise to the challenge and return deep into the ruined town to get the icon. After a desperate battle with beastmen they succeed.

4th – 9th Kaldezeit

The adventurers set out north with the town refugees back to the city of Middenheim, where surely all can find succor.

Around the ruins of Grimminhagen, the adventurers take the time to do a little rummaging with little success. Onwards on the road north, at a crossroads, the pathetic refugees are ambushed by goblins. The adventurers chase them into the woods and find their camp in a dell blanketed by autumn leaves, and kill them all. Things take an amusing turn when—after the adventurers dither about whether goblins are nasty or not and how they should go about fighting them—Fitzue’s spell misfires and he charges into the fray. duCourt and Lavarar look at each other, shrug, and charge in after him. The goblins are all killed.

9th Kaldezeit

On the evening of 9th Kaldezeit they arrive at the great city of Middenheim, and camp with the other refugees crowding the gate ramps at the base of the huge plateau on which it is built, the Fauschlag or Ulricsberg. The city is still reeling from the damage of the siege.

Eventually the adventurers gain access to the city and go to see Watch Commander Ulrich Schutzmann, now in control of the city while the Graf and his knights are away hunting down the remnants of Archaon’s army. Schutzmann remembers the adventurers from their exploits in the past. The icon is taken to the Temple of Sigmar, and the adventurers find the best rooms they can in the overcrowded city—the stinking hole known as the Drowned Rat.

10th Kaldezeit

In the morning the adventurers are summoned to a meeting with Schutzmann. It appears that Dietrich has been found dead. Schutzmann gives the adventurers a permit to act in the name of the Watch and investigate the killling. When they return with evidence that he was killed by a dart, he shows them information on three recent killings by the same method—a guard by the Collegium Theologica, a dwarven doorman at the Temple of Grungni, and an unknown man in the streets of the Old Quarter.

After investigating, the adventurers discover that a book on Sigmar and a map of the sewers has been stolen, and that the unknown man was to be buried in a pauper’s grave until three men appeared and paid for his funeral. His headstone is inscribed with the name Gerhard Kroen and a twin-tailed comet symbol with the letters ‘OF’ inside it.