2.2:
Deep in the Drakwald

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.