We arrive at Middenheim, from Üntergard coming up through the South causeway up the mountainside. The walls have been heavily damaged, worse to the east; hook-handed humanoids stuck into walls that are crumbling into disrepair, and a stream of refugees trickling into the city from other towns in the area. (Middenheim is the central city of Ulrich, temple to Ulrich in the center with ever-burning flame, strife between Ulrich and Sigmar)
Watchmen at the gate explain to us the ins are full and refugees are taking up camp in city parks — they’re not turning people out. Brother Reinhart’s first order of business is to return the icon to the temple. Caravan heads to the great park in the center of the city and offers us their thanks, Teresa sticks with the refugees, wishing to stay out of sight due to previous troubles in Middenheim. We follow them on our way to the temple of Sigmar. The park is overcrowded, with makeshift tents and lean-to.
We pass through some slum-like districts, then into nicer parts of town and the temple of Ulrich. At the north side of the nicer district in town, across from a big garden is the temple of Sigmar, some initiates are milling about and ask us what our business is. The initiate returns to us and lets us know Father Morten will see us now.
We are welcomed by a short man at a desk, who asks us what item we have related to Sigmar. We show him our item, his eyes light up, inspects it at his desk, and declares it to be the oldest icon of Sigmar he’s ever seen, pointing out the Dwarven craftsmanship, and postulates that this was drawn contemporary to Sigmar himself. We tell him of all the troubles we went through to bring the artifact here, mention the beast men and lack of pie, and hint that we’d like to be put up with room and board as a show of his gratitude. He invites us to sit and rest, and comes back shortly comes back with an ornate chest filled with seven tiny bags, one for each of us, filled with 25 gold crowns and a silver pendant bearing a hammer, the emblem of Sigmar.
They escort us to a common room with a communal cot where we are welcome to stay for a few days.
We talk around town and learn that the city was under siege by five separate armies of Chaos, from all directions, strongest in the north and east, who lay siege to the city for two week straight. The Dwarven craftsmen collapsed the east causeway on purpose; Chaos wizards reconstructed it using Chaos magics and the city is working on getting the ick out of it. Meanwhile, Beast Men stormed the city from the West. The east part of the city took the biggest beatings. The siege was only lifted due to the Empire along with Wood Elves, with massive armies showing up and scattering the siege. Graft’s army has been mustered and is in pursuit of the forces. The city is under control of the watch commander, who is its primary defense. Ar-Ulrich and his elite guard, along with the mages from the wizard’s guild, have joined in on the pursuit. People are working on repairing the damaged parts of the city.
Brother Reinhardt accompanies us.
The next morning we are greeted by an initiate waiting in our room who tells us there are some town watchmen waiting to see us. We walk out and meet the guard, watch commander Schutzman wishes to speak to us regarding the Beast Men we encountered, and they escort us to see him down towards the south gate. We meet a severe-looking military man in full plate armor at a desk in an office with an effing bad-ass look in his eye, who tells us to take a seat.
He introduces himself as the head of the town guard, in command of the city, and asks us about our encounters with Beast Men — we tell him we got attacked as we left Üntergard, about the pits, give him our estimates on their numbers and tell him about the ambushed supply caravan.
Someone enters and hands the watch commander a note; he frowns as he reads it. He informs us that Father Morten has been found dead and the item we brought him is missing. As we were the last people to see him, he tells us he will need to confiscate our weapons, and hold us while they conduct an investigation. Barholomaeus works the charm with the watch commander and offers to help with the investigation as we were clearly not the ones responsible for his death. Schutzman says he does not believe we are guilty and was just following procedure, and accepts our offer to help them out, handing us a note declaring we have the full authority of the city watch.
When we return to the temple of Sigmar, we see more armed initiates. One of them questions us, We tell him we are investigating the murder and Rugnar shows him the note declaring us to be the city watch. They take us to Fr. Morten’s quarters; the chief priest has sealed the room after the incident.
It’s a small room, comfortable, with wall-to-ceiling bookshelves, his body slumped over on his desk by an open window, papers scattered under him, with a dart in his neck. We look out the window at the surroundings. In the window sill, we find three scratch marks. It looks like someone climbed up into the window rather than coming from the window directly across. Rugnar looks around at the alley and surrounding window sills but can see nothing from up here.
Barholomaeus and Mal-ren Tair take a look at the dart itself, which has fibers on the back — looks like it came from a blow gun. We look to see if anything else was taken and find it looks like Father Morten was studying the icon while he was killed. Mal-ren notices that there is a page with the indentations as if below the sheet he was writing on; Rugnar reads his note.
Thorgrim heads down to the alley to attempt to pick up the killer’s trail, but fails, because he sucks. The rest of us search around — in a moment of Dwarven inspiration, Rugnar notices a small bit of sediment with an animalistic footprint at the bottom of a puddle — a rat-like footprint. Perhaps it’s the footprint of a Skaven?
We report to the watch commander with our findings. We show him the dart, he takes us down several floors and asks a man with several books for the evidence from previous murders. He produces three small packages with a similar dart — all used in murders in the past few days.
He shows us a map of the city showing the locations of the murders: One was a watchman in the college area of the city; The second was a doorkeeper at the dwarven engineer’s guild; the third was an unidentified individual found in an alley and turned into the shrine of Mor. They have found no connection other than the manner of death. When we mention the Skaven, he confirms that they are indeed real, and that Skaven are for sure not the same beast as Beast Men, and says much of the lower levels of the city have been sealed to keep them out. If there are indeed Skaven loose in town able to kill at will, this is a grave problem indeed.
We have no complete map of the underground, so who knows where they might have come from — Schutzman suggests our best course of action is to investigate the murders.
For the most recent murder — the unindentified victim — there was an unloaded crossbow found near the body. For the second murder, the dwarves were uncooperative with the investigation. The watchman was found by his replacement for the next shift underneath a window leading up to the library on the third floor and a classroom on the second floor.
We head to the nondescript back alley and search for a crossbow bolt — we do not find it, but we do find traces of blood several yards away from where the body was found. Thorgrim tracks the trail of blood to the edge of the city walls where the trail seems to go through a small metal grate which seems to have been sawn through, replaced, and covered in filth. We report once again to the watch commander, who tells us of the Sewer Jacks, a specialized sewer control unit — a room that smells literally of shit, with six folks caked with grime, shit, more shit, and filth.
They advise us that it will be cramped for those of us not Dwarven or Halfling, and keep anything we don’t want to lose tethered, and put a perfumed rag over our face.
We track down the Dwarven Engineer’s Guild — the doorman is gruff and uncooperative, but eventually after talking to him, he gives in to our charms and lets us know that their most complete map of the sewers were stolen.
Before we head into the sewers, we head over to the library to see if there was anything stolen on the night of the murder near there, either from the library or the classroom below it. We seek out someone who knows the collection, who says they have not noticed anything missing, although it could take several hours of searching to determine if anything was taken as the collection is so large. Topics of the books near the window are dramas, politics, theology, philosophy.
We gear up and head into the sewer, several of us gagging on the vile scent, as Thorgrim attempts to pick up the trail down here but fails. We come upon a grate scattering the filth every which way and are just freaking lost until Lily notices 10 feet away the sound of air passing through near a pile of rubble and spots a passageway in the rock.
Through the passageway, we spot an armed Skaven with his back turned to us, and we attack. Rugnar rushes him and quickly incapacitates him and then crushes his skull. Searching him, we find a sword, a dagger, and a skull cap. We continue down the tunnel and find a pile of rubble that looks like a cave-in and a passageway continuing to the left.
The cavern widens up and we come upon a group of Skaven unaware of our presence — some sleeping — and attack before they notice us. Mal-ren Tair shoots one right in the head and knocks him down. Lily, Barholomaeus, and Reinhardt run in to stab sleeping Skaven who wake with a squeak. One skaven rushes up onto the party members still in the cavern, and gets mauled to a pulp by Rugnar.
Another skaven with a blow gun enters the room and fires a dart at Thorgrim, and the poison makes him feel sleepy and collapse to the ground. Barholomaeus and Lily finish off the Skaven they were fighting, as another Skaven confronts the group by the entrance and gets cut down by Mal-ren. Lily pegs the Skaven with a blow gun in the leg, and gets a dagger thrown at her while Barholomaeus and Reinhardt double-team the last Skaven and finish him. Rugnar deals with the last of them, and there was much rejoicing.
Searching the bodies, we find the one skaven was carrying eleven poisoned darts and five throwing knives and a small vial. Rugnar pulls the dart from Thorgrim and tries to heal him, and Thorgrim wakes — he’s fine. In the back of the cavern, we find a rough hewn statue of Grugny, the Dwarven god of mining and underground construction. The Dwarves can tell that this cavern was made artificially. We find a crossbow along the walls, and see strange symbols painted on the walls — strange symbols and a human skull with blood on the skull.
We search the beds for the stolen items and find the gold frame that contained the icon. While searching, Mal-ren contracts a disfiguring infectious disease — the galloping scum-pox — and will be wallowing in misery for the next six days, and we dig up some loose change worth 2gc. We inform the watch and recieve 10 gold crowns a piece for providing a service to the town, return the frame to the church, and inform the Dwarves of the happenings.