The following day, an initiate comes to our barracks with a note, a summons to the temple of Ulrich from Father Renauld, a priest of Ulrich. Mal-ren Tair suffers from the wretched pock-marks of the galloping sum-pox, who seeks attention to cleanse his ailment with a bath of hot water and vinegar, and his boils seem to get better.

We head to the Temple of Ulrich, taking a detour through the market area to post Mal-ren’s flyer for his land in the Chaos-ravaged western lands. The temple is built like an impressive, well-defensible castle, dominating the cityscape. We are greeted at the cathedral gates by initiates of Ulrich bearing medallions with the white wolf.

Two priests greet us, one bearded and in his fifties, well-kept; next to him is an older blind gentleman, who is introduced as Father Odo. We were summoned on the recommendation of the watch. Father Odo explains to us his troubled visions — he is visibly shaken as he tells us he found himself in a deep forest, with a stone, on a grassy mound, skulls and bones at its base, blood flows as if on fire, and the ground shakes; from the mound erupted the Blood God Korn bearing a brass skull which spoke to him: “I shall be free.” — Father Odo can feel its presence even still, and appears visibly shaken and quite disturbed by his vision.

He was found by a younger acolyte collapsed in his chamber. Father Renauld seeks our aid, and says Father Odo will accompany us, should we agree, to Drackwald Forest, as even in blindness he may be able to guide us — if we agree, the city would be forever in our debt.

Barholomaeus asks the Father to put a more specific value on this debt. Fr. Odo sighs, and tells us to rest assured that we will be compensated — if monetary compensation is what we need, he will see to it. Barholomaeus negotiates for a pack mule with a cart but is not quite satisfied. “This is like some battle church, isn’t it? What’ve you got?” Odo explains that most of the armaments are with the templars and sees that we are fairly well armed. Fr. Odo does not know how long the journey will be, so we ask for a makeshift canvas-sheet tent and as much food and water as the mule can carry. Having come through the Drackwald Forest and finding most settlments ravaged by Chaos, we do not expect to be able to restock on our journey.

Father Reinhard, from the temple of Sigmar, continues to accompany us.

We set out from the West gate of the city, with Father Odo telling us which roads to take. West of the city, the conditions are much better than from the south and from our reports of the East. Mal-ren and Amendel make notches in the trees as we travel to mark our route home. As night draws, we come upon the village of Prithstock — we have not travelled far, but we have taken an unusual path to get there. Father Odo pays for our rooms at the inn.

Before long, the next day, we can tell we are travelling in circles. Father Odo tells us he can’t help what direction his visions are taking him (and us). This continues for about 9 days, and Mal-ren estimates we are about 150 miles from Middenheim, but we can tell Odo is getting more jumpy and nervous, and we come to a clearing far off the path, difficult to get to with the mule and cart.

In the center of the clearing is a giant obelisk, about 30 feet high, with skulls and bones stacked up at the base. Mal-ren notices something moving amongst the bones, looking kind of like horns, pointing it out to us — and it looks kind of minotaur-shaped, poking up from behind the hill, carrying a bone horn and an axe as tall as he is. The group, save Lily and Rugnar (who are not sissies), are terrified by its appearance. Father Odo suspects whatever we are looking for is in the clearing. We circle around the clearing, and it looks the same from all side. The obelisk has writing on it, but from 150 feet out we are unable to make it out.

Amendel climbs a tree while Lily and Rugnar start working on putting together a spear trap — then Thorgrim and Mal-ren show them how someone with actual trap-making skills get this done.

Lily, Rugnar, Amendel, and Thorgrim coordinate shots on the minotaur warrior — Rugnar hits with his pistol and Thorgrim hits with his arrow — he screams loudly and charges at us while we continue to fire at him and Thorgrim gets ready to trigger the trap. The minotaur sounds his fell horn and charges toward Thorgrim, who is unable to fully set off the trap but hits him in the shins. The minotaur smacks Thorgrim in the head as Rugnar unloads two pistols into his arm and face.

Behind us, we hear bestial braying, likely responding to the Minotaur’s horn. Mal-ren investigates the bone mound and obelisk, finding skulls of all types — human, dwarven, elven, halfling — and the writing on the obelisk looks scribbled on and of poor craftsmanship. Rugnar grabs the horn and searches the Minotaur’s body, finding nothing besides his giant axe and leather armor. The crude horn clearly bears the taint of Chaos and was probably fashioned from human bones, and bears a symbol looking like an asterisk with an underline.

We approach the obelisk looking for pretty much anything, as Father Odo is of no help in guiding us towards what it is we need from this clearing. We find rotting severed heads and excrement — after quite some bit of digging around, we find a hole near the stone, but it’s covered with too much stuff for us to jump in or investigate further.

Mal-ren hears footsteps behind the group and alerts the group, and a group of six Beast Men enter the clearing. A skirmish ensues on the skull-and-bone-covered hill. We dispatch them without too much trouble, and some of the Beast Men try to run away — but we peg the cowards in the back. After searching the bodies, we find nothing but filth and their loincloths.

It takes us a few minutes to uncover the entrance, but after clearing off enough bones we find a massive stone door with an image of the Blood God Korn sitting on a brass throne atop a mountain of skulls — Mal-ren Tair and Barholomaeus force the heavy door open, and we find ourselves in a T-shaped intersection. We see depictions of Korn doing battle, eating people, drinking blood, and we start to feel… angry. Like we want to kill something. We go to the left, looking for secret doors — we notice a slightly conspicuous skull in the decorations, which leads to a passageway — we realize that the passageways are arranged like Korn’s symbol, and as we approach the center we hear bubbling from behind us.

Two vaguely humanoid beings, made of blood, materialize behind us — paralyzing Barholomaeus and Thorgrim with fear. Amendel fires an arrow through one creature and it is seemingly hurt; Lily fires an arrow through one of the blood creatures and it dematerializes, and the group dispatches the other creature.