After these events, we book it the hell out of town, pushing forward with as little sleep as we can manage.

As we start getting ready to make camp, the skull emits a piercing, unrelenting scream. A few of us hear a roar over the acursed din, and we decide to turn tail and run, but the noise sounds like it is gaining on us and we realize we’ll have to fight, so we take up positions in the forest, and nigh a dozen Beastmen show up — we start to fight off the first party, and a second arrives.

In the middle of the battle, a second group of adventurers appears, also fighting the Beastmen. They make quick work of the remainder (and save Lily’s ass), and our party and the strangers regroup to heal.

Then the strangers got all up in our business, interrogating us, and gettin’ some sort of attitude which I did not much care for. They say they’d been tracking us since we were asking about Gerhard Kroen (presumably the unidentified murder victim we came across earlier), and they start asking us questions, threatening that if they liked our answers they’d escort us back to Middenheim, and if they didn’t they’d kill us. We notice their armor bears the symbol of Sigmar (a two-tailed comet). Amidst this, we find the skull has come out of its box. The demand to know what the awful wailing noise is, and we explain everything. The strangers introduce themselves as Matthias Hoffer, and his associates Jacob Bauer and Ulrich Fischer, of Order Fidelus (Witch Hunters). During the interrogation, Rugnar and Thorgrim search the bodies of the fallen Beastmen for gold, but find none.

On the matter of Gerhard, we explain that we tracked down his killer — the group of skavens — and delivered some street justice. After hearing this they’re not all up in our faces with their attitude so much, and they offer to escort us back to Middenheim with haste.

We make it back in a single night, and they ask us not to mention their assistance to the temple. We meet with Father Randolph and present him with the horrible skull as well as the Chaos horn; they place the skull in a heavily-runed iron box. They offer us wine, mead, and pie (though blind Father Odo asks for only water), and we enjoy, and are told that Deputy high priest Liebniz (who is in charge while the real high priest is off with the army) will be quite pleased. The moment Father Randolf starts to talk about our reward, Fr. Odo falls into convulsions and morphs into lengthened arms and claws, his body swells up and sprouts pink and purple scales, along with tentacles with talons and pincers.

Rugnar tries to stab him before the transformation is complete, and several of us are quite shaken by these events. Amendel kills him in a gory and spectacular fashion, surprisingly quickly, and a geyser of greenish-black blood flows out. Then we hear random people start screaming, looking in shock and terror at three people who have turned hideous: a chef with a knife fused to his hand, someone with sprouted wings and violet eyes, and someone whose skin has turned purple and foul pus.

We turn to Fr. Randolph for orders, he tels us to destroy these abominations of chaos, so we do. Pus guy explodes, the wing guy tries to fly away but the wings are too weak to carry him. It turns out that the three kitchen employees had water also; we deduce that the wells in the temple must bear the taint of chaos.

Father Randolf and we report to Leibniz in a large office — the man has a mane of gray hair, long robes, has a wolf’s head pendant with crossed axes beneath, and is totally ripped — he motions for us to sit down at an oak table. He is quite shaken, as Fr. Odo was a good friend of his, and he demands answers. He asks for our silence on this matter so as not to cause a public commotion and says that he heard we were good investigators, and so asks us to find the perpetrators — without involving the city watch.

We agree after quibbling about cash for a while (and not getting any), and they resupply us.