Session 9 – All’s Well but a Tainted Well

Charged with defending the wells of the city and investigating the saboteurs, we consult a map of the city. We start our investigation at the Temple of Erena, two streets down from the temple of Sigmar.

While heading towards the temple, we notice the three Order Fidelus gentlemen who saved our ass heading out of an alley towards us. We wave them over to call their attention to us; they say they heard there was something going on with at the temple — we tell them about the tainted wells. They tell us that the most common source of gettin’ taint on something is “warpstone,” something we have heard of but don’t know much about aside from its badness.

We tell them about our plan to keep an eye on the wells in the richer north section of town; they offer to help us, they say that with them knowing the town better, they’ll take the more well-numerous northern part of time and leave the southern section to us. We agree to their plan and head southward, planning to meet up tomorrow at a nondescript bar in the merchant district. People are starting to filter off the streets due to the curfew (although we have a writ of curfew-breaking issued to us by the city command).

We fit Lily into a rig with and lower her down the well, but the water is too murky for her to see if there’s any sort of warpstone or whatnot… so we try to figure out a new plan. While bumbling towards the next well, we see a figure darting through the alleyways, wearing a cloak with the hood up. We cry for him to halt, he doesn’t, and Mal-ren immediately fires an arrow at him, hitting him in the arm. We chase him down, he speaks Kislevite and tells us that he doesn’t know Reichspeil… but then when he sees the gun he says “OK don’t shoot” and starts groveling in perfect Reichspeil. We have him pinned down and restrained, and rifle through his belongings, and find a pouch filled with a glowing green powder, as well as a crumpled-up piece of paper with a map on it.

We demand answers from him, restrained and with a gun pointed straight into his mouth, and he breaks down and is ready to talk. He tells us that he and his compatriots found some warpstone powder, and was poisoning wells because the “Changer of the Ways” told him too — he’s starting to get delirious, rambling on that the “Changer is coming” and that “they are everywhere.”

Dragging him with us, bound and gagged, we follow his map backwards looking for the well he poisoned earlier, and find an abandoned single-story warehouse with the sign “F. Keller, Grain Merchant,” which seems to have taken some damage in the siege. Amendel sneaks around the building and finds a door propped open. We enter and find just a single-room warehouse with no rooms, just a couple barrels of moldy grain. In one corner, a bunch of stacked barrels. Lily notices that back by the stack of barrels, between them is a pair of eyes peering at us, and gets the attention of the rest of the party — Mal-ren takes a shot at the barrel and the eyes duck out of the way. We shove the barrels around and find a hole in the floor — it’s kind of a tight fit for the Elves, but the Dwarves and Halfling don’t have much trouble moving around down here.

We hear the words “Intruder!” as a crossbow bolt whizzes by our ears. 20 feet ahead of us are two guys with crossbows hiding behind crates. After shooting the hell out of them, we notice their purple robes, and we see a chamber that opens up behind the crates. As we take their crates as our own cover, and more robed figures come in. One of the larger robed figures tries to cast some voodoo on Rugnar, but vomits black ichor instead, and becomes a geyser of blood and expires.

We reload before exploring the rest of the room and peek around the corner. Around the corner is an even bigger chamber. While searching the first chamber and the bodies, we notice a tattoo on the back of all of their hands, as well as a squiggly mark which Thorgrim recognizes as the symbol of Zeech — the “changer of ways,” the most magical of the ruinous powers of Chaos. On the bodies, there are hand weapons (the leader had a mace) and daggers, two crossbows, and a book chained to his belt: A book, in classical, Lieber Mutandis, which is banned throughout the Empire. Reinhard identifies it and does not touch it. There is an altar here, covered with a purple cloth, two big fat black candles and a human skull. The walls of the chamber are painted with more purple hands and the symbol, and three more bedrolls.

We explore the next chamber, a small rectangular chamber, on the ground are three short swords and a spear — clearly Skaven-made — and a pony-keg filled to the brim with the same warpstone powder that we found in the pouch. Mal-ren figures a way to rig up a cradle with boards and robes so that we can haul the barrel without coming into contact with it… but we decide a safer plan is to hide the barrel here in the caverns and alert persons more competent than ourselves in such matters to dispose of the warpstone powder properly ∎

100 XP awarded