When we exit the warehouse, we notice a more tense atmosphere about the city; the watch presence has been increased, and the watch is interrogating citizens out past curfew. We see a house on fire, with civilians holding torches and pitchforks; a guy with caked blood on his face, swollen with bruises, with a sign around his neck labeled “Beest Man,” but on closer look, the horns on his head are just tied up onto his head with string. The symbol on his house tips us off to the fact that he is a moneylender.
The watch is not present at the home; we decide this is not our problem and return to the church. We see a four-man watch patrol chase a girl down an alley, and another group of people chases after the watch: we see that her hand has grown a separate hand. The mob moves in to strike, but at this point it is too late to save her and death will be a blessing. We figure that the more we dally, the longer it will take to remedy this situation.
We are approached by the City Watch — a large patrol, a dozen strong — who tells us to halt. We show them our writ, and the watch captain tells us they’re going to need to bring us to headquarters and we make haste, not wishing to waste any time. As we are being escorted towards watch command, we run into another party: an armed contingent of ten full plate-mail long-hair guys with axes. With them is Deputy High Priest Leibniz. Rugnar hails the high deputy priest when we see them, but one of our escorts tells us to shut our mouths and breaks off; Rugnar tries to walk over anyways and gets swords drawn upon him. Leibniz motions for him to calm down. “Possibly suspected agents of chaos,” our escort explains in relation to us. Leibniz calms down the watch captain, saying he’ll take over from here, with a bit of a smirk on his face, and says to the watch captain he’d make sure he’d get credit for the arrest. With a wink, he says to “escort the ‘prisoners’ to the temple.”
Out of earshot of the watch, Rugnar mentions that we have urgent news — but we will wait to discuss this until we get back to the temple. Back in the great hall of the temple. As we fall into the main chamber, we notice that along the main temple are men with crossbows trained on us. Rather than giving the order to stand down, Leibniz orders the guards to relieve us of our weapons. Father Reinhardt looks pissed at this situation, but lowers his weapons along with the rest of us, and they start dragging us down the stairs. Claus Leibniz says to us, sarcastically, “sorry to disappoint you, but you have outlived your usefulness,” throwing us (including Reinhardt) all into the same cell.
While roughly handled, Thorgrim and Mal-ren get a rough layout of where we were taken: 6 cells, three on each side of the hallway; an L-shaped hallway followed by a room with two doorways and a staircase leading up. The stone in our cell seems to be made from the rock the city was built upon.
While we’re talking, making plans for escape, weakly across the hallway we hear a voice: “You! I know you… I know your voices, you brought the brass skull out from the forest.” Standing in the cell is the very bruised face of Matthias Hoffer, one of the three witch hunters who saved our ass in the woods. “They took Bauer — when we were looking for prisoners, Bauer found a nest of cultists, in a tavern called the Skull and Flail; the book was there, the watch took him.” Mal-ren suggests the classic sick prisoner trick while Rugnar inspects the hinging of the bars. Barholomaeus uses the lockpick that the guards didn’t find when they searched us to open the door.
Mal-ren starts complaining as if he has caught the taint of Chaos, and we all start calling out as if something awful is happening. As soon as the guard comes over and slides the window open, Thorgrim and Rugnar push the door into the guard’s face, hear the sound of a cudgel hit the floor, and we pummel the piss out of the guy. We grab the keys and all of his equipment. We lock the guard in his cell and open Matthias’s cell, finding him unconscious. Rugnar heals him back to consciousness, though weary he can move. Barholomaeus and Amendel carry him.
We don’t see any living souls in the other cells, but search them for secret passageways or trap doors, and find none. We hear nothing coming from further down the hallway and so take the passage around the corner. In the next room, we find all of our confiscated equipment. We gear up (which takes a while), and also get Matthias in his gear. Once prepared, we don’t hear anything from the next door, so we use the key to open the door and find a long stairway which we start making our way up, weapons ready. At the top of the stairs we listen in at the next door and hear two voices discussing the glory of Ulrich.
While we talk about killing the guards, Fr. Reinhardt voices his moral concerns about killing potentially innocent initiates, so we agree to merely wound it. The less fuel that we throw on the Sigmar vs. Ulrich situation, the better, with Father Reinhardt being from the rival church of Sigmar. We make a noise to try to lure them to the door, and see a long-haired kid in a robe about 20ish, and the two Dwarves grab to toss the two of them down the stairs, probably getting rather bruised, locking the door behind us. The courtyard isn’t exactly teeming with people, so we start to sneak out; though Lily’s grumbling stomach nearly betrays our position, we do manage to sneak up towards the vicinity of two guards. Rugnar and Mal-ren sneak up on the two of them and grab them, subduing them into unconsciousness. We’re scot-free, and make our ways towards the temple of Sigmar upon Matthias’s suggestion.
It’s like morning and shit.
The streets are kinda empty — we make haste to the temple of Sigmar, which we find surrounded by an Angry Mob™ carrying table legs and axes and stuff, yelling “burn the heretic” — apparently a “minion of chaos” has taken refuge within the temple which is refusing to hand him over. It’s hard to get in through the main gate, but Hoffer knows of a secret entrance, though we will still need to get through the mob. We hide our sigmar symbols, and start to cake mud over Mattias and Fr. Reinhardt’s symbolic armor — we push and shove forcefully through the crowd, and once we nearly kill a few of the people, some of them finally clear out of our way. Although the entrance is guarded, they see Hoffer and quickly let us in through the door.
They let us in and bring us into a small chamber, along with Fischer, the balding doctor-looking member of the Witch Hunting trio, who is glad to see Hoffer back. The third member of their group, Bauer, was found on the streets with a book, Lieber Chaotis, and was apprehended by the watch, on trial as a heretic — a public event. It seems Claus Leibniz himself will be conducting the trial, with the watch commander, the lawmen, and the priestess of Erena serving as judges; the temple of Sigmar has been called upon to give evidence on behalf of Bauer.
Another initiate comes in and says to Fischer, and summons him to the high capitulor, Werner Stoltz, and he asks us to accompany him. Sitting in this desk is a vigorous man in his sixties, bald at the top, who nods to the two witch hunters as they enter and then looks over at us. He lists our accomplishments, and asks for our names, and sends out for water, saying that things for us are about to get a good deal busier for us.
He says this trial is an opportunity for the temple of Ulrich to humiliate Sigmar; with the townsfolk hungry for a scapegoat to blame this upon, Bauer’s life is at stake. But his is not the only life at stake. He won’t stop at Bauer — he’ll pursue the rest of Ordo Fidelus, pull down the temple, and call for us as well, which would signal all the lands for Ulrich to paint the temple of Sigmar with chaos, leading to an inevitable civil war; little would be there to stop the Empire from being overrun by the forces of Chaos.
Thus, we must allow the trial to continue but Bauer must be found innocent. Stoltz looks to us, asking us to seek the Skull and Flail tavern, find evidence of cultists, and bring the evidence either to him or to the trial.
We’re a bit wary to trust him after just getting screwed over, and so he gives us a big chest of money, as he just pretty well doesn’t care about money at this point. Rugnar suggests we expose the church of Ulrich for what they are; Bauer may have information which will shed light on this fact. We turn over the book to Stoltz, who refuses to touch it, and divulge our information regarding the warpstone.
Fr. Reinhardt and Matthias stay here; Hoffer and Fisher can give us a rough idea of where this tavern is: the Neumarkt district. We need to rest up and eat, and then need to make haste as the trial is just in two days.