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

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.

We venture further into the hallways, and find a fountain adorned with skulls with blood pouring out of their mouths. There are dead ends that we check for secret doorways, deem that they are just there to support the blood god’s twisted aesthetic, and as we approach the fountain, the skulls atop it start to rotate and their jaws click.

As Rugnar approaches the well to attempt to smash one of the skulls, copious amounts of blood start to flow out of the fountain, splattering the entire room with blood. Amendel and Rugnar attempt to crack the fountain’s skulls, as the rest of us scramble out of the way. Barholomaeus peeks in to take a shot at the skulls with an arrow, but ends up going insane after catching a face full of blood. Meanwhile, Rugnar, resigned to being covered in blood, searches the room, and finds a skull-shaped button similar to what was used to gain entry into these accursed hallways.

Through the hallway, there is another room with a throne in it, and two skeletons climb out of the pile by the throne — we open fire. Rugnar and Lily are a bit too frightened to fight, but the rest of the group, who are not total wussies, stay and shoot the skeletons with some arrows, dispatching them without too much trouble. By the time Lily, Rugnar, and Barholomaeus regain their wits, the skeletons have all been killed. Barholomaeus waits outside the room of blood, however. As soon as the skeletons have been dispatched, we hear grinding noises from both sides as the doors open. The room to the left is heaped with broken weapons, dented shields, and tattered standards — including a standard from Middenheim. The group searches the debris; Amendel finds a helmet with an ornimental beast man head atop of it. Rugnar finds a runed toolhammer which he determines to bear the name of one of the Dwarven kings of the Black Mountains – an heirloom of a king.

Following to the other side, we see another rectangular room, with more blood and a sarcophagus rising from the middle of the pool, made of plain polished black stone. The walls bear carvings of bloody carnage battles glorifying a single warrior champion — including a carving of a defeated warrior wearing a helmet quite similar to the one we found in the other room. We start to pitch the stuff from the other room into the pool to make a footbridge across the pool of blood, and try to crack open the tomb, to raid it. Rugnar and Amendel slide the heavy top open and it splashes into the pool of blood.

Enclosed is a horned guy in giant evil armor, with runes carved in his teeth, in chain mail bearing the symbol of Korn, a greatsword, and holding in his clutches the brass skull that matches the blind man’s visions. We decide to take the skull out of this place so evil stuff won’t happen. The skull is considerably heavier than something made of brass ought to be. Amendel throws the skull in a sack on his back. Then we chuck the sword in the blood to get rid of it. Then we bolt.

The moment we step out of the wretched halls of anger, we feel much less angry. We chart a considerably more direct route back to Middenheim, and though it is getting dark we decide to trek on straight through the night rather than set up camp, and make it to the town of Pritztach mid-morning the following day. There is a coaching inn here that feels just a little too quiet — and we notice that the windows are boarded up. As we approach the door, a hatch opens on the door and a shot fires at the ground in front of us. They demand we identify ourselves, we introduce ourselves as on a mission for the church of Ulrich, the mumble a bit to themselves about us not looking like beastmen, and ask one of us to come forward. Thorgrim does, and Brother Reinhart does some talking for us, vouching for us, and Barholomaeus adds that the church will pay the innkeepers hansomely for a night’s stay. The shutter slams, they chatter amongst themselves, and the door pops open a creak with a blunderbuss trained on the party. We shuffle in quickly, and the innkeeper locks the door swiftly behind us. Indoors, we see the entire population of the town.

The innkeeper, Hans, tells us that the beast men fled west from Middenheim and many smaller towns have been razed to the ground. He asks what we were doing in the woods, and we tell him only that we were on a retrieval mission for the Church. Rugnar gets a bath to clean the blood off himself, which is more expensive due to the inflation of death. We spend the night in the common room, taking shifts to watch our stuff. Although we notice nothing suspicious over the night, when morning comes, we find the skull outside of Amendel’s backpack. Looking at the skull, we swear it moved, and that the shadow just doesn’t look quite proper. After hearing a sloshing inside, we decide we need to get the skull away from the townsfolk before the skull consumes them or douses them in blood or something. Our hasty departure confuses the townsfolk. Pressing on, on the brink of exhaustion, we come across a smaller, deserted town, secure the skull in a box, and take shifts for a brief overnight rest. Mal-ren hears chanting from the box.

Amendel goes blank, staring off into nothing, and has a vivid dream where he is standing on a twisted, impossible landscape. In front of him is an indistinct figure, bleeding from several wounds and writhing and pain — and it sounds like this figure, from miles away, cries “help me.” After running after the figure, for hours, he never comes any closer. Finally he comes to a nasty black fortress, to a dark and depressing crypt. At the center of the crypt is a large sarcophagus, hurling himself against the lid as he knows his spirit must be unjustly trapped in this sarcophagus.

Mal-ren, Rugnar, and Thorgrim see him at this point lunge for the box. The three of them grab a hold of him, wrestling him to the floor. Lily and Barholomaeus are woken by the scuffle. Amendel regains lucidity and has no memory of anything that happened.

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.

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.

We flee to the east but we seem to have come to one of the areas that have been devastated badly. We decide to take a roundabout route to avoid the greenskins, but there is a lot of rubble and “weird shit.” We see things that may have been human at one time, small and misshapen. They just watch us and keep their distance. The ground around us begins to darken suddenly. We run, but Barholomaeus looks back to see what is there. There is a huge figure with a vulture’s head standing on a flying disc. He flies away through town.

We run through a couple more streets and now seem to be lost. There is a wall up ahead of us that seems to be alive. Several of us are frightened silly by seeing it. We flee and go around the block to avoid it, though it wails after us. We go by a mansion and see that candles are still lit and dinner was set before the attack occurred. We can see the town hall from here.

We see some of the baddies from a window attacking a woman in a habit, like the nun that is traveling with us. We decide to try and save her by hitting the baddies with arrows. They realize we are there quickly and come after us. We take them down but the nun is already dying. She asks the nun with us to say the last rites of their order, but she seems to have problems doing it. We press her about it and she reveals that her name is Theresa. She offers to get us out of the city for the right price if we help her find the statuette of the Nine Virtues, and we haggle.

The group starts moving and we come into a great hall. We see the obsidian bones of a dragon. Rugnar takes a few teeth out of the skull to take with him. The place looks wrecked and looted. We find a huge tome laying on the ground, and some of the pages are missing.

An old woman is at the land deed desk yelling to be assisted. Mal-ren Tair walks behind the counter like he works there, though all of the people in this building have been murdered and there are bodies laying around. He manages to swindle her out of the land deed and 10 silver as well.

The group goes upstairs and searches through all the rooms. We find a lot of nothing, and then as we come into one of the rooms we hear whimpering behind a desk. He is a clerk posing as the Burgomaster. He tells us upon pain of death that the nesting dolls are in the basement, but so is a tentacle creature that might be interested in eating us.

Mal-ran Tair climbs up to the roof and looks around. He sees the same bird creature and it is destroying things. Theresa tells us that her way out of the city is that an airship is meeting her at the top of the building. We decide to head to the basement to find the dolls. We find the tentacled thing but it happens to be a clerk with tentacles coming out of him. He tells us that we need a form to get into the basement. Mal-ren runs back upstairs and gets the form from the “Burgomaster.”

We come across a sword in a display case called a “Rune Sword Replica.” Apparently 13 of these blades were made by dwarves.

Finally we are able to get to the basement of the warehouse. It is huge. We see a leopard that seems to be guarding the place. It has the name “Putzy” on its collar. Lily tries to calm it down so we can get past. We get to a safe and there are several items including a half-eaten shepherd’s pie. We also find the dolls in here.

We head back upstairs, hurrying due to increasingly dangerous conditions. Theresa fires a flare and a hot air balloon appears. However the men on board are pointing weapons at us. They instruct us to put the doll in the basket and they will not kill us. After a while we agree and they take us with them.

The airship heads to Altdorf, the capital of the empire, where they will drop us off. We lay low and do not attack them for a while. Suddenly Mal-ren yells “DRAGON!” and many of the crewmembers look. As they do this we start pushing people over the side except the helmsman. We go belowdecks and tell the other crewmen what happened and they surrender. We go through the found loot and divide it up.

We continue on to make the trade.

It is the year 2521, in Wolfenburg. The city is currently under siege, and we have all come here for different reasons but are now stuck. The dwarves are in town because one of Paul’s relatives, a smith, sent word that he was dying and wanted to pass on his secrets. The Elves are here looking to see what happened to their enclave, it was seemingly wiped out. A huge army of marauders from the north, the Chaos Wastes, attacks without warning. Everyone within the town has been press-ganged into military service to defend the city against the horde. Beast men have surrounded the city. When the siege occurred, the Chaos Moon cried tears, and where the tears fell, madness ensued.

The city has a river that runs through the center of town north to south. On the eastern side of the river the city has been decimated, and the defenders hold the west bank of the river. A sergeant calls us out and asks us to come over. With his is a woman in a nun’s habit with a huge warhammer necklace on. He introduces her as sister Brimhilda, one of the Brides of Sigmar who needs our help retrieving a statuette called “The Nine Virtues of Magnus the Pius,” which is supposed to protect the city. It is located in the town hall, and looks like a set of Russian nesting dolls as a gift to Magnus from Kislev. Each of the nine dolls represent an aspect of Sigmar. They have a way to get us across the river safely so we may get the artifact. Also, they have some weapons and armor for us.

Ziman takes us to a maintenance passage that goes beneath the river. It is currently raining like crazy. We get through and see that the buildings on this side of the river have been almost completely destroyed by cannon fire. We come upon an overturned carriage, and we see the glint of gold. The dead and bloated corpses of the people in the carriage disgust us, but we search through their loot and find a few treasures. As we are doing this the sky clears and the moonlight is suddenly right on us. A cannon blasts and hits near us. Thorgrim is hit with shrapnel in the chest.

Suddenly we hear the chantings of “skulls for the skull throne” or something similar. There are 35 or so enemies coming at us from the north. We rush to hide and then strike back as the Kurgen come at us.