We ask Weinstein if he has a safe place to hide the box (and its contents), he does, so we leave the box with him and head back to the palace to find Leibniz. As we near the dwarven district, the pavement explodes in front of us, and we see another Dwarf demanding to know who we are and why we’re passing through. Rugnar sighs, shows the explosives, and makes haste towards the sentinel. The dwarves converse amongst themselves and let us through the checkpoint. We do not dally so as to arouse the suspicion of the several Dwarves ready.

We arrive near the palace, and sneak in past the timing of the guards once more. Lily, Amendel, and Mal-ren sneak, but they spot Rugnar and Barholomaeus — they manage to convince the guards that they were actually stepping out of the palace, and they’re escorted back to our room. The guards come knocking on our door, look through our rooms for whoever snuck in. We accuse them of having chaos delusions about people sneaking in as we are the only people in the rooms, so they kind of freak out and leave us alone.

We saunter through the palace, mill about through the foyer and head near the opposite end where Liebniz and his people are quartered; though we’re not allowed in the opposite wing, it seems. We casually poke around for a secret passageway (since Fr. Randolph was able to find his way to us), but don’t come across anything. We weigh our options — bribery, fraud, frontal assault, or just plain barrelling past them — and decide to just run, bashing them out of the way with our shields as we pass. Rugnar and Amendel knock their two guards over, Lily and Barholomaeus knock theirs about a bit — Rugnar pulls a pistol and tells him to back off.

We kick open doors along our way looking for Leibniz, and find Father Randolph. He asks if we were able to destroy the skull, but we tell him that the skull was replaced with Johann Opfour’s severed head. We tell him we’re looking for Leibniz, who we are told has left the palace to “pray,” and the guards were unwilling to detain him. Clearly, this is the work of chaos taking Leibniz over. We need to make haste to the church, because there’s probably some chaos being summoned — but we first pay a visit to commander Schutzmann. We tell him, to his alarm, that Leibniz has left the premises, and our theory that Chaos has a grip on his mind. We may need to act fast, as at any moment he could bring into existence something that could drive the enitre world into hell.

Schutzmann summons the palace captain and assembles a team to head towards the church — but he’s taking his sweet time in doing so, so we just up and leave, totally humming the Mission Impossible theme.

Things seem quiet in the temple, some light flickering from the ever-burning spark. According to legend, those highly favored by Ulrich shall not be burned by the flame. Rugnar senses a shift in the wind and hears a faint sound of chanting, and a massive flare of red light coming out of the great hall. We rock it straight through the wide-open gates, ready to rock.

Two men in full plate armor, brothers of the axe, in wolf-plate clothes, but with a red skull painted over with a red skull, stand in our path. We dispatch them with a barrage of missiles, and run full-steam ahead.

We come upon the fire of Ulrich, and find it surrounded by five more brothers of the axe (with the same red skull painted over the wolf) — Liebniz stands, in red and black robes, with the skull around his neck and a red light beaming forth from it, with a red skull painted on his face. We enter the room just as he’s drawing a jagged blade across the throat of one of the brothers. As we open fire on Liebniz, he moves to slit the throat of the next of the five brothers of the axe. Liebniz falls, and at that point the brothers of the axe awaken, pick up their weapons, and attack us. They start banging their chests and biting their axes while we attack them — eventually, we dispatch them, though we notice that their blood is being sucked into Liebniz, and we see a reddish glowing outline faintly appearing around him, and then a giant demon bursts forth from the once sacred fire of Ulrich.

Rugnar and Thorgrim bolt at the sight of this thing, but Mal-ren stands resolute and fells the beast with an arrow after it levels Amendel. The skull emits a high-pitched wail, and the demon dissolves into a red mist, as the skull falls to the ground and cracks. We return to a choking Leibniz in the fire, who cackles ant tells us that we are fools, and have emancipated the blood god from his mortal form and he can now return to the heart of chaos. “Zathradox, the red flayer, shall return to this world in his full strength and drink the blood of the weak and the mortal! Blood for the blood god!”

The flame erupts in a silver-white light, and we feel it all over our bodies, the bodies of Leibniz and the brothers of the axe are gone. We feel powerful, and hear a voice in the back of our heads: “You have protected my temple and my people, let strife be put aside as the enemy is confronted, let this mark be a sign for all.” We feel an intense pain on our right hand, looking down, we see a pure white mark of a wolf standing on two legs and holding a war hammer. This sensation subsides, though our spirits are still lifted.

As this subsides, Schutzmann storms in and asks what happens; Father Randolph looks at us, strangely, pointing to the marks on our hands: the Symbol of Unity, it would appear. We are taken back to the temple and our wounds treated, as we discuss what to do from this point forward. We agree to keep the specific events secret from the general public to avoid the strife it might cause. Father Randolph is elevated to position of Deputy High Priest; puts together a statement with the watch commander and the priest of Sigmar that the entire thing was a plot by Chaos to sow discord between the two factions.

Thus ends Act I.

On our way to the sword and flail tavern in the Neumarkt district (in the northeast part of the city). This part of town has been somewhat ravaged from the battle, but we do find the tavern by the conspicuous sword and flail on the placard — and it’s in a bit better shape than the surrounding buildings.

We walk inside and find a lot of rough-and-tumble characters in there, heavily armed and armored. Some of them appear to be off-duty town watchmen. There’s no table or stools in here that might need to be replaced in a bar fight. The guy behind the bar is greasy and balding, with scars on his face. He’s behind the bar and everyone else is standing around drinking. There’s a door to the right.

Amendel buys a round of drinks for the party, he pours us some crappy beer. We debate how to get into the door that we presume leads down to the cellar… Lily starts rambling on about Pie Beer as a distraction as Mal-ren passes out his fliers. Meanwhile, Rugnar, Thorgrim, and Amendel sneak towards the cellar door. Although not terribly sneaky, they don’t get noticed by the bartender or patrons, thoroughly distracted (and kind of drunk already).

The sneaking party finds a stairway going up and down and of course heads down, pistols out. There’s a lot of crates and barrels down here, and they notice that one area of the floor is unusually clean — moving the barrels around, they find a trap door and an iron-rung ladder.

Rugnar, as soon as his foot hits the ground, gets rushed by two guys — one of them with a bestial face and big massive teeth, the other is humanoid and bald but with long claws on each hand — both with red skulls tattooed on their faces. Rugnar shoots them both with pistols, and Amendel shoots at the both of them from the ladder. This dude’s face is shattered and also the other guy dies.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Lily and Mal-ren hear some muffled gunshots — but pretty much nobody in the bar notices because they’re so smashed. Lily tells the enthralled patrons that she thinks her friend has a sample of pie beer that she’ll go grab for them and manages to sneak away down to the cellar door, and Amendel likewise sneaks away. They meet up at the iron ladder and smell gunpowder.

Downstairs, we find an altar made of stacked-up skulls and the reddish-brown stain of blood all around the floor and running down the skulls. Next to that is a lecturn, with a chain hanging from it. The chain is hacked off about even level with a big bite mark in the altar. Around the corner, we find an iron cage with a bound and whimpering man inside. Barholomaeus picks the lock and starts babbling, “Thank Ulrich and Sigmar that you found us, the other man must have sent you. I only caught a glimpse of him, but he fought like a tiger, and nearly fought the cultists back.” Realizing he is a witness who could help us out in a trial, we tell him we are going to sneak him out through the tavern but he must pretend to just be drunk.

We put him in a cloak and head back up. Lily drops some pie in the beer keg, mixes it up, and goes back up to resume her distraction while the rest of the group sneaks out the prisoner witness (Johann Opfour).

After getting out of the thing, we get back to the church, still surrounded by an angry mob (although we know the secret way in). We meet with High Priest Stoltz and present him with our witness. Stoltz says that Johann will be a surprise witness and asks us to bring him to the trial and serve as his bodyguard until then. The next morning at the Square of Marshalls in front of the palace, it looks like all of Middenheim has turned out for the trial, packed tight with tons of people. Watchmen are posted every few yards to make sure nobody crosses into the trial area, the judges and commander of the watch are there, as is a woman in a white robe and three men in judge’s robes. Bauer is there, in chains, with two large watchmen with swords and spears, his clothing bloodstained, but he holds his head high. The crowd throws poo and fruit at him, and a stake and pile of wood is there in the event of a guilty verdict. Amongst the crowd we see Werner Stoltz of the temple of Sigmar and Claus Liebniz of the temple of Ulrich.

A herald lists Bauer’s alleged crimes; Bauer says nothing and ignores the taunts from the crowd, as the herald announces the law lords and the members of the court. We position ourselves close to get ourselves in through elbowing and intimidation, working our way through the crowd, pistols in their face.

Leibniz presents his argument that Bauer is guilty of consorting with Chaos, and his possession of the tome Lieber Chaotis, a forbidden tome. His second argument is that his position as witch hunter is the perfect cover for involvement with Chaos. Stoltz, acting as Bauer’s defense, cites his years of loyal service in Ordo Fidelius, and offers us and his companions in O.F. as character witnesses; his possession of a forbidden book could be easily explained as part of his job as a witch hunter.

They call witnesses to the stand, including Bauer himself, the people who arrested him, one of us (who tells of the wells and the beast men); at that point, Stoltz calls Johann Opfour to the stand. Opfour tells of how he was snatched and imprisoned, and how Bauer fought his way into the cult hideout; he found the book chained to a lecturn — all cultists wore the mark of the red skull and told him he was to be a sacrifice to the “Blood God.”

Liebniz then calls Stoltz himself to the stand, and brings up the stolen icon. Liebniz goes over to his desk and presents an icon — Stoltz confirms that it was, indeed, the stolen icon. On the back of the icon is a symbol of Korn, chanting “further proof that the temple of sigmar has been infiltrated by heretics!” The crowd goes crazy trying to get at the Sigmariets. The crowd goes insane and starts to mob the stand. Those people as part of the trial (including us, as we are witnesses) are being shuffled into the Palace as a retreat.

As we’re being shuffled towards the palace, we notice Opfour has just disappeared from under our noses.

—–

Once shuffled into the palace, we feel a very (understandably) tense air. Stoltz yells out, “It can’t be!”, and asks if we saw it on the icon before we delivered it. We never saw the back of the icon as we never took it out of the frame, so we can’t confirm. Ivena darts an accusation at Liebniz — “Even if proven to be false, it could tear the Empire apart.” Liebniz, condescending, says that the wolves (Ulrich) will guard the Empire. Stoltz wrings his hands around Liebniz’s neck. One of the watch commanders tells us that rooms are being prepared for us and this dispute shall be concluded the following day.

We are escorted to nice rooms, discussing things amongst each other, when we hear a knock at the door. Pistols ready, Rugnar asks who it is — Father Randolph answers and asks to speak to us as it is very urgent. He has a large something bundled in cloth, unwraps it to reveal that it is the chest with the skull inside it. It must be destroyed. He directs us to the Collegium Theologica and Albrecht Weinstein, who ought to know what to do with this vile thing. He would take it himself, but must keep the peace at the palace. He knew Leibniz was intense but did not realize he was such an extremist.

Leaving the palace will be difficult as the entire city is under curfew and nobody is supposed to leave the palace and also we are carrying an incredibly evil artifact. Rugnar rigs himself up a suicide bomb with gunpowder and a metal cigar box.

Watching the guard patrols Mal-ren figures there is a 25-second window during which we can sneak out. We creep out the window, sneak out one by one, and Rugnar has the case. Mal-ren, then Lily, and Thorgrim, Barholomaeus, and Reinhardt all sneak out past the guards. Reinhard has removed all items identifying himself as a Sigmarite. We hop over the wall and run like hell.

Down the street we see a watch patrol breaking up a fight between a couple groups, we use the scuffle as cover, figure out a route. We fly around the corner, but then skit to a halt as we see carts being wheeled around, crates and barrels stacked around — a bunch of steely-eyed dwarves with muskets and crossbows pointing at us, telling us that there’s no passage this way. Rugnar points the pistols at his bomb, one of the Dwarven engineers figures out what it is, and the Dwarves back off and even offer to escort us to our destination. All through this neighborhood are Dwarves just up and ready to rock the shit. We see the Collegium at the other end of the block.

A patrol at the other end of the block does not notice us, and we’re in the main dorms of the college. Right inside the door is a directory, with Weinstein’s name on it, and we find his apartment. We knock, and introduce ourselves. There is a man who looks exactly like Einstein, carrying a very large book. We present Randolph’s message, which he reads, wipes stuff off of his exceedingly messy desk and starts to examine the box, and alerts us to that he is about to open it. Instead of a skull is Johann Opfour’s severed head. Something, clearly, is afoot. Weinstein’s eyes dart around the room, thinking, says we can assume Leibniz did this (which means Leibniz probably has the actual skull) — we need to have a conversation with him immediately.

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.

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