WFRP Update 25

I was intrigued. Could this be the magic blade that I had been seeking? I paced eagerly awaiting the arrival of the little man. I was quite surprised when I turned around and he was seated at our usual table. His hands held a dagger in a sheath. As I nervously sat down, he handed me the dagger and told me to draw it, which I did with ease.

"Seems a simple task, doesn't it? So if you couldn't draw the blade then you might suspect that something was wrong.

"But I'm getting ahead of myself. When I get back with supper and Rudolpho in tow, we see that Elpham has found himself some other dwarf, except that this one was dirtier than any other dwarf. Seems that some of the people of the town had decided that living in tunnels under the town was safer than fighting it out with the blue bottle drug addicts and the fleas. I suppose that trading our supper for some more history of the town was a good deal.

"But we got them to show us the one crypt that had been undisturbed. There it was, the hero of Sigmar, sleeping his just sleep. Someone had even gone to the trouble of making a plaque for him. Now, I could maybe think that I was hearing things upstairs when Sigmar asks me if I'm ready. But when I can read the plaque, clear as day, when no other word makes a lick of sense to me, I start to think that I really am the chosen of Sigmar. And the last straw came. We open the crypt and pull out this beautiful scabbard, encrusted with gems and all fine leather working. Elpham grabs the blade and tries to get it to come free and it won't budge. Magdelaine and Rudolpho have the same problem. Now, when I just touch it, it almost jumps out of the scabbard into me hands. Too bad that my chosen weapons are all smaller. We give it to Corobath for safe keeping.

"Nothing special happening that night. We managed to heave Magdelaine over board and get her to wash herself off. That seemed to help get rid of her scratching. We also sampled the local cuisine...and I have to say, I have never had a better 2 headed, 3 legged chicken.

The little man starts to say something and a cloud of anger passes over his face.
"Oh yes...that's right. Our great plan for storming the castle. And that's being generous!! Have you ever seen castle Wittgenstein?? The damn thing lives in the clouds!! I can see why no one ever tried to invade the damned place...You have to spend the better part of a day just climbing up to the door!! I swear that the air was so thin I could barely breath!!
And foolish me! I put my faith in Rudolpho!! He says that we should head up to the castle to see the lady...and the fool that I am, I think that he has some great and cunning plan!!!"

By now he was standing on his chair, waving his arms madly in the air.
"So, we trudge up that damn mountain...no! mountain is too small a word for it!! It's a mountain's mountain!! I was sure that I had passed out and simply walked through the night!! I expected that when we finally reached the summit I'd see some great and mighty heavenly being standing at the gate asking us for an accounting of our lives!! I was sure that the lady was sleeping with Sigmar himself, that's how high this damn place was!!!

The man jumped onto the table, knocking his drink to the floor, so that he could grab ahold of my collar and yell into my face.
"And do you know what happened after we made this great pilgrimage to the top of the world? Can you guess? As we top the summit and now get a view of the gates, which did not have a heavenly body guarding them!! The guards tell us to piss off! No beggars allowed they say!! And as I turn to our great and mighty leader, eagerly awaiting the start of a plan of such brilliance that it will obviously seem like magic to us beings of lesser thought, what does he do? He turns to us and says, "Ok, back down the hill"!!! BACK DOWN THE HILL!!!! WHAT KIND OF HALF-ASSED, UNDER-COOKED, OVER-PLAYED, DWARVEN-DRAWN PLAN IS THAT!!! YOU LONGSHANKS THINK THAT YOU CAN JUST WALK ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE WORLD AND ANYONE WILL FOLLOW YOU WITHOUT EVEN CONSIDERING..."

He had started shaking me back and forth and frothing at the mouth like a mad dog. I'm not sure what he would have done, but luckily the inn keeper saved me from finding out. The inn keeper wrestled the ranting wee fella to the ground and held him there as the serving wench dumped a bucket of water on his head. After several minutes of struggling and many terrible curses hurled at everything, the man calmed down enough to be let up. Eventually he was seated before me again, ale in his hand.
"Yes, so after the long...walk, down the mountain, I decided that I had had enough of this and had a revelation. I might as well try and give these poor people some job to do, even if it was just for a few days. So I hired a few of the poor fellows as my porters. I had them gather me a cart and affix a chair to it. It was not the most handsome means of transportation, but at least I wouldn't have to TREK UP TO HEAVEN AND BACK AGAIN!!!".

"Anyway, we went to have dinner with the so-called doctor in town, called himself doctor John Ruso. He said that there was nothing he could do to solve the variety of ills that were infecting the populace, but he could give them some medicine that would lessen their pain. Of course, he was charging them for it and didn't seem to be suffering at all. Either he had stolen his clothing from a much smaller man, or he had been getting fat off of his cure.

"We did learn that the lady of the castle was supplying him with some sort of miracle component for his medicine, although we could not convince him to let us see it.

The strange angry look crossed his face again as he continued.
"And then, as we are leaving, what do we discover? We, we head back to our boat, only to find the two guards that I left there, dying. It seems that the lady had decided that just because she didn't bother to station a toll keeper at the dock was no reason for us not to pay our toll. And since we were away, CONVERSING WITH HER LACKEY, it was obviously much easier for her to just MURDER her own peasants and STEAL OUR BOAT!! WHAT IS IT WITH YOU LONGSHANKS AND YOUR ENLIGHTENED LEADERS!! I TELL YOU, I SHOULD JUST..."

I did not have the chance to hear what he should do, since the inn keeper and a few of the other patrons chose that moment to jump on the little man and try and carry him out the back door. I would have never expected such a small man to be able to struggle so violently...or to be able to curse so loudly.

But now I was intrigued, why had the lady confiscated their boat? What had happened to the enchanted blade? And what was the miracle ingredient that she was feeding to the peasants? The answers to these and other questions would have to await our next exciting encounter.

Dun-dun-dun!!!!

WFRP Update 24

Another night and another round of ales. The wee man had better have a good story tonight, for my coins are running low.

He entered in grand fashion, as usual and had smiles and laughs for all around. After the usual ale of greeting, he settled down with his second and we started discussing his tales. As I reminded him of what he had last told me, he grew more and more sullen.

"Wittgendorf!! What a foul and cursed place!! We had barely had time to moor at the docks when a crowd of the foul and pathetic creatures that inhabited that cursed town were pressed up against the railing, begging for food and coins. We had figured that if we could keep them happy for a bit we could get some protection for the boat and look like we actually cared about them. So I had Magdelaine open up a sack of grain for them....that damn thing disappeared faster than an unwatched pie during Pie-fest! At least it kept the rabble away from the boat. Too bad Magdelaine hadn't had the sense to stay away from them as well. It was barely an hour later that she started scratching and twitching. Damn fleas get into everything!

"Everywhere I looked in the town I saw these pathetic beings being taken for all they were worth. Some charlatan had set himself up as a doctor and was giving out blue bottles filled with the most hideous booze that I had ever smelt! Magdelaine and Corobath both claimed that there was some other drug in it and by the way these fools were lazing about after drinking some, I was willing to believe them.
"Even the nobility, if they could be called that, were going out of their way to be cruel to the people. I couldn't tell what started it, but we looked up the hill aways and we saw the lady of the castle, surrounded by guards talking with the peasants. Something happened and one of the peasants had his arm hacked off and another one was taken away. Corobath and Elpham tried to save the poor fellow, but by the time we got there he had been mostly stripped naked and the only thing we could do was say a prayer.

He looked thoughtfully away for a moment and then continued.
"Some people will say that the gawds occasionally abandon the people, but I'm convinced that it is the people that abandon the gods. Think of them as a tool. As long as you keep it in proper shape, with sacrifices and chants and all that, they'll work for you. I'm sure that the people of the town had abandoned Sigmar long, long ago. And the temple that we found sure seemed to support that.

"We started looking through the temple and couldn't find any sign of habitation. It looked like everyone had just up and left...we couldn't even find the priest! Corobath found some bones that might have been him, but who knows for sure?

"However I do know that Sigmar had not abandoned the town. He was just waiting for someone who believed enough to come back to him. And it seems that he found that person. Corobath and myself were looking around the temple with the others when we hear this great voice asking if we is ready for the coming storm. I have a quick look around and see that no one else is acting like they had heard anything. So we answer that we are and the voice tells us to seek the meteor.

"Now, I can understand how Corobath was chosen, what with having such a connection to all them priesterly type of things, but why me? I mean besides my obvious superiority? Maybe Sigmar had just lost faith in all of you longshanks...no offence meant, and decided to go with someone closer to reality as it were. In any case, I find us a hidden key that gets us into a records room of the temple. Now Magdelaine is in her own world and would have probably happily spent the rest of her life in that dusty room. Strange woman.

"She did manage to get us some information. It seems that the brother of the baron Wittgen came back with a large lead box about a hundred years ago and that's about the time that things started to go wrong. The area used to be known for it's wines and great harvests and things just kept getting worse and worse every year. Strange births, bad harvests and all that. And two years before we get there, there is this strange storm over the castle, with lightning jumping from the castle to the clouds and it poured black rain for the next two days. Black rain!! Does that seem normal to you!? Anyway, we couldn't find anything that was newer than 6 months old, so we figure that is the time that the priest got about to disappearing.

"Now you have to understand, that this didn't all take place just like that. Corobath and Magdelaine spent a good many hours in that place. They took so long that Rudolpho and me went back to the boat to get us all some supper. Of course when we get back, Elpham is missing and we see some tracks leading into the mausoleum.

As he finished off the last of his ale, he looked at me with a glint in his eye.
"Did I forget to mention that they also found mention that one of the great heroes of Sigmar was buried beneath the temple as well. Complete with his enchanted blade and all that.

"But we seem to be out of ale. I'll have to tell you that tale tomorrow".

WFRP Update 23

I was in the tavern early the next night, enquiring as to the whereabouts of my little tale teller. It was getting very late when I finally saw him. He had a fresh cut on his face, but seemed happier than he had in many a day.

"Ahh, my good friend, Let me buy you a round for a change. Fortune has smiled on me this night."
After we had downed our ales he started back in on his story. All of my attempts to discover what had happened last night were met with a dismissive wave of his hand.

"Not interesting. Now the fate of Iltelka, legendary witch of Altdorf!!"
"Now, after our blood had calmed and we managed to look around, we recognized the other warlock as Earnst Hidleman. We had travelled with him far back in our trials. He had been a strange type back then, but who would have thought that he could have succumb to the powers of that witch."

"Now, since this poor Earnst had accidentally fallen on my dagger a number of times, we couldn't ask him his side of the story, but we did manage to wake up Iltelka and listen to her story. She told us some horrible story about how Earnst had gone looking for the hidden chamber and was really upset when the dwarfs couldn't produce the last key. He even killed some of them and then turned them into the walking dead.
"Now, we had to check this out, so Magdelaine and ELpham, both frothing at the mouth head into the tower with me. Well, sure enough we did find that part of the story was true; the dwarfs had been turned into the walking dead! Luckily for the empire, I am still faster than a walking corpse. We laid them to their final rest and kept searching the tower. We even opened the rotating room that housed the hexagram. And it was a good thing that we was curious, for we discovered that they hadn't killed all of the dwarfs. They were mighty happy to be free and started telling us a different version of the events. They claimed that it was all Iltelka's plan, although Earnst did do some of the magic."

"When we got back and started questioning Iltelkta again, she changed her story and started telling us that she was actually looking for some huge load of warpstone. Now while we were trying to figure out why anyone would even go looking for such a cursed item, we got to witness
dwarven justice first hand...or would that be head? In any case, it sure stopped our questioning of Iltelka.

"Now Rudolpho was no longer in danger of dying, but he sure wasn't up to doing much of anything, so we decided to be nice to the fop and stay here with the dwarfs for a few days. We helped them dig a grave or two and licked our wounds for a while. And then we followed Magdelain's crazy suggestion and put the last key into the hexagram."

The little man stopped for a while and grazed out the window for a long time. Finally my curiosity got the better of me and I pushed him to finish his tale.

"Well, the center of the hexagram drops down, just like some hidden set of stairs and we all descend into this library type room. Magdelaine was as giddy as a halfling with his first stolen pie. Now, after a whole lot of reading from her and a lot of tired looks from us, she spins us a
little tale.
"Seems that this was the library of someone of the Wittgenstein family, who spent a lot of time working on prophecies and astrology. He also claimed to have discovered a huge piece of warpstone that fell from the sky. The book details how he set out with this great lead box to recover the stone and take it back to the castle Wittgenstein. Now, seeing as how we had seen the terrible things that were happening the in village of Wittgendorf and how we were such noble and upstanding citizens of the empire, we made a vow then and there to travel to castle Wittgenstein, recover the warpstone and rid the land of a great evil.
"And the fact that these evil types usually have a lot of valuable, portable things just lying around didn't hurt either.

"Now, we still had to try and survive until we rescued the empire, so we sailed off to Altdorf first and sold off our goods and picked up a few other things to sell. There was also a mysterious chest that somehow appeared in our hold one evening. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. And I got the name of a buyer in Nulm in a dream...yup, a dream. Not much else to tell about that bit. Lots of travelling up and down the river. And once you've done that once, you kind of have the idea. I did manage to finally pick of some fancy clothing for myself. Running around in those peasant cloths was just so annoying."

"That's enough for now. I've had too much ale to continue telling my tale. I'll see you here again tomorrow."

WFRP Update 22

It had been weeks since I had seen a sign of the little man. My contacts in the town claimed that it was normal for him to disappear for long stretches like this and that I should just bid my time. And then one night he came staggering in to the tavern, taking his seat like nothing had happened. He spotted me and ushered me over.
"Still looking for some tales, young-un? Well, buy me a pint or two and remind me where my exploits last took thee."

After getting settled and reminding him of his escape from the three feathers inn, a dark look crossed his face.

"Ahh, yes. Our final encounter with the witch Iltelka. That encounter could have gone much better. We should have known something was up. As we were travelling towards the signal tower, we kept hearing noises from the opposite river bank...Corobath kept claiming that he saw something green following us. Probably should have listened to the man."

"When we arrived at the tower it was in the middle of a downpour. If the weather hadn't been so bad, I'm sure that I could have seen the ambush that lay ahead of us, but my eyes were on my feet that morning."

"Not trusting to the slippery framework that still surrounded the tower, we called up to the dwarfs and asked them to pull us up. Rudolpho had some great plan that we would give a call out if something was going wrong, but even he couldn't follow his own plan. I watched Elpham, Magdalaine and that fool Rudolpho all get pulled up into the tower and disappear from view. We hadn't heard a yelp from them; either good or bad, so it fell upon me to rescue the fools from their own folly. When the swing came back down, Corobath took the seat and I stood in his lap, dagger at the ready, poised to leap into danger. As we get pulled up and can see inside the tower, I spy 4 humans and a dwarf, weapons at the ready, with evil grins on their faces. I can see the others lying on the floor. Since they was wearing bags on their heads I figure there be a good chance that they was still alive. Seeing them there fuelled some inner rage and I leapt from Corobath into the room, my dagger slashing across them villains and spilling their blood on the floor. Corobath was right behind me, swinging that tree he calls a staff. Now, it turns out that the dwarf and one of the humans is wizard types and starts throwing magic around. The dwarf even disappeared from view. Sneaky little bugger!! Hearing that the true heroes had arrived, the rest of the fools start pulling the sacks off of their heads and start looking for a weapon. It was a damn good thing that we had them goons surprised and off balance, otherwise my companions would have been cut to pieces in seconds. As it was they actually made a good showing of themselves. Although Rudolpho must have taken a nasty blow to the head; he started acting just like that crazy stump-stomper, Elpham and went charging into the fray. I suppose that it was better than him trying to part my hair with his arrows, but he should have been looking out for that wizard. How his arm stayed on after that blast of magic I'll never know. It looked like he would drop dead if someone looked at him sideways. I was doing my best to make sure that these goons never bothered anyone again. It looked like we had been victorious, but then these damned magic bolts start coming out of nowhere...seems that the stinky long hair was hiding his tracks with magic and blasting us from the shadows like some coward. Once them goons was down, me and Elpham was scouring the tower looking for him, with a bit of help from Magdelaine. Corobath joined in as soon as he had seen to Rudolpho's wounds.
Them bolts would rip out from somewhere and we'd rush there, only to be shot in the back. Although once Corobath covered us with the pile of ashes, that stopped. We was looking through the dust for something moving when we hear someone on the scaffolding cry out and then a thump
from down below. We lowered Elpham down and we he came back it we had a damn big surprise; he was carrying some lady who looked at lot like Iltelka. Well we got her tied up and...."

The little man's voice trailed off as his eyes tracked a pair of cloaked travellers who had just entered the inn.
"I'll tell ya the rest tomorrow...maybe" he said as he gathered up his possessions and scrambled out the back way. The travellers caught sight of him and gave chase immediately. To this day I still have no idea why they were so interested in him.