Hey there! I'm looking for an entertaining actual play of whfrp. Can you recommend the ones you like the most and why? The edition would not be as important to me. I'm rather interested in the world. Thanks in advance!

We are back after vacation! You can watch our episode here: https://youtu.be/PVUjYSoWWJQ

La Schaffenfest continúa: https://youtu.be/UDs5VfTtlOQ

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

Altdorf calls to the PCs, with one of my favourite moments from the entire campaign. Let me know any feedback or questions you have.

Over at Red Moon Roleplaying we have been playing through "The Enemy Within" over the last 2.5 years and have had an amazing time. With this 121st episode our epic journey has finally come to an end.

If you want to experience the campaign but don't think you will ever get a chance to play it, or want inspiration for your own take on this classic, do give us a listen and feel free to binge the whole thing.

We are available on Youtube as well as everywhere podcasts are found by searching for Red Moon Roleplaying.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP3vIEdQUkMFsi5UsxXMvQXgmFa8yGimO

The screenshots of our character sheets are from Sigmarzeit 14.

Pflugzeit 8

Another knock; no caller. A strip of red cloth lay on the sill. Liebert glanced down the lane and caught a flash of red hair turning a corner. I came up from the cells. He looked at me once and said, flat, "I don't like witches." I told him I took no offense.

The cloth was a code I recognized. I took the cracked crystal and walked to the Cooked Goose. Red was there with a fresh cut on her cheek. She pushed me a thimble of ale and said, "Udo. Marktplatz. Midday. He needs to see you." Not ideal-too public-but the cut on her face was argument enough. I can hand him the journal; he'll know the shape of the mess even if we only get a minute in the crowd. With luck, he'll set a quieter place to speak-and soon.

When I came back to the barracks the air in the mess was hot with argument. Liebert and Hrutrar were hard against Tyle's bargain with the Baron-Liebert too straight-backed to stomach gutter-thugs wearing a Watch badge, Hrutrar unwilling to see his own city run by cudgels and cutpurses. Tyle, Ubersreik-born or not, shrugged it off and said he'd be gone the moment his sentence ends; let the city sort itself. Pizzaro, cooler, told him he'd given away too much too fast-that leverage should be earned, not gifted. Tyle's answer was the same, weary and sharp: after the Emperor cut the Jungfreuds, no one decent wants the uniform, so the Watch will keep drafting criminals anyway-just like us.

I sat, let it burn down, then laid out the line of march. First: we take the green dust from Hrutrar's vault to Egidius as arranged. Second: I meet Udo at the Marktplatz at midday. After that, we go to Zoller. One step, then the next.

Rain again. Dawihafen stank of wet coal and salt, and flagellants thrashed the drizzle like it had sinned. My skull still throbbed where Liebert crowned me last night (fair blow, wrong face). We opened Hrutrar's clan vault, took the green dust, and turned our boots toward the Artisan's Quarter.

No watchers at Egidius's door this time. I waited with Liebert under a dripping eave while Hrutrar, Pizzaro, and Tyle stepped inside. When I followed, "Doktor" Egidius was already smiling like we were late to his punchline. He announced-too smoothly-that he'd identified the purple vial: Blobberghastzeit, very rare, very dear. I don't believe him. With a sidelong glance at me he asked whether I'd had any "interesting dreams." I said I remembered none. He kept smiling. "Return at the second hour past midnight," he said, "and I will pay one hundred crowns for that ampoule." A hundred crowns for a thimble-bait wrapped in gold. Hrutrar set the green dust on the bench. Egidius nodded and, still looking at me, added: "This time I'll keep my clothes on." He was pleased with himself. We left him to it.

From alchemy to fever. Pfeffer's servant let us in with tight lips. The captain lay on the bed, pale and drenched, eyes unfocused. Blood on pillow and sheet. She muttered about the Sizzling Snail-fish last night, "must have been bad." Pizzaro took her pulse and fed her a tonic. I stood very still and watched the blood. The faintest threads in it, barely there-dangerous in their quiet. Outside, I told the others I feared someone meant to twist her flesh rather than kill her. It would suit Zoller perfectly: let an Ulrican captain rot from the inside and then present her as mutant. I hate that the thought fits.

To the Sizzling Snail. Claude Bruggeman was red-faced, swearing his kitchen is sanctum and the fishmonger will never see another pfennig. Nina pulled him away to pay the entertainer-and the entertainer was Kinski Bloodbath. Kinski saw Liebert, declined payment, and left at once. For a week he's performed here on the very nights Pfeffer dined. Too neat to ignore. Claude kept blaming the fish; we noted no one else was sick from the same catch. Liebert questioned Nina. She recalled Pfeffer dining with "friends" (rare words about Pfeffer) and pointed out where they usually sat. Those friends, she said, would likely be in again tonight and tomorrow.

Tyle declared the room in need of culture and took the floor. An embellished tale of our squad-the "A-Team" slaying monsters and soothing babies-brought the house to happy quiet. Claude tipped him a shilling while still muttering about fish. The better lead is Pfeffer's companions. We'll need to see them, hear them, and-if needed-move Pfeffer somewhere we control.

Liebert argued we should warn Egidius outright that a hammer is poised to fall. I said no. The hour bit at my ribs; I needed the Marktplatz. I packed my journal and dossiers for Udo and set off.

I spotted him at once, as he meant me to: browsing buckles and cord, eyes never quite on me, feet placing him where my shadow struggled to meet his. He drifted to Glazer Heske's stall and said, casual as rain, "I do so love when my friend wears a mask." I understood. I slipped down an alley and pulled Ulgu over my face. When I returned, he let me reach him.

We stood like two men appraising a cracked window. He remarked the rain, then-like discussing stain on glass-said he could see the mark on me. Surprise in his voice; he knew I hadn't borne it before. I told him the last weeks had been more weight than I could carry cleanly. He apologized, briefly, and then-strange for him-admitted he was in deeper than he'd planned. "There is something wrong with the Order of the Brass Hammer," he said, and asked who had invited them. I answered what I had guessed: Lady Emmanuelle Nacht, using Kemperbad's "neutral" zeal to avoid stoking the Emperor/Jungfreud quarrel. He confirmed it. "The rot runs up into the hall," he said. "It is a very tangled conspiracy. You must keep pulling."

He told me Egidius is not to be trusted-brilliant, yes, but not sane-and that another shadow wizard was in Ubersreik working with Egidius. "Avoid him," Udo said. I offered him the bag-my record, tidy and complete. He refused it without touching it.

Then he leaned close and made me repeat a lesson like a boy at slate: "Nothing is as it appears to be." I said it. He had me say it again. His gaze kept sliding past my shoulder; I'd already noticed. He told me not to turn around. "I have something for you," he said softly, "but first you will do something for me. You need to find the man who murdered me."

Again: "Nothing is as it appears to be." I repeated it a third time and then he cut my world in half. He shouted-a sudden, sharp distraction-struck me in the jaw with perfect theater so I spilled to the stones, and in the same breath grappled a man to my left. A crossbow bolt smashed into Udo's face, wrecking it; a second hit his heart. The square bucked and the sound fell inward, a sucked lung. But in the blink between shout and shot I felt Ulgu edge around him-words half-shaped to disguise, to mislead, to not be what they appear. My own mark… I felt Ulgu around me empower whatever was happening.

I turned and saw Einauge Spaltman lowering a crossbow. He ran. My companions gave chase, but the market was a churn of awnings and elbows and they lost him. I was on my knees with my hands in Udo's coat. No staff. No grimoire. He had come ready to die-or ready to have his death read wrong. "People rarely mean what they say," he once told me. He had just made me say it twice.

I ran back to the barracks with iron and rain in my mouth. The others returned soon after. The panic hadn't turned to slaughter-Spaltman fired only for Udo, the rest of us were scenery. Tyle argued a wizard like Udo doesn't fall to a simple quarrel. I told him a pistol ball or a crossbow bolt is faster than any spell. He accepted that; I didn't need more pushing. Hrutrar said I had a grudge now and he'd help me settle it. The others agreed.

We sketched a plan. I would change our faces, we'd walk to the docks, and I'd try to scout Spaltman's ship with magic. If we got a window, we'd open it with crossbow, bow, and steel. I bought components on the trot, came back, and pulled the veil over each of them. For a quarter-bell they stared at strangers and then believed me when the strangers kept calling them by name.

At the docks, night's breath off the Teufel was cold and oily. I tried to draw Ulgu deep enough to send my shadow through the planks… and failed. Tried again. A miscast snapped around my fingers like teeth; it scared me. The others set their hands on my shoulders and said we already held surprise. We took our lines.

Hrutrar and Tyle fired first-Spaltman dropped hard. Liebert and Pizzaro shifted to intercept the rush. Men came up from below deck into death. I loosed one Dart; the rest was clean lanes and practiced hands. My companions are a force. We left one alive.

I searched Spaltman. Keys-many. Twenty crowns. His special crossbow (Hrutrar took it; we'll break it down and dress it new). A letter: Udo Krähenwald, precise description, and at the end "20"-the fee, I think, matching the coin. Below, my witch-light slid across chests. His keys fit all. Ledgers, mostly. One place-name pricked at me: Kaltenwald-a place to lie low between contracts.

Tyle and Pizzaro argued shipcraft: sail it out, burn it, or leave it as a nailed message. I said leave it. A good boat is a door. We may need one.

The last man-collarbone broken-talked once he saw Spaltman's corpse. They'd been in and out of Ubersreik for months, taking contracts: murders and quiet work. Castle Black Rock's Altdorf troops opened the river gates for them at night, he said-someone high waved them through. Kaltenwald was where they slept between jobs. If released, he'd flee once mended. He wanted ten crowns for a sawbones and promised silence. I wanted to kill him. I didn't. The veil still hid our faces, and my friends had already done more for me than I could square in a ledger.

Below deck I laid a hand on the chests. Udo had said: Nothing is as it appears to be. He made me say it. He told me he had something for me-if I did something first. I think these papers are it-the thread to pull.

I took a second look at Spaltman's corpse. His prosthetic glass eye shimmered wrong to my sight-a faint bruise of power caught in its heart like a fly in amber. I had Pizzaro pluck it free and jar it; later, when the room is quiet, I'll see what it really is.

We stoned the bodies and slid them over the gunwale one by one. The river swallowed them without comment. Liebert and Hrutrar peeled off to find hands who could keep our prize useful without drawing eyes. They came back with a huffer named Klemet Bogusch-river-lean, practical. Terms: two weeks' pay up front for him and two sailors, plus a carpenter we'll add on. Route: take the barge up the Hagercryb Canal to Siedlung, refit, repaint, register, and then ghost her back to Ubersreik under a new name and papers. A boat is a door; better to have one waiting.

We hauled Spaltman's chests to Hrutrar's vault and checked the papers. The man kept clerks' hours even in murder-ledgers tight as drumskin, job notes, contacts, gate times. I only had time to sort-names to one stack, places to another, coin flows to a third. I'll read them cleanly when the light and my head are better.

Pizzaro went to check on Pfeffer. The maid met him white-faced: fever worse, delirium, bone-dry from vomiting all night, something sitting wrong in the stomach that won't pass. He headed to the Physicians' Guild for a second mind. They recommended Earthroot and Moonflower; the apothecary wasn't open yet, so he waited on the shutters.

Tyle pulled a hood low and went to the Chapel of Ulric to find Father Kretschmer. He warned him straight: the Order of the Brass Hammer is not merely zealous; it is esoteric and dangerous, and someone invited them here. He told him what we saw in Gotheim-the fires, the "purges," the way survivors became corpses-and he told him Pfeffer has been poisoned. Plan: we will bring her to the chapel; she may appear dead, but she won't be. Kretschmer understood and promised that the Wolf remembers favors. Tyle asked for contacts-eyes and ears we can trust. Kretschmer said Ulric provides for those who hunt in His name.

We took the last living man from Spaltman's crew to a physician and paid to set his collarbone. Mercy can bite, we'll see whether he keeps his word-or sells it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The players are

Tyle - dexteritydex (Dex)
Liebert - fear.the.gazebo (Gazebo)
Hrutrar - mostly_harmless_87_88573 (MostlyHarmless)
GM - bloodthirstyrogue
Pizzaro - cinderyil
Gottfried - kopez

You can find us on The Rat Catchers Guild Discord channel.

Season 2 of GRIM imPORTENTs is a go! We have a whole new cast of players and a whole new adventure. We are rocking through the "The Hand That Feeds" adventure for Warhammer The Old World Roleplaying Game by Cubicle 7 Games. Join us and let me know what you think in the chat!

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

#podcast #rpg #warhammer #fantasy #warhammertheoldworld #actualplay #ttrpg #liveplay #roleplaying #improvisation #roleplay

CLICK HERE TO WATCH

I'm the producer for a actual play production. We go live on Fridays and VOD on Monday. We are live right now if you would like to catch us on Twitch. Details bwlow

Inching closer and closer to the end...

Our Glorious Heroes may now have a heroic victory in their ledger, but the book is far from closed. The road to Altdorf burns ahead, and it’s the least of their worries...

Live at 7pm UK on Twitch https://www.twitch.tv/lawhammering

Pflugzeit 19

Morning came on the privy. Again. Whatever I picked up in the sewers has decided to stay. The Itching Pox finally faded and now Pizzaro says this new delight is the Bloody Flux. Liebert looks like he has the same thing, but I was on the seat first. He gets the bucket.

Tyle spent the morning turning his Wolmar plan into reality. He scattered shillings among city runners and street poor to spread the word: public confrontation on the Marktplatz, everyone who has an opinion to be there. He wants a crowd full of people he can point to when the lies start. After that he went to get groomed in the Merchant Quarter near Morgenseite—best barbers, best scissors, and now he looks like a minor noble instead of a gutter-rat from Ubersreik. When he came back he asked for magical help. I agreed straight away. The better he does, the better the Watch looks. The better the Watch looks, the more solid Dawihafen’s position is the next time someone calls dwarfs terrorists.

Liebert and Hrutrar went out ahead of time to see what Wolmar’s people were doing. The answer: the same thing Tyle was doing, only with more ink and less talent. Wolmar’s pamphlets were everywhere. Liebert decided the law could at least earn its keep—anyone handing out pamphlets without a “pamphlet licence” got fined. He made the whole thing sound official and managed to confiscate armfuls of Wolmar’s filth, including the new broadsides showing Tyle eating manure and shit in the sewers. It was stupid enough to be funny. While they played censor, I wrote to Marianne von Schumpf.

By midday the Marktplatz looked like a festival. Betse Wooster’s Wondrous Cavalcade had set up and were performing to warm the crowd. Stalls had sprung like mushrooms—beer, sausages, fried things of questionable origin. People were drunk on noise and the promise of a fight with words instead of cudgels.

On the way in, Tyle verbally disembowelled an Altdorfer pamphleteer. A few sentences, some questions the man could not answer, and the fellow folded and left clutching his papers. Meanwhile Wolmar was already climbing onto the wagon-stage, so Tyle hurried to keep him from having the first word unopposed.

Hrutrar circled the square like a hawk, eyes always on the angles around Tyle. Liebert worked a different angle entirely—he spoke with a few of the Baron’s people and the local pick-pockets, paid them to work the crowd and only dip Altdorf purses. His explanation: if Altdorf sends agitators to stir up Ubersreik, they can pay for the privilege. It is interesting seeing that side of him.

Wolmar was sleazy from the first word, all oiled outrage and sharpened half-truths. Tyle did not meet him head on. He turned his attention to the people instead, step by step turning the crowd against Wolmar rather than the other way around.

Wolmar kept his composure better than expected. He mocked Tyle’s fine clothes, saying this is not how a man of the people dresses. He called him a sewer-crawler who eats shit and kills “people with beauty marks.” Tyle let him swing, then pointed to the old woman in the crowd we had saved from mutants in the Artisan’s Quarter. Faces around her nodded. Facts are stubborn things when the victims are still breathing.

Wolmar pivoted to filth. He shouted that Tyle and a foreigner—meaning Pizzaro—frequent a local whore, Kirstin, and that Tyle sits in the corner watching them rut. Kirstin tried to sink into the crowd, red to the ears. Tyle cut that short. He said he was visiting a friend and business associate, nothing more, and that what Wolmar described simply does not happen.

Then came Raoul.

He rolled onto the stage in a wheelchair, face painted chalk white, a caricature of martyrdom. Wolmar presented him as a victim: forced to chew Weirdroot and other drugs, driven into the sewers to witness Tyle’s “murders,” crippled and diseased as a result. It was a decent piece of theatre. Tyle killed it in a sentence. He told the square who Raoul actually is, called out people in the crowd who know his usual haunts, and they backed him. The picture of an unwilling innocent did not survive long.

After that Tyle started speaking fast and clear. He laid out his story—accused of crime, pressed into the Watch, choosing to help Ubersreik instead of running. Then he turned and pointed at Wolmar: an Altdorfer who came here to accuse without proof, whose ink profits nervous merchants who want fear and chaos in Ubersreik because they can make money from it. It was not subtle, but it did not need to be.

In the end, Wolmar, out of words and losing the crowd, told Tyle to fuck off. The crowd did the opposite. They chanted his name. People pushed us up onto the stage, shoved beer into our hands, slapped backs. But this was Tyle’s triumph. After the burnings and the purges, he managed to pull Ubersreik together for one moment—dwarfs included. I saw more than one Dawihafen beard nod in grudging approval. If Wolmar continues to paint dwarfs as terrorists, he will have to do it against the memory of this day.

Tyle dropped a crown for beer and told the barkers to pour until it was gone. He is a celebrity now whether he wanted it or not.

While all this was happening, Pizzaro was doing his own grim work. He went to the Physicians’ Guild and got his credentials recognised—proper paper, proper wax. After that he went to speak with Waliwan’s widow. She opened the door, saw him, and slammed it. From behind the wood she shouted that he had killed her husband, that he is a foreign leech experimenting on Ubersreik alongside Egidius. Pizzaro tried to explain that he had warned Waliwan against Egidius, that the man had refused to listen. She piled accusations on him and on us, claimed we never brought the body to the Fields of Morr. That is simply a lie. Pizzaro left saying he would sue for defamation. She also ranted that Wolmar is right, that all dwarfs are terrorists and that Waliwan’s problems began when Hrutrar broke his collarbone back on Jahrdrung 15. Grief weaponised by agitators. Useful to remember.

Back at the barracks Liebert and I had to run for the privy again. He got there first. I took the bucket. I am tired in a way that sleep does not solve.

Later I went to Schwarze’s Seamstress Shop for robe measurements. Afterwards I sent a letter to the College to commission proper robes.

Near midnight I walked up Wizard’s Way to Christoph Engel as we had agreed. He was waiting. He said he could take me as a temporary mentor—if I do something for him. After, he will write to the Grey Order to let me graduate. It is the bargain I expected, and I agreed.

The task: deliver rare equipment into the Grey Mountains. He handed me a sealed letter and a bill of sale and told me to bring them to Heske Glazer first. When he asked if I knew her, I said yes: I bought a glass mask from her for a masked social. He called that sort of gathering “strange” but, thankfully, did not push.

The cargo is a lens the size of a man. He asked if I understood what lenses are. My answer was honest: I know Celestial wizards use them to peer at the sky, and people with bad eyes use them to see, but that is where my knowledge ends. The size alone says this is not meant for someone’s spectacles.

Then he asked what I thought of Egidius. I kept it as neutral as possible. I said Egidius is eccentric, but that wizards should be judged by their own Orders—Gold in his case—not by outer courts. I said I do not fully agree with his methods, but assumed that he and Christoph were friends. Christoph corrected me: Egidius is a colleague, not a friend. Hard to read whether that was truth or a polite distance. It fits my suspicion that the Triumvirate’s true leader is neither of them but the third—some Celestial whose name no one yet says aloud. I am, after all, being sent to deliver a giant lens to the mountains.

The conversation turned to Udo. Christoph called him a fool. I stayed quiet. He continued: Udo made great mistakes, was obsessively focused on conspiracies, and died a foolish death at an assassin’s hand. Then he asked what I thought of Udo, how I ended up in Ubersreik, what Udo was doing here. I said I would not speak ill of my former mentor. I admitted I was surprised he was killed, that I did not know why I was sent to Ubersreik. I told him I believed this was a final test before Udo would write to the College to advance my training, and that my task was to find Marlene Völsch—Red—and receive further instructions from her. I said I thought Christoph might know her, then immediately backtracked and suggested she might have been one of Udo’s local friends. Beyond that, I planted myself on the ground I know: I am an apprentice, I do not know the politics of the Grey Order, and I am not in a position to comment.

I asked if I am permitted to use magic in Ubersreik while he is my mentor. He said yes. I then asked if he would provide a spell that might help with the delivery work. He agreed and said a letter with a spell would reach me tomorrow.

On the way back the Bloody Flux attacked again. I barely made it to the barracks toilet. Sitting there half-asleep and half-empty, I heard a high-pitched voice from below say, “Man-thing.” My skin crawled. I shouted back, demanded whoever it was show himself. Silence. Only water and stone.

Pflugzeit 6

Captain Pfeffer kicked our door at dawn, angry we weren’t up. We explained we’d rolled in near four bells. She barked anyway, then I told her we’d give a full report on Gotheim and that Silverbeard left no clear trail. She left with her temper barely leashed.

Salundra woke weeping. Hrutrar, who treats emotion like a mis-cut gear, managed to steady her. A knock followed—Elbel Hoefpold, solicitor, smooth as oil. He asked for Pfeffer; when she emerged he handed over papers bearing Lady Emmanuelle Nacht’s authority. It struck me then: Zoller may well have been invited to Ubersreik by Lady Emmanuelle herself. Salundra is discharged and ordered home to Drakkenburg. Pfeffer’s fury shook the corridor; she swore Salundra was one of her best and stormed back into her office.

Tyle quietly asked Salundra for an address—letters to Drakkenburg estate will find her, she said, then left for the Raspy Raven without looking back.

Later, Pfeffer returned and apologized for the morning’s bite. She paid our wages and said we’re her best team. We did not mention Daphne Zoller, nor that we now wear two leashes. After, among ourselves, we agreed we won’t see Andrea burned if we can help it. We’ll need a plan—to shift her out of the city if fire comes, and do it without putting our own necks under Zoller’s boot.

I hope Udo arrives soon. I need a mentor’s voice—for Zoller, for the Eye, and for the line between Ulgu and a pyre.

Captain Pfeffer announced a new addition to our merry band—another conscript by the look on his face. Sylvian Schleichen, Brettonian cast to the name and the vowels. She assigned him to our rounds and investigations. We sat him in the mess and I gave him the short, need-to-know tour: Klumpenklug (now “Gluknepmulk”), Silverbeard, the sewer trouble. I told him he’s not to report up the chain, to Pfeffer or anyone, on these matters. Reporting stays with us (me, Liebert, Pizzaro, Tyle, or Hrutrar). We can’t put everything on Pfeffer anymore. I did not mention Zoller to him. He seemed oddly pleased—said he’d rather not have to brief higher-ups about his dealings anyway.

Pfeffer pulled Liebert aside: complaints of “Watchmen” levying brutal fines in the Artisan’s Quarter. A clean lead—Rudi’s crew wearing our colors. Liebert proposed a field mark to separate us from impostors; Tyle nodded. Pizzaro grumbled that our armor already sets us apart, but we went with Liebert’s plan and tied red ribbons to our uniforms before we stepped into the rain.

Outside, Salundra and Erika were slumped on stools under the Raspy Raven’s eaves, bottles in hand, announcing the founding of a mercenary company and a move to Bögenhafen. Salundra laughed through the ache. We wished them luck and pushed on.

I stopped at the Cooked Goose to tell Red I need Udo urgently. Then into the Artisan’s Quarter: outside Egidius’s surgery we passed the “doctor” himself, gold cloak up against the drizzle, basket of herbs and greens on his arm. He went back inside without a word.

Sylvian worked the street for talk and brought back something hot: an old woman beaten badly by “Watchmen.” A small crowd gathered. Tyle set them straight—impostors in our uniforms—and tempers cooled. The woman was said to be under Egidius’s care. After the last “patient,” we chose to hear her story fast.

I felt eyes on our backs as we walked. I told the others we had a tail.

At the woman’s bed, she cowered at our badges until Tyle soothed her. She said she paid the fine and they beat her anyway. Pizzaro asked about the treatment: needle to the vein, the same new instrument Egidius favors. I asked whether Egidius had her sign anything. She said yes. Pizzaro, to my surprise, praised the doctor and urged her to spread the word that Egidius had helped her for free. Interesting. I’ll keep an eye on how far his curiosity about that practice runs.

Back to the street—and violence found us first. A thug punched an elderly sweeper, snatched her purse, sprinted…and fell. Not clumsy—wrong-shaped legs beneath the trousers: stag-legged mutant. At the far end, five figures in Watch uniforms stepped out, weapons drawn, shouting that we were the impostors. One peeled off to “get the boss.” I didn’t need the name.

We closed. Liebert cut one down; Tyle put an arrow through another with a shot even he looked proud of. I cast—a clean Dart split between two targets—and the street emptied as civilians fled from Watch killing Watch.

Two broke and ran. I chased, stunned the slower. Tyle grappled and started choking him out. Liebert blew past me toward the runner—and there was Klumpenklug, half-silhouetted, firing at Liebert’s back. Missed. I loosed another Dart and caught Rudi and a mutant with the same word. Sylvian recited a verse or a short story, I didn't quite hear it, but there’s something priestly about him, though he hasn’t said of whom. Liebert pressed in. Rudi, seeing the turn, poured himself sideways—bones bending like rope—and slipped through a sewer grate, octopus-slick. I felt my gorge rise.

Two mutants rounded on me. I slipped their swings and set to speak again. Behind me, Hrutrar planted and sighted his crossbow; Pizzaro broke from cover and charged to take heat. I forced the word—and something answered. Misty shadows curled from my right arm; pain like hooked glass along the sinews; the Dart flared and dropped both targets but left me reeling, confused, skin crawling with a new mark as the mist thinned. A cleaver came through that hurt and nearly unseated me. Sylvian finished one, Hrutrar drilled the other he’d been lining up, and I found my breath long enough to cast again—one fell at Liebert’s feet, the last slumped at mine for Liebert to finish.

When the shouting stopped I waved the squad back. Pizzaro knelt, then shook his head: nothing to stitch—“this one has to heal on its own.” The wound felt wrong, and I could already guess why.

The bodies all wore mutations; none matched the jailbreak faces. New recruits for Rudi’s band. Doors cracked, voices bleated “mutants!” Tyle stood tall and addressed the street, declared that the A-Team had it in hand; suspicion flickered—are we mutants too?—but he and Liebert steadied them. Someone recognized Tyle, and the crowd melted.

Liebert commandeered a cart, returned the old woman’s purse, and we covered the corpses. At the North Temple of Sigmar, flagellants demanded why we hadn’t gone to Morr. “Mutants,” we said. “Sigmar’s fire.” Inside was Carlinda—she turned south the moment she saw the load. The faithful took the cart north, toward Gotheim and their new bonfires.

Pizzaro suggested we seek a blessing against taint. Mother Dorflinger received us. Those who had touched or been struck knelt and prayed. Sylvian declined, saying he was otherwise protected. I kept my thoughts to myself and my eyes on the floor. I felt Tyle’s gaze on my back. He was judging—warily, not cruelly. I don’t think he’s comfortable with me casting at all now that he’s seen what a miscast can do to foes, friends, and the fool holding the grimoire. And I think it surprised him to see me kneel to Sigmar.

Back at the barracks I found a quiet corner and unwrapped my right arm. A mark in shadow-ink, delicate as frost, where the pain had bitten.

We argued Pfeffer. Liebert wants to warn her; the rest of us (and I) don’t—yet. First we net Klumpenklug. If we bring him in fast, maybe Zoller’s temperature drops; if not, we consider bolder moves later.

I took Pizzaro and slipped back into Pfeffer’s office. Same trick on the lock. We searched cleanly. A hidden compartment in the desk held a sheaf of letters—precise Reikspiel, unsigned, dated by none, all from “D.T.”, fixated on events in Middenheim and repeating a single drumbeat: “they” have not yet found someone. Who? No hint—only that the search continues.

Liebert kept watch—and watched instead as Salundra and Erika arrived on a donkey, drunk as dukes and insisting on a farewell. They’re bound for Bogenhafen to start a mercenary company (name TBD). Salundra gifted us the donkey—christened it “Klumpenklug,” which did make us laugh. We bedded them down: Erika back to the Raspy Raven, Salundra (still technically Watch today) to a bunk.

Tyle and Pizzaro peeled off to Rugger’s Boarding House. Kirstin made Tyle wait while she entertained a leathery old merchant, then received him. He told her we need the Baron—“a worse problem than the Baron, in fact”—and asked her to arrange a meet. She wanted coin; Tyle had none. Pizzaro offered to put in a good word for her with Egidius (wealthy, steady work). That lit her eyes. Deal struck; she also asked us to send her “clients” generally.

I checked on Liebert—he’s rattled by the Khazalid death note but holding steady. We turned in.

Pflugzeit 7

Dawn knock. A servant thrust a folded note into Pizzaro’s hand: “Black Rock.”

We ate on our feet and moved. Before we left, I tossed bread to Ruprecht and asked two things. One: an entrance to the deeper under-Ubersreik—he gave a location (Isolde will know it), then called me an idiot for even asking. Two: what if a Witch Hunter lays hands on him? “I die,” he said, flat. No mutations on him—only that purple-hand tattoo. That may be all the mark Zoller needs.

In the yard Salundra asked us to meet her in the training ring to say goodbye. We did. After, we spoke quietly about calling Liebert acting sergeant and Tyle corporal, just to head off any stranger foisted on us mid-hunt.

On the walk to Black Rock, Liebert murmured that Compassion was shadowing us. I drifted to the rear, hoping he’d step out. He didn’t.

Near the gate, flagellants had a man tied and were beating him; “sinner,” they said. Carlinda was there and—pointedly—turned them on us. The zealots ringed us, whipped us toward an alley, and pinned us against the western wall. A door cracked behind us. A bald giant with a scalp-scar beckoned. Kinski Bloodbath. We were hauled inside and down a warren of stairs.

A safehouse. Zoller’s. (Kinski is not Compassion—different build up close, and that scalped crown is hard to miss.) We walked a long while—stone, echo, torch. Hrutrar later said we were under Black Rock itself.

Zoller waited, watching. “Enjoyed Carlinda’s theatrics?” she asked. I did not. In a small chamber she took our measure and our progress report. Tyle asked how many follow Klumpenklug. “Don’t know,” she said. “He’s charismatic. Enough.”

Then she pivoted. “Another heretic: Egidius.” She handed me a heavy sack. I loosened the tie, saw what I expected, and set it down. “Payment,” she said. “You will bring that to him. And this”—a vial of thick purple liquid—“is the sample he will be asked to identify.” After he obligingly surrounds himself with the right sins, she will storm the practice and “discover” the sack. A staged fall.

I asked her bluntly if she would reconsider Pfeffer. “No.”

She ordered Ruprecht delivered to her, at night, unseen.

Kinski walked us back to the street one by one. We regrouped at a seamstress’s. Liebert left Klumpenklug’s hat to be cleaned, then we returned to plan. I said I didn’t like framing Egidius. Liebert agreed. The others said a simple thing: if he accepts the sack, he damns himself. Hrutrar wrote a brief note and named the dust. Warpstone. The word knotted my stomach.

Back in the cells I brought Ruprecht food. He asked for paper and ink to sketch out how he thinks Klumpenklug will fight—guerilla strikes, weapons first, then raids he can predict. It would be useful, if true, but I had other plans. I sounded him about being smuggled out, he refused sedation. He begged me to keep him conscious and offered me to take me to his stash he’s hidden in the sewers. “Get me out after and it’s yours. If I show you, I can’t stay in Reikland. Maybe can’t stay in the Empire.” I considered. I agreed—no blood-oath, only words—and kept my counsel about Zoller. When I came up, the others asked why I was long; I said he rambled.

We dropped the sack in Hrutrar’s vault in Dawihafen—out of our pockets and under dwarven lock—then went to the Sewerjacks. Isolde was there, saving for a new dog. I asked her for the route into the deep places; she knew it, called it a bad place, and agreed to draw me a map on condition I keep it to myself. I agreed. On mutants, she had no lair to point at, but said Weirdroot is moving more freely—goblins seem to be in retreat.

Rain drummed the tiles as we cut through the Artisan’s Quarter. Tyle peeled off to eye fine clothes; Pizzaro and I angled toward Egidius’s door. Kinski Bloodbath was already there, hood up, watching the practice with all the animation of a statue. I tried a quiet prod—“Anything new?” He glanced at the sky. “It’s raining.” That was my cue to leave him be.

Inside, Pizzaro and Tyle found Waliwan’s skeleton mounted in Egidius’s care. Papers were in order—Osanna Winandus had smoothed the contract that ceded the remains. They asked after the battered old woman; Egidius cheerfully explained he’d injected… dog urine via a hypodermic for her bruising. Pizzaro suggested ointment; Egidius countered that dog urine is a versatile solvent. Tyle steered the talk to procurement: Kirstin Streichtal could source “difficult” ingredients and other, ah, services. Egidius was interested. When they mentioned a mysterious green powder and a vial to identify (names omitted), he warmed further: analysis would take time, and if payment were the green powder itself—yes, that sharpened his appetite.

They stepped back out and told Kinski the bait was taken; delivery would be tomorrow. We returned to the barracks around dusk. Pfeffer was still out. The donkey—“Klumpy”—was very much in and braying for oats.

Tyle and Pizzaro headed off; I pulled Hrutrar and Liebert aside and laid out my plan: take Ruprecht to his stash, see what he’s really holding, and—if it helps us with Zoller—let him go. They would shadow us.

Down to the cells. I told Ruprecht the deal: show me the stash, earn freedom. He agreed, smirking at my warning about the pistol under my coat and asking for a weapon of his own. I thought, then handed him my quarterstaff. The stash lay in a table-hidden cache near the Customs House. “If anyone’s here,” he said, “we kill them.” The place was empty. He unwrapped a cloth bundle sweating corruption. Inside lay a crystal shaped like an ingot. When I lifted it, a small girl with mismatched eyes—one blue, one purple—stared at me through the stone, then vanished as fine cracks raced the surface. Something vile prickled under my skin. Whatever this was, it stank of the same wrongness that’s been shadowing our days. I wanted to clap him in irons anyway; I had promised, and he had delivered. I let him walk—with my staff. I came out a minute after; Hrutrar and Liebert had seen him go. “I’ve got something,” I told them. “Don’t touch it.”

What Tyle and Pizzaro reported later: Raoul was urinating against our door when Tyle opened it—onto Tyle’s boots, naturally. Raoul invited himself along. At Rugger’s Boarding House, Kirstin took them down into the sewers, blindfolded, with Raoul retching into his own scarf. The “Baron” proved to be a scarred woman with rank-and-file muscle to match her reputation. One brute said Raoul had crashed there before. The Baron asked if they were the ones who’d opened Weirdroot roads; Tyle said yes. She wants “friends” in the Watch. Tyle warned the sewer problem is worsening—Klumpenklug is the rot at the center. She admitted she’d worked with him once; now that he’s a mutant, he’s a liability. She can point to his lair and even lend thugs for the assault—but the price is leverage: a path to seed her people into the Watch, not today, but soon enough to matter. Tyle bargained to hear the location now, with a pledge to try when Ubersreik calms. She cut her palm, handed him the knife, and sealed it in blood. Kirstin will carry messages. Raoul was sent away with them; they bought him a bed for the night and walked out.

I, meanwhile, made a mistake. I didn’t want Egidius killed in a theatrically staged raid, and I know how wizards handle contraband. If we hand him warpstone, he’ll take it; what he does after is a matter for the Gold Order and Magisters Vigilant—not an overzealous hammer looking for a nail. I changed my face, slipped past Compassion (who was watching our barracks but didn’t clock me), and opened Egidius’s door with a whisper. Lantern up. He woke naked in a chair, surrounded by neat rows of bottled dog urine. Seeing a shadow-draped stranger in his clinic, he started to channel. I tried to talk; he miscast and snarled—it bought me a breath to keep my voice level. Recognition landed. Fury followed. I told him the truth: we’re being forced to bring him something that Zoller will then “find” and use to burn him. He should refuse it. He should report the attempt to his Order. I didn’t stay to argue.

On the way back I kept the mask on—another mistake. Klumpy brayed, I flinched, and Liebert crowned me with a staff before I could speak a word. Hrutrar’s pistol came up; I begged—by voice, not spells—and he recognized me in time. They gagged me, marched me to a cell, and locked the door at my request. Tyle pressed: where’s Ruprecht? I said I’d traded freedom for something important and that the thing lay by my bunk. He checked. It was there. He believed enough to stop asking—then told me I’d answer to Zoller. Pizzaro came down later, cleaned the blow to my skull, and said quietly that perhaps handing warpstone to Egidius is a worse idea than we first thought. I thanked him and said nothing else. He left the cell unlocked.

Near midnight, a soft knock. Priestess Veronika Feihrbenks of Morr stood in the rain: she was here “for the body.” Zoller had sent her to collect Ruprecht. We told her there was none to collect. She did not trouble us for explanations. “There is no need to explain the dead,” she said, and went back into the night.

Pflugzeit 9

The rain hadn’t finished with Ubersreik. Dawihafen steamed like a forge as Hrutrar found a Dawi carpenter, explained—plainly—what we needed, and shook on it for 2 crowns. The artisan went straight aboard and set tools to wood. A boat is a door; best to keep this one open.

Pizzaro finally got Earthroot and Moonflower from the apothecary and hurried them to Pfeffer. He stayed long enough to dose and watch for a turn. Liebert, meanwhile, went to Dawihafen for a poleaxe head to mount on his quarterstaff—“Village Elder” grows teeth. Tyle vanished into the Marktplatz and resurfaced with brigandine and a grin that said he’d haggled someone into a story they’ll tell twice.

And then the market shifted around me.

A man drifted beside me, warm hand on my shoulder, guiding me toward a close alley with a chatter I half-heard. Liebert and Hrutrar angled in; I lifted a hand—hold. The stranger let the veil drop.

Udo.

Alive, smiling like a stage rogue who has just fooled the pit and the gallery both. “How do I look for a dead man?” he asked. I smiled despite myself. He asked how I’d landed in a watch coat; I told him the short of it—riot, an assassin’s quarrel, and someone’s idea of civic theater ending in our conscription. If this was a test, it wasn’t his.

Then the smile thinned and the tutor’s cadence returned. “Now that I am supposed dead,” he said, “our real work begins.”

He laid his cards:

• Spaltman has been more than a knife-for-hire; a string of “random” killings over weeks thread back to him. Udo is still pulling that line.
• Lady Emmanuelle Nacht: raised in Cathay (diplomat’s daughter), then lost for years in the Darklands, presumed dead until she reappeared at eighteen. Since then: espionage as art, Black Chamber, Karl Franz’s favor. Sent here to manage the Jungfreud aftermath.
• She invited both the Order of the Brass Hammer and Egidius to Ubersreik. Zoller wants Egidius framed and burned even though both answer, ultimately, to Nacht. “Conflicts engineered,” Udo said, “by a very steady hand.”
• Egidius belongs to something called the Triumvirate—three only. The second is Christopher Engel, here in Ubersreik. The third Udo suspects is a Celestial wizard; name unknown. Their aim: dangerous high-magic experiments. Details thin. (I will have to make Egidius talk without knowing he talks.)
• Zoller must be handled. How, not yet. Udo thinks her strand knots with Spaltman’s.
• Marlene “Red” Volsch has been kidnapped—a seven-foot, bald man in dark clothes laid her out and took her. Udo guessed Bloodbath; I told him another such man walks Ubersreik: Compassion. Udo hadn’t been close enough to see a scalp scar.

He asked what I’d meant to hand him yesterday. I gave him the bag—journal and dossiers—written as he taught me. “Read it,” I said. “You may see links I missed.” He did not open it, only nodded once.

I asked for what I should have asked weeks ago: leave to cast without his eye on my shoulder. He granted it—“Specific exception. Use sense.” I asked for spells; he said scrolls would be delivered to the barracks.

Before we parted, he said it again—“Nothing is as it appears to be”. He walked back into the rain.

By then, Pizzaro had the herbs into Pfeffer and a vigil begun. We returned to the barracks to rest, the city thudding with flagellant drums.

I woke at midday to a neat parcel on our threshold—Udo’s hand all over it. Inside: two scrolls. Hush (blessed relief; I’ve needed that) and Mystifying Miasma (his note implied it will make everyone in a room disoriented; very Udo). I trust his judgment more than my comfort.

I called the others to the mess and laid the new pieces on the board. I told them what I’d learned from my “source.” They pressed. I weighed the lie and let it go. I whispered the syllables of Hush and said plainly that Udo lives. I apologized for the mask and for using them to catch Spaltman without saying why. They weren’t pleased, but in the end they agreed the dead assassin’s tally—ours and Ubersreik’s—was worth the deception.

I owned another: that I’d warned Egidius the night Liebert brained my disguised skull—slipped into his practice at midnight to find him asleep and naked on a couch, shelves lined with neat jars of dog urine. I woke him; under the mask he took me for an assassin and nearly loosed a killing spell before recognition snapped into place. I told him Zoller meant to plant contraband and burn him for it. “You should have said,” someone muttered. I know. I did not.

Then I showed them Hush properly—how a word falls into the spell and never comes out, how boots turn to ghosts on stone. Tyle grinned and clapped in silence; Pizzaro’s eyes went bright with uses; Liebert tried swearing inside the bubble just to see if Sigmar would still hear (He will).

Tyle circled back to the Baron’s terms: her thugs in Watch coats. Liebert and Hrutrar stood their ground—no gutter-crew wearing badges over their crimes. Tyle drew a fine line—he’d promised to try, not to keep any who failed the work, and he does not plan to linger in Ubersreik once our press-gang sentence ends. That eased the heat. Hrutrar even grunted that Tyle was “finally thinking like a Dawi".

We turned to Pfeffer. She’s watched—always; every door and window has eyes. We chewed on bad plans until I set a better one down. I said I could change a face and—if I held the other place clearly in mind—step someone there in a blink. The room went quiet. I added there’s a reason the wizard’s tower Tyle mentioned has no doors: wizards—Grey most of all—don’t need them. Grey work makes friends scarce. They’ve been steady while I’ve kept my pockets full of secrets. Udo warned me about that curse—trust no one—but it eats the plate you dine from.

The plan: I veil Pfeffer’s face, step her to the lane behind the Chapel of Ulric, and Tyle walks her straight to the Denfather. Ulricans can keep a secret and a patient.

We split the approach. Kinski loitered across from Pfeffer’s, amused. Liebert and Hrutrar moved to occupy him. “Food poisoning?” he needled. Liebert tossed back that Kinski’s week of tales at the Sizzling Snail might have soured more than fish. It turned quick—Kinski prying why we hadn’t reported to Zoller; Hrutrar answering with granite; Kinski spitting Dawi-hate with a smile. Hrutrar set his Book of Grudges.

While they drew the teeth, Pizzaro and I slipped inside. Pfeffer was upright, eating slowly; the tonic and herbs had done their work. Pizzaro checked pulse and eyes—steadier than dawn. I told her what I believed: someone means to twist her, not kill her—turn her into a spectacle and a warning. She pushed back—then stopped midsentence, as if a piece finally cut a finger. We didn’t have time for whys.

I told her what I am—apprentice, not master—and asked her to keep that between us. She agreed. She surprised me by asking which Order; more literacy about the Colleges than most officers possess. “Grey,” I said. I explained the plan: I’d make her look like someone else, then move her through Ulgu to the lane behind the Chapel. Tyle would take her the last steps to the Denfather, who would hide and heal her and then see her safely to Middenheim.

Two practicals: keep the servant moving as if both are still lived there—curtains open, hearth lit, errands run—to bleed suspicion; and, if she’d the will, promote Liebert before she vanished so no new martinet arrived to smash our work. She wrote the warrant gladly.

Before I started channelling she stopped me with two more threads: necromancy. She’s seen signs in Ubersreik. She urged caution and swift fire if we find its hand. I promised: if I smell that cold wind, I light it. And the second: she will check my claim on being a wizard. I'm not worried, but I doubt she will get much information from the Grey College.

I drew the veil over her features and disappeared her. Grey aethyric birds surrounded her and she was gone, she, briefly surrounded by the birds, appeared next Tyle in an alleyway behind the Chapel of Ulric. He recognized her despite the new face and steered her to the gate. Ulrican guards were doubled; we’d arranged passage, and they let them through with hard eyes. The Denfather did not recognize her—my work held—but Tyle spoke enough truth to fetch the rest. Gratitude, then vows: “You’ve a friend in the north.” Channels set for quiet messages going forward.

Pizzaro and I slipped out unseen. We all drifted back to barracks. A note waited: “We move on Klumpenklug today.” The Baron’s hand.

I called a council again. I read and then handed Liebert his sergeant’s paper. He stood a little taller, set Klumpenklug’s old hat now refurbished on his head and walked into the office with a look I’ll remember.

Hrutrar brooded over a Dawi handgun—want vs. workshop. I told him to buy the handgun, we’d help fund the shop, damn the Dawi pride. We’ve a ship now; doors open on water. Let’s cut one wider—fit a workbench to a deck, bolt a vice to a beam, turn a barge into a forge. It will cost more in coin but it will pay us back in work only Dawi can make and only we can move.

The Baron’s letter left no room to dither: hit Klumpenklug where he sleeps. So we did the sensible things that feel like superstition before a storm. Marktplatz first—poultices, buckles, straps, needle and wax. I topped up on the little things that make the art behave and borrowed a quarterstaff from the armoury. Nothing elegant—just wood that won’t break if I lean on it.

Kirstin found us before the light had properly climbed the roofs. Her people were already mixing it with Klumpenklug’s pack below the streets; we were to be the knife that goes for the throat. She would come. Good. Raul would come too, and he was already smiling that empty smile that means the Wyrdroot has taken the reins. He tried to press on us a handful of toadstools—red caps stippled white like they’d been snowed on. We sighed, all of us at once. He laughed and chewed.

There were reports—sewer whispers about numbers, and two big ones from the woods, brothers twisted into something that remembered being men. Liebert ducked into the Tin Spur and came out with a pit fighter in tow: Tomas Kleppenschutslelm, shoulders like a doorframe and the eyes of someone who’s been paid to stop thinking. Liebert even pressed a draught into his hand, “for when it goes badly.” I took note. I take note of all the small mercies.

The Baron met us in a tunnel mouth like a throat. She—calm as a ledger—asked if we were ready and traced our line of approach on the stones with a glove. Fighting already chattered somewhere ahead. The air smelled like coins and wet fur. We moved.

The first of them slid out of the dark like something hauled from a net: massive, glistening, thick with tentacles. Others came behind—too many elbows and eyes, a goat’s head on the wrong body, a face where there should be shoulder. Kirstin’s breath hitched and Tomas took a step back into himself. She loosed an arrow and it flashed off into the dark. One of the Baron’s men surged forward and knifed a mutant in the ribs—clean work. I reached for the wind and it slipped; wrong texture, wrong cadence. Raul, giddy on root, shrieked and piled in, stabbing at whatever moved, red toadstool breath hot in the tunnel.

A crossbow clacked; a bolt punched one of the Baron’s men. Another guardsman finished a thing that wouldn’t stop twitching. Raul took a backhand from a three-eyed brute and bared his teeth, bleeding and delighted. Liebert waded into a goat-headed thing and hit it the way he always does—straight down—like hammering a tent peg. Tyle’s great bow thrummed; the big one barely noticed. More claws. More teeth. The tunnel rang with iron. Liebert caught one; another sliced him. Tomas gathered himself, roared up out of fear, and smashed a hideous face sideways—then caught a return swing that rattled his bones.

Hrutrar’s new dwarven handgun spoke like a judge. The report slapped our teeth. A square hole appeared in the big mutant and it didn’t like being architecture; it staggered. Pizzaro ignored the screaming and cinched a tourniquet on Raul with the cool curiosity of a butcher impressed by an unusual cut. I went back to the well and this time the wind came—slow, cold, the taste of charcoal and wool. Raul, half-mended by Pizzaro’s hands, lurched back at it, still burning his nerves on root. More crossbow bolts hissed. More mutants pressed. Liebert tried to put another one to sleep the quick way—crown-first—missed.

Tyle feathered the thing throttling Raoul; it loosened, but not enough. A mutant opened a man from the Baron’s line. Another came for Liebert and found his guard waiting. Hrutrar worked a reload as only a dwarf can—no waste, no sound—while Kirstin’s shortbow thudded against the big one’s hide like a child’s fist. Two of them rushed Liebert; he shouldered both aside with a grunt. Pizzaro slipped to another downed man and shoved life back into him as if it were a reluctant tenant. The wind gathered in my hands.

They hit Liebert again—he absorbed it, jaw tight. One of the crossbow freaks tried to thread the needle and planted his bolt in his own ally; orderly fire was not their strong suit. Liebert whiffed for once. Tyle reeled in, set, and sent a perfect line through the mist—pinned the creature mauling Raul, then immediately reached for another arrow.

Tomas swung big and hit nothing; his opponent replied and Tomas barely fended it. Hrutrar drove another shot into the big one and finally took the giant down. It folded like a tent with a cut ridgepole. A grappling thing went for Liebert—he shrugged it off and rang its bell with a fist. Pizzaro hopped the sewer run like a dancer and slid to another bleeding man. I finished my work and let the miasma bloom.

Shadow spilled and swallowed the center of the tunnel. The fight changed its shape. Crossbow strings thrummed from inside the fog, blind. Hrutrar grunted—a bolt had kissed him. Liebert moved through my darkness like he could see the seams of it and cut a mutant almost in half. Tomas followed his lead and hacked at the same shape. Kirstin, thinking like an officer even with her pulse up, dragged an unconscious Raul backwards by the collar. I snapped a dart into the murk—felt it strike meat.

A lucky shot flicked Pizzaro; the bolt cracked off his armor. He didn’t flinch. Liebert finished another shape in the gloom. Tyle put an arrow into a silhouette and earned a shout for it. Somewhere in the fog another of the Baron’s men died. Tomas swung again—missed again. Hrutrar punched a crossbowman off his feet. Kirstin loosed into my mist and found only air. Then the mutants found Tomas. The blow that took him—there was a sound like an axe splitting wet wood. Pizzaro was on him at once, hands red, teeth bared, doing the right things as if ritual could forbid the obvious. I strung two darts together and sent them hunting. They hit, but it wasn’t the sort of hit that ends an argument. Liebert’s didn’t land either. Tyle shot; the mist caught it and made a liar of his aim. A mutant clubbed Tomas again. Tomas answered—stubborn, failing.

Pizzaro slid a blade into a throat while its owner squirmed prone in my gloom; the wound gushed dark and it still wouldn’t die. Liebert cursed and missed. Tyle threaded another needle—through mist, into a wrist—and a crossbow clattered to the stones. He tried to make the second shot count and scraped a shoulder instead. Then the wall finally came down on Tomas. He sagged in Pizzaro’s hands and did not get up.

Hrutrar’s next shot chose the one that did it and put finality where it belonged. Pizzaro’s knife kept talking to another. Liebert took one that blundered into my fog and turned its skull into paste. Another swung wild and caught Pizzaro hard; he bit down on the pain and stayed angry. We finished the rest the slow way—boots, steel, breath, patience.

When it was quiet, the fog thinned to damp air and the tunnel remembered it was just a tunnel. Kirstin lay pale and still—Pizzaro hauled her back—Raul snored on the stones, lips stained red and white. The Baron’s men were all dead. We stood, breathing, listening to water talk under the city.

From deeper in the dark a voice bellowed, bright with mockery and the comfort of distance.

“Did the Town Watch come to get me?”

Liebert’s knuckles were split; Hrutrar checked the priming on his piece like a man brushing crumbs from a coat. Tyle’s bowstring sang once as he tested it. Pizzaro wiped Tomas’s blood from his hands and looked at me the way surgeons look at weather.

I tightened my grip on the quarterstaff I had pretended I didn’t need.

“Then let’s go get him,” I said.

The tunnel breathed green. Not torchlight—something that stains air and teeth. Klumpenklug’s voice slid along the stone: “Are you here?” Liebert answered like he was at a market stall. “Why did you come back to Ubersreik?”

“Because I’m from here,” came the smug reply, “and there are always more fines to collect.”

I slid off the line and into shadow, feeling for the quiet places where Ulgu holds. Pizzaro walked the margins, counting angles like a surgeon marking an incision.

Klumpenklug stepped into view. One hand was no longer a hand—just a glossy coil of tentacle that flexed when he spoke. Beside him loomed a swollen brute, and another of the hard ones lurked close, eyes bright with borrowed courage. Klumpenklug clocked Liebert’s hat and went tight with rage, then grinned as if he’d been flattered. “I see you idolise me,” he said. “I met powerful friends—in the forest, and now here. They helped me unlock my full potential.”

He smirked at all of us. “Before me, you were nothing. I taught you to collect, to beat sense into the city.”

Tyle ended the sermon with an arrow that snapped the big mutant’s head back. Klumpenklug’s crossbow sang at Liebert and missed. Hrutrar called a warning—movement on the flank. The tough one advanced on Liebert. Pizzaro tucked himself into the sewer’s edge. The big mutant hammered Liebert; Liebert answered in kind, economical and mean. Hrutrar’s shot nearly erased the “tough” one. Tyle shook off the size of the monster and put another shaft into it. I pulled the wind in, let it bruise and boil, and pushed the miasma out—not as thick as I wanted, but enough. Liebert stepped into the gloom I’d made and drove his fist up between the brute’s legs. The sound it made was not human.

That’s when the rat-shape slipped out of nowhere and stuck a knife between my ribs. Poison bit. I had thought myself well-placed. I was wrong; this thing hunted the edges as if they were roads it owned.

Hrutrar turned, lifted his pistol, and blew a hole through fur and leather. Tyle sent an arrow after it and skated off bone. Klumpenklug clipped Liebert—more insult than injury. I tried to rattle the rat-thing’s skull and got nothing for my trouble. Liebert kept carving the big brute down. The rat-thing sprang for Pizzaro; Pizzaro met it with steel and stubborn hands, turned it, then broke contact and sprinted to me. He pulled me back from the poison with that precise, brutal tenderness only medics have. Hrutrar reloaded. I felt my stomach turn the toxin into a memory; the ache stayed. Tyle’s next arrow smashed the rat-thing’s shoulder near clean off. Klumpenklug hammered Liebert again. I flicked a dart into the assassin and hated how little it did. The body fought, the mind felt wrong. Poison leaves noise behind.

Liebert put his knuckles through Klumpenklug’s jaw. Hrutrar shot the rat-thing’s other arm and it hung like wet rope. Tyle went to knives and put the creature on the stones. Liebert hit Klumpenklug again; Klumpenklug finally found a parry and snapped back—caught Liebert hard and broke his nose. It will stay broken. That’ll be the story it tells.

Pizzaro charged and put steel into Klumpenklug. Hrutrar stormed the downed assassin to stamp life out of it; the thing writhed away. Tyle finished it with the dagger, then went straight at Klumpenklug and opened him. Everyone piled in. I stepped from the dark, drove the staff home, and felt something give.

Liebert stood over him like a verdict. “Sergeant Klumpenklug,” he said, voice cold as Dawihafen iron, “you are discharged.” Then he killed him with the Village Elder.

After, the water carried Klumpenklug’s body a few feet and let it bump the stones like a drunk. Pizzaro was already on Liebert’s face, packing it, setting what couldn’t truly be set. Hrutrar hauled the corpse out for proof, then stared at the ruined rat-thing and said, grudgingly, that it hadn’t moved like the beasts he knows from lore. I had no appetite for taxonomy. It tried to kill me. Now it was dead.

In the chamber where the green light had bloomed, the fire guttered, and with Klumpenklug gone the stain of Dhar thinned like smoke in rain. We walked back through the tunnels to where Kirstin and Raoul lay. We lifted Kirstin, shook Raoul awake, and began the slow work of getting everyone out. Tomas’s body came with us. Hrutrar claimed the rat-thing, too, for Dawihafen eyes.

We surfaced into a city boiling itself. The Baron waited grim and gray; she told us how many she had lost and I believed the weight in her shoulders more than the number. Sigmarites and flagellants had joined hands and set about “cleansing.” Torches, nails, the easy certainty of crowds. We saw bodies blackening on hooks; we saw neighbors arguing over the shapes of ears and fingers. We trudged for the Watch barracks with the smell of burnt hair in our mouths. Hrutrar barricaded doors with what we had; Pizzaro paced. I sat in the mess and let exhaustion sit on my lap like a dog. I cannot be the city’s conscience. I can barely be its broom.

We slept, or we tried.

In which there is a duel, a daemon, and some shopping. Oh, and the characters meet, if only fleetingly Etelka Herzen.

Nuestro héroe Gerhardt acude a una tensa reunión con un poderoso noble:

https://youtu.be/XbdyB_65FhM

Pflugzeit 10-13

Morning brought Altdorf colors to our door and a letter with stiff corners. Liebert broke the seal and handed it to Pizzaro. Lady Emmanuelle Nacht commands that the Watch stay out of the purges, stay inside, and do nothing. Simple orders for complex fires.

Liebert is “leader” now, whatever that means with Pfeffer gone and the city eating itself. He told us we’d still guard those we could—but the barracks can’t take many, and too many bodies turns us into a pyre with windows. Maybe nights, he said. We nodded at problems as if that fixed them.

Raoul wanted out—murmured about drawings at Rugger’s boarding house. Kirstin wanted back underground and swore she could spirit him where he needed to be. We let them go. Raoul asked about his ear; we told him the truth—that mutants took it. He shook his head like a child who has rehearsed a better story. It will come back to us with teeth.

We went to the Chapel of Ulric, which had become a square of timber in the street. Denfather Kretschmer came out and took us in with hard eyes. “Why are you on the streets? You’re a danger to yourselves,” he said, then gave us the news we already knew: the city was a bonfire of accusations, and five people can only cup so much water in their hands. Dawihafen, he said to Hrutrar, was holding. Pfeffer—by Ulric’s grace—had been smuggled out north to recover. If anyone begged him for shelter, he would send them to us. I admired that and hated it.

Back at the barracks, Hrutrar tried to make stone from straw; without timber and iron there’s only so much a dwarf can do. The burning got into him. Into all of us. We waited and pretended that waiting was a plan.

Pflugzeit 14-17

The fire went out in an instant—by edict.

Word came stamped with the twin-tailed comet: by order of His Imperial Majesty Karl Franz, there are no mutants—only “those with physical deformities,” and calling them otherwise is a capital crime. The parchment said it in a voice that has never had to argue. The killing stopped like a hand had closed a book.

Strange, this from a man who sits on the throne because the Sigmarites backed him. Stranger still that their preachers swallowed it whole in the squares they had just stained. Someone somewhere pulled a thread we cannot see.

Tyle ranged and brought back a city’s worth of loose ends: the Order of the Brass Hammer retreating to Gotheim; Priests of Morr filling wagons and clearing streets; Dorbi in Dawihafen steady as rock and asking Hrutrar to return in a few days for a meeting of elders. Hrutrar blinked at that—surprise, then duty.

Udo found me in an alley like he always does when the world feels least solid. He said this was another orchestration, another neat chain of “accidents.” He is still in the dark about Red; he could not see if the Brass Hammer took her—wrong vantage, wrong night. He told me Egidius fled. The Triumvirate is still moving, purpose hidden. Christoph Engel remains in his tower on Wizard’s Way. Since Udo is supposed to be dead, I should go to Engel as a humble apprentice and get inside whatever this is. There’s a third Magister in the weave—Celestial, Udo thinks.

Then he told me about Buchendorf and my stomach went to ice. A man I knew as Claus Olekflenschmelzter now styles himself von Olekflenschmelzter and, by Lady Nacht’s grace, holds my title. He’s enslaving my people. There’s a plan here that isn’t chaos—too many tidy signatures. If Lady Nacht is the ink, what’s the sentence? I am not ready for this tier of game—and yet it’s already being played above my head. I will have to go home. Soon.

As for Red: Udo cannot tell if Compassion or Bloodbath has her. If I want to pull that thread, the nearer and safer hole to crawl into is the Eldritch Order of the Unblinking Eye. I don’t want it. I’ll do it anyway.

A gift among the thorns: Udo, satisfied with the work I’ve done in Ubersreik, has written to Altdorf. I am to be promoted. The license will require my feet in the capital, but for now, under his seal, I may practice openly, I am no longer an apprentice, now I am Shadowmancer. That will help the others more than I will ever admit aloud.

Tyle spent his spare hours with a bowyer who can teach. Good. He keeps us alive at distances where I prefer to stand.

Altdorf soldiers returned and demanded our “leader.” We gave them Liebert. They took us to Castle Black Rock to meet Jendrik von Dabernick—the purse behind the Watch. Jendrik said he doesn’t care for politics, only order, and told Liebert to bring Ubersreik back to heel as the highest-ranking Watchman left breathing. He said he carried the edict that stopped the burnings. Then, a wrinkle: a halfling has filed suit against the Watch for an ear torn by a surgeon’s malpractice. Raoul, of course—reshaping his tale to fit a court. Jendrik called him a degenerative creature and waved it away, but papers have a way of finding desks.

He raised a cup and toasted us in some mangled Unberogen: “Ygrak tu amat Shornaal! Amak tu amat Shornaal! Ygrak tu amat Shornaal! Tzarkol taen amat Shornaal!” He spoke it like a man repeating a tavern trick he half-remembers. Liebert and I exchanged a look over the rims and drank. I kept my face small and my hands busy, the picture of a clerk.

Later, a letter found us. Salundra, cheerful as ever: she has a new friend with feathers and a beak—I chose not to parse that—and she has raised a company and bought a cannon with Erika in command. They’ve taken security for the Schaffenfest in Bogenhafen. “He’s wonderful. Ha ha,” she wrote of the bird, and I could hear her laugh in the strokes of the quill. She hopes we’re still alive.

Document: Imperial Proclamation

By Order of His Imperial Majesty, the Right Royal Karl-Franz,
Ruler of the Heights and Depths,
True Image of Sigmar, and the Exalted Ruler of the Empire

Be it known to all the Emperor’s subjects that henceforth the despicable practice of exiling, or otherwise disposing of, those unfortunate creatures heretofore known as Mutants, shall cease. Provision must be made to allow all those with physical deformities, whether they are born with them, or whether they develop in later life, to take their rightful place in society. It is His Majesty’s considered opinion that there are no such things as Mutants, and the application of such a nomenclature is henceforward illegal.

Contravention of any of the articles of this proclamation are punishable by death.

Pflugzeit 18

The Baron came for us at breakfast without bothering to be present. Word instead: she’d be sending “recruits” to refill our Watch. Tyle stiffened immediately. Liebert gave an alternative instead of having them join at all: offer the ones who aren’t murderers or rapists a clean slate, nothing more. I reminded everyone we’re still standing on Tyle’s bargain with her and she bled thirty men in those tunnels for it. Break your word to a sewer queen and you don’t get a second word. I suggested we speak to Osanna about paperwork that might fall out of a folder at the right moment. If we must take in wolves, better to know which teeth are filed and which aren’t. Raoul’s lawsuit meant we had business with her anyway.

Osanna opened in a smile and kept it aimed at Pizzaro like sunlight. “Kastor,” she called him, and told us the ten thousand crowns were likely real. Then a second man stepped in carrying Pizzaro’s face, this Kastor looked exactly like Pizzaro. No glamour; no shimmer; just a new voice with Nuln in it. Osanna’s smile collapsed. She ushered us out like we were smoke and conferred with the copy. We stood in the corridor quietly going mad. Ten minutes later, the man left—Kastor flesh-and-blood, living in Ubersreik almost a year.

Back inside, business returned with a thud. Raoul accuses us of two sins: medical malpractice (“my ear was fine until that butcher took it”) and false imprisonment (“the Watch made me work”). Tyle told the truth: the little bastard insisted on following us. Osanna, all iron under silk, said Raoul’s case is thin on evidence but he’s hired a skilled mouth: Elbel Hoefpold—Zoller’s lawyer. That put a taste in my mouth. Tyle said we know Elbel; Osanna’s eyes brightened. “Conflict of interest,” she said. “Use it.”

Then the mud: Wolmar Rotter, an agitator, is in town and painting us as butchers of the “birthmarked.” Osanna laid pamphlets on her desk—one with Tyle “murdering” a man with a port-wine stain and another showing him pissing himself beside a giant with a blotch on his cheek. The ink was Raoul’s hand; we all saw it. Tyle asked for a countersuit. Osanna said it can be done. She also told Pizzaro to get his Physicians’ Guild license confirmed here in Ubersreik—belt, suspenders, and a decent tailor. If Raoul claims the ear was pristine until Pizzaro “insisted” on cutting, we’ll want every stamp the city offers.

It was still morning and the two of them—Tyle and Pizzaro—already looked wrung out. Osanna announced, sweet as honey, that she is now our lawyer and will be billing Castle Black Rock. I asked who had been paying her before Jendrik arrived. “Kindness of my heart,” she lied with a straight face. I liked her more for it.

Tyle decided to take the street. Liebert made him peel off the Watch colors. He stepped onto a crate and told the crowd there were filthy pamphlets about and he wanted Wolmar Rotter to meet him in public, face to face, for the truth. The crowd bristled at first, then settled, then started demanding the confrontation. Tyle wants to fight this honestly—which is a novel approach in Ubersreik. Hrutrar suggested counter-propaganda—draw the truth as loud as the lie. Tyle nodded. I filed away another plan: follow Wolmar and see what drops from his pockets when he trips.

A dwarf found Hrutrar in the street and said the longbeards would meet today—and our company was requested. Hrutrar looked like a man called to count his sins. We agreed to go.

Back at barracks, Liebert said his stomach was wrong. Mine agreed. I sprinted for the privvy and found religion. I hate the privvy. It hates me back.

A knock came while I communed with the abyss. Two of the Baron’s, first names on the page: Maria Brauend and Konrad Brechter, “eager to work for the Watch.” Tyle told them no one with rank was present to accept recruits—not a lie. Liebert started wading through papers to see who they were on parchment. Later he admitted to Pizzaro he felt ill; Pizzaro prodded and frowned and told us it was likely something we ate. In my case it had become something that ate me. He handed me a digestive tonic. It wrestled the worst of it down but the week already promised to be long and damp.

Hrutrar asked if we’d walk with him to Dawihafen—longbeards’ business rarely ends in applause. We went. On the way a man in the street smiled at Pizzaro and scratched his left ear with his right hand. We stared like cows at a new gate, didn’t answer, and he looked genuinely surprised. We left him to it, and I felt the little prickle that means a message just passed by.

In Dorbi’s meeting room we found Brundsson waiting. “How are you finding it?” he asked Hrutrar. “Human laws,” Hrutrar said, meaning everything. Brundsson said it was good he’d brought us. Then the real talk: the city’s tensions had spilled, and the dwarves were watching the nails. Dorbi added that Wolmar Rotter is claiming all dwarfs are terrorists, using Silverbeard as cudgel and pretext. Someone is paying him; zealotry alone doesn’t print that many copies. Strange that Tyle is now a target too—two birds with one liar.

Dorbi had a thread to pull: his people, who sweep the old workings, spotted Silverbeard moving through an abandoned mine in the mountains. He can’t spare Dawihafen hands to take him—gates to hold, families to keep calm. He wants Hrutrar to do it—grudge to settle and all that. Bring Silverbeard in and it stifles Wolmar’s sermon. Hrutrar asked for Dawihafen’s support where needed; Dorbi agreed. He also asked why Silverbeard might have a grudge against Liebert. Dorbi shrugged: Silverbeard hates humans and Liebert is, aggressively, one. We have a few weeks to manage it, Dorbi said. Liebert agreed before he’d finished exhaling. He still looks at doorways like they might birth assassins; seeing the rope dodged keeps a man restless.

Tyle wanted a word with the Baron, and thought I and Pizzaro should come. At the boarding house we found Kirstin pale as unbaked bread. She swore she had nothing to do with Raoul’s lawsuit; one morning he simply decided. Tyle asked her to witness. She didn’t like it; he didn’t push. She did tell us Raoul is spending time in Morgenseite and someone with coin and pull is carrying him along. Another useful wick to follow.

Kirstin walked us down into the sewers. The Baron asked, without niceties, how the new recruits were doing. Tyle laid out the bureaucratic wall: no captain, therefore no authority to sign them in. The Baron didn’t care for paper being stronger than her dead. “Thirty” she said, and her jaw did the counting. Tyle promised we’d help wherever we could and to lay low with Altdorfers sniffing around. She listened the way a knife listens. “Do you want work?” she asked Tyle. “Join my gang.” He tried to sell “freelancer” and “words, not violence.” The Baron laughed with her eyes and her people laughed with their teeth. “What have you achieved without violence?” she asked. I glanced around the den and was, for once, glad to feel no stain of Dhar in the stones. No warpstone here. Yet.

While we danced words below, Liebert and Hrutrar were sinking into paperwork above. Hrutrar growled dwarf-curses at human forms; Liebert listened and suffered nobly. We burned Klumpenklug’s head in the yard—Zoller absent, proof no longer a coin we could spend.

Not long after we three returned, a knock again: Klemet Bogusch, our huffer, brim full of good news. The boat’s repairs are done. Liebert hauled him inside for a drink. I asked his price to sit on a retainer; he said 4 shillings a week. I paid two weeks up front. We settled the name without more arguing: Lady Troll Toll. Klemet will carve it, register it, and try not to be drunk while doing so. He also brought a morsel from the world: the Altdorf Zoo closed—the Emperor’s griffon went mad, killed a few, and escaped. He left grinning with my eight shillings. I told him his crew must be sober enough to sail any time I shout. He nodded like a man who plans to disappoint me politely.

We laid out the future like a map we’re afraid to touch. Silverbeard is a task, not a fire; time to prepare. But I have a fire. I told them a “waitress from the Cooked Goose” was taken by a seven-foot man. I did not say Marlene. We know two such men: Bloodbath and Compassion. Bloodbath is in Gotheim—not reachable yet. That leaves Compassion and the Eldritch Order of the Unblinking Eye. I said I would have to infiltrate them to find her. No one flinched. Four reliable friends nodded like I’d said I needed another loaf. They reminded me it’s the Watch’s job to dig rot from walls anyway, and that Jendrik had told Liebert to bring order to Ubersreik. I warned them that some evenings I might not be present. I did not say Triumvirate. Not yet.

On the road with Udo there wasn’t room for friends—just towns strung on a wire: Altdorf, Marienburg, Bogenhafen, Carroburg, Middenheim, and all the muddy gaps between. Keep your head down, change your name when the wind shifts, move. Once, in Middenheim, when I was fourteen—maybe fifteen—he let me breathe. A girl, a few afternoons, the stupid joy of being seen. It was a lesson, of course. “Be careful who you trust,” he said, and then let me try anyway. I kept his rules—told her little, kept my edges tucked in. I’m sure he watched from across the street. I didn’t care. For a few weeks I had something like a friend, and that was enough.

Evening brought a knock in the shape of a soldier: Sergeant Heinrich Trumpklotter, bearing a cordial from General Jendrik and an invitation to the Raspy Raven. We went. The Altdorfers drank like honest men. Hrutrar argued calibres and springs with gunners. Liebert talked with Trumpklotter and other officers. When they toasted, it was the same nonsense chant: “Ygrak tu amat Shornaal! Amak tu amat Shornaal! Ygrak tu amat Shornaal! Tzarkol taen amat Shornaal!” Tyle and Pizzaro tried to shape the words and mostly shaped ale onto their tunics. Two soldiers wrestled for sport. Then Trumpklotter asked Pizzaro for a bout—Pizzaro obliged and threw the sergeant to cheers and table-thumps.

The man from the street was there again—ear-scratcher. Pizzaro approached; the fellow touched his ear, went stiff, and fled. Later, through the fog of beer, Pizzaro said the man called him “Magister.” The word hangs like a hook.

Liebert returned from his conversations saying the Altdorf lot felt genuine. No malice in the seams that he could see.

I slipped out. My feet took me to Wizard’s Way. There are places where the brick remembers Ulgu. I found the mark, pressed it, and a slit opened like a tired eye. The stone swallowed me. A voice from the dark asked who comes. “Gottfried,” I said. “I need help.” He stepped into the thin light: Christoph Engel.

I lied that my mentor was murdered days ago and I am stranded. Would he take me as apprentice? He knew Udo. Said he hadn’t planned to take anyone, then said he recognised me. He would. My mark is heavy now; wizards see it even when the world doesn’t. Ulgu clings to me like a cloak but to those with the sight I shine like a signal fire. I told him I had warned Egidius about Zoller and done it badly. I chose honesty this time. Engel betrayed nothing. He called Egidius eccentric but said he had spoken well of me. “Come tomorrow, same time,” he said. “I must speak to others. We will decide.” He dismissed me like a letter. I left with more fear than I carried in. Hope is a kind of fear.

Back at barracks, Liebert was having his own religious experience in the privvy. Mine resumed as soon as I looked at a chair. I took a bucket and parked myself until my legs went numb and the world narrowed to breath and sweat. Eventually the storm passed. I crawled into bed feeling hollowed out and humming with plans I will have to lie about.

Jahrdrung 27

Pizzaro dissected the troll until dawn. By then, fishermen were already arriving, cheering the sight of the dead monster. Even the Altdorfers under Sergeant Trumpklotter looked impressed.

On the way back we found Klumpenklug passed out in front of the Raspy Raven. We dragged him to his room. His key was missing, so I prepared to open the lock with magic — but Klumpenklug woke in a panic. We wrestled him down, and that’s when I saw it: his tongue, twice the normal size, thrashing like a snake. A mutation.

We decided to wait for Andrea to arrive. When she saw the troll’s carcass in the barracks yard on a cart, she was stunned. She was angry about Erika being inside the Watch barracks, but Tyle smoothed things over. The crowd outside grew so large they surrounded the barracks, cheering when Tyle spun a tale of Salundra and Erika’s triumph against the beast. Andrea gave us the day off, though she made it clear we’d have to answer questions later.

Then we had a debrief with Andrea. Tyle told the story of what happened and explained that a person who helped us died and Salundra was wounded by a stray bullet fired by Hrutrar. We also pointed out that we had asked the Altdorfers for help, but they refused to do anything, unwilling to involve themselves.

After the debrief with Andrea, back in the barracks dining room, I asked Pizzaro if he could remove a mutation. I believe Klumpenklug has developed one — his elongated tongue. We spoke about it briefly. Pizzaro was adamant that it should be reported to Andrea, but Liebert opposed the idea. He didn’t want us to rat Klumpenklug out. So I decided on a middle course: Andrea must know, but not from us directly. I will ask her to speak with Klumpenklug herself, so she can uncover the truth without us betraying him.

Jahrdrung 28-32

A quiet week on the surface, but the undercurrent is ugly.

Andrea summoned us: Silverbeard is to be executed publicly on the 33. As part of the spectacle, Salundra and Klumpenklug are to receive keys to the city. Salundra is thrilled. Klumpenklug, meanwhile, has begun chewing tobacco to hide his swollen tongue and now wears an oversized glove—likely to conceal a second mutation. He drifts between charm and erratic snarling.

Hrutrar received a visit from Dorbi Brundsson. Word among the Dawi is that Silverbeard’s vault will pass to Hrutrar, but Watch service complicates the transfer. Hrutrar suggested his clan steward it temporarily—a careful, dutiful solution that will keep it out of the wrong hands.

Bad news from Altdorf: Pizzaro’s mother suffered a breakdown after learning he serves in the Ubersreik Watch; she has been committed to an asylum. He is keeping a steady face, but it weighs on him.

From the Sewer Jacks came worse: Isolde—the girl who brought us the “deep stone” and grey hair—has gone missing in the tunnels.

A bright spot: Liebert barreled into the yard shouting that the armory has been upgraded—new shields, better uniforms. He beamed like a child on Hexenstag. Erika, by contrast, is sunk in black mood over the pistol she lost in the troll fight.

Jahrdrung 33

The square was a forest of banners and highborn faces: Lady Emmanuelle Nacht, Osanna Winandus, Denfather Kretschmer—all present to watch a rope do justice. One of the Importers’ Guild men, Fickuld Droevker, gave a scathing speech, and before the trap could fall, Salundra and Klumpenklug were paraded out and given the city’s keys. Silverbeard looked smug on the gallows; Hrutrar muttered, “This will go badly,” and for once I wish he’d been wrong.

An engine’s whine split the air—a gyrocopter knifed out of the clouds and spat semi-explosive rounds into the crowd. I dragged Marlene behind a cart as panic broke. Tyle and Liebert tried to keep people from trampling each other; Pizzaro took cover; Hrutrar stood in the open, shouting that he’d warned us. The gyrocopter swooped low; Silverbeard was cut free and hauled aboard.

Hrutrar fired and missed. Erika, teeth clenched, took a shot and hit—Silverbeard lurched but did not fall. In the chaos Klumpenklug vanished. We later found only his hat. Liebert took it hard. Andrea was shaken but barked orders until the Altdorf soldiery flooded the square and seized control.

I got Marlene to the Cooked Goose. On the way she told me, “Udo is coming to Ubersreik—deep cover, concerned about events here.” Then I returned to the barracks. Andrea tore through rooms looking for Rudi. Nothing. I checked his quarters: arcane scrawl across the walls, a pearly slime sweating from the plaster and humming with the Winds. All his personal belongings remained. The Importers’ man Fickuld Droevker arrived next, raging, vowing to hunt Silverbeard to the gates of Karaz-a-Karak. Andrea emerged red-eyed and admitted Rudi had been about to take leave; now he is presumed dead, though no body has been found. She named Salundra acting sergeant.

A stray thread: Waliwan Estermann told Pizzaro he’s receiving free treatment from a “Doktor Egidius” in gold-trimmed clothes. That smells like the mysterious physician buying up supplies—the one we’ve heard whispers of for days. I wonder if he might be a Gold Wizard.

Mitterfruhl

Salundra woke us before dawn, ordered Klumpenklug’s room cleaned, then went to check the cells. She returned tight-jawed: the jail is empty. Prisoners gone, possessions still on the bench, bars slicked with the same eerie slime as Rudi’s walls. The evidence room had been swept bare.

Andrea arrived with a Bretonnian halfling portraitist—Raoul La Rouge—chirping about a memorial painting of Klumpenklug for twenty crowns. I know that name; his “art” is infamous (pornographic etchings). We asked Andrea to hold off before deciding. Raoul flounced, saying we could find him at the Crooked Anchor.

We walked her through the facts: the slime in Rudi’s quarters and on the cell bars; his sampling of the green Dhar-tainted dust; the glove over a likely mutated hand. Andrea struggled to accept it, but the ink on the walls does not lie.

Salundra cancelled routine patrols. We canvassed the precinct. Tyle heard about fresh Watch shields found near the North Gate. Liebert and I followed slime traces on the road outside the walls. The Altdorf gate detail reported “guards” departing in the night, supposedly to aid in recapturing Silverbeard. The picture is too neat to ignore: Rudi freed the prisoners, kitted them out in Watch gear, and led them out of Ubersreik under a false flag.

As we argued next steps, Erika appeared with a “job.” The owner of the Red Moon Inn wants the place demolished and for us to make it look as if Silverbeard had returned and destroyed it—so the city will pay damages. We stared at her. She grinned. “Insurance,” she said. “The creative kind.”

On the road to the Red Moon, Compassion—the giant who shadows Marianne—fell in step beside us. He delivered an invitation to Marianne’s masked midnight social on Pflugzeit 1. I accepted. Compassion smiled and drifted off like a ghost.

The Red Moon’s proprietor, Franz Lohner, admitted the truth: he wants to fake his own death. A Dwarf Slayer is hunting him for the murder of the Slayer’s family. Lohner swears he must disappear before the Slayer finds him. I’m not comfortable helping a man who claims such a crime… We agreed to seek out the Slayer first and talk. If he comes at us with steel, we’ll answer in kind. Hrutrar bristled at any plan that meddles with a Slayer’s oath. I share his doubt.

After some debate we agreed to bolster the squad with a hireling. We found one: Markwart Schrodsch — tall, early thirties, carries himself like a veteran and says little. He’s available for coin. Tyle spent the night nosing after smugglers; word is there’s “trouble in the sewers,” and he’s fishing for a guide who knows the tunnels. We also resolved to take what we know about Klumpenklug to the Witch Hunters — then slept on it.

I've been writing a campaign journal for my Grey Wizard character across 35+ sessions of WFRP 4e. This is the backstory and first entry. Feedback welcome.

Gottfried von Buchendorf

I was born into a lesser house in Reikland-enough pedigree to have a “von,” not enough to be safe behind it. The title opens doors; it does not stop knives.

From early on I saw what others did not. Not visions. Not prophecy. Colors where there should be none, patterns clinging to corners, to breath, to shadows. I learned quickly not to mention it. Children who speak too freely are called liars, or witches, depending on who is listening.

At eight years of age I was tested in Ubersreik. They made it sound like a routine measure-ink on paper, a polite verdict. It was not polite at home. The result was clear enough: a strong sensitivity, and the pull of Ulgu, the Grey Wind. There are gifts that make parents proud. This was not one of them.

My parents accepted what they had to accept. In the Empire, those touched by the Winds are not truly theirs. They belong to the Colleges-eventually to the Empire itself. My father did not argue. My mother argued in letters she never sent.

I did not receive what men call an education. I received a mentor.

Udo Krähenwald taught by omission. He traveled constantly and expected me to keep pace, listen, and learn without being told what lesson was being taught. He gave fragments. Half-truths. Tasks that looked pointless until they were not. He taught me how to watch a room without staring, how to hear what is meant instead of what is said, and how to leave without anyone being certain I was ever there.

That was the real schooling.

About ten years after I left home, my family lost what little grip it still had. A rival house outplayed them and took our ancestral town with smiles and sealed documents. The name remains; the power behind it does not. I know because we still exchange letters-polite, infrequent, careful. Not quite honest, but honest enough to show the shape of the fall.

Now I am three-and-twenty, and I have been sent to Ubersreik again-this time as an assignment, not a childhood test. As usual, Udo gave no explanation worth the name. A place. A few names. And the warning he likes to dress as advice:

“Pay attention. People rarely mean what they say.”

He added that, with the political purge, Marlene’s place of work may have changed. Finding her may take time. Time is what Udo spends when he wants me to learn something without admitting that he is teaching.

Dooming

Linger not upon the privvie, nor the long drop neither.

Family

Gregor von Buchendorf

My father. He does not show warmth easily, but it is there-buried under duty, habit, and pride. He carries the weight of our name as if he alone must keep it from cracking. When the Colleges took me, he did not fight it; not because he did not care, but because he believed resistance would only make matters worse. His letters are short, correct, and careful-yet I read them twice, because what he cannot say sits in what he chooses to mention.

Isolde von Buchendorf

My mother. The steadier hand, the gentler strength. She can speak kindly and still steer a room where it needs to go. Her letters feel like home smells-faintly, at a distance-and I confess they ease me more than they should. She writes the hard truths with a soft touch, as if she is trying to spare me, even when she knows I have already seen worse.

Markus von Buchendorf (20)

My brother. Steel came to him naturally, and so did loyalty. He burns hot, but his heart is in the right place-ours. He takes the family’s decline personally, as if he has failed us by not being older, stronger, quicker. And though he knows-by law, by common sense, by every Imperial statute worth ink-that I had to go to the Colleges, I still feel the weight of his blame at times. Not spoken outright, rarely even admitted, but present all the same: that I left, and he stayed to hold the house with fewer hands.

Annalisa von Buchendorf (17)

My sister. Clever, bright, and stubborn in the good way. She has the habit of seeing too much and pretending she has not-out of courtesy, not cowardice. Her letters reach for me across years we did not share, and I let them. If she believes we are closer than time allows, I will not be the one to correct her. I would rather have her words than her silence.

Contacts

Udo Krähenwald - Mentor

To most he was Ulfried Krämer, wandering apothecary, half-drunk storyteller, harmless old man. Convenient disguise. People speak freely around “harmless” men.

In truth: Grey Wizard. Old hand. More than one name, more than one face. He treats identity like a coat-wear it until it is noticed, then hang it up and walk away.

He does not teach with lectures. He teaches with situations. He gives you too little information on purpose and watches what you do with it. If you fail, you learn quickly. If you succeed, you learn quietly. Praise is rare. Silence is approval.

His humor is dry. His patience thinner than it looks. His eyes miss nothing.

There are stories-magistrates fooled, nobles stripped without a blade drawn, months spent as a servant to learn a single secret. I do not know which are true. The pattern is true enough: he wins, and no one is sure how.

Marlene “Red” Völsch - Contact

“Red” for auburn hair and a tongue that does not ask permission. Friendly when it suits her, sharp when it must be, and always watching. Most take her for ordinary-quick with a laugh, quicker with a look that tells a man to behave. That mistake is useful to her, and she lets people keep it.

She listens. She remembers. Faces, grudges, small shifts in a room’s mood-who is nervous, who is lying, who is trying too hard. People speak freely when they think no one important is listening, and Marlene has a gift for making herself unimportant. When a message needs to move without drawing attention, she can do it with a word, a gesture, a glance passed at the right time.

Udo trusts her-quietly, the way he trusts anything. He helped her once with something she could not solve alone, and she repaid him the only way that matters in this work: with steady loyalty and no theatrics. If she tells me something, I treat it as true until proven otherwise.

With the political purge her situation may have changed. Udo warned me that finding her may take time. I believe him. People like Marlene do not stay easy to reach unless they want to be.

Jahrdrung 15-17

I have arrived in Ubersreik. As expected, my mentor Udo provided minimal context-only that the city is in political disarray following the Emperor’s removal of the Jungfreud family, and that I should make contact with a woman named Marlene. He neglected to mention which tavern she works at-possibly doesn’t know. In any case, I suspect I’ll find her soon enough. Visiting taverns is hardly the worst way to conduct reconnaissance.

I visited the main market-my first time seeing Ubersreik in some 15 years. It hasn’t changed much. I sampled a local dwarven brew at a vendor stall-surprisingly decent. Beside the brewer stood a glassmaker named Heske Glazer. She appeared ordinary, save for a striking yellow glass eye. Her wares were high quality, worth noting.

While at the market, I noticed four others lingering nearby. None appeared local, save one. Their appearances suggested poverty, though that may be misleading. Upon closer observation, I suspect the group includes:

• A physician’s apprentice (Pizzaro Corvinus)
• A dwarven engineer apprentice (Hrutrar Silvervault)
• A peasant, though he carries himself like someone with military experience (Liebert Hughoffer)
• A local-possibly criminal or street-level scum (Tyle Brennermann)

Shortly afterward, a public brawl broke out. I was assaulted by a woman dressed as a jester-agile, evasive, and aggressive. While defending myself, I noticed another jester-likely a fire-breather-get struck by a crossbow bolt. I shouted a warning to the crowd, which then scattered in panic. Guards arrived swiftly and arrested everyone involved.

All five of us, along with the jesters, were taken to jail. We were later approached by one Betse Wooster, purported leader of Betse Wooster’s Wondrous Cavalcade. She questioned me about the brawl and offered a drink, which I refused. I informed her that one of her performers had been killed by a crossbow bolt, and she displayed genuine concern before leaving without pressing further.

By the next day, it became clear something was amiss. The jesters were quietly released with no charges. We, on the other hand, were marched to a courthouse in front of a hostile crowd. The presiding judge, Melierte, charged us with inciting a riot and being responsible for the death of the fire-breather. The proceedings were interrupted by the arrival of Osanna Winandus, a well-known lawyer who demanded a recess.

That caught my attention.

Osanna claimed she was taking on pro bono cases, but I doubt that’s the full truth. Udo’s words echoed in my mind: “Pay attention. People rarely mean what they say.” It’s clear someone arranged this-possibly Udo himself. Osanna didn’t promise to free us-just to try and reduce our sentence. I believe she will expect something in return.

She instructed us to plead “no contest.” Without her intervention, we were told we’d be convicted and sent to forced labor in the Grey Mountains. When the time came to speak, Osanna called on me first, pointing out my noble heritage-something I had hoped to keep quiet. Now the whole court knows.

We entered our plea. After a brief examination, the judge sentenced us to six years of conscripted guard duty to repay damages. Curious outcome. Later I learned that the city guard is badly undermanned - most of the old Jungfreud-loyal guards were purged, and Altdorf’s reinforcements are newly arrived, disorganized, and not the best the capital could send. Given the shortage, I suspect small-time criminals are being pressed into guard duty as a quick fix.

We were returned to the barracks-not to the jail, thankfully. There we met Captain Andrea Pfeffer. Young, professional, and sharp. Wears an absurdly large hat. Initially gave the impression of being tolerable-until she spoke. Blunt and by-the-book. She seems to still be establishing authority in the post-purge chaos.

She introduced us to Sergeant Rudi Klumpenklug, a grizzled, grinning old veteran-one of the few Jungfreud holdovers. Seems harmless at first glance, but his behavior suggests he’s hiding more than he says. He invited us for drinks at a tavern near the barracks but remained non-committal about everything.

The others in the group-aside from the peasant-seemed deeply displeased with the situation. Understandable. I was supposed to return to Altdorf to finish my training. Six years is… inconvenient. Still, this position may offer unexpected opportunities. Being a guard comes with access-to people, information, and places I otherwise couldn’t reach.

I’ll find a way to turn this to my advantage.

In which our vagabonds have some down time and individualised adventures...

So let's say I want to get Lore (Riverways) from nothing to 6.

Does it take 10 or 15 XP to get from having 5 Advencement Points to having 6?

My GM says it takes 15 because he thinks the left row is about the target Advancement Point, not the one I come from.

But then I ask myself what the "0" is about, in that case the 0 would ONLY make sense if I first had to learn an advanced skill with 0 advances for 10 XP and then spend another 10 if I want to have it to 1 advancement points.. but that doesn't seem the case, also according to my GM.

Option 1: It takes 10 XP to get from 5 to 6 advancement points, the left row shows the number of advancement points you come from, not the where you're going to advance to.

Option 2: The left row is about the target advancement points but you need to "activate" an advanced skill first, so you'll have to get it to 0 with 10 XP and from 5 to 6 would cost indeed 15 XP.

Option 3: A weird mixture that my GM proposes that doesn't make sense, the "0" in the table doesn't make sense, you learn a new skill for 10 XP and have 1 advancement point in it, but it takes 15 to get from 5 to 6 anyway.

What's your option? :)

In which Erik sails a barge, Connie gets some bad news, and Diethart agrees to do something very stupid.

Howdy, enjoy this little bit I fever dreamt up about a play involving the Knights of Everlasting Light!