Winter is coming

 Winter is fast approaching. We are back in the warm embrace of the town. Away from the undead in their tombs and the chaos worshippers. People are busy everywhere in the city, preparing for the cold months to come. Fortunately, the fire burns bright within me and I am not worried, but Mia needs to learn how to control the flames and I immerse myself in this task. She is a natural and adept student. Impatient but still able to quickly master the art of channeling the warm wind. Small candles turn into torches and torches into fires. Soon she will be able to brighten this blaze as well as fires become pyres. Sweet Sunniva will be happy. Her reading skills are unbelievable considering the short time since she started.

Dealing with the corrupted

We also seek out High Morr Priest Teidegger. He is shocked at the revelation that another of his knights has fallen sick and hence corrupted to work with the forces of chaos. He will deal with the matter. Johanna is not impressed and wants to put the whole order under a watchful eye. It seems to be of the utmost importance that the chalice stays where it is. We can ill afford some dark master, perhaps is it this Dieter Hellsnicht, to come back into Salzenmund.

We visit the Stevedores guild and seek out Axel Sullner. He is obviously quite sick and we easily lure him into a trap where he tells the truth about the plans to destroy the food stores for the coming winter in exchange for a cure and his life. There is no saving him and we put him out of his misery now that he has been exposed. 

An old foe returned

We also learn again about trouble in the north around wreckers point. Apparently, “swamp people” have taken over parts of the lands in the area and are disturbing trade routes. This is the work of that evil witch Malice. Woe to us. She has come to claim us and there is only one way out of this….We have to face her. My head throbs and inner fires swell and churn. I almost burn down my study with the Great Fires just thinking about it. Have to focus. Must find a way to defeat her. There must be a way to avoid her curse.

 Our plan and focus slowly shifts to tackling the problem in the north. Malice must be confronted or her plans somehow thwarted. This will be a winter expedition and we prepare for the worst.

Before we go we ask the help of those hopeless Astromancers. The top wizard reluctantly greets us in his study. The place is filled with garbage. Various scopes and measuring mechanisms. First thought is that I would torch the place. Melt it all down and make something useful instead. Horseshoes or swords. My companions seem to think that he might be able to help. We have already researched information concerning that Dark Keep in the Forest of Shadows. Some entries could suggest that the a certain Brass Keep could in fact be the keep in question. Not surprisingly, the master of the lore of heavens has nothing to offer. Waste of time. I almost torch the place but pace myself in time. Only smoke and sparks.

 

Trouble in troubletown

A small gang fight erupts between our Johan's gang and some other thugs. All this whilst we are planning for a hard winter expedition. I would put a flame to every disturbance drawing focus away from us now. Fortunately it is quickly resolved. Torgil takes quite the beating though. Why Johanna, Sweet Sunniva and I were not informed I do not know. I know I could have helped a lot. Burning and turning the rivalling gangs headquarters down into a heap of ash would have been an effective solution and avoided all and any injury and peril to ourselves. But they chose a more crude way with swords and sticks. Very well. I secretly think Torgil enjoys it when I heal him though. He squeals like a stuck pig every time I cauterize his wounds but he always comes back for more. Fascinating.

Chaos in our midst

Then, mere days before we depart with the boat north,  disaster…. Johanna is called to the WH headquarters and given a mission of vital importance. I turns out that the day before, in conjunction with a simple beheading, something went terribly wrong and a demon, a 3m tall horned beast with a great axe,  popped up from the beheaded man's blood and killed a lot of bystanders (20 of them!). 

Johanna’s mission is to investigate this, find out why it happened, and if possible prevent it from happening again. Demon worshippers in Salzemund? It draws our attention away form the expedition but this could be an interesting task to undertake. Demon research...Where there is smoke you find fire.

This we know:

Harold Lurkel was the convicted man. He killed his neighbor in a fit of rage (beheading by shovel) 3 months ago.

Karsten Kronenburg did the actual sentencing by beheading. Strange man. When question him in a lowly dive of a bar he is beyond himself and plans to change occupations. He just survived a demon! He is obviously capable. But perhaps slicing sausages at the butcher instead of heads at the square is better on the nerves…

It was killed in the end by a detachment of Boars Teeth Company.  The captain, Sigrun Neiding, a formidable warrior, had a magical weapon, the only weapon that seemed to be effective.

Sentencing done by honorable judge Bakkaus. 

Investigations

We split up some and I realize that there is a faint Dhar presence at the executioners place in the square. Nothing else out of the ordinary otherwise. Mia is with me and I try to teach her the ways of investigating magical presence. She is full of Aqshy, busting at the seams but alas without any means of control yet. This will take time and patience. The latter is lacking in us both I fear.  

The old apartment where Harold lived is empty and uninteresting but something interesting does however turn up whilst interviewing captain Sigrun. She remembers seeing a small girl pointing at the demon and laughing while everybody else was panicking. She also appeared to be standing with someone, a man, wearing a red and copper colored uniform. He seemed to come from a sort of temple or school.

Our talks with the good captain brings other rewards as well as we are able to acquire 10 able bodied soldiers to aid us in our upcoming winter expedition.

Sweet Sunniva remembers reading something about a similar event occurring some 200 yrs ago and we research this. The witchhunters under general Saus have an extensive throve of miscellaneous information regarding the occult and deviant. We find that where 8 robed figures, possibly witches, committed a form of ritual suicide and turning into 8 demons. Pandemonium ensued. It was concluded that this happened due to some freak event where Khorne dominated during a chaos war/conflict. A scroll was found with means to open a portal or gateway. A copy of this is supposedly stored in the library of the Salzenmund Keep. Needless to say you need a strong surge in the winds for something like this to happen. Khorne cultists? Perhaps. If they have come back we will smoke them out and burn their place of worship down. 

Into the pits

This Harold might have been a Khorne worshipper as well. He was into pit fighting and had a reputation for aggression. We find little else however except that he had little remorse, befriended one of the jailors and had one sole visitor in the three months he was in jail. An elderly man, possibly from some sort of orphanage or school judging by his attire. Sounds like it could be the same man as the one seen on the day the demon appeared.

Our next plan is to find out about Harolds connections and dealings with pitfighting and his connection to the orphanage/temple.

The latter proves difficult, as there are no records available anywhere and surely no records portraying those uniform colors. Even Sweet Sunniva comes up empty after exhausting her ever-expanding network. 

Late in the evening, we go to see the pits. The scum of the city (both the rich, the famous and the lowly) are out at this hour. There is tension in the air. I can almost smell it. Someone is going to be badly burned tonight.