After a two day journey with the roadwardens, the party arrived at the little town of Ramsfeld. The roadwardens sent the mercenaries off to the Ugly Giant and told them to meet at the watch station in an hour. After a quick breakfast and discussion of what to do next, three of the company set off for the market while the other four went to the watch station. At the market were
- Juliana Fuhrmann, company paymaster
- Uschi Kalbmann, gold wizard
- Anthon Essing, ex-roadwarden trainee
While going off to the hearing were
- Birgit von Dittloch, leader of the company
- Anselm Traschelmann, a shady sort with a big hammer
- Havelock Holm-Winrich, a war priest of Ulric
- Augustus Hausier, an incredibly irritating student from the Altdorf College of Engineering
An uneventful shopping trip where we picked up kit for the new recruits and a blunderbuss for the engineer was followed by a rather uneventful day in court. The judge was an imperious and blustery clown but quickly dropped the case after having a stack of affidavits thrown at him certifying that we had only murdered mutants and thieves, and saved a number of good, tax-paying citizens of the Empire in the process.
After the hearing, the captain of the guard pulled von Dittloch aside and asked if she wanted a contract. The calling up of the local regiment had gutted the town guard, and they were unable to deal with a goblin infestation at the lumber yard a few hours to the north. Birgit negotiated a reasonable daily rate, and set off to inform the others that they would be further delayed in heading for Bögenhafen.
Anselm set off early to the lumberyard, since he had stayed there days before and had a bit of rapport with the workers there. The foreman was suspicious, paranoid, and acting very trigger happy with his crossbow, but he told Anselm about the dozen or so goblins he suspected to be running around in the woods to the north- a broken stretch of land called the Beinbrecherbach Hügel (which I believe translates roughly to Legbreaker Hills). Without much of an idea as to where the goblins were, the party rejoined Anselm and began traipsing north.
Eventually, the party came across a small cliff overlooking a stream, with a bloated corpse stuck floating in the stream by some rocks. They quickly tied up a rope, and as Juliana began climbing down the rope Havelock spotted some goblins popping out of the underbrush on both sides of the river. Deciding it was better to be in melee with one goblin than on the wrong end of their bows, she rushed at it. Havelock leapt down the cliff and started throwing axes at the archers, while the engineer started firing his blunderbuss (both of them missed).
Uschi began channeling the Wind of Chamon and prepared to cast a spell, before the wind began collecting its power directly inside of her skull. Without anyone nearby to release the aethyric feedback onto, the magical energies began building up and her skull began to crack. Another, slightly bigger goblin rushed out of the forest, introduced himself as Grishnak Backstabba, and shouted incoherent threats about eating the party, before him and his cohort opened fire and completely missed their shots. Anselm jumped down and rushed a goblin, breaking its leg with his hammer before finishing it off with a blow to the head. Anthon quickly dispatched another with his longbow, while Juliana grabbed the one she had been ineffectually tangling with.
At that point, the sound of a WAUUUUGH echoed out of the trees to the east, and a single orc came thundering out of the woods. Uschi had managed to keep her skull from coming apart (with the help of a fortune point; aethyric feedback either fucks up everyone in the area or just automatically kills you if there's no one there. It's the worst miscast and she rolled it on the first channeling roll she made this game) and as the winds blew strong, she melted Backstabba's armor and the choppa of the ork. Backstabba, covered in the scorching remnants of his armor, rapidly fled. Anthon shot the ork through the eye before a final strike to the heart from Dittloch killed it. The rest of the goblins fled, leaving their comrade imprisoned by the Dittloch Company.
Augustus finally finished reloading his blunderbuss, which he'd been trying to do since he fired it for the first time, pointed it at their prisoner (who was squirming in the hands of Juliana, disturbingly close to the cone of fire) before being instructed to unload it by von Dittloch.
Things we learned this session were the fickle nature of magic (which nearly instantly killed our wizard), the unreliable nature of gunpowder weapons (Augustus fired his weapon once and spent the rest of the fight trying to reload it), and that, surprise surprise, six goblins are no match for seven well-armed and well-trained humans. We managed to pile up stupid numbers of advantage because the goblins couldn't hit any of us. None of the PCs even took a hit. Next session will probably be more difficult, once we find the camp.
0 Yorumlar