Diversity Hires, part 8: A Dance of Diseases

We left our heroes in the middle of a fight with a sorcerer, with approaching cultists...

The sorcerer fired a cone of maggots and awful at Mormacar, failing to reach him by inches. Burlok through himself into melee with the sorcerer, closely followed by Gildiril who applied an enchantment to Burlok's pick. Armando threw his sword into the air, drew two pistols and fired at the sorcerer, entirely failing to hit him. Frida threw rocks at the approaching cultists.

Then the sorcerer created a ring of disgustingness that covered himself, Burlok, Gildiril and Armando, the latter of whom immediately fled in terror, which given the effects of staying in the circle wasn't exactly a bad idea.

A few attacks later, the sorcerer had split in half, converting him into basically a tumour on legs, the cultists had grabbed the coffin containing Karl, Gildiril had miraculously escaped death, and a bunch of vampires had shown up. Burlok's pick ultimately took out the tumour creature, and the cultist numbers were slightly reduced, but the others had still fled with the coffin, pursued by vampires.

Frida patched up the rest of the team. Burlok decided to head into town, while the others went back to the camp to retrieve Armando before joining Burlok in Altdorf. By some miracle, despite most of the party suffering from Nurgle's rot, nobody spontaneously turned into a plaguebearer of Nurgle, and a local hospital was able to treat them after some persuasion by Frida.

Burlok had acquired a note from somewhere, and once those party members who could read had had a look at it, we learned that we needed to talk to someone called Estlemann. Frida found out that he was actually in the hospital, and having convinced the staff that she was a doctor, was allowed to visit him.

The resulting conversation was short, given that a gang of witch hunters were looking for him, but we did find out about his bookshop that had been burned down (we were all outraged by the wanton destruction of extremely valuable property) and the connected underground room with the special collection. Estlemann begged us to kill him, so that the witch hunters couldn't torture him. Frida enthusiastically agreed. She'd been waiting a long time for the opportunity to torture someone, and was absolutely not letting anybody else get to do it. Burlok broke his neck and threw him out of the window.

There was a brief altercation with the witch hunters, who were reluctant to acknowledge the authority of people working for Roderick, although Mormacar did note that the leader of the group was rather attractive. Somehow we avoided getting arrested, and with the assistance of a surprise flash mob, we were able to leave in search of the bookshop.

The shop was still a bit on fire, so ultimately Burlok decided to put his mining skills to use and dig his way into the sewers to reach the special collection via a less burny route.

Gildiril, as resident book expert, investigated and found a lot of labels with names on. Burlok's note had mentioned the name Ansel, and sure enough the labels included Ansel Vorman. It seemed we were on the right track.

Will the team locate the elusive Ansel and find out about the mysterious necklace mentioned in the note? Will Mormacar and Frida ever achieve their dream of retiring to open a beauty salon? Find out in the next episode of Diversity Hires.