Diversity Hires, part 13: Yan Again

We last saw our heroes exploring a particularly disgusting haunted mansion.

After a cursory look at the rest of the house, which was mostly covered in shit and chaos bees, we left. Mormacar set the building on fire, and we headed for the hedge maze.

The first few layers of the maze were incinerated by Gildiril's fireballs, but after we disturbed some surprisingly belligerent flowers, Burlok took over and navigated to the centre. There we found a hideous domed fleshy mass, which opened at our approach like a giant sphincter, something none of us wanted to see.

There was no other option for getting into the plague temple though, so we followed Mormacar's example and dived in. The initial horror was followed by a significantly less awful stone staircase. We proceeded cautiously through a series of rooms, carefully avoiding touching anything (we had quite enough diseases between us already, not that any of us knew that yet) except for a crazed prisoner in a cell. We put him out of his misery/insanity without getting too close and continued on our way.

At last we reached the temple itself, where some kind of ceremony was happening involving Karl, Yan (who was somehow still not dead despite having definitely been killed before) and some other guy, presumably the high priest. There were also a bunch of mutants. We paused briefly to plan our attack and for Gildiril to magic up our weapons.

The high priest proved rather unpleasant to attack, covering Mormacar in bees when he tried it, so we focused ranged attacks on Yan while the melee fighters took out the various mutants. We’d made significant progress when two more vampires showed up. They weren’t Sophia’s friends - in fact they were from two different vampire teams. Making the fight into a sort of bizarre five-way with us, three different vampires, and the plague cultists.

By the end, the high priest was dead, Yan had done his turning into a monster thing again and left through a hole in the wall, and we were left negotiating terms with the three vampires regarding Karl. There was some kind of truce between the vampires preventing them attacking each other, but none of them were comfortable leaving Karl with any of the others. Finally it was agreed by one of the new arrivals that Karl would stay with us, providing one of the party acted as the vampire’s agent, and that Sophia left. Burlok, who was interested in vampirism but had been rejected by the sexy lesbian vampire clan for reasons, volunteered.

All three vampires departed (much to Frida’s disappointment) and we were left with Karl.

What next?

And that's where we left things, with most of the party infected with multiple diseases, and Frida...well, that's between me and the GM.  However you're supposed to play this campaign, I'm pretty sure this wasn't it.  But we had a bloody good laugh.

Diversity Hires, part 12: Vampire Visit

We last saw the team dealing with a slight cultist problem. Despite the fact they had a plague bearer with them, we were victorious.

Gildiril and Frida missed the next encounter with the vampires, due to having a quick nap, but the rest of the team encountered the vampires again and put in a good word for Frida.

We needed to get to Wolfenburg, and with no river or carriage available we had to walk. The journey was proving fairly uneventful until a snotling carrying a rattly stick and a kettle jumped out at us.

The initial snotling proved easily flattenable, but his one hundred friends took a little more effort. Gildiril let loose with his magic, giving himself a nosebleed and causing unsettling cold drafts with the magical fallout as he set fire to multiple snotlings. Burlok squashed many of them with his pick while Armando skewered them on his sword. Frida largely missed with her flail, despite the target rich environment, but did annihilate them when she actually made contact.

Then one of the snotlings actually survived a hit from Mormacar, and while the others bowed down to worship him, he climbed up Mormacar and prepared to do obscene things to his face. Mormacar responded by biting the snotling's penis off.

(At this point there was a brief OC discussion about whether Mormacar could use his Mighty Blow ability on this particular attack, with the final conclusion being that Mighty Blowjob was sufficiently funny to be allowed. I swear we are all adults.)

At last the final snotling was splattered into mush, and we continued on our way, stopping off briefly for a wash in a river. Unfortunately, these lands were heavily tainted by the chaos war and the river water gave several of us green pox. Not that any of us know that yet.

We made it to Wolfenburg and headed straight for the pub as usual. We were in search of somewhere described as a 'plague temple' and the Hahn house a few miles out of town seemed like the best place to look for it. Once again the vampires were present, and Lady Sophia Margrave joined us in the pub. She mentioned something about pet humans, and one of us asked her if she'd ever have a pet halfling. She had not. Frida asked her if she'd like one.
 
Having decided that we would be visiting the Hahn house at night, the better to catch evil cultists doing their evil cult stuff, Frida invited Sophia to join us. Rather embarrassed, she explained that she would have to ask her mum.

We set out after some food, assuming that Sophia would have no trouble catching us up. An hour or so of walking (perhaps a little more at dwarf speed) brought us to the Hahn house. It was not a pretty sight. Overgrown, with clouds of flies buzzing around, but clearly recently in use given the wheel ruts leading towards the wrecked gates. The whole building seemed to be coated in some kind of oil, unpleasant gases emerged from the ground, and a feeling of general malaise seemed to hang over the whole estate.

Sophia, who'd caught up with us by this point, thought it was great.

We ignored the suspicious maze and dread gazebo and headed straight for the manor itself. We entered through the double doors, ornamented with the symbol of Handrich, god of commerce, and found ourselves in a building covered in mould and hornets. Some muddy tracks lead us into the main hall.

From there we explored the house. In the dining room was a ghost, rather unhelpfully telling us to 'kill the killer' without offering any guidance on who that might actually be. Fortunately the ghost in the wine cellar proved a little more forthcoming, and told us about his sons, one of whom had been a great disappointment. He also had a giant beetle on his back, which we disposed of in our usual style.

Upstairs we found a room with a small girl crying, a disturbed looking adventurer, a mutilated dead woman, and a horrifying mass of inchoate flesh that appeared to be made of two people fused together into a tentacled monstrosity covered in flies.

We attacked the flesh monster, which promptly responded by paralysing Frida (and incidentally giving her a case of nurglish rot). Mormacar picked her up and took her out of the fight, delivering her into the waiting arms of Sophia, while the others flattened the monster.

We'd had enough of the manor. There was no sign of any plague temple here, just a lot of goo and spoiled wine. We decide to investigate outside instead.

Will the team discover the plague temple in the hedge maze or the gazebo? How long will it take for everyone's diseases to manifest? Has Frida succumbed to Sophia's vampiric embrace? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 11: River Cruise

We last saw the team boarding a river boat in the hope of making it to Ruhrhoff before the vampires.

The journey was for the most part uneventful. We passed a town consisting mostly of wineries, but inexplicably weren't able to stop. We also saw a chaos troll on the side of the river, but given that it was a mutant with only one leg it seemed unnecessarily cruel to go attacking it, and we left it hopping along. We also saw a tree with several corpses hanging from it, but decided we didn't want to get involved with whatever that was.

We did stop to deal with some mutants who had some bandits tied up and were taking them to make them touch a warpstone. Burlok had ambitions to become an outlaw chief, a profession that naturally required some outlaws to be the chief of. Accordingly we rescued the bandits from the mutants and took them with us on the boat, a process that involved Armando leaping dramatically off the boat, firing his pistols as he went, in a spectacularly display that may even have included successfully shooting someone as well as looking cool.

Eventually we ran out of river and had to continue on foot. We were very glad to find the village of Kietchdorf, which had an inn that served beer, and decided to stop off for a drink. Burlok sent his outlaws to the general store to buy a weapon for them to share. On discovering the village was afflicted by plague, Frida donned her leather doctoring outfit and went out to investigate. Having observed that the landlord and other inn dwellers seemed unaffected by the plague, she recommended to the afflicted that they should stop drinking water and drink beer instead. And also rub themselves with raw onions. Because medicine.

In the inn, we learned about a missing teenager who was wearing a family ring. It appeared he was most likely in Ruhrhoff, and we made a note to look out for him when we got there. We also paid a visit to the well, so Gildiril could check it for magic. It wasn't, but on a hunch we decided to keep watch at night and see if anything happened.

Something did indeed happen. We caught the culprit, who continued to deny having done anything despite the fact we literally saw him pouring something into the well. Frida finally got to use her manacles, but he didn't seem to mind being tortured. Eventually he was persuaded to talk by more ethical means, and we learned that it was indeed a plot by Nurgle cultists to try to convert the villagers to the ruinous powers.

Frida prescribed more beer for everyone and we continued on our way.

The town of Ruhrhoff was something of a disappointment, having been ruined at some point. We made our way to Schoenstrasse and found the house we were looking for. It was similarly a ruin, and we headed straight for the cellar. The cellar was appalling, covered in blood and bits of dried flesh, with an outline showing where the necklace had once been. Frida left immediately, feeling a little unwell. Naturally this was the moment when the cultists showed up.

Will Burlok's outlaws stay with him after having to fight Nurgle cultists? Will the team catch up with the vampires, the cult, or whoever has kidnapped/stolen who/what at this point? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 10: Library Truce

We left our heroes fighting a particularly disgusting wizard...

Gildiril continued to stare blankly into space. Burlok concentrated on taking out Yan's henchmen. Armando fired at the vampire, but did nothing useful. Frida threw rocks ineffectually. And then Mormacar rejoined us, and things got weird...

Yan, apparently not wanting to fight a vampire any more than we did, vanished from sight. Mormacar also vanished, although in a more prosaic manner, by being blasted out of the window in a manner that would definitely have killed him had he not had the fortune to land in a tree. Yan reappeared, tripping over the edge of the curtain that he'd teleported behind, where Burlok gave him a good thumping and Frida deployed an unusually vigorous rock, leaving him on the point of death, at which point he decided to leave properly.

The vampire turned out to be slightly more reasonable about things than Yan. With the team of dodgy witch hunters approaching, a temporary truce was called. With the special books room now open (without party intervention, as for some reason we really wanted plausible deniability), she began searching for the book, along with Burlok, although his inability to read made him less than useful. Frida followed them in and found it immediately, unfortunately lacking the skills to keep this in any way a secret.

The team left, via the window. The vampire carried Frida to help break her fall. Gildiril had his happy reverie broken, and Mormacar was retrieved from the tree, now with a white streak in his hair, which Frida immediately offered to dye the colour of his choice.

We wanted to go somewhere out of the way to examine the book without interruption from witch hunters. The book shop cellar that we'd previously visited seemed like a good choice, but the moment sewers were mentioned the vampire refused, and given that she was carrying both Frida and the book it didn't seem like a good time to argue. We went to the pub instead, with Frida restyling the vampire's hair along the way.

After a few beers, we read the book. We learned that the house where we should look for the necklace was on Shoenstrasse in Ruhrhoff. We also learned that the necklace apparently didn't do what it was supposed to do, being prone to turning the subject into an enraged murder beast instead of making them love you - or at least, that's what happened when Ansel had tried it.

We made some notes to ensure we didn't forget anything important, and the vampire left with the original, much to the disappointment of Frida who'd grown quite attached in the brief time they'd spent together.

The fastest way to get to Ruhrhoff was by boat, and Frida reckoned that if vampires couldn't cross running water they might not do too well with boats, so we could potentially get a head start. We booked passage on a boat, and did some shopping in Altdorf while we still had the chance. Some of the group bought some nicer clothes. Burlok and Mormacar hired an entertainer to keep them occupied during the voyage. Frida bought a disguise kit, four pigeons and some pink hair dye.

Can the party survive all being on the same boat for so long? Will they make it to Ruhrhoff before the vampires? How fashionable will Mormacar look with a pink streak in his hair? Has Frida found love in dubious vampiric form? Find out in next week's thrilling episode of Diversity Hires!

Diversity Hires, part 9: Actors and Armpits

While hanging around Altdorf, a city increasing descending into riots as food supplies decreased, we began investigating the location of the mysterious Ansel. All of us except Mormacar who had been misplaced in a brothel somewhere, that is.

Burlok, who had recently learned to read thief sign, was able to identify a local butcher as a fence. He queued up along with Frida to buy some sausages and also question him. In addition to some information, we also got some excellent sausages made of named meat. The butcher told us they would go well with some good bread and beer. Having recently been in a pub where the bread and beer were excellent but the sausages were terrible, we were very pleased with the purchase.

More importantly, for those slightly less motivated by sausages than Frida, we had also obtained some information on Ansel - or at least, someone meeting his description. A thin man with a scar on his forehead had apparently been seen around the Temple of Sigmar, and while his name was Axel rather than Ansel, we decided it was worth a look. Frida also noticed that the description could also fit the vigilante known as The Vengeance, a mysterious masked figure known for taking out mutants and witches with a 100% accuracy rate, in contrast to the rather high false positives of the actual witch hunters, who was also known to hammer a tin badge in the shape of the twin comets of Sigmar into his victims' foreheads.

We'd encountered a tin badge seller earlier in the pub, but despite buying a cake and a symbol of Shallya from him, Frida hadn't managed to get him to talk.

We headed for the temple to look for Axel. Somehow we felt the rose garden would be the best place to look for him, but what we actually found there was an actor. He was initially inclined to dismiss us as unworthy poor people, but since interaction began with Frida turning on her charm and complimenting his shoes, he rapidly became more friendly.

Being unpleasant to poor people turned out to be his favourite hobby. We asked why he was doing it here rather than in the poor quarter where targets were easier to find, but he didn't like visiting that part of town. We suggested he could stand on the wall at the edge of the quarter and throw things at the poor, like coins. He wasn't entirely sold on that idea until Armando suggested loading the coins into a blunderbuss. There followed an extensive discussion on the practicalities and uses of the coin blunderbuss and the best position for a poor person to stand relative to it when it was fired.

Eventually discussion of tormenting the poor wound down, and we were invited to attend the theatre the following night, before heading off in search of Axel in the library.

Axel was not in the library, but his boss was, and was rather annoyed about him being missing. We decided to visit his house to check up on him.

Axel was not in a good condition when we found him, and was able to live just long enough to explain that he had previously been known as Ansel. He had some mutations - feathery armpit gills that allowed him to sniff out other mutants. What was it with mutated armpits?

More useful were his journals. We learned the strange and disturbing story of a man whose obsession with an uninterested woman had lead to stalking and dark magic, ultimately sending him in search of a magical necklace that would cause the one who wore it to love the person who put it on them. Ansel/Axel had eventually got over himself after some unspecified incident, but now somebody wanted the necklace to get control of Karl the scion/demon child.

Chapter 10, the one that would tell us how to actually find the necklace, was missing, but a clue suggested we could find it in a holy book in the temple library. Getting into the library again proved more of a challenge, as it was after closing time and everyone had gone to the pub.
Not that we needed much persuasion to go to the pub.

The head of the library had no intention of leaving his theosophical pub club to open up the library for them, and neither Gildiril's attempt to bribe him with brandy nor Frida's attempts to persuade him to loan them the key proved convincing.

We did eventually get the key off him, along with a beer mat with his signature, and headed for the library. Going through the catalogue we learned there were three copies of the book we wanted in the library. Naturally the one we wanted was in a separate room for special books, which had a separate lock that none of us knew how to open.

We decided to spend the rest of the night in the library, so that we'd be there ready when either the librarian got back with the key or a bunch of evil cultists showed up for a fight. Burlok, despite being a dwarf in plate armour, managed to hide himself completely convincingly by pretending to be a statue. Everybody else hid very badly.

As expected, the evil cult showed up next. There was an evil goth pigeon outside the window (which Frida totally failed to notice despite being literally hiding in the window), a wizard who appeared to be Yan again, and a couple of minions. Fortunately Gildiril's enhanced elven hearing meant we had warning of their arrival and he was able to magic up a couple of weapons before they arrived. Not that that helped much. Burlok couldn't get much of a swing up on his pick, Frida failed to hit anything with her tiny rocks, Armando missed with his pistols and then failed at parkour to get to the balcony where Yan stood, and Gildiril was hit by Yan's Golden Torrent spell, which was as awful as it sounded and required a jar of urine to cast. It wasn't long before Yan had also flooded the room with an unpleasant green smog (this time using the tears of a diseased child) and we were all struggling to achieve anything at all.

It was at this point that a vampire popped up behind Yan, deploying daggers from drop sheathes into each hand...

Will the team survive the cavalcade of bodily fluid based magic? Will Mormacar turn up in time to make inappropriate jokes? Will we all end up as mutant vampires? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

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.

Diversity Hires, part 7: Roderick's Return

We decided it wasn't in anyone's best interest to know what happened to Kazgar, sticking to saying that he was gone. Which was technically accurate.

The crusade came to a temporary halt on the plains outside Altdorf, and we had a surprise visit from a gold wizard. He was very shiny. Burlok attempted to persuade him, with the full force of a dwarven miner's personality, to turn his beard gold. He declined. Frida reckoned that with some urine and camomile she could probably achieve something pretty similar. Burlok was not sold on that idea.

After some discussion and introductions, we got talking to one of the random team of guards who accompanied the wizard: an Estalian diestro by the name of Armando. There was quite a lot more to his name, but nobody could remember it.

Despite the fact that we were at this point supposed to be in custody after the recent mutant deaths, we convinced the higher ups that we should be sent to the city to arrange food to be sent out to the crusade. At last, we would be able to meet up with Roderick again. We made our way to the city gates, accompanied by Armando who was presumably following us mostly out of curiosity at this point.

We found Roderick in a pub, where we were able to get excellent beer and bread and very bad sausages. Mormacar enjoyed the spectacle of scantily clad men wrestling, while Frida complained that this was the first time she'd been disappointed by a sausage. Roderick himself was upstairs in a private area, guarded by a dwarf. After being bribed to let us in, the dwarf congratulated Burlok on being accompanied by 'so much vag'. We're not exactly sure who he was referring to.

We told Roderick of our adventures killing mutants and vampires, and convinced him that a general strip search for mutations of all important people on the crusade (important here defined as 'people with names') would be a good idea. After arranging for food deliveries and a brief shopping trip so Burlok could get the missing dwarf size pieces for his plate armour, we headed back to the camp.
The strip searching was a difficult sell, even with Mormacar entirely willing to undress himself, but we were distracted when we learned that Carl had gone missing. He was being taken away inside a coffin on a wagon, driven by a sorcerer and four hammer men.

The murder elves mounted their horses and rode to get ahead of the wagon. Frida, Burlok and Armando climbed onto Kazgar's wagon, and then remembered that Kazgar had been the only one who knew how to drive.

The sorcerer proved rather tricky to deal with, being apparently immune to conventional weapons, but Gildiril's magic missiles did work, and he began enchanting other people's weapons. Mormacar took a hit from some kind of magic rifle that left him close to death, but fortunately the sorcerer abandoned it after one shot and stunned Gildiril instead.

The hammer men proved significantly more vulnerable to Frida's tiny rocks, and shooting one of the horses in the leg effectively stopped the wagon. So we leave our party here, around a stationary wagon with Karl the scion of Sigmar/totally a demon stuck in a coffin, with a sorcerer to fight and a horde of cultists (probably) emerging from the gates of Altdorf. Will they survive long enough to actually make it to their next careers? Find out next time on Slightly Less Diversity Hires Now There's A Human.

Diversity Hires, part 6: Murder Elves

Thanks to illness I got a bit behind on the write-ups. When we last saw our heroes they were in a fortified inn fighting off a hoard of beast men, having temporarily teamed up with a group of mutants. As I was really too ill to have been playing, the following session can be briefly summed up as 'we won'.  We pick up again a week later...

The team continued on their way, and finally caught up with the crusade. They spent some time getting to know people, got briefly mixed up in an attack by elves, had a few drinks, and found a vampire. For once, Frida's ineffective rock flinging actually proved effective, and the vampire was swiftly dispatched.

One of the important crusade people, Yan, asked the team to investigate some potential chaos evil stuff in the camp. Following a particularly dodgy type called Krieger, they found that he spent his nights visiting a camp follower rather than engaging in anything more nefarious. However, a trip to the nearby woods led to them finding a bunch of letters made of flies, and a sheep with baby hands, which resulted in a certain amount of insanity all round.

Returning to camp, they were arrested by Yan and his men for being evil chaos cultists. This seemed a bit unnecessary and implausible, and much arguing resulted. Krieger's men were also being arrested, in the sense that people who have been shot tend to have their movements arrested. Although given that they were all looking horribly diseased, this seemed like a reasonable approach.
Presumably it was the same disease that had afflicted a team of witch hunters who'd shown up earlier and then all died.

Frida noticed something going on in their tent. A woman who'd previously befriended them and ridden on their wagon for a while had thrown a flea covered dead rat into the tent and then ran away. Gildiril sent a magic missile after her, resulting in Yan yelling about him being a witch. Mormacar shot her, then made chase and dragged her back in one of his nets. She had clearly been afflicted with disease as well as having been shot with arrows and magic.

It was around this point that Mormacar and Gildiril became known as the 'murder elves'.

The team decided not to get involved in the fight any further, and all the diseased corpses were incinerated along with the infected tent. There was still a lead to follow up on though - some suspicious conversation at the butcher.

The butcher was in conversation with a guard when they arrived, and was thoroughly evasive. Frida had been hoping to try out her torture skills, but ultimately a fight broke out and the butcher was beaten and flailed to death. It turned out that he was a mutant with a mouth in his armpit, which spewed infected goo across Frida and Kazgar. Frida had also hoped to try out her skills on the guard, but it became apparent that a good wash was more important at this point.

The two of them stripped off and started washing, Frida was disturbed to notice Kazgar first start to drip some kind of corrosive substance and then catch fire. She scrubbed harder, managing to clear the goop before getting any kind of infection. Kazgar suddenly disappeared.

And thus was born the dark legend of Kazgar, the dwarf who would appear suddenly, wreathed in burning acid, wreaking death and destruction before disappearing as fast as he had arrived, leaving a trail of fire and demons in his wake.

Diversity Hires, part 5: A Night at the Inn

After a brief delay while Kazgar had some holsters made for his new pistols and attempted to convince someone to give him some powder and shot, we set out again. Our party had now expanded to include Gretchen, a remarkably sturdy peasant, whose job was to carry our stuff.

We followed the trail of poo and corpses left behind by the crusade, and it was late afternoon when we arrived at the inn. Unfortunately, there was nothing in the inn, not even beer, thanks to the passing crusade taking everything and everyone with it.

After a thorough search of the building we did discover a seriously injured wood elf who had never seen dwarves before and was somewhat disconcerted by our presence.

We planned a quiet evening in with some beer, but not long afterwards we were joined by another group of travelers, including a priest of Sigmar ranting about how the crusaders were all heretics, his scribe, and a couple of hammer wielding warriors.

Gildiril made conversation with the priest, while the rest of the group went out hunting. After a long, difficult and generally incompetent fight we eventually returned with a deer, carefully dressed to conceal just how much effort killing it had taken. Frida took it into the kitchen, and much to everyone's surprise emerged some time later with a pie, which was declared about as good as it was possible for a meal to be.

Frida was given the option of skipping watch that night, given that between hunting, cooking, looking after the injured elf and making sure everyone's hair was looking fly, she'd been quite busy. But she wanted to take her turn anyway, and it was while she was on watch that a band of mutants showed up, trying to get into the inn.

Frida woke up the rest of the party, and it was strongly suggested to the mutants that if they didn't want a fight that they should leave now and come back in the morning when we'd all left. They were unconvinced, however, and hostilities opened.

Not long after that, however, hostilities were temporarily ceased when a group of beast men showed up outside. The doors were closed, and we teamed up with the mutants to fend them off. Gildiril showed off that he'd actually managed to learn some spells by illuminating things and throwing magic darts. Mormacar was as brilliant and flamboyant as usual. Kazgar and Burlok overcame their natural dwarven reluctance to use ranged weapons. And Frida ineffectually threw rocks around before giving up on this combat business and going to heal some of the injured mutants in case they needed them again later.

Diversity Hires, part 4: Vampire Hunters

With Frida keen to examine the baker's body and Burlok keen to do some digging, the team got permission from both the widow and local law enforcement and got to work. It wasn't particularly enlightening. However, while the body was being examined, a local noble showed up, in urgent need of a party of four to six adventurers to help 'rescue' his brother from an evil cult.

Sure, why not? The cult were apparently meeting in a mausoleum, and since the one theory we had come up with for the missing animals that didn't involve stacking was that they had been eaten by a vampire, this seemed like a reasonable place to look.

We were joined by a couple of locals as well as the noble - the road warden who'd first met us, and one of the noble's blaublut friends. All were very relieved when the dwarves were willing to go first. As usual, Mormacar offered to be in the rear.

We descended into the mausoleum, discussing vampires, which didn't seem to reassure our companions at all. Frida assured them that if they really thought there were vampires down there, she wouldn't be there. While checking the desiccated corpses that lined the corridor for embedded wooden stakes.

Inside the mausoleum we found a complete dearth of cultists, but did find the noble's older brother lying on a stone table, a ceiling full of bats, and a mysterious figure lurking behind the table. On engaging him in conversation he turned out to be quite a personable vampire, of the family on the purple coat of arms we'd found earlier. We also found the remains of a rat, a chicken, a goat and a dog, which confirmed our earlier suspicions.

We had a remarkably pleasant chat with the vampire, who really seemed quite reasonable compared to the noble who'd fed his older brother to a vampire, but ultimately we were forced to get rid of him. He was pretty tough and not easy to damage, but once Mormacar had thrown a net at him he was at least reasonably easy to hit. The corpses in the corridor unsurprisingly animated and attacked, but the road warden and blaublut held them back. The bats on the ceiling coalesced into a batman, but the road warden and Frida swiftly dispatched him.

After some hairy moments (Mormacar nearly died), the zombies were dealt with and the vampire was finally taken down. Well, maybe. He turned into a cloud of bats. Gildiril, for reasons that weren't entirely clear, threw brandy into the batnado. The batnado attacked, adding blood to the swirl of brandy and bats. Frida found this sufficiently terrifying that she left immediately.

Eventually everyone else emerged, not saying much about whether the vampire had actually been defeated or not, and the group headed back to the village. The noble, whose father had just died, making him the new ruler of the village, was very pleased to have his brother out of the way and the vampire (apparently) dealt with. He promised to get a new chicken for Gertrude, and granted everyone titles. More importantly, he also provided gold. Frida, concerned that there might still be a vampire in the mausoleum, suggested that the noble keep a close eye on his villagers.

Frida healed everyone's wounds except for Mormacar (she found his wounds just a bit more difficult than everyone else's for some reason) who was forced to resort to poultices and drafts. Everyone ate a lot of garlic, and we set out for the next leg of our journey. One which we were assured would end in an inn.

Diversity Hires, part 3: Chicken or Death

With everyone now properly dressed and equipped we set out towards Altdorf to follow the army of cultists. The journey was pleasant and uneventful right up until we approached the village of Pfeifeldorf and were stopped by a road warden. Much to his confusion we conversed relatively civilly with him, given that he was accusing us of being criminals. He had a drawing that he claimed was a picture of Mormacar. While it was definitely a picture of an elf, Mormacar felt it didn't in any way do him justice, and Frida agreed that the hair didn't look nearly good enough.

We asked him for his credentials, and he revealed a signet ring that Frida identified as belonging to the Speier family. ("Who would have thought that skill would come in useful?") His rather generic pictures of another elf, two dwarves and a halfling didn't convince us that anything was on the up and up here, and we weren't particularly keen on the idea of being arrested, but agreed to accompany him to the village once we learned it had a pub.

We were assured that the whole matter could be easily cleared up if we dealt with a small village matter of a missing chicken. He reckoned it had been eaten by the passing crusade, but its owner, Gertrude, insisted that it hadn't.

Gertrude, a very tall woman, paused her current activity of cleaning graffiti off her house and showed them the hen coop, where they found signs of forced entry and some purple fibres. Gertrude's neighbour, an insane old man whose farm had been destroyed by the crusade, was found using a purple handkerchief, which on closer inspection had been torn from a larger piece of cloth like a cloak or tabard. It even had some heraldry on it, which Frida was unable to identify.

Missing animals seemed to be an issue in Pfeifeldorf, with a young boy missing a rat and someone else missing a goat.

We paid a visit to the town scribe, a person of proper height (dwarf edition). Alas, without a name he was unable to determine much about the heraldry on the purple fabric. We promptly went to the pub.

Unsurprisingly, the landlord was missing a dog. (Was someone stealing animals to stack them into a nice statue?) We also encountered the bailiff and a female friend, and engaged in a nice game of cards that Mormacar won. The bailiff was drinking water, something perceived as an act of great bravery by all present.

Finally, we paid a visit to the baker's wife, along with a bottle of brandy as a gift so she would be allowed to accept visitors, and Frida turning on her best halfling charm. The baker had recently committed suicide, which we all found highly suspicious, and said suspicions looked confirmed when Gildiril noticed that the splinters on the beam from which he supposedly hanged himself were pointing the wrong way, as if he'd been hoisted up there by someone else.

After assuring Frau Schimdt that she was in no way responsible for her husband's death, we learned that Schimdt the baker had been doing some research into heraldry himself, shortly before his death, and managed to get a name to go with the purple crest. Schmidt had also joined the crusade very briefly, but she had not wanted to go with them.

We left the house. Clearly we needed to visit the library again to learn more about the name and the crest. It would also be worth digging up Schmidt to see if we could work out how he died. (Burlok was very excited at the prospect of digging.) And now we had four missing animals on the list and still no idea of what that was all about.

Still, at least there was a pub.

Diversity Hires, part 2: The Inevitable Sewers

With the mutant problem dealt with, the team turned to more mercenary matters. Gildiril acquired a certain amount of clothing, narrowly avoiding a lice infestation in the process. Frida was excited to find a set of manacles.

They returned to town without significant incident, and headed for a pub where they hoped to follow up a lead. The person they were looking for wasn't there, owing to being a bit dead, but they did manage to track down the people responsible.

There was also a visit to a leather crafter, who thought he was about to be able to retire until the dwarves found out how much gloves actually cost and cancelled the order.

They needed to pay a visit to a bakery. Frida said you could always trust a halfling to find a bakery, and sure enough was able to lead them straight to it, despite it having been abandoned long ago.

Down a hole at the back of the bakery they found themselves in an underground tunnel system. Things encountered included a team of surprisingly friendly sewer mutants, an encounter which did not actually result in significant violence. They also ran into a deranged cultist in a cage, who they decided it was best to leave in the cave.

Finally they encountered a pool containing a hideous tentacled horse thingy, a sight so horrific that some of the team were completely unable to act in the face of it. Not that Frida being unable to throw pebbles vaguely near it was going to make much of a difference. A bit of help from the sewer mutants, on the other hand...

Back on the surface it was time for a shopping trip so everyone could change career, and more importantly, dress like people who hadn't just been down a sewer full of mutants and tentacles.

Diversity Hires, part 1: Boat Trip

We played the Warhammer FRP adventure, The Thousand Thrones.  Well, kind of.

The campaign makes certain assumptions about the party, not least of which is that there's at least one human player character.  This was not the case.  In fact, the reason I played a halfling is that I wasn't there for the first session and it became very rapidly apparent they needed someone in the party who had a personality and could do stuff like talking to people.

The GM gave us a lot more XP than the campaign says.  This did not in any way result in our characters becoming overpowered.  He also skipped some bits that he didn't think were interesting, plus there were times we made party decisions that the book had not accounted for.

And we only actually played as far as the end of chapter six, for, um, reasons.

Anyway, spoilers ahead for The Thousand Thrones.

The party:
Kazgar - a dwarven mercenary. Unusually slender for a dwarf, occasionally mistaken for a halfling. Has tattooed letters on his knuckles, but being illiterate, doesn't know what they say. Literate members of the party feel no need to enlighten him.
Burlok - a dwarven miner. One of the least tough dwarves ever born, despite being more conventionally built than Kazgar.
Mormacar - an elven mercenary. Gay and fabulous, absolutely lethal with a longbow.
Gildiril - an elven scribe. Gets very excited about books.
Frida - a halfling barber-surgeon. Roughly spherical. On a mission to remove everybody's eyebrows, while keeping their hair looking fly.

The team work for a witch hunter by the name of Roderick. Recently there has been a bit of a skill drain in the local area due to a lot of peasant types heading off on a crusade with a child who they seem to think is Sigmar reborn but who is quite clearly a manipulative demon in disguise. As such, a lot of basic jobs like policing are not getting done.

Enter the team.

So far the more martial team members have been on an investigation mission (which completely coincidentally led them through several pubs and an opium den) while the barber and the scribe, who both have the kind of personalities that allow them to interact successfully with other people and the ability to write down anything they hear have been off attending parties on the witch hunter's behalf.

However, the martial team needed to investigate a possible cult in an old fortress in the swamp, and having someone capable of having a conversation with them seemed like a good idea (not to mention the benefits of an extra longbow and the suspicion that Frida's talents might extend beyond conversation and hairdressing.)

Step 1 was to recruit a guide through the swamp, given that nobody had any idea how to survive outdoors. Jekel was friendly and incredibly cheerful, despite (or perhaps because of) having a large chunk of his brain missing. Gildiril purchased one of his pamphlets on the many wonderful and exciting things to be found in the swamp, and everyone went to buy rations. Gildiril bought a selection of alcohol for the journey. Frida brought her own personal barrel of beer on top of that.

They set out through the swamp in two boats. The two elves got in the front boat with Jekel, while the dwarves and halfling (or 'team normal height', as they styled themselves) brought up the rear. Jekel regaled them cheerfully with tales of the many horrifying monsters they could expect to be eaten by in the swamp. They stopped off briefly at some interesting flowers surrounded by bones. Frida was initially going to collect some of their nectar herself (she reckoned it would be useful for medicine) but realising that she was likely to succumb to their effects due to being a fragile halfling asked for someone else to do it. Burlok volunteered, and promptly fell asleep after collecting the nectar. He was dumped back into the boat and the journey continued.

Stopping off at a small island to spend the night, the party were lucky enough to get a good night's sleep thanks to Jekel remembering how to build a proper shelter out of boats and a tarp. Frida spent her watch attempting to shave Gildiril's eyebrows, but unfortunately woke him up and had to stop. She also spotted a large white worm curled up between Burlok and Kazgar for warmth, but having woken up Burlok to deal with it, didn't bother staying awake any longer.

In the morning, Gildiril went to investigate the rotting corpse at the other end of the island, and narrowly avoided being horribly diseased as he retrieved the corpse's equipment.

The second night passed less comfortably, as Jekel had forgotten how to build shelters. Fortunately there were no interruptions, and the next morning they continued to the fortress to investigate the cult.

Three normal looking people were walking past. Attempts to have a conversation with them were hampered when the elves decided to open said conversation with arrows, culminating in Mormacar shooting one man's arm right off. Attempts at interrogation went poorly. Whether they were actually involved in the cult could not be established. Frida patched up the two men who weren't dying from sudden loss of limbs.

They paid a brief visit to the men's fishing boat, which proved similarly unenlightening, then headed back to the fortress.

Inside the fortress they saw a man covered in hair with big crab claws for hands. Aha. Now they were on safer ground. These were definitely mutants and could therefore be killed.

Or at least, they could be killed if you were Mormacar, Gildiril or Kazgar. Frida completely failed to hit anything with her sling, and even Burlok was finding it remarkably difficult to hit anything. On the other hand, the mutants completely failed to damage Frida, while making a substantial hole in Gildiril. Frida patched him up, resisting the urge to remove his eyebrows in the process.