[WFRP] The Bloody Crown XIII

[TheSummoner]

Sieghard

"With luck, the girl is just going about her own business and will come home in time," Sieghard said. He left unstated the possibility that Mala had come across her.

"Wasn't expecting she'd have that much of a lead on us... Won't be easy to pick up her trail again. How many wolves do you figure she had with her?"

[LCP]

He spotted Ingwald arguing with Silviu and went to intervene. "It's fine," Sieghard said. "You make your living fishing the mere, right?" he turned to Ingwald "What else is the man going to pay in?" If need be, they could sell the crayfish or put them in a stew.

Ingwald twisted his mouth sideways in a dubious expression. "If you say so, sir," he said, accepting the cages of clicking crustaceans with some distaste.

Once Silviu had traipsed off, he said in a lower voice: "Still got a few stragglers trickling in today, but I don't think we've collected as much here as we were hoping. Hanna better've had better luck in Painford."

Elsa looked skeptical. "Even a lean animal has a lot of flesh. Heart and lungs and intestines and so on. I doubt wolves would turn down an easy prey of any size, unless they were directed by some kind of higher purpose." She turned to Tatiana. "Tattie. This is your field of expertise."

Tattie hesitated, not entirely sure what she was being asked. "I mean..." she said, "she could have... brought it inside? That's what we used to do..."

Urgrim scratched his beard, looking back in the direction from which Sieghard had walked over. "Herr Silviu," he called, with a wave to the marsh man. "We couldn't have a few more minutes of your time, could we?"

"Of course, master dwarf!" said Silviu. "What is it you wanted?"

He listened to Urgrim's questions with a sober expression. "Well... I wouldn't speak ill of my friend Klara. She might be drinking... a little more than she used to when Gergo was still around. But she's a good woman. She wouldn't go spinning stories." Urgrim could tell he wasn't going to get an objective assessment out of Silviu. "Usually Bekka helps her keep things more in order. I'm going to have a bit more of a look around for her now the tax business is done with. I've got nothing back home that can't wait a few days more."

On the subject of Rebeka, he was a little less guarded. "Her mother's right, she's a roving sort. Got to be, to live that far out in the Mere. Knows how to handle a boat, too, so she could have gone a fair way." He sucked on the cavity of one of his missing teeth and fiddled with one of the charms in his beard. "This business of bringing the man back to Klara's hut, though, that don't seem like her. I s'pose Klara could have mistaken someone else's voice if she was... sleepy... but there's precious few other folk that come out that way."

[-Sentinel-]

"I mean..." she said, "she could have... brought it inside? That's what we used to do..."

Not the answer Elsa was asking for, but she was now realizing the dwarf may have made inferences based on the mere sight of a goat.

"Urgrim," said Elsa. "Is there any reason to believe the goat was outside when the wolves came?"

She found the theories about the daughter a bit far-fetched, but did not voice her doubts.

[LeSwordfish]

"Yes we asked her about her animal husbandry," Ludo deadpanned. "Took a day off tracking the necromancer to track the goat."

[Thragka]

Urgrim tried to control the sudden careening of his face, but the expression crashed at smug before he could safely get it to straight. "Didn't think too much about it, myself," he said, raising a hand in mock penetance. "Took it at face value that we were knocking Frau Klara up, though."

Spoiler: OOC

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Making Urgrim earn that Animal Care advance, eh Sentinel?

[-Sentinel-]

"Did you pick up Mala's trail, at least?" asked Elsa.

They could not wait too long. A trail would grow cold quickly, even without rain or wind. Or Mala and her wolves would reach stony ground, water or another area where they could easily lose their pursuers.

[Thragka]

Urgrim shook his head. "No, didn't have much of a chance once we were into the muck. Best chance is maybe trying to lay a trap, like I said. But now I'm thinking, we should ask around that vol- area, see if anyone else had any late night visitors asking t'come in."

[LeSwordfish]

"I don't know," Ludo said, looking a little miserable. "Perhaps we could try to pick up some sign on the edges of the Teeth. Or keep asking the people in the swamp. She might have ended up doing with one of them whatever she wanted with Klara."

[RossN]

Jarla

Jarla, had been silent while thinking of something.

"That daemon that caused you so much trouble a while back. Could Mala be in contact with it?"

[-Sentinel-]

Elsa gave it some thought. "Tshula was after the Book of Nagash... It's possible she found a new patsy, yes. Then again, there's no evidence that she's resurfaced, so let's just keep an open mind and avoid chasing false leads."


OOC

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Is Hanna with us? She's our resident expert on Being Possessed By Tshula.

[LeSwordfish]

"We should probably send a letter to Sforza to say we haven't found her and we think she's headed into the Teeth."

[TheSummoner]

Sieghard

"I'm sure he'd take it seriously too," Sieghard replied, rolling his eyes. "Just like he did with Klammenberg. I won't stop you, but I wouldn't get my hopes up."

"We're not even sure she's headed into the Teeth," he said after a pause. "Seems like the only thing to do from here is try to pick up the trail. Ask around and see what the locals have heard. That sort of thing."

[LeSwordfish]

"We can be down to the south point of the teeth in a day," Ludo said. "I'll keep track of things here, and get a messenger off to Sforza - he didn't take us seriously about Klammenberg, but a lot has happened since then. You head down and try and pick up their trail, or some sign of where they headed into the Teeth. If we can't find her again, Elsa should go back to Savonne - nobody else can look after the Book in the same way. If Mala wants anything, it's that - but if we're lucky she's just trying to leave the reaches for good."

[-Sentinel-]

"It's been several weeks since we killed her god. If she just wanted to leave the Reaches, she would have done so already," said Elsa.

She had no intent to return to Savonne. Mala's current motivations were a mystery, but even if she wanted the Book, it was unlikely that she would be able to get anywhere near it.

It's so frustrating just to think how close we were to killing her the last time we saw her...

[LeSwordfish]

"She won't get far just going south into the desert."

[-Sentinel-]

Elsa was not sure what Ludo was getting at. "Well, it's clear to me that Mala's not planning to leave the Prince's lands. What drives her? Revenge? Power? Survival? Whatever the case, she has nothing left to lose, and that makes her exceedingly dangerous and unpredictable."

She cast a long look at the faraway peaks of the Giant's Teeth. "Do you think it's possible she may strike an alliance with the greenskins? The goblins are bound to respect someone who leads a pack of wolves... and someone who has ruled over cannibals and ghouls is likely not too discriminating about the company she keeps."

[LCP]

Aubentag, 3rd Vorhexen

Urgrim, Sieghard, Elsa & Jarla

They set off later on Wellentag, heading west along the edge of the Mere. It wasn’t far from Ravenskird into the foothills, where the waters of the marsh and the rocky outcrops of the Giant’s Teeth met like interlaced fingers. Stunted trees grew down in the sheltered hollows next to the water, but up on the exposed shoulder of the hills, they thinned out to hardy shrubs and bushes.

Few people made their homes out this way, and those that did were intensely wary of strangers. The pens for their goats and geese were fenced with dead thorn thickets, though stone was plentiful on the slopes above them. Jarla wondered who would try to rob people who had so little, but a bleached old scarecrow outside one of the homesteads answered her question for her. Its head was a yellowed skull, so small that at first she thought it might have belonged to a child - but a second glance showed that its huge nasal cavity and jagged snaggle-teeth were certainly not human. Urgrim knew exactly what it was - he’d seen enough goblin skulls to know one when he saw it.

Signs of grobi were not signs of wolves, and Urgrim did not see so much as a paw-print all of Wellentag. Their attempts to find shelter with one of the locals ended with a long-haired old man waving a heavy stick at them while his two chained dogs barked so loudly that they could not even hear what he was shouting, and so they made camp out in the wild. The night was bitterly cold, and Elsa huddled so close to the campfire that Sieghard thought she might catch light.

On Aubentag, they continued south-west, following the edge of the water to the furthest point that the spine of the hills protruded out into the marsh. The wind was in the west, and as they came out of the shelter of the Teeth, they felt its full strength. Down in the Mere, the tops of the reeds bobbed and swayed like ocean waves, fast trains of ripples gusting over the surface of the dark water. Jarla shivered in her fine riding clothes, feeling the icy wind cut through them like a knife.

Noon came and went, and still there were no signs of the wolf pack. Tomas was starting to make noises about turning back when Urgrim found a faint trail of paw-prints in the muddy slough where a creek had once run down off the hills. Following it up to higher ground, they crossed a stony promontory to see a lonely crofter’s hut crouching on the rise ahead of them.

No smoke rose from its crude chimney, though the hour was growing late. A number of crows were perched on its roof, croaking and squabbling - and in the air above it, a greater number were circling, dipping in and out of sight towards the stone-walled sheep pen behind the house...

---

Ludo

On Aubentag, the Thorns’ supply wagon came creaking along the road from Painford, drawn by two of the company’s oxen. A Thorn named Bart was driving, with Gustaf riding guard, and it was loaded down with the taxes they had collected in Painford. Behind them, another three Thorns were bringing up the rear, herding a small, heterogeneous and highly unruly gaggle of livestock.

“Hanna says she hope you got a better haul than we did,” said Gustaf to Ingwald as he stepped down from the board, rubbing his aching behind. “Though it looks like plenty to me. I never had the head for numbers.”

OOC:

Spoiler

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Going with this as I’m figuring it probably doesn’t matter much to Ludo whether this conversation takes place in Painford or Rivermouth - if you had different plans let me know and I’ll edit. Either way, can I get an Evaluate roll for Ludo to work out how much all this stuff is worth?

[Thragka]

Urgrim, Elsa, Jarla, Sieghard – Aubentag 3rd Vorhexen

"No time to waste. Scouts with me to take a look at this place," Urgrim instructed the Thorn quietly. He looked to Sieghard. "I'm sure the rest of you will figure out if we need your help pretty quickly."

"We'll go straight up, just stay low on the approach. We'll take a look in the yard and see if we can get into the hut."

Spoiler: OOC

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I'm taking it from the lay of the land that we're approaching the croft from a lower position, and that there wouldn't be any convenient way to circle around it and approach unseen from a different direction. So I'll make a Stealth roll, but as Urgrim says that's not to try to be sneaky or even particularly cautious on the approach, more just to approach in a stoop and try not to make any unnecessary disturbance. I'm assuming this is rural enough for the Rover bonus to apply.

Stealth 76 - (1d100)[91]

[-Sentinel-]

"If the crows are there," muttered Elsa, "I'd wager stealth is no longer necessary."

[LCP]

Ludo

It took some time for Ludo to sort through the various offerings Gustaf had brought, and add them to Ingwald's inventory. There were a lot of goods to appraise, and the geese kept trying to escape - but all in all, he thought the total value of what they had collected came to around two-hundred and twenty crowns. That would have been more than enough for Al-Makir, if they didn't have the Thorns to pay as well - but they did. To pay the Prince his due and keep the Thorns at the wages they were accustomed to, this came up fifty or sixty crowns short.

---

Urgrim, Sieghard, Elsa & Jarla

There wasn't much cover on the approach to the hut, and the crows flew up in a squawking flock before Urgrim's approach. The gate to the sheep-pen was hanging open, and Urgrim could see what they had been feeding on - the carcasses of at least a dozen sheep, opened up by tooth and claw. The ground inside the pen was like a slaughterhouse floor, only the cold and the sharp wind from the west keeping the flies at bay.

There was a human body among the slaughtered sheep. As torn and gnawed-upon as his herd, the shepherd was a man in his later years, with greying hair and skin like weathered teak. His throat and belly had been opened, and the crows had been working on his eyes. His hands were empty of anything with which he might have tried to defend himself, and behind him, the crude door to his hut hung ajar.

The inside of the hut was dark and cold, the hearth in the middle of its dirt floor long since burnt out. It looked like he had been sitting down to eat - two dirty bowls and a mug of small beer still stood on the simple table. One of the two chairs had been overturned, and there were traces of blood on the floor - but other than that, the place seemed surprisingly tidy compared to the carnage outside.

[RossN]

Jarla

Jarla looked at the sheep. "There is still a lot of good meat there - if only we could transport it back."

There was a tone of forced jollity to her voice and even that died away when they found the dead shepherd. Instinctively she made the sign of Morr, then looked around for any further clues, gingerly examining the two bowls. "A guest?"

[TheSummoner]

Sieghard

"Can't imagine you'd get many guests out this way." Sieghard said. "Maybe he had a wife who escaped. Or a child."

Spoiler

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Can Sieghard tell how recently the man was killed?

[LCP]

The bowls still had traces of some kind of vegetable stew in them. There was no sign that anyone other than the man in the sheep-pen had lived here on a permanent basis - in fact, even his own possessions seemed lacking. The store-room at the back of the house was depleted well beyond the point that might have been expected this far into winter, and apart from the clothes on the corpse, there were precious few clothes to be found - only a few threadbare old shirts and underthings. It seemed odd to think that a man living so far from the nearest town wouldn't have a warm cloak or a spare pair of boots.

By Sieghard's reckoning, the bodies in the pen had been dead at least a day - time enough for the crows to gather and get in through the wounds the wolves had made. The blood of the initial slaughter had had time to dry, but the flesh had not yet begun to rot. That would put them perhaps a few days behind the pack, no more than four at the outside - at least, by Sieghard's reckoning.

[Thragka]

Urgrim, Elsa, Jarla, Sieghard

Urgrim shook his head. "No family lived here. I think Lady Schreiber's right. The man was attacked by a guest. And then robbed, by the look of it. I'd wager if we find more thinkers'¹ tracks with the wolves' they won't be barefoot any more."

---

1. Using this to indicate the four "civilised" sapient races of the setting: dwarfs, halflings, elves and humans. I reckon there would be a standard term in-universe for this grouping, so I'm borrowing from Homo sapiens.

[-Sentinel-]

"I do hope they have some kind of lair, or we'll have a hard time catching them," said Elsa. "How shall we deal with the body?"

[TheSummoner]

Sieghard

"I doubt she does," Sieghard answered. "She was in the Thornwood until recently. The only sort of lair she'll have is whatever she can find among the rocks."

He glanced at the man's body.

"More time spent here lets Mala put more distance between us. And besides, we didn't bring any spades. A pyre might be the best we can do."

[LeSwordfish]

Ludo sighed and looked over the assorted goods. "Well. Get enough for Al'Makir headed north, and let's figure out how to make up the rest. Who came in short? Anyone we reckon is holding back rather than just running out of their own?"

[LCP]

Ludo

Gustaf scratched his head. "Well, Hanna'd know better'n me... I didn't do the counting," he said. "I think we saw most of the folk east of the road passing through Painford. Not sure how many we saw from around the Karst, or down towards the hills. Folk that far out've probably got used to not troubling or being troubled by whoever calls themselves lord."

---

Sieghard, Urgrim, Elsa & Jarla

A leaden silence hung over the Thorns as Sieghard directed them to scavenge what wood they could find to make fuel for a pyre. With the battles of Nath behind them, this was clearly not the kind of duty they had been envisioning. The crows complained loudly, squawking and circling until the sun began to slide below the horizon. After the birds had dispersed to their roosts, the trackers were left with only the crackle of the flames and the stink of the sheep carcasses for company.

---

Marktag, 4th Vorhexen

Sieghard, Urgrim, Elsa & Jarla

The next morning, Sieghard tried to scavenge what supplies he could from the shepherd's larder, while Urgrim studied the ground outside for signs of where the pack had been headed. Urgrim had more success - the bloody tracks of the wolves leading away from the slaughter of the sheep were clear, while in the hut, the shepherd's supplies of food seemed to have already been picked clean. The trail headed north, up into the crags.

The ground was rough, and the higher they climbed, the more they felt the cold and the wind. Halfway through the afternoon, they found shelter behind a large boulder, and shared around a few provisions.

"There's precious little forage up here, this time of year," said Tomas. "And precious little grass for the horses. How long are we going to keep after these beasts, sir?" he said, looking to Sieghard. "We're well outside the Thornwood now."

OOC:

Spoiler

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What's your provisions situation?

[RossN]

Jarla

Jarla couldn't help but glance at Tomas and subtly nod her head. She had no desire to undermine Sieghard in front of his own men by openly stating she was heading back but as this hunt stretched ever further ahead of them she was recalling her job back in Savonne. She'd have a quiet word with Sieghard, Elsa and Urgrim later on later on.

[Thragka]

Urgrim

"To be honest," Urgrim said to Sieghard, "I wasn't expecting we'd have to go so far into the Teeth. It'd be unwise for all of us to stay out much longer."

He rooted through his pack, counting up his dried and hardy food. "I've enough for myself for about a week. For two people, four days – so two days further out, then we'd have to turn around. And you'd have to squeeze into my tent at night," he finished, trying not to indicate vocally how much of a pain in his behind that would be.