(Being a series of quick game notes trying to account for the events of many sessions of playing through The Enemy Within using the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e rules – this session has the party off the main storyline and playing through “The Missing Children of Regensdorf” from Warpstone magazine.)

Session 4

The Children of Regensdorf

• Larry [Bawd]
• Wilfried [Bawd]
• Gottlieb [Hunter]
• Wilhelm [Trader]

Limping home in the miserable drizzle from the “bogeyman ambush”, the group is met in Regensdorf by Gottlieb’s old friend, the trader Wilhelm. They discover they have missed the coach sent by the Baron, Lord Ennum Regensdorf, to fetch them for their dinner date at his estate. However, the townfolk are excited to see them arrive wounded and bloodied and overjoyed to discover they are carrying the heads of slain bogeymen with them.

Claiming they have slain “all” the bogeymen, the party’s wounded are cared for, and they are feted as heroes. The young (and buxom) Emmanuelle attaches herself to Gottlieb – the strong silent type.

As Wilfried and Larry started discussing the value of getting the reward money and skipping town ASAP, Gertrude Studabaker runs in sobbing that her son was just taken from the garden as she was doing her washing in the kitchen. She then presented his favourite toy, a wooden soldier, covered in blood.

At the scene of the crime, the party found both footprints (human sized) leading to the fields, and a large leather hat. Asking around, the hat is identified as belonging to old farmer Stefan, and suddenly the townfolk are armed with pitchforks and torches as they rush to the farmer’s house. Before they could lynch and hang Stefan (with Wilhelm’s gleeful support), Gottlieb managed to talk them down for a few minutes and establish that the hat is indeed Stefan’s, but that it had been placed on his scarecrow after he stole a better one (that he’s wearing) from one of the murderous highwaymen hung on the road to Regensdorf.

Sending Larry and 5 townfolk out into the night to collect the scarecrow sounded like a good plan, right?

Doubly so when they found the body of the young Studabaker boy with his throat torn out at the base of the scarecrow. Until it started attacking people – ripping the chest of one young man open and attacking Larry until lit on fire by Wilhelm and chased away by the torch-bearing mob.

The next morning, farmer Stafan’s house has been destroyed and it is assumed that some of the townfolk “took care” of the problem in the night.

With a bit of tracking, it is concluded that the scarecrow ran into the woods and then up into the trees where Gottlieb lacked the skills required to keep tracking it. So instead of hunting the child-eating killer scarecrow, they set a trap.

Dressing Talbberry (the party’s only halfling) up as a child started the ruse. But they topped it up by designing a fire trap hidden under a picnic blanket and equipped the halfling with a number of delicious pies to eat.

Then they sent a group of brave townfolk (mostly the parents of already-eaten children) into the forest near where the scarecrow had escaped to “hunt for it” as loudly as possible. They set themselves up in clever blinds constructed by Gottlieb and Talbberry began the ruse…

“I have stolen all these pies from Katarina, but now I am lost in the forest and miss my parents! How do I get back to Regensdorf? I am afraid and lonely, but these pies look so delicious…”

And sure enough, the scarecrow clambered through the canopy to the site and jumped down to consume the poor halfling, only to be lit on fire and held to the ground by Wilfried’s pitchfork where it expired. In the fighting a few of the party got turned around and noted that they were also about to be ambushed by the remaining goblins (who expected them to have a MUCH harder time killing the scarecrow) – and they too were dispatched with haste, finishing with poor Strength 2 Wilhelm clubbing the goblin shaman’s head clean off (flying 4 yards).

So once again, they return to Regensdorf as heroes… only to find out that Luc Gascon has gone mad and has killed three townfolk and is now holed up in his smithy. Burgomeister von Schtupp immediately offers the group that he will increase their pay by 25 crowns each if they can capture Luc without harm.