(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.)

Session 18

Death on the Reik

• Wilfried [Fence]
• Larry [Bodyguard]
• Martin [Scout]
• Talbberry Grumble [Scribe]
• Othmar [Charlatan]
• Wilhelm [Wizard]
• Gottlieb [Bounty Hunter]
• Oscar Jager [Bodyguard]

The party finally arrives in Delberz where they make contact with Franziska Lang, the fortune teller and wizard who is training Wilhelm.

They are introduced to Lang’s current apprentice, Hanz-Peter Schiller, a lazy-seeming sort of student who seems more interested in power than learning and hard work. He seems to spend most of his spare time prying into Franziska’s secrets.

While Wilhelm was taught the tricks of being a level 1 wizard, the rest of the group noticed a pair of coachmen from the Three Feathers now just “hanging around” Delberz. They explained that they were no longer employed by the coach line and were just chilling out for a while. The party tried to distract them by sending them off to Marienburg.

Franziska Lang was very interested in what occurred to them in Boggenhafen, and explained that the originator of the ritual is Etelka Herzen of Grissenwald, near Nuln. She is a known dabbler in the dark arts. To aid them in halting her fell activities, she presented them with a Dwarven Ring of Protection and a shirt of magical black mail.

Back on the river to Altdorf (and then on to Grissenwald), they were shaken down by a group of gypsies warning of monsters along the river and offering a charm to protect against them.

Sure enough, a bit further down the river they found a half-sunken riverboat loaded with waterlogged turnips. The boat had definitely been taken down by the same mutants they had encountered down on the Bogen, but the group kept them at bay long enough to rough-patch the boat, bail it out, sell the rotting turnips for spare change (as pig food and alcohol mash), and finally haul the two boats down to Altdorf.

Where they once again ran into the two coachmen “randomly” in the same city as them again.

After a bit of shopping, they proceeded up the Reik towards Nuln. Along the route they passed castle Reiksguard (where the Emperor’s son is supposedly locked up either for his own protection, or because he has been touched by chaos, or diseased…) and then a mirror and semaphore signalling tower under construction by a team of dwarves.

Two dwarves attempt to catch a lift from their passing boat but are stopped by their employer / foredwarf, Master Artisan Aynjulls Isembeard.

His team of 12 dwarven engineers have been working on the site for six weeks. They chose this site because it included the foundations of a much older tower on a hilltop, shaving weeks off the project as well as providing a much sturdier overall structure.

The project has been plagued with accidents and paralyzing illness. In spite of this, work continued apace, but 5 days ago workers on watch in the tower began disappearing without trace during the night. Two more vanished only last night. Now the other dwarves are demanding danger pay, claiming that the place is a cursed elven burial mound… or something worse.

With the offer of 1 Crown per person per day and another 50 Crowns per person when the device is complete (in another 7 days, hopefully) or once the mystery is solved, the party decided it was their “duty” to help…