(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 42

Power Behind the Throne

• Wilhelm [Wizard] – I 55
• Wilfried [Forger] – I 53
• Larry [Mercenary] – I 48
• Gottlieb [Assassin] – I 43
• Othmar [Spy] – I 46
• Brother Nate [Cleric] – I44

Bezahltag – Day 5 of the Carnival

• Ice Dancing Competition – Square of Martials – 11am to 2pm
• Firebreathers – Bernabau Stadium – Noon to 1pm
• Druidic Life-Sculpting – Royal Gardens – 2pm to 4pm
• Red Arrows Flying Display – Great Park – 3pm to 4pm
• Snotball (Middenheim Carpenters vs Middenheim Eastenders) – 3pm to 5pm
• Snotball (Southgate Slammers vs Beeckerhoven Rangers) – 6pm to 8pm
• Elven Lightsingers – Royal College of Music – 3pm to 5pm
• Exhibition of Heraldic Arts – Square of Martials – 5pm to 6pm
• The Barbarian of Seville – Royal College of Music – 7pm to 10pm

Realizing that they weren’t getting any more leads on the death of little Addic, and with Janna Eberhauer giving Wilhelm the hairy eyeball to remind him that the High Wizard is looking for him, the group walked around the corner from the Red Moon to the Guild of Wizards and Alchemists.

High Wizard Albrecht Helseher eagerly greets Wilhelm and fills him in on the developments in “the Gurtelrose affair”. A rag picker recently turned up with Gurtelrose’s other signet ring (he always wore two – the one that Wilhelm had presented to him at the Garden Party that was found in the catacombs, and now this one).

The rag-picker is familiar to the group – they had encountered her twice before selling rags in front of their own tavern and another during their various outings in the last week. She leaves the city once a week to scour the area where the bodies of those too poor to afford a funeral or even cremation are dumped off the edge of the mount.

She found the ring with a desiccated finger still attached in a bush down there… and with a bit of compensation she showed the group the location.

The forest down there was… creepy. Bodies draped down from the trees where they had fallen, skeletons littered the ground, and the sweet smell of decomposition was everywhere, even as a cold breeze blew through keeping the flies down.

A few minutes of focusing on magical origins and Wilhelm was able to identify a section of the rocky cliff face that was distinctly magical – probably an illusion disguising a cave… but Nathander’s warning was just in time. The low shrubs and bushes in front of that space were bloodsedge – quick and hungry plants that grapple and dissolve their… sorry… I mean they used to be bloodsedge until Wilhelm struck them into pieces and lit them on fire with his lightning bolts.

Beyond the smouldering bloodsedge, the wall of the cliff is indeed an illusion and the cave beyond stretches into darkness, lit for the first 20 yards or so by the wan sunlight from the cave entrance, and then only by Wilfried’s lantern.

The dirt on the floor of the cave shows the bark-sandaled footprints of a single person who has travelled in and out of the cave and both down to the left hand cave and up tiered steps to the higher caves on the right.

Climbing into those higher caves, they discovered odd discarded robes and a small makeshift table with a stack of books beside it and some makeshift implements.

As they push through the old clothes, Wilhelm finds a dark blue glass vial containing what turns out to be a healing potion. Then whispering ghostly voices begin circling the cavern and zombies begin to clamber up the tiered steps from behind the group…

Rushing to set up a defensive line to stop the zombies from getting into the cavern proper, Othmar sweeps the space and his well-adapted eyes spot something foul moving forward from the next cave… something so foul that he collapsed instantly with a wail of terror into a puddle of his own urine.

And everything starts to fall apart.

The defensive line is not well set, and while Larry and Wilfried on the front line manage to kill the first wave of zombies, the second wave breaks through and one zombie nearly tears apart Brother Nathander (who is saved by the expenditure of 1 Fate). Gottlieb grabs his great sword and rushes whatever terrified Othmar – only to fall to his knees in a cry of fear as it stalked forward towards him.