(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 66

Something Rotten in Kislev

• Gottlieb [Witch Hunter] – I 63
• Larry [Mercenary Captain] – I 58
• Othmar [Assassin] – I 56
• Nate [Witch Hunter] – I 64
• Wilfried [Templar] – I 53
• Karl [Artillerist] – I 45

Following the farmer into the orchards, Gottlieb sees him go straight to the site of the hanging bodies. He quietly looks around (unshocked), seemingly making sure that nothing has been disturbed, and then starts to return to the town – but his trip is cut short by Gottlieb and poor Ioakim Rostropovichgoes never returns from the orchards.

Now the town is in full lockdown. The murder of one of their own has them obviously pretending to be worried about “all these murders” when they definitely only care about the one. Kisa Yatskaya helps cover for Gottlieb as he changes into his (non-bloody) clown costume when the townfolk come to check on the travelling circus.

Only serious convincing from the group keeps them in the shelter of the public house for the night instead of travelling the brutal cold of the plains on this crispy cold evening. They keep a guard and see no other townfolk besides the keeper of the house, Fyodor Lyakhova.

Deciding that this isn’t their fight, and worried that they might be the next sacrifices in the woods, they pack up the circus the next morning and leave Bordonavetz behind them without giving a show.

Two uneventful villages later they come to the last great bastion against Chaos, the city of Praag. Here Kisa is seeking an order of witches for further instruction on the magical arts. The city is one that has been razed by the forces of chaos on two occasions within the last five hundred years – on the second occasion the city itself turned against the defenders as the mighty spiked walls mutated, grew eyes and mouths, and attacked those defending the walls. To this day travellers are warned not to make eye contact with the gargoyles at the north gate – for those who do are marked for their own doom within the fortnite.

Here they acquire arms, and talk to one of the two firearms manufacturers who makes the Henricus Maxus – probably the most potent hand cannon in the history of personal firearms (having been given his name and address by Zenevieva who carries such a piece at her side).

They then practice their act for a few nights in one of the squares in town, but find the nihilism of the people of Praag to be hard to bear, especially in the cold of winter with the constant inflow of injured and frostbitten troops from skirmishes with chaos north and west of the city.

So they finally take the south road down towards Bolgasgrad.

As they crest a hill bringing Bolgasgrad into sight, they encounter a farmer, one Martyn Shakirova. And sure enough, everything they were told is true – the farmer is holding a gate open as his flock of sheep move from one snowy pasture across the road to another… herded not by a dog or another farmer, but by a zombie.

“G ‘day, Olets furriners. Sorry to keep ye, but they’ll be moved on soon enough. Ye’ll not ha’ seen workin’ deaders afore, I’ll wager. Right handy, an’ no mistake. Slower’n a good dog, and not so bright, but the sheep, they thinks it ‘s man, and they pays it heed by instinct.”

“No pay nor fodder needed, never tires nor goes poorly. Goes on day an’ night, ‘appen ye wants ’em to. Lasts a goodly time, an’all – had that’un a year and more and still ‘e keeps goin’. Say what ye likes, I can see the good on ’em. They do say ‘orses’ll be next – now that’ll be a thing, right enough. Them as says it’s wrong never done a day’s work , that ‘s what I say.”

“Well, g’day to ye. An’ a good stay, an’all. You just be sure to tell the folk where ye came from what a blessin’ it is, t ‘have deaders doin’ the work. Better yet, tell ’em t ‘come an’ see fer theysel’s!”

He promises to come see Wilhelm Lizard’s Flying Circus along with as many of the extended Shakirova clan as he can get together mid-winter.