FINALLY the FINAL

Well. I have the final entry of the Journal for Warhammer here, covering the last two sessions. I was not present for the last part of it, so I sort of pieced it together from information told me by Shawn and Tim...someone was supposed to give me a more detailed account but the person who shall remain anonymous but whose name starts with a T and ends in an M never came through. If it is partially or wholly innacurate...too bad because it's now written history and in a year or two the only account that will be remembered is MINE.

Journal- Party Favours

The above mentioned rest came after a long hard night of fighting and then a harder day of searching, watching, and trying to get the dwarf healed. The last part may have been the toughest of all the problems.
The necromancer was not quite as fearsome as he supposed himself to be; in fact after he summoned some skeletons to keep us at a distance, he tended to fizzle out on his attempts at spell casting, no better than a certain journeyman wizard I could name. Perhaps not even so good.
The skeletons were a mere annoyance, simply slowing down our pursuit of the fiend. Actually, one of them hit Furdok pretty good while he attempted to wade through them, but it was a lucky blow and he did eventually force himself through while the rest cleaned up the remaining skeletons. I got a couple good shots in on the dark mage, but once Furdok closed with him I was unable to provide further support without risking hitting the dwarf.
Unfortunately for Furdok, the necromancer was able to summon enough foul sorcery to, at the time I thought, kill him. Luckily, this was not the case, but it was close enough that I believe if Ulfred had not rushed to his aide, Furdok might have perished there in the filthy sewers. As it was, Volrad was able to “cleanse” the fiend with his magical fire, and the threat was ended.
He also “cleansed” the rest of the lair of its taint with fire while we searched for any clues. We came up mostly blank, and once we had determined that there were no further leads, we headed back to the cannon project warehouse. Once there, it began to dawn on us that we had been set up. Oskar, the snitch who put us on to the “saboteurs” in the first place, was nowhere to be found. The workers at the project had no idea who we were. We had been led deliberately to the hidden lair, perhaps to get us killed. If so, we have been underestimated, as we often are.
Luckily, the head of the project was willing to listen to our story, and though he kicked us out, he did not have us arrested as he might have. Instead, he chose to at least give enough credence to our tale to put us on Oskar’s trail and let us go on our way. The problem was, Oskar was fled from his home and we had little hope of tracing him.
Options were becoming limited. The dwarf wanted to go to the Temple of Shallya to get healed while we cleaned up and pondered our next move. The problems with that plan were manifold. First, the dwarf is tightfisted to the extreme and was unwilling to pay for the services, second he was unwilling to even get cleaned up and bandaged so his wounds would not be infected, and thirdly he has no possible way of being diplomatic about any of his irritating quirks.
So I begged a few gold crowns from the rest of the group (except for Ulfred…he was uncharacteristically unwilling to part with his crowns) and went to the Temple myself to…donate…to the priestesses in order to get them to not only heal Furdok but see if they could cleanse his mind of this sudden fear of water he had apparently developed. It was not quite as bad as I thought it would be…in fact it cost about 20 gold crowns, 7 of which I donated to the cause, but I would probably have gone higher because it was worth it just to get him to take a bath.
Which he did…Shallya came through wonderfully and Furdok was freed from the shackles of his own mind. I wonder if I can get them to cleanse him of his cheapness as well? This might be harder to do since he did realize afterwards how I had set him up, although I think he was grateful for it in retrospect.
Anyway, the rest of the fellows returned to the Inn to get some rest before the party. I decided to check out “The Maze” since I had heard that Oskar may have fled there, and it seemed like a likely hiding spot for Rolph as well. This proved to be a bad idea, and I nearly got lost, so I retraced my steps and left that for another time.
I went back to the Reaver’s and awoke my companions, and wrote a little bit while they got their costumes on for the party. We arrived a little bit after 9, and spent some time “hobnobbing” as the men call it. I met a merchant named Oldenhaller who seemed nice and possibly a good contact for future business relations. Konrad met the man who had replaced Randolph Vogt on the cannon project, and oddly enough Furdok met the Sheriff.
As it got later, and the Countess arrived, I began to get nervous, having not yet seen signs of the younger Vogt though the elder was in evidence. After a few false hopes, I saw a man in a blue costume arguing with Marshal Wolfhart, the man Konrad had been talking to. When I asked him about it, he feigned as though it were unimportant, but I was not convinced. A few minutes later I saw them head upstairs to the gallery and, concerned, I tugged on Ulfred and followed them up the stairs.
It was hard to get through the crowd, and so by the time we got up there the man in blue (who I was now pretty much convinced was Rolph) had assassinated the Marshal. He then clambered down a tapestry and made his escape from the hall through the stunned crowd. I attempted to pursue him, but somehow he was able to outpace me! I have never seen such a thing from a man before, unless he was also a mutant. This is of course not out of the realm of possibility given the gods Rolph has turned to.
He lost me in the crowd, once again foiling and frustrating any attempt we have made to apprehend him. Our only recourse was to try to use any resource we could to find and/or stop him. This included telling the authorities what we knew about Vogt, having the engineers check and recheck the cannon, and oddly enough speaking to his father Randolph.
Randolph approached Ulfred after the ruckus and seemed genuinely concerned about the safety of the cannon and his son’s questionable activities. Although he did confirm our suspicions about his son, he did not really give us any help in finding him, so I can’t say for certain he is innocent in all this. Hard to say.
In any case, we were left with nothing but attending the cannon ceremony, which we figured could only go badly given our abject failure in stopping any previous parts of Rolph’s plans and schemes. And as we expected, it went horribly bad. The cannon blew up. Konrad and Ulfred were injured very badly, and I had to rush to Ulfred’s aide from my position overlooking the bridge. Thus I was unmounted and busy tying off bandages when the mutants and Daemonettes erupted from the below and began their assault.
Of course, as we launched into our vigorous defense of ourselves and the people around us from the attack, an even bigger threat appeared…some kind of hideous abomination created out of the flesh and bones of Vogt’s victims was making it’s way through the crowd, slowly and methodically and eating people whole as it went. I did not see this thing at first…and in fact I may have been eaten myself if I had not been warned at the last minute that it was behind me.
As I scrambled away from it’s gaping maw, towards Noddin and Volkrad (who had been trying in vain to kill the thing with his magic), it suddenly erputed in a shower of gore. From it’s remains stepped the nightmare we had all been fearing, the Red Flayer itself. Huge and fearsome, it screamed in rage and set about trying to kill the nearest person it could find, which unfortunately happened to be Konrad.
Luckily, by this point the rest of our group had nearly finished off the mutants and daemonettes, though at the cost of some serious wounds. They quickly rushed in to try to save Konrad…though it seemed too late. Volkrad and I did our best to provide fire support, but the creature seemed to be cutting through us like wheat. Poor Gerlach was brutally slain. The demon stood triumphant and stood ready to mercilessly slay my wounded and dying companions who lay bleeding at his feet.
I took a deep breath and knocked an arrow. I knew this was my last chance. If I failed, all we fought for would be lost, as would the lives of those I had come to think of as my friends. I could not, would not, fail as I had failed before. I took my aim, and I let the arrow fly.
Perhaps my prayers to the gods were heard. My aim was true. My arrow struck the demon prince right in the heart and buried itself deep into it’s flesh. It let out a scream, and turned as if it was going to try to reach out and tear my heart from my chest in revenge…but instead it fell and died, it’s corrupt body dissipating and returning to the void from which it came.
But I only had a moment to savor my victory, then I had to rush to the aid of my grievously wounded companions. It took every ounce of knowledge I had learned about human anatomy, but the will of my friends to live is nearly legendary, especially Ulfred who I think simply refuses to die despite any injury he may take. Though tired, wounded, and badly shaken by the confrontation with the nightmare demon, they were on their feet again.
In theory, Vogt was still out there and needed to be brought to justice for this heinous crime. How to find him though? The answer was simple…follow the swath of destruction the abomination had left in its wake. No skill was needed for this, the path was so obvious a child could have tracked it back to its origin. We were unprepared, however, for the point of that origin when we discovered it:
The Reaver’s Return.
How? Ralph had been literally right under our feet the entire time and we had no idea. His lair was in the basement of the very refuge we had used as our home while staying in Nuln, and we had never had a clue. What’s more, we were unprepared for the sight which greeted us upon entering the cellar from which the beast had so obviously emerged.
Ralph was dead. This simply saved us the trouble. However, his killer was none other than Liebnitz, the corrupt priest we had slain in Middenheim. Sort of. By sort of I mean we had sort of killed him and it was sort of Liebnitz. His body was that of the incredibly fast fat man in black who had dogged us since Altdorf, but embedded in his chest was the face of the evil traitor Liebnitz, who had somehow become part of this other person. I don’t know how this happened, and I doubt I will ever know. We did not wait for any explanation or exposition on his part…as one we fell upon him with murderous intent, determined to stamp out his evil for once and all. Our grim fury at his acts lent us the strength, despite our wounded state, to slay him before he even had a chance to really react.
The chalice was ours, for better or for worse. Now we simply had to figure out how to get rid of it.
It was at this point that my suspicions about the Lady Katherine were confirmed. We had not seen her since our arrival, but she chose this moment to appear on the stairs and congratulate us on our victory. Then she suggested that we give her the chalice for disposal. We of course refused this offer. She then suggested that she would take it from our corpses if we did not give to her.
To be fair, we probably looked a sorry lot at that moment. Nearly every one of us was ragged, bandaged, limping, and covered in blood much of which was our own. Still, we had just killed a demon prince. Sorceress or not, Lady Katherine would have been wise to consider who she was dealing with before she made such threats. Her squad of mutants and daemonettes was vanquished (some simple deduction post-battle confirmed that she was a worshipper of Slaanesh and responsible for the attack, in opposition to the machinations of the Khornite forces which had been working towards the freedom of the Red Flayer), so she had no back up but her own sorcery.
This did not prove to be sufficient against the weight of our numbers and anger, and she perished as well, a victim of her own hubris and greed for power. It was not difficult to gather up the evidence we needed to present to the Countess of all the various nefarious goings on which had been occurring in her city. She was not ungrateful for our assistance in saving Nuln from the forces of Chaos, and gifted us with a warehouse in Nuln per our request, thus making the launch of our mercantile enterprise a sure thing. The chalice will be remanded to Light College in Altdorf for safe keeping.
As for us? Perhaps with the Red Flayer vanquished we can retire from this dangerous life of adventure and enjoy the fruits of our victories. Furdok will no doubt excel in the business we have acquired…though we currently have nothing but the barest skeleton of an enterprise I am sure that under his guidance and with the help of the rest, it will be built into a significant concern given time.
As for myself, I must consider the possibility of returning to my people. I don’t know if I am prepared to face them yet, to explain the death of my brother and my failure to prevent or avenge it. Nor am I sure that I would be ready to return to the life they have planned for me. These are hard questions, and ones that I must carefully weigh before I decide what to do.