[Session] Fauxhammer S03E04: Dead Zeppelin

Red guy turned out to be
a red herring.

The rest of the family was out of town for a week, so I seized the opportunity to hold a fourth session for our Mordschlag campaign on the 4th of April. I used the last few months to digest player feedback and overhaul the core system to something closer to WFRP1e in feel. The most significant changes include transitioning to twelve attributes instead of ten, using the units of the attack roll to determine hit location, rolling d6 for damage, introducing Mythras-like special effects, and a experimenting with a freeform skill system. The feedback was surprisingly positive, so I feel I'm on track now and not just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.

I'm a big fan of train levels in first-person shooters. We had one in the last season, where the party attempted to escape a speeding skaven train. It was one of the most memorable adventures in the campaign. I thought it was time to try another adventure where they are confined to a small enclosed space with something dangerous - this time, in air!

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted] (cameo): The former monster slayer's skin turned black and white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former Chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Ruben Schultz, human mercenary captain: Downtrodden Sylvanian noble on his way back home from a Breatonnian trip. He firmly believes there are no vampires in Sylvania. 

Rudolf Fürst, human ex-daemonologist (NPC): Former student who summoned a herald of Slaanesh, caused some trouble, and was beaten into becoming Ruben's squire.

Session Report

The party concluded the last session with their balloon hanging from the nose of a dwarven zeppelin. Following a short rescue mission they met Roli Balderson, the wheelchair-bound captain of the ship. They learned the airship is carrying passengers between Araby and Marienburg. Roli offered the party a free trip to Altdorf as compensation for the accident. However, he cautioned them against visiting the city. Since the incident at the docks there is a sickening green smog hanging over the streets, weird folks are gathering there, the decent ones are leaving in throngs, and the emperor is dying.

In the first half of the session the party got to know some of the crew and passengers.

• Squinting Skegi was the half-eyed navigator of the ship. He was rarely seen out of the map room or away from the window with a telescope on his remaining eye.
• Mighty Margit was the leader of the stevedores. She had the lovely voice of a long-time smoker and whiskey drinker. She had a crush on Blitzkrieg since the moment she met her.
• Hardy Harald was the dirty chef with a permanent scowl on his face and froth leaking from the corner of his mouth. He showed a surprising amount of respect towards Blitzkrieg because his brother was also a slayer - one who died early in his career.
• Benjamin Hill was a halfling stand-up comedian. It was a miracle he wasn't thrown out of the airship earlier for his jokes.
• Rüdiger von Kopfsmerz and his family were the quintessential irritating imperial nobles who thought the world revolved around them.
• Alfonz Verpacken was the Kopfsmerz family's valet. They didn't bother booking him a room, so he travelled in the storage with the luggage.
• Faqir al-Gebra introduced himself as an Arabyan envoy. In reality, he was a Strigany charlatan trying to rip people off by gambling. His latest victim was Rüdiger, who lost some money and family jewels while playing with the "envoy". Blitzkrieg tried his luck against him. The dwarf lost a small sum and couldn't prove the "Arabyan" was cheating.
• Professor Heinz Burgsch was an academic from the Altdorf University specialized in Nehekharan archaeology. On his latest dig, he discovered an undisturbed tomb in the Land of the Dead. He packed a few sarcophagi containing the remains of a priest and some of his warriors on the airship. Paether had a long discussion with him about his discoveries while Blitzkrieg was gambling.

Skegi discovered that a green cloud was coming from the direction of Altdorf, which they didn't have the time to evade. Roli told everyone to return to their rooms and prepare for turbulence. Paether started getting headaches from the warp dust cloud.

Far from their tombs
they still guard.

The adventurers, of course, didn't heed the captain's warnings. Ruben and Blitzkrieg wanted to search the sarcophagi, fearing that the cloud would raise the dead or cause some magical bullshit. They even bought garlic and salt from Harald at a ridiculously high price. Meanwhile, Paether realized they haven't seen Rudolf for a while, so he went looking for him before he caused any trouble.

They all met at the storage room at the back of  the gondola. They didn't find any sarcophagi, but they saw Benjamin getting ripped apart by a pair of red arms that disappeared into the darkness with a bang coming from above. Among the boxes, they found Rudolf in the middle of a protective circle. He told Ruben that he heard some weird noises from above, panicked, and summoned a Bloodletter of Khorne to protect himself. Then he lost control of the daemon. After Ruben disciplined his squire, they all climbed up through the trapdoor to hunt down the daemon.

The adventurers found themselves in a huge labyrinthine cargo bay full of crates. Claw marks showed the creature's path, but the adventurers had no time to track them as the shambling corpses of the dwarven stevedores attacked them. After beating them down, they scrutinized the corpses and realized that they weren't killed by the daemon.

While Ruben and Blitzkrieg held back another wave of zombies deeper in the cargo bay, Paether zealously followed his daemon-slaying elf sword's light. He found the Bloodletter climbing up a crate in an Exorcist-like spider-climb. Paether killed the daemon with a single strike, but then acid started spraying from the screaming corpse. The acid burned the wizard, but Ruben pulled him out of the acidic stream's path, which kept flowing for a minute before stopping.

After the last wave of zombies, ancient khopesh-wielding skeletal warriors showed up. While the two warriors quickly dispatched them, the skeletal remains started to move again. While they were busy destroying them, a cackling voice called forth a cloud of scarabs, gravely wounding Ruben and slightly wounding Blitzkrieg. They followed the caster to the other end of the cargo bay, where Paether stunned another bunch of undead stevedores with a stormblast, then climbed down through another trapdoor to the entry hall, and burst into the lounge, where they finally met the mummy wielding a Scarab staff and a meteoric iron khopesh. In a quick and brutal battle, Paether disarmed the mummy's staff-wielding hand with a magical blast. Literally, Ruben was gravely wounded, but in the end, the adventurers prevailed.

Once the danger was over and they left the cloud, the professor got a bitchslap from the captain for bringing dangerous cargo on the ship, Blitzkrieg received special treatment from Margit, and everyone got a warm handshake for saving the day. As the airship reached Altdorf, Margit visited the adventurers to give each one of them a backpack 

[Session] Fauxhammer S03E03: Daemonslayer

The epitome of gothic horror.

The third session of our Mordschlag campaign was on the 22nd of June, where we finished our adventures in Kreutzhofen.

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted] (cameo): The former monster slayer's skin turned black & white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Ruben Shultz, human mercenary captain: Downtrodden sylvanian noble on his way back home from a breatonnian trip. He firmly believes there are no vampires in Sylvania.

Session Report

Following last night's events the adventurers interrogated Rudolf Fürst about what's going on. It turned out the scholar got interested in daemonology while studying in Altdorf. He summoned a daemon of Slaanesh who promised to appear at a random time in the future to kill him. Fürst went to the edge of the Empire hoping that he can run and hide from the daemon. The adventurers promised Fürst to keep an eye on him so they can catch the daemon.

The interrogation was interrupted by Bruno, the militia captain. He informed the party that there was another murder attempt, this time against one of Magnus Richthofen's farmhands. The victim is alive, but dying, and Dr. Entesang is nowhere to be found. Edgar stayed with Rudolf in the inn, while the other went to the doctor's house.

Blitzkrieg kicked in the doctor's door and entered the house with his comrades. Paether sensed a slight magic inside, so they started going through the doctor's belonging. They found spell components, books of necromancy, books of science, and a large number of bills and payment notices about various scientific devices. Many of these were for a different name, so Paether started to suspect that the doctor is in incognito here. He put some of these away as potential tools for ransom.

The investigation was disrupted by the drunk gravedigger. He wasn't too keen on talking until he got some of the doctor's finest wines. It turned out he earned some beer money by digging up fresh corpses for the doctor, who has a laboratory hidden under the Reichenbach manor. The old tale of the Reichenbach manor being burned down by bandits also turned out to be bogus: the gravedigger said it was the villagers of Kreutzhofen who lynched the Reichenbach's for being tyrannical assholes.

At the ruins of the Reichenbach manor the party found a metal pole that was time and time again hit by lightning bolts, and the door to the cellar. Despite the mess down there it was obvious that the place was occupied from the magically sealed door and runic traps. In the laboratory the doctor and his hunchback assistant were about to raise his patchwork Frankenstein's monster bye the power of weird science! As the lightning zapped it the body raised and with a bone chilling groan it said: "Just five more minutes..."

Our intrepid heroes weren't startled by the sight, which surprised the doctor. Entesang declared that he never hurt anyone and explained how on the long his research can benefit mankind. The adventurers didn't care about what's going on, they just need a doctor, right now. So Entesang and Igor left the creature in the laboratory to clean up while they visited the victim.

Back in the inn Rudolf was enjoying the safety of being tied up next to a weird warrior meditating with white eyes and a black and white hellblade on his lap. Paether realized that Edgar's sword created an anti-magical area, which is what probably kept the daemon away. The party thought about pulling Rudolf out of his shelter to use him as bait for the daemon, but ended up dropping the idea. Instead they visited the scorched house to see if they can salvage anything from Rudolf's burnt notes and books.

"Someday - and that day may never
come - I'll fuck you up. But until
that day, accept this justice as
 gift on my summoning's day."

Paether sensed an ominous presence within the house, but found no one inside. Instead the adventurers heard voices that tried to tempt them into treacherous acts against their comrades. They were tenacious though. Pather cast light on Ruben's sword, hoping it will reveal the daemon, to no avail. Then Blitzkrieg had a brilliant idea: if the daemon likes playing with his prey, Rudolf Fürst, then he is going to go back to the inn and kill him. That angered the daemon enough to make them manifest and attack furiously.

Ruben wanted to flee at the sight of the Herald of Slaanesh, but Paether helped him regain his cool and join the battle. Blitzkrieg held his ground against the daemon, until finally Paether - perusing the stormy weather - cast a lightning bolt that blew the herald to pieces. Rudolf was grateful for what the adventurers did for him. To cleanse himself from his sins he offered to join Ruben as a squire. Ruben promised to leave him at the first monastery if he doesn't perform well in his new role. Edgar woke up from his meditation and didn't remember jackshit. The guests at the inn were paid a few rounds to make sure they don't remember the weird shit happening around the inn tonight.

Except of course when they had to testify for Lazlo Lazlovich, who was let out of prison. Bruno also learned that Richthofen wasn't planning a revolution, but to deliver supplies to Mortensholm via his balloon. Since the recent beastman attacks and the daemon were enough reason to upkeep the state of emergency, he got what he wanted and let Richthofen recover his guns - at the cost of leaving a few of them in hands of the militia.

Lazlo said good bye to the party and continued his journey to Altdorf by boat. Richthofen took off with the adventurers to fly south first, then try his balloon at a longer trip after that, to Altdorf. Alas on the way to Mortensholm they lost control of the balloon because of some mechanical malfunction, then the balloon got punctured and started losing air as they ploughed through a huge cloud. After a bit of a panic and prayers though the balloon's passengers realised they weren't losing altitude - in fact, something was carrying them... Once they left the cloud they found out that their balloon was punctured by the nose of a dwarven zeppelin!

And that ends our adventures in Death's Dark Shadow's Kreutzhofen. After that I took some time to revisit rules and continue the Eremus campaign too (using Mythras, for the sake of variety). We'll continue sometime next year, once I recovered from our second kid's birth.

[Session] Fauxhammer S03E02: Revelations

With that tongue they can easily
reach your back molars.

We held the second session of our Mordschlag campaign on the 4th of April, with two players present in person, and one virtually - staring at miniatures and maps through a shitty little webcam attached to my table. That's what you get for loitering in Scotland!

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted]: The former monster slayer's skin turned black & white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Session Report

After a hearty breakfast our intrepid adventurers decided that they should visit the nearby village of Weilerberg, to find an old woman who knows one of the suspects of last night's murder: the young druidess. Frau Eberhauer turned out to be a retired elementalist. She told her visitors that the druidess they are looking for is a feral child called Wanda, who appeared two years ago around the Moon Pool. She is in her teens, has some magical talents, and more than likely innocent, because she never wanders far from her territory. She is also respected by the locals, who send her baskets of food in hope of a good harvest. Frau Eberhauer told the party where do people leave their gifts, and even sent a basket of jams.

After plowing through a dark forest the party arrived to the glade they were looking for, then got ambushed by five beastmen. Paether conjured a pair of wings to fall back to a better position, while Blitzkrieg and the Edgar held the beastmen back. A combination of magical windblast, lightning bolts, and steel killed three of the beasts. One fled south along the river, the other fled west into the forest, until he was caught by animated vines. When the adventurers found him they saw it's capable of regeneration, so they dispatched him a swift and brutal manner. It was only then that the druidess showed herself.

The girl was suspicious, but thanks to their valiant efforts shown against the minions of Chaos and the jam they brought the party quickly earned her trust. Wanda lead them to a lake deep in the forest, and told them, that she too has felt that an evil presence appeared lately near Kreutzhofen, and that the waters of the pool will offer them guidance.

Paether was the first to take a bath in the pool. He saw a vision of a sick old oak with six saplings growing under it - but five of them seemed insubstantial, with birds unable to rest on their branches. Then he saw the vision of three blue faces on the sky reminding him of the daemon prince whom he pulled his sword out of a year ago. When the wizard raised said sword to the sky, the demonic faces were distorted by agony and disappeared. When Blitzkrieg took the plunge, he didn't get anything other than wet. When Edgar gave it a shot, the lake catapulted him out.

Without new leads the party returned to Kreutzhofen to investigate Magnus Richthofen, a local landowner whom Bruno, the milita captain, suspects of planning a rebellion. After presuading his two dimwit, labourers the party entered the barn, where they met the landowner. It turned out Magnus was just a selfmade scientist and engineer, who wanted to create a balloon. His plan was to use his invention to ship the guns Bruno confiscated to Mortensholm in the Border Princes, to aid the fight against the greenskins. He offered the party a ride to Altdorf, if they help him recover his guns and join him to Mortensholm.

After the deal was made the adventurers returned to Kreutzhofen to visit Rudolf Fürst, the student whose door got a penis nailed to it last night. There was a storm coming, and far away to the north they saw several lightning bolts strike around the same location. While that was suspicious, they didn't have time to take a detour, because there was another vulgar surprise on the student's door. There was a strange smell in the air and Rudolf's reactions were hostile to the knocking. Soon a Fiend of Slaanesh burst through it, while Rudolf ran up to the attic to start a fire.

Edgar came under the effect of the fiend's musky odour, trying to hold Blitzkrieg back from attacking them, but was pushed aside. Dwarven steel and magic destroyed the monster, who melted into a fragrant rainbowy puddle. By the time the locals came to check out what's going out the house was burning and a hysterical Bruno was brought down by the party. Paether knew that Bruno was trying to incinerate occult books in desperation, yet they told the locals that it was some greasy stuff that caught fire.

While the villagers were busy fighting the flames, Bruno admitted to this captors that he summoned the demon to protect himself from something more horrifying...

Pushing Things Over the Edge

One of the things we are experimenting was throwing out Luck Points, which allow you to reroll tests in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Instead, if you are really not satisfied with your roll, you can choose to push the test. This allows you to make another roll, with two caveats: the second roll is final and you gain a number of stress (which leads to insanity), or corruption (which leads to mutation), or wounds equal to half the units of your final roll. Which one you gain depends on what kind of roll you pushed - e.g. breaking down a door will likely cause some wounds because you bruise yourself, while regaining control over a spell will result in corruption.

Three sessions in this is one of the rules that will likely stay. My players like using it when things look desperate and I'm satisfied with the pace corruption and stress accumulates. I also like reminding them when things go south, and tempting them into using it. That short moment while they hesitate whether they should give in or accept failure is priceless.

[Homebrew] Mordschlag Hit Location and Damage

Tis but a scratch!

We had the second session of my Fauxhammer campaign sometimes in April. Session report is coming soon, but in the meanwhile, here is a glimpse into how I ruined the core system of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay! I have a rule of thumb for house rules: if the players don't forget to use it, then it's worth keeping, otherwise just throw it out. How we handle hit location and damage withstood this test, despite being poorly explained early on. Hopefully I will do a better job this time!

I fucking love hit locations in WFRP. Swapping the tens and units to get a number you can refer on the hit location chart is elegant. Alas I had two goals that forced me to defenestrate this classic solution: less rolling when making an attack and putting a bigger emphasis on choosing hit locations. Also, the front facing hit location tables are prone to giving nonsensical results, and fixing that would require either further hit location tables, or tampering with the numbers - and I'm too lazy to do either.

Damage: When you land a successful blow you don't roll damage die. You take the units instead, and add your damage bonuses to that. If the units die landed on 0, your damage is a 10, and you roll an additional d10. Each additional d10 also explodes in a similar way on 0. For example, if you hit someone with a roll of 18 while wielding a battle axe of +7 damage, your damage total is 15. If you hit someone with a roll of 20 and your additional dice lands on a 5, your damage total is 22.

Yeah, there is still a 10% chance you have to roll an additional die, and 1% chance that you have to roll two of them, but I'm okay with that. Rolling maximum damage already breaks the game's momentum, because everyone stops to cheer, and rolling an additional dice actually builds anticipation in this case.

Hit Location: Fasten your seatbelts, because we are getting dangerously close to narrative game territory here! When you make a successful test the tens of your result is your Success Level. When you fail a test your Success Level is -1 for every 10% you rolled above your success chance. Yes, we went with a blackjack method, where instead of rolling as low as possible, you have to get as close to your success chance as possible for better results. For example, if your success chance is 51%, a roll of 39 is a success with SL 3, while a roll of 71 is a failure with SL -2. SL 3 usually comes with some boon, while SL -3 is where the really bad things start to happen.

When attacking your foe, choose a hit location you can reach! If your SL is 3 or higher, you hit the targeted location. If your SL is less than 3, you hit the location your target chooses. Normally I allow chosing a location one step away from the targeted one - e.g. if you went for the head and rolled an SL of 2 only, your target can choose to put their left arm, torso, or right arm in harm's way. This option can become critical when someone starts taking criticals, since arm and leg criticals are usually less painful, than getting your skull cracked or gutted.

That's it. So far my players actually liked these changes, though wrapping their head around the alternative SL calculation took some time. Stay tuned for a session report in the near future, where our intrepid adventurers visits an old hag, meets a young feral druid, and kills a Fiend of Slaanesh - all in a day's work!

[Session] Fauxhammer S03E01: Back in the Saddle

Another excellent module overshadowed
by The Enemy Within.

On the 3rd of March I finally GMed my first session after almost two years of hiatus. While my son's arrival came in the middle of our Portals of Eremus campaign, I decided to keep that game on hold, and dust off our Zweihänder campaign instead, which took a pause because of the pandemic a few years earlier. Those who have been reading this blog for a while now might remember that I had some session reports for that campaign, but eventually discontinued writing them because they took more energy than I was willing to spend on them.

We has our 18th session behind us when the virus intervened, which marked the end of what we called "season 2". During the first season the party thwarted several skaven plans, had to leave Nuln as wanted criminals, and accidentally freed a daemon prince of Tzeentch. The second season started with them trying to tie up loose ends, which resulted in blowing up an entire quarter of Altdorf, waking up on a skaven train, and ending up in Tilea, which was invaded by a greenskin horde at the time. Thus began the party's long and weird way home...

Season 3 starts with the party returning to the Empire, with a warm up adventure using bits and pieces from the excellent Death's Dark Shadow. It's not only the scenery what changed: we also left Zweihänder behind in favour of my homebrew system Mordschlag¹, which I jotted down during the winter to have something that's much lighter than Zweihänder or WFRP4e, and works well with WFRP1e and WFRP2e stat blocks on the fly². I might talk about that later, but for now, onward to the session report!

Dramatis Personae

Blitzkrieg, dwarf veteran slayer: Half-deaf, naked, and in possession of a magical axe he fished out from the belly of the legendary Moby Squig. He is on his way to Altdorf to find the love of his life: the dwarf priestess Agonia.

Edgar, human [redacted]: The former monster slayer's skin turned black & white after a short trip to the Realms of Chaos, where he saw several of his clones crucified, was granted apocalyptic visions, and obtained an ominous sword. He is also followed by the black and white horse of a former chaos warrior.

Paether von Sternwart, human astromancer: Eager to get back to Altdorf, graduate as an archmage, and put his elven sword back into the daemon prince it was pulled out of.

Ruben Shultz, human mercenary captain: Downtrodden sylvanian noble on his way back home from a breatonnian trip. He firmly believes there are no vampires in Sylvania. New character.

Brünhilde, human hedge master: A huge burly woman with an addiction to mandrake. Alas she was pulled away early from the game to fulfill some motherly duties, but still deserves mention. New character.

Session Report

Let's throw a troll at them!
Aaand it's gone...

After orcs burned down Alimento and the party made a deal with some vampiresm they were finally on their way home on a strigani bargue. While still on the underwater river leading to the Empire, they learned that Altdorf is in turmoil: there is a huge hole in the city, the green mist billowing out of it is spreading sickness, a new extremist sigmarite cult is on the rise, Emperor Karl Franz is dying, and his son is missing.

Near the end of the journey Blitzkrieg and one of the sailors pulled up a stinky river troll along with the webs, who immediately attacked the group with a rusty anchor chained to its hand. He was one unlucky bastard... First a pot thrown at his head distracted, then Ruben threw an oil lamp in his face, then all his attacks were dodged or parried (though Ruben's sword shattered while parrying the  troll's anchor), and after getting critted by the dwarf he tried to jump back into the water, only to get torn apart by attacks of opportunity. Lazlo Lazlovicz, the captain, offered to pay the party's drinks in the Helmsman Inn once they are in Kreutzhofen.

Kreutzhofen was full of tileans, bretons, and refuges. They quickly learned the city is currently under the control of the pompous militia captain Bruno Trottel, who abuses some legal fuckery to announce martial law everytime there is something suspicious, which is a day or two later is revoked by the dorfrichter Sigismund Klippel - until Bruno discovers some new threat.

After buying suppliesthe party went to the Helmsman, except for Paether, who performed some divinations on the edge of the village. After getting some baleful visions he noticed a giggling girl running away and his daemon-slaying sword pulsing at his side. He lost the tracks, then heard a commotion across the street. It turned out a tilean syndicalista was brutally murdered and mutilated at the bridge, and Lazlo Lazlovits was found looting his corpse. Needless to say the strigani captain was beaten senseless and taken in by the militia.

In the Helmsman the party gathered some gossip while drinking herbal tea and schnaps with three old crones:

• The town was founded by the tyrannical Reichenbach family, whose last members burnt to death in their manor during a bandit attack many years ago. Some say the old Reichenbach lord is back as a vampire, murdering people.
• Whether there is a vampire or not, graves were dug up recently, and the third victim's scarf was found in the mud near the Reichenbach manor.
• The village has strong pagan ties. There have been no priests for a while now. Recently a teenage girl showed up in the nearby wilderness, whom many revere as a druidess.
• The pious believe the druidess is up to no good, and someone claimed she saw the girl near the house of the theologist Rudolf Furst.
• Rudolf Furst moved in recently from Altdorf and paid rent in advance for a year so he can perform his studies in peace. He is rarely seen and doesn't mingle with the locals.

At Rudolf Furst's house the party the dead tilean's missing genitalia at the doorstep. After pretending to be with the militia, Rudolf let them in for a drink. The theologist was absolutely clueless about what's going on. He didn't notice anything and the party didn't find anything interesting at his house - but at least Paether messed up casting Witch Sight, waking up all the animals and children in the vicinity as a side-effect³. Rudolf was eager to join the party on their way to Altdorf when they leave, because he has to do some paperwork at the university.

The ragtag hand of the law.

At the militia house Bruno explained this was the fourth murder in four months, and he needed to arrest someone to calm the people. Lazlo was in the village during the last murder, he is known to be on bad terms with the tileans, he used to walk around with a huge machete, and he was found right next to the corpse, so he was ideal for scapegoat. Other than the wounds being too brutal to be done by human there isn't much evidence in his favour, but those have yet to be examined. The local doctor, Jakob Entesang wasn't at home when the militia knocked on his door. The party can save Lazlo by providing evidence or doing a mission for Bruno... Magnus Richthofen, a local landlord, has been working on something in his barn and ordering all kinds of weird stuff. The last cargo he received was a crate of guns and gunpowder, which Bruno confiscated and used as an excuse to proclaim martial law. He is sure Richthofen is planning to incite a rebellion to take over the village.

After the chitchat with the militia, the adventurers visited the doctor's house. The Herr Entesang arrived soon on his couch along with his hunchback assistant, Igor. He said he was visiting an old patient in a nearby village and will check the mutilated corpse tomorrow. The party returned to the Helmsman, discussing what should they do tomorrow.

Big thank you to Paether's player, who took and shared his session notes. Maybe I should do the same for his next Call of Cthulhu session...

¹ Might be temporary title. I wanted to go with Mordhau, but that's already taken.

² One of my biggest mechanical issues with Zweihänder is how it handles characteristics and bonuses. Conversion isn't hard, but it takes some effort, and isn't much fun if you have dozens of stat blocks.

³ It's a pity he didn't roll the big brother of this effect, which makes the nearby animals and children so angry they will seek out and attack the wizard.