LogTorments of the Righteous-Jason-1

Game log for the 2018/11/18 session of AW: Torments of the Righteous, as taken by Jason

Tendahl is in his workspace, polishing a parabolic reflector, when he hears the screaming start. Someone just stabbed the Bishop of the Redemptionist in the back. He was in town to try to shut down Das Asylhaus and Hike stabbed him in the back.

Yeah, so the Bishop has come all this way, in this massive heavy carriage that got dragged for a long damn way through the Marca jungle. His minions have been all over town posting declarations (to be read by torchlight, I guess) about how Das Asylhaus is a den of sin and iniquity. The whole town is in the mood for cleansing some sinners, and then all of a sudden, Hike out of nowhere with the dagger in the Bishop's back. As the HP screams, his jaw unhinges, and some black gaseous thing cames out of him. Is it a Wolf of the Maelstrom? Probably! Isn't that exciting? Hike is so into her assassination scheme to notice right away, which is even more fun.

Tendahl isn't immediately motivated to intervene, but the screaming changes, from alarm to torment. One of the dark monsters is feeding out there. He grabs his newly polished reflector, screws it to a torch, and goes running.

Hike finally sees the dark monster in front of her and looks around for a fire. There's a torch attached to the side of the Bishops's coach. She reaches for it as the monster spirals and begins to manifest tendrils. She takes the torch in hand, thrusts it at the creature, and the flame goes out. The torch gets covered in a thin coat of frost, all the way down to her hand. Hike starts to pray, loudly.

Barbarossa had been trying to flank the Redemptionist guard, fearing they'd come to arrest him. Now he sees the smoke monster and starts trying to figure a new plan. He fires a pistol in the air, trying to get people out of his way, but nobody really responds to that. He then starts shouting Damerrung prayers as he walks toward the monster. Rolf and Leopold grab him and start hustling him out of there, getting a bar regular to safety.

Tendahl realizes that his best way in is over the rooftops. Maybe he can catch it by surprise and zap it with his focused torch beam. He goes sprinting over them like he was born to it. Maybe he was, since he's no damn good at level ground.

The monster tries to envelope Hike, who calls out to her gang for aid while scrambling under the coach. The monster grabs her by the leg, and she feels an instant piercing coldness while the monster lifts her into midair. Tendahl then shifts the reflector on the torch around and hits the monster with the full concentrated light. The monster, surprised, flings Hike over to the well in the town square, and recoils away from the light. It actually goes down one of the streets, toward Inga. She runs. It heads for the river, out of town.

The Bishop's body is sitting in town, covered in ice. Inga starts tearing down flyers. Hike begins rousing a posse, but her gang are really not in the mood to obey her orders. A bit of a brawl breaks out between them. Ardner tells her they're Torchbearers, not pallbearers. She admits that they need to get tooled up if they're going to do this. They agree, though clearly they aren't going to rush out and get those tools just this minute.

Barbarossa ends up in a root cellar. Since the screaming has stopped, he tells Leopold and Rolf to stay put while he goes to check it out. When he gets back to the square, he sees Archimandrix Hike talking to her militia, one terrified guardsman standing the reins of the carriage holders with piss running down his leg, and Tendahl approaching the dead body. Carl, meanwhile, looks for food. Barbarossa decides to return to the tavern and see what there is to eat. He invites the guy holding the horses to come in for a pint.

The Guardsman is really intent on notifying the Pontifex that this has happened. "We must waste no time!" He calls out that the evil of the town did this to the Bishop. Hike replies that she smelled the evil on the Bishop when he got to town. The Guardsman draws steel. Tendahl calls out, "Put your steel away, you clod, there's been death enough here." Tendahl inspects the body and begins to suspect that the freezing might have slowed the bleeding enough to save him. He can also sense that a torrent of horrendous whispering came to the Bishop before his death. He can resolve one word in the whisphering - "bow to the will of Vulakh."

Tendahl tells them about the possibility of saving the Bishop if we can keep him cold for a while longer until a healer arrives. Nobody wants to go out into the woods for Hegge the witch. Helmut turns up with a torch and volunteers to look for Carl. He brings him out into the square and tells him to take one of the Guardsmen to Hegge's cottage. Carl is willing.

Barbarossa has taken down some proclamations and settled in at the Asylhaus, and sees Carl heading out of town. He volunteers to come along to protect them.

Hike tells Helmut that they need to focus on doing their duty, seeing to the perimeter torches, checking on the rest of the village, etc. Inga tells them that the monster ran for the river.

Carl, Barbarossa, and the guard (Dieter approach Hegge's house. He sees one of the horned effigies she puts up and cuts it down. Carl goes running forward to warn her that the new arrivals are vandals. Hegge welcomes Carl. Her place is super weird. All sorts of stuff is hanging from the rafters or sitting on shelves, ranging from skulls of animals nobody recognizes to dried fish. Carl tells the story of what happened in town, and Hegge responds by throwing some sort of white-burning powder into her fire. Then she tells them that they have to go now, and to be watchful for the return of the monster.

The Archimandrix's team finds a spot near the river where three of the torches have been put out and covered in frost. Someone is sitting on the dock, fishing by torchlight. She sends her team to light the torches and goes to talk to the fisherman, who's named Klaus. Klaus seems curiously unimpressed by all the recent goings-on, which makes Hike nervous. She looks around for signs that something is wrong with this guy, and while she doesn't find any proof that he's possessed or anything, his total lack of interest in what's going on makes her nervous. Her men are frustrated, too, and she finally puts it to them directly: what's going on here? Hermann complains that the Archimandrix talked to Klaus while leaving them to do the dangerous work of re-lighting the torches. Since she was the one who went hand-to-hand with the daemon, she makes much fun of them.

Barbarossa, Carl, Dieter, and Hegge head back to the village. They pass where Dieter cut down the stick fetish, and the sticks are twisted and covered in mold, even though they were straight and hale recently.

At the ice cutter's house, Inman the ice cutter isn't answering, but he will answer for Tendahl. The Savvyhead emphasizes that the Bishop's Guard has come with the frozen body, and of course Inman doesn't want that sort of trouble. He lets everyone in to his icehouse. Once Hegge and party shows up, things get interesting. More of the Guard have also trickled in, enough to crowd the ice house. Dieter picks two of them to stay and sends the rest out to guard the area.

Carl opens his brain, to see how the body looks in the sunshine. In the light, it seems shrivelled, twisted, and strange. Hegge inspects the body and determines that it's too late, because his wounds go beyond the stabbing. The Bishop, she says, has been tainted by the monster for a long time, and he brought it with him from afar. Dieter orders her to do what she can, and then sends messengers out to pass some sort of word.

Archimandrix Hike, seeing all this from the river, realizes that given Redemptionist proclivities, they're probably going to start burning the ice house, and they may not stop there. She leads her gang over in that direction, and as soon as the Guard see her coming, they loosen their swords in their scabbars. Dieter spits "Archimandrix," at her and waits for her to talk. She asks what's going on, and sure enough, he tells her it's cleansing. He's decided that Tendahl and Hegge are liars or heretics or some evil shit.

Inga's in her tavern when someone comes running in and calls out that the Archimandrix and the Captain of the Bishop's Guard are squaring off at the ice house. She leaves one of the help in charge, gathers everyone else she can get, and heads out to reinforce the locals against the visitors. They arrive in time to interrupt the Archimandrix's conversation with Dieter.