LogTorments of the Righteous-Jason-4

Game log for the 2018/12/16 session of AW: Torments of the Righteous, as taken by Jason

Sergeant Feldkreis and his squad of guardsmen arrive at Der Flammenkamber. He goes right up to our friendly neighborhood Archimandrix and asks what happened there. She endorses the cheating accusation that Ardner made and agrees that if required, she would swear to it. She also offers a barter to console the dead guy's bereaved family. The Sergeant cheerfully says that the accused cheater was a worthless malcontent, but accepts the offering in the spirit intended. Hike tells Ardner that he owes her for that barter.

Barbarossa has been standing by while the Torchbringers square up accounts, but now he pulls Hike aside and tells her that Tendahl's in the pokey. Inga returns to the table and puts in a bad word for anyone named Schmitto, then ducks out again. Hike and Barb go over to the schloss to see what happened to their smith buddy.

They find the schloss buttoned up tight as a drum. It's closed for the night, opening in eight hours. Hike tells the guard that she has to leave at first light and can't wait, so she wants the audience now. The guard would very much prefer not to wake the Captain. Tough, says Hike, if your boss wants his messages carried around, he needs to make time. The guard caves, meanders off, and leaves them standing around for a few minutes, until he comes back and opens the gate. He leads them up to the main tower and the Captain's room.

They find the Captain finishing his meal with Lord Eisenbach. He promptly stands and asks them to come to his office, while the Flamebearer and Dammerung make their courtesies to the lord. Hike jumps directly to it, saying he's there to get his tinker out of jail, if only so he can box the man's ears. The Captain sends someone down to see if they have anyone in custody, and the man comes back to tell them that they have no prisoners. The Captain assures the Archimandrix that if her tinker was arrested as a drunk, he was set free outside the Cask. Hike can see that he's lying, and she shoots Barbarossa a look.

She then starts to tell the Captain about how she's been on the road for a while and has no time for this, but the Captain jumps in and cheerfully hands her his messages. He's really not going to knuckle under on this lie he's told. Hike reminds him that she's spent as many as eight days on the road, that she needs her man's skill to make it out there, and she wants him back. The Captain sticks to his guns and tells her to look for him outside the Cask. Hike is feeling pinched, because she really doesn't want to do violence to this guy in his own tower, but she's not sure how to get him to shape up.

At that point, she notices that Carl is somehow in with the tower servants, and is clearing up the dinner plates.

She asks the Captain if he's religious and starts a quarrel about the religious merits of lying. He says he's needed in chapel, so she goes with him, telling Barbarossa to check the Cask.

Barbarossa talks to Carl. Once the Dammerung leaves the Lord's quarters, he's not closely watched, so he has a moment to talk without being overheard, and explains about Tendahl's predicament. Carl agrees to go look for him deeper in the schloss, while Barbarossa finds a chair in which to read his holy book.

The Archimandrix goes to chapel, and prays / opens her mind to see where Tendahl is. One bad dice roll later, High Deacon Schwarzhoele notices that she's just mouthing her prayers. She comes back to the real world and see him just staring daggers at her.

Carl heads down into the dungeons and finds Tendahl, who has not yet been tortured. He hears people coming down the stairs, so time is precious. Tendahl has been reading his situation (and concluding that Carl is his only way out) and also to see what his chain (which has heard someone promising not to tell the High Deacon).

So anyway, Carl can hear at least three voices coming down the stairs. He figures his best way in is to duck around the corner and sneak in when they enter, and that the guy in control here is a twitchy guy who seems to scare the others. One of them goes to pull the door closed behind him. Tendahl yanks on his chain to get their attention as Carl sneaks in before they close the door. The guard closed the door but didn't lock it.

Tendahl tells them their room is very subtle. The twitchy guy introduces himself as Artzt and begins to interrogate the Savvyhead, who answers truthfully. Artzt explains that Tendahl's fallen into something too deep for him and has to go, but it's nothing personal. The torturer tells his minions to drown Tendahl and then leaves. Tendahl holds on for a minute or so, but as they drag him over to the drowning barrel, he freaks out. Carl pops up from behind the barrel and drags Tendahl boddily into the bright place.

Barbarossa waits for Hike to return after services. As she does so, she observes Flaubert telling Eisenbach something while giving her a dirty look. They both beat feet out of the schloss and head back to the tavern. Barbarossa thinks he's being followed. He checks and realizes it's more than one person following him, positioned to ensure that if he jumps the guy following him, the other can get away and tell someone. He tells Hike as much. While the gunlugger had subtlety in mind, the chopper turns and points at the guy and yells out, "You? Are you following us?" and advancing on the guy. When he realizes she's really coming for him, he draws a blade. Barbarossa sees the second snoop in the shadows with a crossbos.

Hike walks up to the blade-wielding thug shouting, "What? What are you gonna do, stab me with a blade?" She beats him to death with her bare hands. She's not aware of the crossbowman, but Barbarossa is, and those who live by the crossbow in the shadows die by the crossbow in the shadows. Barb's armor would normally be pretty resistant, but this time the bolt slips between two pieces of armor, and that's bleeding a bit now. His return show hits the crossbow-fielding footpad right in the center of the face, just under his nose.

Hike then looks her victim over. He's carrying a shortsword that looks like it was castle-forged, and he looks like a soldier in street clothes. Barbarossa retrieves his bolt, and they return to the tavern for drinks. On the way, he throws a bucket of water at Hike, just to get some of the blood off. Inga brings them strong drink. Hike drinks absinthe and stares into the fire to try to read the omens in the bright place. The flame gushes out back at her, singing her, and then Carl and Tendahl walk out of it. Inga, Hermann, and Jens see them walk of the fire, but they're the only ones who actually see it. Everyone else just thinks they were warming themselves by the fire. Inga offers Carl something to drink.

We debate how to flee the town while Barbarossa breaks into the storeroom. When questioned by the innkeep, he assures him that Deacon Schmitto said he'd take it on account. The innkeep sends his wife to get the guards. We head out.

The gatekeeper opens the gate for the Archimandrix, as a matter of course. A voice from town calls out, "Close the gate!" Hike looks him dead in the eye and says, "Do NOT touch that lever." The guard lets them through. There will be pursuit. Tendahl knows that gate mechanism requires that lever to be re-engaged to raise the gate, and tells everyone else so. Barbarossa runs in, pulls the lever down and breaks it off, and then runs to slide under the gate. It's a close shave but he slides through intact.

We decide to head to the capital as a group. We're low on provisions, especially Tendahl, who got boosted out of the dungeon with nothing but wet clothes. Luckily Hike has provions enough to keep Tendahl's body and soul together. We go off the road and behind a hill to evade pursuit, which works fine, and then two days later, we're in the capital.

In the capital, Hike reports to her patron, Inga finds an inn that needs help, Barbarossa goes to an Order safehouse, and Tendahl follows Barbarossa around, for lack of a better idea.

Hike's patron is Archbishop Kreuzmann, and he's being bathed when she arrives. He asks her for news of the road, and she says there's nothing notable on the road, but of course, there was some trouble with a Bishop in Hollewald. Of course, Dieter had told the Archbishop all about that, but he'd like to hear Hike's story. She claims she had a revelation that the Bishop was somehow wrong, and that her actions proved the revelation correct. She also pays her tithes. She also eats the small foods in his chamber, ignoring his somewhat quelling look. He accepts her story and her tithe, and tells her he'll have her fed, and he wants to talk to her later.

Barbarossa goes to the safehouse and reports in. Brother Kardner is happy to see him. Barb catches him up on current events. Tendahl offers to work for them, and indeed yes, they have a wagon needs fixing. Barb tries to patch up his own wounds with minimal expenditure of supplies, and accidentally nicks his own lung. That's not going to work out well. Now he needs the apothecary, and also, time to heal. Tendahl whiles away some hours asking Kardner about the Dammerung.

Inga and Hike's crew go to the Post Haus. Rutger is hiring, but he needs bed labor, not tavern labor. She tries to persuade him that she's more useful as a brewer, and he agrees to at least try her absinthe recipe. After trying it, he agrees that she has to brew for him full time, and give him the credit, though she can keep the recipe secret.

Hike gets hired as a tithe/tax collector. There's a noble, Graf Marburg who's a bit behind, and the the Archbishop would like to make sure he gets current. The Torchbearers arrange to meet up with him on the road. Hike leans on the "god wants you to pay your taxes" and the noble's guards respond by drawing weapons and shooting Helmut. Marburg tells her that he already told the Archbishop where he stood and nothing has changed. Hike can either leave him alone, or get her ass kicked.

Hike tells him that everyone pays their tithes and hammers Graf Marburg's horse in the knee. Blows are exchanged, but since the Graf's gang care more about his welfare than about killing Torchbearers, things die down a bit once they have him on his feet. Marburg kills his own horse, like a proper gentleman. He leaves the dead horse there, so the Torchbearers cook and eat it.

Kardner tells Barbarossa about the exorcism that needs performing. There's a catatonic girl who shouts out things that nobody should know. Barb gets Carl to see if he can sense anything interesting about her. The moment Barbarossa comes in, the girl goes from catatonic to thrashing and making weird noises. Carl suggests that the girl clearly doesn't like the Dammerung and asks him to leave. The girl contributes "even Bettina doesn't like you, Dammerung." Wonderful! But Barb steps out. Carl tries talking to her, and she tells him that a) the wolves are coming, and b) he has to help her escape. He's unlikely to do that.

When Barb comes back in, he asks if the girl is a demon. Carl's not sure, so he asks the older man to step outside a little longer. He gets the girl's assurance that she's willing to try to survive in the wild, and when she says she's up for it, he tells her he'll come back and free her later. He walks out of the room and tells Barbarossa that she's not a demon, just a different sort of girl, possibly one who can't be helped. The big man decides to exorcise her but not to the utmost rigor. In the throes of the ceremony, the girl tells him that she told Carl this would happen. She curses him thrice, then a thousand times, so he slaps her and tells her that he told her this was going to happen. When she wakes up, she doesn't recognize him, and wants her parents. He leaves to pray.