LogTorments of the Righteous-Jason-18

Game log for the 2019/05/19 session of AW: Torments of the Righteous, as taken by Jason

Barbarossa is starving in the cave - not metaphorically, but literally.

Back in town, a couple people have started muttering about Barbarossa's connection to Sonja, and how it just didn't seem right. Her mother has started keeping her on a very short leash.

After some time, Tendahl's made some jingle working on repairing the village gate and other items. He buys some extra food and asks Carl to deliver it down the well. Carl does so, except that he doesn't have the melody quite right, and Barbarossa is off in the bright place trying to call for help, so he misses the package. Tendahl's also been trying to get himself accepted in the town, and he will be, once he finishes with gate repairs. He's also got the new high-pressure fuel system for Hike's flammenwerfer, but it hasn't been tested.

Carl asks Tendahl's advice on where to get the rope they need to free Barbarossa. The stone barn would have lots of rope laid in, and they won't be missed right away. The plowman would also have had some, and he got killed in the fighting, so that should be an easy place to score some. Carl goes to check on the plow-goats first, to "make sure they're OK." He sees a light and clanking noises from inside the house, though neither lasts long. He's trying to see who it might be, peering into the windows, when someone grabs him, covers his mouth, lifts him up, and tells him not to make a sound. The person tells him to get lost. It's Thaddius Margner. He really doesn't want Carl around. Once he lets Carl go, the kid runs for it until it's safely out of sight, he doubles back and takes a look. He realizes that Thaddius is the lookout and he's working with a partner, and they're working together to loot the place. This time one of them is taking a bunch of tools and a sack full of something, and Thaddius has a sack and a giant bundle of rope. They head off toward their own houses.

Carl follows Thaddius to chez Margner, or actually, the attached shed. Unfortunately he's bad at following people and gets grabbed again. Now they're both getting pissed. Thaddius seems to care that Carl's just a kid, but the other one, Goran, seems to be thinking that a man's game comes with a man's price. Carl screams for help. Goran punches him and tries to cover his mouth. Thaddius starts emptying out his sack, with the intention of putting the empty sack over Carl. Carl bites Goran's hand and gets a heel into his groin. Goran drops him and Carl's on the run.

Carl heads out into the darkness, where they don't dare follow him, though they argue about it. They decide to stay near the edge of town and see if maybe they can catch him coming back. Carl skips into the bright place to make his return, appearing in Tendahl's wagon. Carl's busy explaining what happened to Tendahl when one of the bear traps in the junkyard goes off. Tendahl lights a torch and goes to investigate, and finds Goran screaming in pain. He comes out with his pry rod after a show of trying to find it, and is in the process of levering the trap open, when he hears another noise behind him. He's turning to look when he gets hit with a hoe. Tendahl goes down, and finds Goran trying to grapple him so Thaddius can swing on him. Tendahl swats Goran in the leg with the prybar. Goran's got Tendahl's leg and will not let go, and Tendahl's having trouble getting out of the way of Thaddius' hoe. It's looking grim for the savvyhead until Carl cocks Barbarossa's shotgun. That distracts them enough for Tendahl to get to his feet, although he's stuck in the shotgun's line of fire.

Carl tells Thaddius to fuck off. Unfortunately he's misjudged the length of the hoe, and Margner's actually in striking range. The garden implement knocks the shotgun out of his hands. Tendahl and Thaddius swing on each other, hit each other in the head, and fall down. Carl grabs some old manacles that Tendahl was using to hang things and locks them on Thaddius. At that point, villagers begin arriving, including Deacon Engsauer. Carl tells the Deacon that he and Tendahl were attacked, but Goran says that they were coming to ask Tendahl for help with something and got caught in the traps. Nobody likes the way Carl tells the story, and the Deacon orders Carl and Tendahl locked up in the Stone Barn.

Back in Schwarzhoele, Hike has lead the Kingsguard back to the capitol. The Archimandrix goes to see Archbishop Kreuzmann. She tells him about what happened at Nachtburg, except for the encounter with the Dammerung on the road. She advises the Archbishop that Barbarossa is unlikely to escape from the well, since he has no apparatus with which to do so. She also mentions the road to the well. The Archbishop does not like the road. He wants all reference to this heresy eradicated. Hike worries that it's going to become a Dammerung holy site. Eventually, he tells her that he wants to see the well, and he wants to see it at once. He wants to leave immediately.

That's going to piss off the Torchbearers, who are just starting to get their drink on at the Post Haus. She decides to visit the commissary first and get supplies. The agent there claims it will take days to get all the supplies. The Archimandrix says the Archbishop is leaving tomorrow, and gets blank disbelief, which turns to anger when the agent thinks her references to the Archbishop is a threat. Hike shows him her war face, and he retreats behind his locked gate.

Once she gets to the Post Haus, she finds her troops partying hard. Himmler is trying to demand absinthe to soothe his broken heart. The Archimandrix taps him on the shoulder when he pauses to inhale and asks what's wrong. He's sad about the bad booze here. Hike's happy to inform him that they're leaving for Schwarzhoele in the morning. She also tells the other Inga-besotted troops the good news, and lets them bring the rest of the man into line.

Hike then goes to find the Archdeacon who will be leading the Archbishop's travel party. He's light on details and a little flustered by the irregularity of the whole thing. She asks him to help push the quartermaster to get those supplies ready.

Inga feels that something weird is happening in Schwarzhoele. People seem to be on edge. There have been a lot of arrests recently and at least one disappearance. One of the foremen of the tar collecting crews vanished, and he was a relatively important person. She even sensed a darkness in the bright place, clouds swirling over the citadel. She starts checking the security of her place.

As she does so, Danziger comes to find her. Jung wants to see her in the kitchen. When she goes in, Jung sends Danziger out and asks to talk to her in private. She leads him to her office, where he refuses her offer of absinthe. He asks if he can trust her, and she assures him that he can. Seems he's heard that she has hidden entrances, and he needs to hide a handful of people. He'll make fair arrangements if she needs to provision the people she's hiding. The people will arrive within three days. She agrees to provide a place where they can all meet and hide then from there. He says he'll arrange to get her some currency but it will be managed in a way that doesn't point to him. Later, a kid comes in to tell her when and find out where.

Tendahl wakes up in a cell, and Carl catches him up on how badly things went. Naia's there. She tries to associate Tendahl with Barbarossa, but he rejects the implication and points out that he straight left town when the old boss got carried away. Naia goes to fetch the Deacon. When the Deacon arrives, he interrogates Tendahl in a somewhat hostile way. After an awkward conversation, Tendahl agrees that it would be best to drop charges every which way and write the whole thing off as a misunderstanding. The Deacon sounds pleased but says that there's still one more thing to deal with, and brings in several people, including Goran and Thaddius. They let Tendahl out of his cell, he shakes Thaddius' hand, and then Goran shakes his hand, but Goran's staring daggers at Carl the whole time. Tendahl promises to put warning signs around his junkyard. Carl's also released, of course.

Carl still needs rope, and now he knows where to get it. He finds the shotgun caught in a bear trap, which Tendahl will need to fix. That's going to take time, but not much else. Learning how to duplicate the ammunition, though, will take dozens of attempts, each of which will expose someone to danger.

Carl makes himself look like the younger Henrich Dietz and steals the rope out of the Stone Barn. It's easy since he can carry it out through the bright place. He stashes it at the end of the road to the well. He then sneaks into the shed/root cellar of the Margner house to steal their rope. He's just getting it off the peg when a voice behind him asks, "Can I help you, young man?" Still looking like Henrich, he turns and says, "I've come to take back what was stolen from me!" Then he vanishes. Within hours, the word of the curse on the Margner family is all over the town.

Carl tells Tendahl the rope is all set. Tendahl asks Carl to notify the Dammerung and, if possible, to Sonja. He can't get to the witch, but Himmler and Schmidt show up to the fun. They make their way to the well without incident. Carl sings while Tendahl lowers the rope, and then Tendahl has to climb down to tell Barbarossa that it's cave/jailbreak time. Tendahl has some vague idea of how this is supposed to work on his second pass, and makes it.

Barbarossa heard Carl singing and swam into the water to get the food pack. They both grab the rope and give it a couple tugs, and Himmler and Schmidt pull them out. While they're still in the well, Tendahl makes sure to tell Barbarossa that if he goes back into town, they'll straight up kill him.

Carl looks at the stones while he keeps watch, and thinks he sees a light out to the west of the hill, in the moor. That's not the direction of town. It's blue, not the red of a torch flame. Weird.

Back in Schwarzhoele, Inga's got the cellar prepped to work as a hiding place. She meets her "guests" and finds that it's going to be three families, fifteen people, and she recognizes members of two of them. They all look terrified. Inga suddenly remembers that there's no lock for the outside of that gate, though she brought some stuff to pile against it. Anyone getting into that tunnel will at least have to make some noise.

Inga welcomes them by serving them some absinthe. She makes a particular impression on Anya, who seems to be the matriarch among these refugees. As a gesture of thanks, Anya gives Inga a necklace with a charm hanging from it. Inga asks the history of the necklace, and Anya tells her it's a family heirloom that will bring her luck.

It's slow again the next day at Der Flammenkamber. A bunch of Lord Eisenbach's troops come in, and when a dozen of them show up all at once, that's not usually good news. Inga greets them as guests, but the guy in charge, Captain Schmitto ignores her and reads out of a warrant to arrest and/or search the place for a whole bunch of people. Inga asks to see the list, spots a couple people who she thinks have left town, and says they were in last week but she thinks they left town. She points to another and says he was just in but he left to go to the market. Deacon Flaubert is asking the questions, and he wants her to take him to the market right away to find that guy. She encourages them to search her place first, so as to allay his suspicions. She's already given the panic signal to the people in the basement, so she can plausibly hope they'll all have retreated to the tunnels. Unfortunately, Schmitto recognizes the pendant on Inga's necklace and orders his troops to tear the place apart. Just then, Archimandrix Hike and her troops come in.

"Is this a bad time?" the Archimandrix asks. She can see that this place is crawling with guards and Schmitto's in charge. She offers to have her troops leave, but he tells her to bar the door and ensure that nobody leaves. She offers to have her men surround the inn and ensure that nobody makes a break for it, while helping herself to some wine. She then bars the door from the inside, with her gang outside.

Schmitto asks Inga about her necklace. She claims someone left it at the bar and she doesn't know what the big deal is - she wears it so that whoever left it might recognize it. Her lie is so transparent that Schmitto slaps her in the face with his mailed fist. His men search the downstairs while Schmitto continues to demand answers about the necklace. Meanwhile, she hears screams from the cellar, or probably from the tunnels in the cellar. Schmitto claps her in irons. His troops start leading the fugitives out from the cellar. Inga tries to act surprised, while the Archimandrix asks what the hell this is. Anya spits on Inga and calls her a collaborator. Schmitto unlocks Anya's manacles and tells her she did well. The guards lead them all away. Of course, once the guards lead the fugitives, Inga, and Danziger, and the barmaids on duty, outside, certain Torchbearers are going to be unhappy. Only Linus manages to successfully claim innocence.

Hermann steps in front of Captain Schmitto and asks what the hell is going on here. Hike steps to him and tells him that things are going to go much worse if he gets in the way, but Hermann doesn't back down. He claims that this is bullshit. Hike gives Hermann his second vicious beat down of their relationship, and when she's clarified certain matters for him, she tells him that he's not going to get a third chance to learn how things work. Schmitto's aghast, but the Archimandrix tells him that it's an internal matter.

Hike's crew try to take over Der Flammerkamber. She tells Linus that she's got Inga's permission to use the place. Linus is a little uncertain and also, he doesn't really want to turn the place to this blood-spattered lunatic. He tells her to go to The Camp down the street. Hike offers him coin up front for what they're about to drink, and that convinces Linus to let the Torchbearers in. They bar the door behind themselves. Linus goes to let people know what happened there.

Tendahl tells Barbarossa that he needs to not go back to town. Carl tells Himmler about the corpselight, which leads to a digression about what they are. Anyway, Himmler has work he wants to do in town, so he doesn't want to try to run. Carl asks about the Adler place, but it's quartering soldiers. The absinthe shed might be free, but it would be under constant risk of discovery. As they argue, Carl returns to town, via his own special channels. They eventually decide to let Himmler find a Dammerung loyalist to host Barbarossa, and so Tendahl decides to split off before they get to town and sneak in separately. Tendahl returns to his shop before anyone knows anything ever happened. The Dammerung make it to a farmstead owned by the Margners, where they don't expect people to come and look for them.

Barbarossa enters, and Thaddius, complete with ugly jaw repair contraption, kneels and calls him Lord Barbarossa. Barbarossa can tell that Thad is full of disbelief, and elation, and terror.