The Misfits of Righteous Indignation

** Note** Due to simmering tensions, an expanding plaer base and the need to divert a potential player vs. player situation, our regular Song of Ice and Fire campaign has been temporarily suspended.  In it's place we journery to the dark and despicable Empire of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying (2nd Edition).

To see them traveling together, one would assume the band was a tarvelling carnival of some sort or another.  Three halflings, two dwarves, a human and an elf made their way along the mountain passes headed to the Sausage Festival in some wretched little town.  If not for the happenstance of fate and the foreknowledge that the roads were dangerous, perhaps such a group would never have found itself in one another's company.

As the dwarvess Annika proclaimed, "I just want sausage, dammit."

The band consisted of a confidence man, a cook, a soldier, a tollkeeper, a gaoler, a rune bearer, a failed entertainer and a shady toll keeper.  Each member of the troupe had its own reasons to be on the road.  Some were simply afflicted by wanderlust while others were escaping the drudgery of their past lives.  A deeper connection had to do with their own sense of propriety and justice, something the road ahead was sorely lacking.

That any of them individually could have survived the trek was never in doubt - they could not.  City bred or better suited to the company of others, they plodded along barely able to keep starvation and disaster at bay.  With their talents combined, however, it seemed this miserable band could at least make it from town to town.

What became apparent was that this part of the Empire has been in slow but steady decline for some time.  the roads were in poor repair and many travelers had fallen prey to banditry and attack.  This much was borne out by the fact that a warrior priest lay slain and abandoned along the roadside.  Lorenot the elf took advantage of the priest's misfortunes and salvaged what he could from the corpse.  many of his compatriots, though used to the carnage that accompanies the wilder areas of the Empire, found the elf's actions disturbing if not wholly distasteful.  Still, the glimmer of gold was enough to assuage their guilt at least for the time being.

Upon arrival, the band took note of the erratic and lackadaisical actions of the town guard.  Though protected by high, stout walls, the presence of voracious ratmen and bandits did not seem to engender any particular sense of urgency among the town fathers.  Indeed, it soon became apparent that this indifference may have been purposefully cultivated.  A pawn shop gathered and disposed of random wares, the type of plunder one would expect to harvest from travellers exposed to misfortune in the region.  Likewise, the sausage maker Hanse, though locally famed for his product, didn't strike the band as being entirely honest nor trustworthy.

This mistrust was put to the test during the group's first night in town.  The town gate shut promptly as evening fell and yet, a disturbance in the night aroused members of the company.  Looking out from the confines of the fortified inn, members of the group spotted a wagon making a meat delivery in the middle of the night.  Furthermore, the deliverymen had a decidedly inhuman gate that would later reveal them to be ratmen.

Lorenot and Bertoldt the toll keeper decided to confront the ratmen.  Respectable sausage makers did not receive mystery meat deliveries in the middle of the night, and certainly not from wagons that blithely enter the town after everything should have been closed up for the night.  Unable to contain their unease, the elf and the human pursued the ratmen as they attempted to make good their escape.

The battle was fierce but decisive with the pair managing to slay the foul beasts, though Lorenot sustained grave injuries in the process.  Fortunately, the combined care of the dwarvess gaoler Annika and the halfling soldier Alice were able to patch up the worst of his wounds.  Their attempts to confront the sausage maker with his foul deeds was briefly sidetracked by the cook Alfred's inability to confirm just what manner of flesh was contained in the ratemen's delivery.

"The meat is people!" Lorenot shrieked from deep inside the sausage factory's larder.

Though the band pointed out serious flaws in the town's defensive plans, the town fathers seemed to casually ignore the group's protestations.  Only after receiving recompense for their disturbed sleep was the band promptly booted out of town to await the town fathers' judgment.  Convinced that there would be no justice, the band made out for the north to the next town along the road - Treva.

The lure of the ruins of the Black Keep, though rife with possibility, also bore with it the high probability that adventurers were routinely sent there only to fall at the hands of the ratmen.  With the elf still in dire circumstance, the band decided to make for the next town as quickly as possible, there to rest and re provision for a return journey to the keep.

Upon arriving at treva, the band found this miserable hamlet to also be in an advanced state of disrepair.  the wall was barely sufficient to keep rabbits at bay, let alone attackers.  the surrounding fields and forests were virtually barren of wildlife, the animals no doubt frightened by the pall of despair and evil that hung over the area.  the presence of the unnamed and unnameable baron high atop the rocky crag did little to inspire confidence in the town's leadership.

This was further tested when the con halfling found that a lone child, probably an orphan of some predation or another, lived next door to the abandoned smithy.  The child eagrly awaited her marriage to the baron on the hill, despite being only eight years old.  The curious state of the hamlet's absurdly large cemetery only added to the growing unease of the band.

As Grimal the rune bearer pointed out "Those graves look like more things came out than went in."

Will the dwarf's proclamation prove prophetic?  Will Bertoldt gamble away the band's meager possessions before the next big payday?  Will Alice ever awaken from her seemingly inescapable nighttime reverie?  Is there anywhere that Axel and Alfed can't get kicked out of?  Can Annika ever get close enough to an enemy to bear him to the ground and produce a prisoner?  is an elven entertainer even capable of earning an honest day's age?

These and other questions will be answered in the next installment of the company's chronicles.