Sessions 4 & 5, Blood on the Road
Raquel & Gunthar arrive at the Coach and Horses.
They pay to join a Ratchet Lines of Altdorf coach which is staying over at the coaching inn on route to Altdorf.
They meet, to varying degrees their fellow passengers;
- Isolde von Strudeldorf a young, stuck up Drakwalder noblewoman traveling with her maid and bodyguard.
- Ernst a studious young physician’s apprentice returning to his studies at Altdorf University
- Pandora ‘Pea’ Lostpocket, a halfling fiddle player and entertainer on the way to the Schaffenfest, an annual festival in Bogenhafen.
They also meet Harken Rouge, a bounty hunter on the trail of Maud Shay, leader of some gang of thieves who murdered Baron Fielbach’s heir while robbing an Altdorf jewelers. Believing his quarry to have headed north along quieter trails he is journeying next to Erinsclaw, when he overhears that Raquel and Gunthar have just come from there he joins them to see if they have any useful intelligence. Raquel tells the tale of their bloody exploits to the evident horror of Gustav the landlord who absents himself for the remainder of the evening.
It's a late start the next day as Gunnar and Hultz, the two coachmen over indulged the night before and now suffer mighty hangovers. Heavy rain christens the journey along with heavy bickering from Isolde who is affronted at having to share the interior of the coach with commoners. Raquel joins Gunthar on the roof and charges Pea to look after Traitor inside.
Mid-afternoon they round a bend to see the grisly sight of a leprous like mutant feasting on a coachmen laying dead on the road. He springs up on to the coach, the horses panic and manage to break their traces and drag Hultz off with them into the trees, a stunned Gunnar is stabbed by the mutant as the coach veers wildly and crashes on its side.
Raquel is fast to her feet and dispatches the mutated assailant in 2 blows. An awful bestial howling can be heard from around the bend as the disheveled occupants clamber out of the coach. Raquel instructs Ernst to help Gunnar, then she, Gunther and Pandora (equipping herself with Gunnar’s blunderbuss) head off to investigate the cries. They cut through the trees, up the hill that forces the bend to see a scene of mayhem and carnage.
A Four Seasons coach lies on its side, its 2 horses are still trapped in their harness, one contributes to the cacophony of pain as a huge mutant with the head of a baby cuts it with his axe. Another dog faced abomination sits on the ground by the coach, screaming as blood pours from his leg while a third mutant with a weird conical head attempts to stem the flow with rags. The bodies of the passengers are scattered across the road and being searched by a fourth figure, who at range looks human, but close up displays skin formed of thorny scales. This one carries a crossbow.
Raquel and Traitor rush as quietly as they can towards the one armed with the crossbow, while Gunthar lopes towards the acting medic. Pea curves around the scene to approach it from the opposite direction.
Cone-head turns on hearing Traitor’s chain being loosed and yells a warning before a great swing of Gunthar’s axe removes his left arm in a spray of blood. A blow from Racquel’s sword knocks her target down, just before a ferocious bite from Traitor finishes him off.
Dog-face dies where he lies, a chop from Guthar’s axe shedding fingers and splitting bone. Baby-face tries to run, and gets about eight yards away before Raquel, sweeping up the fallen crossbow, takes him down with a quarrel.
The searching of the bodies begins. Gunthar starts on that furthest from the coach, a burgher judging by the clothes, face down with a bolt through the neck and another in the back. He turns the body over and manages to stifle his reaction; the corpse looks exactly like himself, as though it were his twin. A better dressed twin. He searches the pockets of the coat to find a letter from a Lawyer explaining that Kastor Lieberung has come into an inheritance, and finds another note, a signed affidavit declaring the bearer to be Kastor. Gunthar shows Raquel, then thrusts the papers in his pockets as a patrol of Road Wardens arrives.
Raquel quickly convinces them of what took place. Magnus their leader says he’ll need to take sworn statements, but at the next Inn down the road. The coaches are righted, the bolted horses recovered and split between the coaches with all of the corpses piled into one.
By nightfall they reach the Seven Spokes, an inn much like the Coach & Horses, but busier as there are 3 coaches worth of travelers here, not to mention the posse of Road Wardens. News of the carnage spreads quickly around the bar, helped on by Pea with her fiddle, regaling the clientele with the tale of Gunthar the limb lopper and Raquel true shot’s derring-do. There is much talk of mutants and ill things abroad, and rumours that Faberguz Heinzdork put Erinsclaw to the sword and flame as folk there were in league with mutants. Magnus takes down the statements and the bodies of the mutants are burned, whilst those of the victims are prepared for the arrival of a Doomsayer.
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