1×04: A Conflict of Colours

• Following the fire, the new watchmen are off-shift until this time tomorrow when they go onto the night shift.
• Most of the rest of the crew seek out a tavern to drown their bad day, but Christoph, needing some replacement arrows, observes Sybille in the market. She nods toward a disurbance, which turns out to be the infamous witch hunter he met briefly the day before. She casts a discreet spell that causes his saddle buckles to snap, dumping him into the street. Enraged, the witch hunter orders one of his escorts to be seized for daring to laugh; he must be Questioned to determine if he had just tried to murder the witch hunter.
• Possibly more important (or not; time will tell) is the magic ring that spills out of the witch hunter’s saddlebags and inexplicably rolls across the dirty cobblestones to Christoph’s boot.
• Afterward, Christoph follows Sybille, insisting that he wishes her to be an ally; she takes him to her hidden camp outside the town where she gives him a scroll to test whether he can learn and possibly aid her in killing the witch hunter who she claims killed everyone in her village. When he does so and counters with wanting her to prove she can cast spells, the GM laughs and casts: Charm, followed by Weaken Will, then Weaken Will again because he beat her, then Lesser Geas (to kill Fabergus Heinzdrok, Witch Hunter), then False Memory to hide what she just did. They agree to meet the following evening to discuss plans.
• The following day sees the new Watch members called into a fight at the Journey’s End between rival Merchant Houses. Against Sergeant Klumpenklug’s suggestion, the crew get involved and the fight spills out into the streets.
• Afterward, Jörg finds Watch Sergeant Else Überraschung, the woman he was courting before the bad times, waiting at the barracks so they can talk; she agrees to join him as he heads to his family’s farm and they depart Bögenhafen. The others are more interested in observing an execution of a heretic by a witch hunter, though Christoph breaks off by himself, sneaks to a building that he climbs onto the roof of so he has a clear vantage point. Just as the witch hunter is about to ignite the pyre, Christoph looses an arrow that punches into the back of the witch hunter’s head, killing him instantly.
• Pandemonium ensues.

GM Notes:

• Well. That escalated unexpectedly. My original intent was for Christoph and “Sybille” to sneak into some place within the temple of Sigmar after the execution, during which Christoph would have an opportunity to resist his geas … but FX embraced it and bam, dead witch hunter. This is going to result in a bit of revising the next sequence…
• I’d considered using the sequence of mind control spells earlier in the week, but was actually beginning to lean away from it and more toward the “long con” … until Christoph asked Sybille to prove that she was a spellcaster. That was too good of an opportunity. Unfortunately for her, the calamity stuff from her exceeding her Threshold (see GURPS: Thaumatology) has left her in a very bad place: all spells are cast at -3 for 8 fricking weeks and her Threshold level is reduced to 7 instead of 30 for 3 mos. She’s going to be very wary about casting spells for quite a while.
• Nosh had some computer issues in that his laptop died, so he was watching the stream on Twitch and logged into TeamSpeak via his phone. He should be back to normal at the next session.
• This ep turned in a super focus on Christoph and FX, the player, is aware that the character is potentially in a lot of danger, so he has given thought to a replacement character if necessary.
• No session next week: we’re going to do a “Session Zero” for Gigermann’s Old West game instead. This gives me an extra week to work on plans.