1×05: Troubled Town

• Pandemonium has ensued. Fabergus Heinzdrok, infamous witch hunter, topples, an arrow buried in the back of his skull. There is a long moment of stunned disbelief and then a wave of panic sends everyone scrambling away from the scene, filled with terror.
• Christoph is able to escape the Göttenplatz mostly unseen, though he is convinced that a few people did notice him; in the mad chaos, though, it was likely just a fleeting glimpse and not enough to draw an accurate portrait of him. More importantly, though, he can feel the lesser geas cast upon him evaporate since Heinzdrok is dead and as that happens, so too does the false memory he had dissipate. He was charmed!
• Jörg, who was passing through this way with Sergeant Else Überraschung on their way out of town, is also hit by the panic, as is Sören (and possibly Enfys, though we won’t know about that until next session with the flashback!). Coppertong, being a Dwarf, is unaffected, but still wisely scrambled for cover. In the chaos, Sören heads toward the two thieves he knows and they hurry him to a manhole cover and the sewer, aka the “Thieves Highway.” Their boss wants to see him.
• As the courtyard and streets clear out, SGT Überraschung orders the Watch personnel back to the barracks to gear up; she’s see this sort of madness before and knows riots are coming. Jörg and Coppertong follow her, and are joined en route by Christoph who has donned his Town Watch tabard as cover. There is no sign of Enfys or Sören.
• Sören, as it turns out, is being recruited into the Crooked Fingers, the current thieves guild running the town and a religious order of Rainald as well. From the leader, Franz Baumann, he learns that his parents were members in good standing – his father was actually the Ranaldan high priest – until they died under mysterious circumstances. Baumann wants Sören to join and promises that it’ll lead to a big payday down the road. To prove his worth, Sören is tasked to help a fellow escape from the barracks while the rest of the Watch are out dealing with riots.
• He does so by slipping the thief lockpicks, then ducking away to change into his Watch uniform; unfortunately, the thief panics upon seeing someone dressed as the Watch and attacks, injuring Sören before fleeing.
• After being patched up, Sören rejoins the rest of his team (sans Enfys, who is still missing) and they participate in anti-riot measures all night and into the morning, finally ending up on the north bank, defending the Shallyan mercyhouse from crazed locals obsessed with digging up a nonexistent treasure. Exhausted, they return to the barracks around noon, only to be reminded that they have night duty that evening.
• The night drags only slowly for the exhausted personnel, especially with SGT Rudi Klumpenklug overseeing them and swearing he was in the middle of the riots (though no one remembers seeing him at all.) Once back at the barracks, the new Watch members have no problems sleeping through the day … and they have gate guard tonight. Klumpenklug reveals that the Town Council decided that the gates will be closed from sundown to sunup thanks to the recent problems and no one is to be admitted.
• Around midnight, a large group of witch hunters and soldiers arrive, demanding entrance, but Jörg, who is currently in charge as SGT Klumpenklug has “mysteriously” wandered off for some reason, politely refuses due to his orders. He gives his name when the witch hunter demands it, and the Templars of Sigmar ride away to the other gate. On the morrow, they will learn that the other guards bent under pressure and allowed the witch hunters to enter … and yet another group of them arrive around noon.
• That evening, just as their third night shift begins, the Watch members are at the site of a “road rage” incident between merchants when Sören notes some men making familar hand gestures he recalls from another group who mistook him for Kastor Lieberung. They flee into the crowd when he tries to approach…

GM Notes:

• Original plan was for us to skip this week and do a session zero for the GURPS: Old West that Gigermann is spinning up but Nosh wasn’t able to join us so it was back to GURPSHammer.
• The Action Challenge System is something Gigermann started working on a while back for action scenes that couldn’t be handled by standard GURPS combat (or would be difficult to do so). It’s not quite GURPS: Mass Combat which both of us have some problems with, and has gone through some iterations. Mostly worked for my needs, but I didn’t do as good a job with setting the conditions as I’d like.
• I wasn’t happy with where the session ended and naturally, 30 seconds after everyone had logged off, I realized what I should have actually done.
• Nosh is back next session and I’m going to do a quick (hopefully) flashback for Enfys to setup what he’s been doing and reveal some things that will hopefully make the crazyness a bit more clear.
• The Schaffenfest and Enemy in Shadows adventure will actually (finally!) kick off next week as well.
• I also realized after the fact that, since I’m using that GURPSHammer fan supplement (which admittedly is based more on WFRP 1e), all religious spellcasters with Warp Empathy 0 (which is basically Magery 0, but without the magical awareness; Power Investiture is not a thing in GURPSHammer) have access to the Divination spell … which means the Witch Hunters are going to be tapping into that by using Sigmar priests … so I’ve started using “The Hunt: from Monster Hunters 2 but in reverse to see how close they can get to Christoph before things turn to crap…