2: Red Mist

The session started at about 4.30 pm on Konigstag 24 Brauzeit. Btw, I never explained much about the timing of the adventure. At the moment, it is near the end of Brauzeit, which roughly equates to our month of October (although it's actually the ninth month. The nights are beginning to draw in and the days are getting colder.

We finished the last session with everyone just having left Claudio Zefferetti's place, all with blue rags that he gave you as some sort of gang signal so you don't get attacked on your way to Arlisconi's in Boogaardweg. You decided that you might be being set up and wanted to check that out. You spent a while in the local area and in an inn trying to discover the colours of local gangs but didn’t find out anything useful.

You decided to make your way down Remasweg, anyway, without your colours and go to Arlisconi's. When you caught sight of the building it was obvious that it was well defended and one of the thugs around there had a gun. Hermann approached him and managed to convince him to let him see Benito 'Benny the Butcher' Arlisconi. He was taken into the butcher's shop and after a brief chat in which it was agreed there had been some sort of misunderstanding, allowed to leave. Arlisconi also decided that Hermann and his gang now owed him a favour. On your way out of the ghetto Thijens noticed that the area was swarming with previously unseen gangsters. Arlisconi also told Hermann to deliver the message to Zefferetti. 'Same again, next week.'

On the way back over the bridge into Noord Miragliano, the party got a note delivered by urchin-post reading:

I have lied to you, but I do this last thing for you. You will not find Ana. She has gone forever, because of me. She is gone. You won't find her in Boogaardweg. Leave there now. I will be dead, soon. The doctor has killed me.
C.Z.

You rushed back to Zefferetti's to find him swinging from the rafters by his neck. Haakon was keen to try to save him but everyone else just wanted to have a look round his home. Eventually you got him down, but he was dead. His son was still alive, however and beckoned for some medicine, which Johannes inspected.

In the house you found a suicide note that read:

I pray to Morr speed me to your realm. Bring me where you have taken Marco, and as you drag Emilio, there, despite all I have done to save him. I pray that the Shallyan sisters will show their mercy to Emilio and I give them all my remaining worldly goods.

Under the wings of the Raven may I find the peace there that has eluded me here. May the Gods forgive me. May Ana forgive me.

Claudio Zefferetti

And a scrap of paper stuck to one of the bottles of medicine which read:

Kalter dusk Daankkanaal Red Mist

Most of you rushed off to the Daankkanaal again, leaving Zombrie and Johannes to take the very ill Emilio and his fizzy brown medicine to Heiligdom, The Shallyan Asylum of Blessed Rest, over the other side of Doodkanaal. They said they'd look after him. You also told them about Zefferetti's bequest of all his worldly goods (actually debts, but they didn't know that)

You asked a few likely looking people if they had heard of Kalter, or Red Mist. Apart from a busker, on Daankkanaal who said he had seen it (the Red Mist boat) a few times, no one was helpful. Over-stressed by poverty and lack of sleep Hermann was in no mood to be fleeced for two schillings by the busker and chased him down a dark alley and managed to get the money back.

Then Zombrie had the idea that they should ask the red dwarf whom Klaus had chased a few days before, where she had found the cloak. You found the dwarf at her home (an abandoned ship) and got her to take you to Goudberg on the North Islands. She showed you the place on a muddy beach near Streusel's wharf in Goudberg.

You had a look around and Johannes spotted the Red Mist tied up at the wharf. While Hermann, Johannes, and Thijens went to a nearby inn, the Sands, Zombrie, Haakon, and Klaus gave the Red Mist the once over. Nothing at all was found on the Red Mist, it was almost 'too clean'.

In the Sands, Thijens managed to find out about a local who worked for some guy named Kalter. He and Johannes followed him all the way home (to the back of a terrace in a posh street above the warehouses) then went back to get the rest of the party. The party decided to break into this apartment.

Klaus decided subtlety wasn't gonna get the door open and so Hermann hammered it in, with some violence. Hermann, Klaus, Haakon, and Zombrie rushed the place. Haakon and Zombrie managed to defeat the thug from the Sands quite easily and sat on him. Then Klaus came in and spilled his guts out onto the floor with his dagger.

Meanwhile Hermann went down to the cellar. He found a very strange room with horrific apparatus and strange paraphernalia stuck into various butchered body parts. Some of the equipment seemed to be feeding fluids of some kind into the bodies, and some seemed to be siphoning fluids off, or something. It was not pleasant.

There was a robed figure in the room and Hermann went to get it. Before he managed to reach it, however, a suddenly animated hand grabbed him and soon the room was crawling with these horrific animated corpses.

Hermann took a hefty blow from one of the undead things. He threw his hammer at the robed figure, hoping that might end the enchantment, and legged it as quick as he could, calling for help. Klaus and Haakon arrived. Klaus was cut up a bit too by the dead things, and something strange happened to Haakon who went all simple minded, out of the blue. Klaus grabbed him and they made their escape.

Zombrie then tried to defeat the corpses but he was soon overpowered and luckily just managed to escape in one piece.

Everyone got in a watertaxi and went back to the south islands. Everyone tried to sleep again, and all got some strange dream that featured the Red Mist.

In the morning, as luck would have it, Herr Rotter wanted some new crew for his old boat (no one asked what happened to the old crew). He remembered Hermann and spoke to him about getting together a crew that didn't have to be able to sail but had to be able to look hard. You all volunteered, knowing that Rotter paid well.

He sailed across the Doodkanaal and then waited for the tide. As the water level dropped a low cave entrance was exposed in the bank. By taking down the mast you could just slide the boat into the cave with inches to spare. You came out in an underground cavern area with what seemed to be various passageways and caves leading off it. The channel continued further under the ground but you stopped at a makeshift jetty, carved into the cave wall.

Rotter explained that you needed to get the cargo (all sorts of stuff) unloaded very quickly as you had to be ready to go while the tide was still low enough. otherwise, you would have to stay in the cavern for another 6 hours waiting for the tide. You managed to get the job done in time and came out into the light of day again.

Haakon expressed an interest in returning to the underground waterway, sometime, and took note of where the entrance lay. Klaus got Zombrie to write him a note to send to the temple of Morr asking for help. It also kind of faked his death.

It's about 1.30 pm on Angestag 25 Brauzeit. Zombrie gets a day off from his job at the temple (the one he never goes to). No one else has a job except for Thijens, although the landlord of the Hole has been complaining about the rats, again. Everyone is weak and very tired, a bit on edge, and anxious to stop the nightmares....