Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 6709230" data-attributes="member: 60965">The Last Act   A high-experience Warhammer Fantasy adventure. Decades ago: deep in the Empire: Erinnerung-town; a centennial bonfire, new town crest proudly inked on foolscap sheets Dawn: a traveler's call falls upon barred gates, silent walls. Engineers called; gates fall. Erinnerung: empty save skin scraps, skittering rats, bloody smears, uncannily chilled. Chaos feared, Witch Hunters enter, wary, skilled. Survivor: One. Rabid, raving. Proscribed: Gates sealed – steel and lead – word spread: a death warrant upon the head of any who enter or speak upon. Upon every map, path and name removed. Forgotten: Erinnerung, its mysteries: abandoned, relinquished to wilderness and time. Opferburg: Another town falls. Yesterday: Imperial Writ dispatched, Survivor released from distant asylum to lead the way back to Erinnerung.  Death to All Who Know  While camping, the party hears sounds of battle. A white-haired Witch Hunter crashes into them bearing a brace of pistols, wicked scars, wild eyes, and a mildewy reek. He screams of "hooded vermin", then coughs, spraying the party with chill, brown flecks. He leads them to an overturned coach surrounded by signs of recent battle, even the horses' corpses dragged into the night.   The Witch Hunter, Jäger Schädling, proclaims himself the hero of a tragedy, returned to the stage to complete the final act. Standing amidst the wreckage, he pronounces:  A town bygone and bygone, our sad players seek it out. Speaking of it, death follows. Approaching it, death awaits. Crusty blood, rusty mud, so cold! Consuming life, devouring warmth His blood all enfolds!  In his mad, melodramatic way Jäger reveals Erinnerung's fate and that "to know of it is a bounty, upon word of it all will hang". Further questioned, he reveals something dwells beneath Erinnerung, the exact what lies beneath decided by the Emperor best left unknown, undisturbed, and forgotten – until Erinnerung happened again. Jäger presents a faded foolscap sheet. Barely discernible: an elaborate inverted triangle on a russet field. "Lost Erinnerung's coat arms, found in Opferburg where all else was taken."   By this time, crusty brown mildew infests the characters, rimy to the touch. “You carry its slow rot now for life. At its source alone a violent cure and esteem of an Emperor.”  Blood and Treasure, Less Treasure  Traveling there presents the usual Old World dangers – orcs, bandits, weather, starvation, privation.   Jäger's hazy recollection and the players' skills finally lead them to forest-reclaimed Erinnerung where they must find a way into the ruin – scaling the crumbling wall or swimming the swollen river it fronts – then face canny traps, pitfalls, hazards, and hit-and-run ambushes by hooded figures in the rubble-strewn streets as Jäger leads onward.  At the sewer mouth, Jäger poses dramatically: "far below, the last act resides!"   Delving into the sewer, they finally face the Skaven face-to-face, assaulted from twist and turn and tunnel. The ratmen hurl handfuls of brown, mossy sludge that engorges on blood and drains all heat and light from torches while hordes of brown, mildewed rats gnaw at ankles. Wet brick sewer gives way to a tangled skein of warrens, leading deeper into the Skaven stronghold wherein are found maps etched on human skin: a dozen other towns to be "sacrificed".  Rot-Skaven battle them deeper within, the brown must in their fur devouring their innards when they die, the slimy remains running slowly down (or up) the tunnels.   Following the trickling slime, the tunnels culminate in a single massive pit.   Within, men and beasts are sacrificed, blood running into a viscous pool. Rot-Skaven stumble in, falling to putrefied lumps amidst the gunk. Bonfires roar, fed constantly as heat and flame are devoured, churning the fetid gore in the basin. In the middle of the pool, the corpse of a rat the size of a dragon lays gutted, its gnarled rams-horns curling around its skull. The holocaustic carnage seeps up and into it, like blood running back into a wound. In the center of its skull a brand: the same symbol as the Erinnerung arms.   "Behold, the Chaos God of rat and rot! Here my tragedy finally ends!" Jäger proclaims, revealing rune-traced explosives packed to his spare frame. "Aid me to the avatar's bulk, then flee. My finale is here; your tragedy but now begins."  They must protect Jäger until he detonates himself near the Horned Rat, then flee the warrens to bring answer to the Emperor: the many towns in danger by the “mythical” Skaven, the implication of the symbol on Erinnerung's arms, and the but-delayed Coming of the Horned Rat.Ingredients<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Faded Memory </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Unasked Question </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> The End </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Dangerous Knowledge </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Rats </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Brown Mold </li> </ul></blockquote>

Verification