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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sanzuo" data-source="post: 4862658" data-attributes="member: 66180"><img src="http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/6057/rolf.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> The Journey The next morning everyone was up bright and early to take the coach to Altdorf – only to find that the coachmen had not yet risen and were sleeping off massive hangovers.  Hargin the Knave went upstairs to rouse the coachmen and told them if they did not get ready then the coach would be his.  This got them moving albeit slowly.  The coach went underway with Hargin and Klaus sitting inside with Lady Isolde von Strudeldorf, her servant, bodyguard, and the quiet scholar from the previous evening.  Lau rode on top with  the coachmen, Gunnar and Hultz. The coach was moving a bit too slowly for Lau's liking, so he decided to take his hand at the reins.  Before too long the coach was bounding across the road at a respectable clip.  However, after about an hour of this treatment the coach decided to lose a wheel.  The front left side of the coach took a dive into the hard ground as the wheel came loose and the entire coach capsized.  Lau managed to land on his feet, but everyone else managed to injure themselves in the crash.  (Except for Hargin who cushioned his fall in the Lady Isolde's bosom.)  Gunnar, Hultz, Hargin, Klaus and Marie the bodyguard all helped lift the coach back onto its wheels.  After about ten minutes of wheel repair the coach was ready to be on the move again.  Lau took the reins once more, though everyone pleaded with him to drive more slowly.  He sort of listened to them.  Then it started to rain.  Several hours later the hurt, soaked and miserable group drove past another coaching inn, but this wasn't their destination.  They were seeking the Inn of Seven Spokes – another coaching inn still a few hours away.  They rode past without stopping.  A short ways up the road they were halted by something.  They saw a figure in the road hunched over the corpse of what seemed to be a coachman.  The figure turned and to everyone's horror it seemed as if his skin was melting off his body.  Also he was eating the dead coachman.  Lau happened to notice that the man was Rolf Hurtsis, a man he had met in the past.  The mutated Rolf drew a knife and charged the coach.  Before anyone could react the horses panicked and broke loose from their bracings.  Hultz quickly grabbed the reigns from Lau, but got dragged off his seat and into the forest behind the fleeing horses.  Gunnar jumped free from the coach and Lau simply stood on his seat and reached for his bow and arrows in his pack next to him.  Gunnar pulled his blunderbuss from his back and leveled it at the charging mutant.  At the last instant the mutant jumped to the side and the cluster shot from the gun flew harmlessly into the woods.  Then, an arrow fired by Lau caught the mutant in his shoulder, throwing him off-balance.  This gave time for Gunnar to dodge the mutant's charge and fumble for his sword.  As the mutant raised his knife again to plunge into Gunnar, Lau's second arrow pinned the mutant's wrist to his head and the mutant fell over dead.  Gunnar complimented Lau on his marksmanship. By then Klaus and Hargin piled out of the carriage with their weapons, but the fight was over.  A battered and bloodied Hultz soon ran back out of the woods pleading for the others not to shoot him.  Everyone could hear screaming further down the road around the bend.  They decided to investigate.    After Klaus looted the dead coachman's sleeved mail shirt, Hargin, Klaus, Gunnar and Hultz proceed down the road. Ahead they saw carnage.  There was an overturned coach in the middle of the road, a huge mutant with a tiny head hacking away at two screaming horses with an axe, a mutant with dog-like head laying on the ground screaming, blood pouring from his leg while a pointy headed mutant tries to bandage it, a mutant with cloven feet feasting on the body of a child and a human with scaly skin and a crossbow  looting the many bodies littered about.  They hadn't immediately noticed the four watching them.  Hargin and Klaus whispered quickly to one another about what to do while Gunnar and Hultz stared in abject horror.  Then the scaly human noticed them and yelled at the other mutants.  Hargin, Klaus and the coachmen turned and ran back towards their coach. At the coach the four of them stopped and turned around to face the mutants pursuing them.  The tiny-headed, pointy-headed and cloven-footed mutants ran around the bend wailing with their crude weapons raised high.  A short ways behind them the scaly human with the crossbow followed.  Lau, who was still standing on the coach, immediately drew and arrow and fired at the scaly man.  Lau's shot missed and hit the road but managed to gain the man's attention.  Klaus and Hargin met the mutant's charge and ganged up on the cloven-footed one, battering it savagely with mace and axe.  Gunnar fired his blunderbuss at the group of mutants and managed to wing the tiny-headed one, but only slightly wounding him.  The already wounded Hultz lost his nerve and stayed back to protect the carriage.  The scaley crossbowman fired a bolt into Lau's shoulder, nearly throwing him from the coach.  Lau recovered and managed to return fire, but missed again.  Klaus takes a spear through his arm from the cloven-footed mutant, then Klaus and Hargin smashed and hacked him to bits while fending off the other two mutants.  Gunnar drew his sword and joined the melee.  Lau continued to exchange fire with the crossbowman but still couldn't find his mark.  Klaus and Hargin made short work of the pointy-headed mutant and then Klaus, Hargin and Gunnar surrounded the tiny-headed mutant from all sides.  The scaly human decided then that he had lost and fled into the thick brush.  A frustrated Lau took it out on the last mutant, putting an arrow into its arm as the three surrounding it cut it down.<img src="http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/4417/battlex.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />    The battle won, the group decided to investigate (loot the crap out of) the ruined coach ahead.  Unfortunately, it seemed the bodies had already been well looted by the scaly man before the group arrived.   Just then, Klaus spotted something in the brush.  It was the body of an artisan, perhaps missed by the mutants.  He pulled the body out of the foliage and made a horrifying discovery - the dead man was an almost exact likeness of Klaus!  Except for a few minor details, he could have passed as Klaus' twin brother.  After searching him and finding a pack of documents, Klaus discovered the man's identity.  The dead look-alike was a man named Kastor Lieberung, who was apparently on his way to a town called B[FONT=Times New Roman, serif]ö[/FONT]genhafen to claim an inheritance – an inheritance which included an estate and no less than twenty thousand Gold Crowns.  This was written in a letter which included an affidavit verifying Kastor Lieberung's identity, and Klaus was an exact match for the dead man. Klaus looked at Hargin and Lau knowingly and pocketed the documents.</blockquote>

Verification