The Horror from the New World

Another great game of Devilry Afoot this week, this time a separate but related one-shot adventure as Friar Chük's origin story.

Needing a new character, I played Matthijs van der Velde, a Dutch Goodman. He had departed his village after the troubles of 1615, where he witnessed things that should not. Secretly raised Catholic by his mother, he was then recruited by the Vatican as an independent investigator of unnatural things...

Netherlands, 1627.

The Eighty Years' War raged on, and the Dutch struggle for independence was reaching a bloody crescendo.

The fortress city of Breda had been reduced by the Spanish Army of Flanders by siege in 1625, but that was the Spanish high-water mark. Dutch resistance continued to build and inflict reverses upon the Spanish army. In the New World, the Dutch settlements around New Amsterdam had begun trading not only with the French and English traders, but with the Native Americans. Seeing an opportunity to recast the war, a firebrand Jesuit priest decided to bring a supernatural horror, along with its shaman controller, back from the New World to help the Spanish reverse their campaign setbacks. 

The Surrender of Breda, by Diego Velázquez, 1635

A party of hunters, led by Friar Chück and supported by an Algonquin brave called Wigo, set out to stop them. Wigo had rejected the path of his tribal shaman, who had taken the horror far from their homeland. They were joined by Matthijs van der Velde, a Vatican investigator, and Gaston the Gambler, a former soldier toting a blunderbuss and sword. Together they tracked the monster and its keepers to the marshes of Holland. They were soon to learn that it was they who were the hunted.

The group had followed a trail of destruction to the swamps. They passed burnt-out villages, slaughtered inhabitants in farmhouses, and caravans torn to shreds. They did not understand the nature of what they were tracking, only that it needed to be stopped. As the night approached its darkest hour they approached an abandoned shepherd hut. Friar Chück hung a lantern on the outside post, and Gaston and Wigo peered into the darkness as Matthijs went into the hut to investigate, finding nothing of interest. 

"Abandoned?" Gaston asked.

Matthijs looked at the hut. "Apparently."

"Apparently is not a word I like when we're hunting something that has eaten half the countryside."

As Friar Chück steadied the lantern on the post he said "Then pray, Gaston."

Gaston hefted his blunderbuss. "I will, but I brought powder also."

But watching them from the darkness were three pairs of eyes belonging to a renegade priest, a shaman and a ravenous monster. Matthijs emerged from the hut to report back to Friar Chück, when out of the darkness charged a ten-foot ravenous monster, its emaciated body at odds with its size and figure. Finding only a torch in his hand, Matthijs waved it to no effect but managed to fend off the beast. The fire illuminated its enraged visage.

Wigo saw it and his face paled. "Wendigo," he whispered. They were the first words he had spoken since the creature appeared.

Friar Chück glanced toward him. "You know this thing?"

Wigo slowly nodded. "I know what it is. It is Death." His eyes moved toward the shaman standing behind it. "And I know who brought it here. He taught me the old ways once. Now I hunt him for what he has done."

To his left, Friar Chück stepped forward and held aloft a placating hand as he began to recite the Word of God to this outlandish beast.

The monster turned its head toward the friar, surprised, and then shocked, and took a few steps backward.

"Does that always work?" Gaston asked.

Friar Chück lowered his hand. "I have never tried it upon a creature such as this, but it seems so."

Behind it came the Jesuit priest and the shaman, following slowly in the monster's wake and chanting indistinctly. Wigo, recognising his former mentor, quietly fired an arrow from his bow and wounded him in the leg. The shaman grabbed the shoulder of the Jesuit priest and they backed up to a tree line. The monster turned and roared into the face of the monster hunters but they held their ground. They were ready to take this monstrosity down. 

Gaston stepped forward and fired his blunderbuss at short range. The igniting gunpowder roared, and the flash illuminated the whole area, revealing deep gouges and pink mist erupting from the monster's chest as the shot tore into it.

"That should have killed it," Gaston said incredulously.

Friar Chück looked at the creature. "Apparently not."

Gaston began ineffectually fumbling for his powder flask. "I preferred it when my enemies were Frenchmen."

Shocked by the pain, the Wendigo turned and charged Gaston before he could reload, swiping with its claws and catching him on the shoulder to wound him. 

The scent of blood filled the air, and the Wendigo stooped down to roar into Gaston's face. Gaston shrunk back and retreated. Seeing his prey disappearing into the darkness, the monster turned to his right, and seeing Matthijs still standing there, ran in to attack him. Matthijs again braced, cursing not having drawn his weapons, and thrust the torch into the monster's face. It hadn't expected it and reared back, its face singed. 

"Matthijs!" Friar Chück exclaimed.

“Still standing,” Matthijs replied, his voice strained.

"Then stand fast."

Friar Chück strode forward and recited more Scripture, and the beast recoiled. Of Gaston there was no sign, and the others believed he was still cowering in the shadows, unnerved by his encounter and the wound it had given him.

Seeing the monster turn his back to him, Matthijs saw his chance. He drew his horseman's pick from its sling over his shoulder and charged it from behind, burying it deep into his back. Blood spurted and the monster howled in rage. With their minion suffering such damage, the priest and shaman continued to shrink back to hide in the forest. But the monster was not stopped for long. It turned and saw Matthijs standing behind it. Its frenzied claws wounded him badly before Friar Chück could quote scripture once more and force it back. But the reprieve was brief. The Wendigo turned to reattack, and its blur of clawed attacks left Matthijs on the ground, bleeding and insensible.

The Wendigo licked the blood and meat from its claws. Friar Chück was horrified to see its wounds starting to knit together, as though feeding upon its victim somehow restored its own flesh. Encouraged by this casualty, the Jesuit priest and shaman emerged from the woods and began to advance on the hut again. The Wendigo dipped its snout, tore a chunk from Matthijs's body and roared in triumph. Friar Chück, horrified by this unnatural behaviour, fell back, but seeing the shaman and priest emerging, decided to rush them with his halberd and distract them from whatever unholy chanting they were doing. With no prey immediately available, the Wendigo turned to its left, sensing Gaston's blood trail and stalking after him. Having dropped his discharged blunderbuss, Gaston was fumbling for his sword.

"I've survived worse odds than this" he said, but then the Wendigo emerged from the darkness with blood smeared across its face.

Gaston stared at it. "Not much worse though." Then he too was on the ground and the beast began feasting on his entrails. Gaston's shrieks of pain soon trailed off into a grisly gurgle and then ceased.

Friar Chück and the Jesuit priest swung their blades at one another as Wigo stood to one side and put another shaft from his bow into the shaman. 

"You brought this thing here," Friar Chück accused the priest.

The Jesuit smiled. "And you came all this way to send it back?"

"No." Chück raised his halberd. "I came to send you both to Hell."

The shaman, bleeding now from the shafts in his abdomen and leg, moved in to help overwhelm Friar Chück, just in time to see the Friar swing his halberd in a wide, disembowelling arc that sent the renegade priest to the ground in a torrent of blood. As he died an anguished howl emanated from the monster in the woods.

As the monster's shriek of pain echoed away into the darkness, Friar Chück looked up to see the Wendigo coming around the shepherd's hut and stalking towards him. It appeared to be more sluggish than before, but still came on with frightening speed, its hate-filled eyes fixed upon him. 

It leapt at Friar Chück with both arms, but he managed to dance back and then thrust in with his halberd. The blade bit deep, and with a twist of his hands, ropes of entrails from the Wendigo poured out, and the monster fell screaming to the ground. The shaman, seeing the creature bound to him die, furiously attacked Friar Chück, but with his wounds was no match, and he soon joined his monstrous companion and the renegade Jesuit priest in death.

An extra large beastie gets an extra large death token!

But one look at the remains of Matthijs and Gaston, their bodies ravaged and feasted upon, showed that their victory had been narrow and that not everyone would return from their endeavours. They were merely more casualties in the hidden war against the enemies of Mankind.

----------

How's that for an origin story? Friar Chük not only vanquished the Wendigo but slayed both the renegade Jesuit Priest and his pagan witch doctor accomplice as well! Fabulous outcome and no dice tweaks required.

And for those wanting to know about the Wendigo model - it's Curt's great painting of "the model is ‘The Feasting Wendigo", for Forbidden Psalm. It’s a 50mm model but he upscaled it to 85mm to give it more gravitas. You can see more of it here:

https://analogue-hobbies.blogspot.com/2024/03/figures-for-forbidden-psalm-and-kill.html

Great game, thanks as ever to our host Curt and team mates Keith (Gaston) and Doug (Friar Chük). Here are Keith's game notes and wonderful map for the encounter.

Russian Command Figures

Having completed massed infantry and the first of my cavalry figures, I felt like painting something different: Command and Staff for my Russian army, led by Baron Osten-Sacken.

Count Dmitry Yerofeyevich Osten-Sacken (1789–1881) was a highly decorated Russian General of Baltic Prussian and Russian descent. He began his army career in 1809 with the Elisavetgrad Hussar Regiment and went on to have a distinguished military career that spanned 50 years and 15 campaigns. He is most celebrated for commanding the defence of Odessa and Sevastopol during the Crimean War.

Based on a contemporary picture, in the uniform of a cavalry General-Adjutant
source: Osprey 241 Russian Army of the Crimean War

The Baron himself is a very detailed sculpt, particularly with his collections of medals and awards, and I spent quite a bit of time picking them out to get the right gravitas.

The mounted staff officers are from a different blister, but match well

"Thats odd. I wonder what that British Light Brigade is up to..."

I kept the individual staff officers and aide-de-camp in the bright Uhlan uniform (he was fun to do!) on seperate bases to maintain flexibility on the table (like using them as ADC markers for the General d'Armee rules). I did their uniforms differently to reflect different regimental backgrounds and show the diversity of the Russian uniforms when not lathered in greatcoats!

Once again these are metal figures by Great War Miniatures from the following packs:

• CR14 - Baron Osten Sacken and Staff
• CR11 - Mounted Russian Officers in Helmets

Modeling notes:  I previously kept the greens on the infantry a few shades lighter to get the right effect, but deliberately didn't with these officers. Not only did I want them to stand out, but contemporary notes detail how fashion shifted Officers' green uniforms to an almost black-green by this time. The Coatee colour is GW Caliban Green over a dark grey undercoat.

Silent Victory Tertium!

Fabulous to catch up with my favourite game designer mate Greg Smith this week. While we've chatted and worked on projects together since, its been 12 years since we met face to face. So when the chance arose he graciously drove 3 hours each way to see me while I was visiting Washington DC.

Awesome as ever to catch up and also chat about our games in the design pipeline. He also very graciously gave me this recently released 3rd edition printing of Silent Victory, which is awesome because my first edition is in deep storage in another hemisphere.

I'd not realised before that late Rodger MacGowan did the artwork

I got him to sign the rules for me - its still much fun to see my name in the credits!

Time for another visit to the Pacific War Submarine Museum at Pearl Harbour...

If you want to read the declassified U.S. WW II SUBMARINE WAR PATROL REPORTS and compare your tabletop efforts, look here: 

https://maritime.org/doc/subreports.php

and here

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305243

Devilry Afoot: Terror in Kurtstein

The Terror in Kurtstein

This week saw intrepid heroes return to the horrors of the 30 years war in another remote game of Devilry Afoot. Introducing (L to R, top to bottom):

And a curious collection o' scallywags they were...

•       Curt (Saskatchewan, Canada) our host and majordomo
•       Millsy (Sydney, Australia) as grizzled veteran soldier Kasper Kessler
•       Reilly (Queensland, Australia) as demonologist Albrecht Braun, scholar
•       Paul (Washington DC) as nobleman Johann von Falkenburg, with his faithful man servant Jürg
•       Keith (Vancouver, Canada) as Dr Raymond the Lucky, physician

The Road to Kurtstein

Timor Domini principium sapientiae.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10)

A few weeks after Magdeburg, in a dining hall still smelling of the siege that had ended it, Giovanni Battista Seni had poured the wine himself. They were an odd company, assembled by design other than their own: a gentleman and the servant who followed him, a demonologist, a physician who wanted to dissect monsters, and an old campaigner who had learned that death found villainous and virtuous alike.

Count Wallenstein's astrologer watched them over the rim of his cup with the satisfaction of a man who had found precisely the goods he was promised. "Word travels strangely in this war," he said, "but it travels. Magdeburg has produced a remarkable number of reports. A child-preying entity banished, a spectral procession saved, churchyard horrors dispatched. Enough, at least, to convince my patron that the Empire has a problem larger than one ruined city. Your names have become useful to me."

"We've had luck," Falkenburg said, which was true as far as it went.

"You've had skill," Seni corrected, "which interests us a great deal more. Your former companions have gone their separate ways. Captain Reichenau remains in Magdeburg for the present, and I'm told the Franciscan has gone his own road."

Johann thought briefly of Friar Chück and wondered what he would have thought of the company Seni had assembled.

Seni continued, "The others have likewise found their destinations. Yours happens to be Kurtstein. I would not call this errand a test, precisely." He smiled, thin and dry. "I would only observe that Count Wallenstein watches how a man performs his first small commission before he offers him a larger one."

Braun, who had said little through the meal, set down his cup. "And how large a commission does the Count have in mind?"

"That depends a great deal on what you bring back, and in what condition. A smith whose iron does what the rumours claim is worth a great deal in a war... and you will not be the only ones who have heard of it. The Swedish crown keeps its own collectors of curious talents these days, and not every Imperial officer answers first to the Emperor's interests where a prize like this is concerned. Bring the smith back safely and you will have shown my patron what kind of instrument he has found in you."

Kessler, glass already refilled twice, broke the silence that followed. "And if we don't come back at all, Herr Seni?"

Seni did not answer at once. He idly turned his cup on the table and studied them each in turn, as though he were reading something off their faces that had nothing to do with the meal. "Mars still burns red over Magdeburg, they tell me," he said, almost to himself, "though I hear your Franciscan considered that Venus was already rising to answer it. Mercy following hard on the heels of Wrath. A tidy enough reading, if a man believes such things." He let the observation sit a moment before the smile returned. It was said that Count Wallenstein would not march an army without first consulting what Seni saw written in the stars.

The Astrologer Giovanni Battista Seni advises Count Albrecht Eusebius Wenzel Von Wallenstein 

That dinner had been three nights ago, since when the silence of the road to Kurtstein had been broken only by horses' hooves and a distant, directionless howling that might have been wolves. Count Wallenstein's coin sat heavy in Johann von Falkenburg's purse and heavier still on his conscience, for a man did not get rich in the Empire's thirteenth year of war without paying in more than mere silver.

They had ridden hard from camp. Falkenburg and his manservant Jörg were the vanguard, Falkenburg watching the road while Jörg watched his master, his hand resting easy on the silvered guard of the rapier that had been his grandfather's before it was his, the Falkenburg motto worn half-smooth beneath his thumb from years of the same habitual touch. Yet the company that had cleared the shrine at Magdeburg was not the one riding behind him now. In their place Dr Raymond "the Lucky" trailed behind with his satchel of powders and case-bottles clinking softly at every stride, occasionally checking the contents as though the road to Kurtstein were a laboratory rather than a road to somewhere men had stopped coming home from. Braun rode with the stillness of a man who had spent more nights reading of devils than sleeping, a crossbow across his saddle and a bundle of sharpened stakes beneath his cloak. Old Kaspar Kessler brought up the rear, halberd resting across his saddle-bow and his wineskin lighter than it had been at dawn.

Kurtstein's low stone gate rose out of the mist ahead of them, standing open, unchallenged by any watchman.

"Abandoned?" Jörg asked.

"Listen," said Braun, reining in short of the gate.

Beneath the wind: laughter. Thin, musical, threaded with something that raised the hair on every neck present, drifting towards them from somewhere down the high street.

"That is no watchman's call," Kessler muttered, and took a long pull from his wineskin.

They went in anyway, because the smith was in there somewhere.

Somewhere a dog gave one low whine and fell silent, as though it had thought better of it. The timber-framed houses leaned over the cobbles like conspirators sharing secrets. The cold had a taste here, flat and metallic, the way well water tastes of the pump it's drawn through. Every door was shut fast, more than one marked with a crude cross scratched at eye height, and above three separate lintels, wilted sprigs of wild rose and hawthorn, their protective virtue long since spent.

"Someone here knows what walks these streets," Braun said grimly, loosening the crossbow at his hip.

The faint laughter drifted and faded behind them as they turned off the high street, and for a time it seemed content to let them go.

The Daughters of the Night

Wer nachts pfeift, den holt der Teufel.

He who whistles in the night, the Devil fetches him. (German folk saying)

They kept to the shadow of the eaves as they crossed the town, following the cold, dark houses towards the smith's dwelling. They found it by its cold forge and shuttered windows, no different from its neighbours save for iron hinges that did not creak when Falkenburg's fist fell upon them. The man who opened it was broad through the shoulder in the way of his trade, a leather bundle already clutched to his chest as though he had been waiting all night for someone, anyone, to tell him it was time to run.

"You're the ones Count Wallenstein sent," the smith said. It was not a question.

"Gather what you can carry and no more," Falkenburg told him. "We haven't time for a return trip."

"I have had little enough to gather since their singing started," the smith said grimly, pulling the door shut behind him with a hand that shook only slightly. "Two nights now I've barred myself in and listened to it walk past my window. I had begun to wonder if anyone was coming at all."

"You'll wonder about warmer things soon enough," Kessler told him, not unkindly, and set off back the way they had come, the others falling into a loose, watchful ring around the smith. They had gone no more than six paces when the laughter changed pitch, sharpening as it found them, rising suddenly into words, sing-song and playful, pitched to carry.

"Come and see... come and see what waits within..."

Three women stood in the middle of the high street, bathed in a pale light that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere, clinging to their skin like moonlight made solid. They wore only thin shifts, white linen translucent with damp, and their bare feet did not seem to feel the frost on the cobbles. They were young, impossibly young, and achingly beautiful in a way that made a man's reason falter.

Their mouths broke the spell first. Dark stains ran from each woman's lips to her chin, black in the moonlight but unmistakably not black at all. Blood, and beneath the cold night air a faint copper tang reached them even at this distance.

"Sweet travellers," one of them called, her voice like a bell struck underwater, "you have come such a long way. And found what you came for, I see." Her eyes slid to the smith at the centre of their ring, and her smile widened. "Won't you rest with us a while, before you carry him off?"

"Thralls," Braun breathed, low enough for only the others to hear. "Wine-drunk on their master's leavings. Don't look at their eyes! Don't answer them!"

"Fascinating," Raymond murmured, reaching for the small case at his belt where his grenades were carried.

"Later, Doktor," Kessler growled. "If God is kind, you'll get your chance to blow one of them to Hell before this night is through."

Falkenburg tore his gaze from the women and fixed it on the black slate roofs beyond, forcing his mind back to the matter at hand. They had the smith, now they had to keep him. If there were thralls walking the streets at the witching hour, something far worse was master of this town tonight; and whatever it was would want the smith just as badly as Wallenstein did.

"We get him to hallowed ground," Falkenburg said, low, urgent, "and we do it now."

"He is not for you," the first woman sang, drifting closer, close enough now that Falkenburg could see that her breath did not fog in the freezing air. "He is promised. You may come in all the same, sweet soldiers. But you may never leave."

Braun's hand closed hard around Falkenburg's arm. "The church," he said. "Now. Move!"

They moved: Falkenburg gesturing Jörg across the street, Kessler barking Raymond back into step, Braun walking backwards with the crossbow finally levelled, watching the pale shapes come on.

The women had closed half the distance already, bare feet skimming the frost-slick cobbles without a sound, and even as Falkenburg watched, the tallest vanished into the black gap between two houses. Her sisters continued after Raymond and Kessler, but Falkenburg knew the missing woman would be circling to close the trap from both ends at once.

"She's flanking," Kessler snapped. "Move straight across!"

"Jörg, with me!" Falkenburg cut a line diagonally across the high street towards the black bulk of the church tower rising beyond the square, Jörg a half-step behind him, driving a path through the open ground before the other two women could close it. Braun came next, one hand fisted in the smith's collar, half-dragging him across in their wake.

Behind them Dr Raymond had gone very still and Kessler remained by his side. He set his lantern down upon the cobbles and stood with a small clay grenade cradled in both palms, its fuse already lit from the lantern and spitting bright orange sparks into the dark. Its fuse hissed and spat like grease thrown upon a cook-fire. His eyes held the particular, unhealthy delight of a scholar finally given leave to test his theories on living subjects.

"Doktor." Kessler's voice, flat and wary. "You are holding that a mite close to your face."

"I am timing it," Raymond said, without looking up, tilting the grenade as though admiring the sparks. "The fuse burns unevenly. I've adjusted the mixture myself, less saltpetre and more-"

"I saw those things take a man's hand off in the opening engagements at Magdeburg," Kessler more briskly, backing away a step, his grip tightening on the halberd all the same, for he was not about to leave the man to face three hungry corpses alone. He took a long pull from his wineskin instead. "Half his arm, Doktor. Gone. Just so you understand."

"Then stand a little further back," Raymond suggested amiably, "and watch from there."

The grenade fizzled on as the women came on faster, and down the black gap between the houses, unseen and unheard, the third of them was already out of sight.

Dr Raymond and the "special fizzling grenade" token

Falkenburg had no path left to him but forward. The church tower stood black against the far rooftops beyond the town square; but the quickest way towards it lay through the tangle of yards behind the town's one inn. He led them through the inn's garden instead, boots crashing through a low hedge, towards the small stone shrine that stood among the trees there, their first waypoint on the way to the church proper.

He was three strides into the copse when she came around the corner of the inn's wall. All pale flesh, grinning mouth and teeth.

The thrall was on Falkenburg before his duellist's instincts could bring his rapier up to guard, her claws opening his shoulder. Jörg arrived a heartbeat later, lantern in one hand and hanger in the other, with his familiar blunderbuss slung across his back. Though his first stroke missed, it drew her attention long enough for Falkenburg to recover. Together they drove her back; Jörg's hanger finally found her arm, and when she turned towards him Falkenburg struck. The blow glanced away, but it exposed her flank. Jörg's next swing did not.

Her head left her shoulders and went sailing into the dark hedge beyond, and what remained of her folded to the frozen ground, already unmaking itself into something that no longer troubled to look like a woman at all.

Death amongst the Ducks...

For a moment neither man spoke. Then Jörg let out a shaking breath and turned to where Falkenburg stood swaying against a tree trunk, his left arm hanging dark with blood. Only then did Jörg realise that his own hands had gone numb around the hanger's grip. Whether from cold or from what he had just done with it, he could not have said.

"Can you walk?" Jörg asked.

"I can walk," Falkenburg said, through his teeth. "The others..."

"Are still coming, and so is her sister, most like, wondering why this one's gone quiet. The garden shrine first, to catch our breath. Then the church."

Back in the open street, Dr Raymond had eyes for nothing but the sizzling grenade in his hand. Its fuse hissed and spat, throwing a small, furious light across his face, and for one endless moment the death in his palm seemed the only true and interesting thing left in Kurtstein. Then the moment came, and he drew back his arm and threw.

The casing was slick with damp and oil and turned in his grip as he released it, and the grenade sailed long, missing the ground between the two advancing women entirely to strike the cobbles just behind the second of them.

Whatever the failings of aim, the blast that followed was spectacular in every other respect: a booming crack that threw light and stone dust the length of the high street. The thrall it caught did not so much fall as come apart, flung into ruin in a dozen directions, and where a laughing young woman had stood a heartbeat before there was now only wreckage and the stink of black powder.

Her sister's scream tore through the wreckage's echo, and it was a scream of sisterly rage. She closed the distance to Raymond before he had even registered that the grenade had worked, claws raking in to catch him across the forearm and chest, and the doctor went down onto one knee with blood welling black through his sleeve as she leaned in for what would plainly have been the finishing stroke.

Then Kessler's halberd came in low and level, driven forward with the full weight of an old soldier's charge, seeking to spit her on the blade.

But she was not there to receive it. She twisted aside with a speed that mocked the blade meant for her, the point passing harmlessly down her flank. She turned towards Kessler, tongue running slow over blood-slicked lips, and smiled the smile of a woman who did not believe an old soldier with a pole-arm was worth her trouble, before turning back to finish what she had started with Raymond.

That was her mistake. Kessler recovered the halberd and swept it around in a practised arc. This time the blade found her throat, and she folded down beside the doctor in a heap of white linen gone suddenly, finally still.

Kessler stood over the both of them a moment, breathing hard. Then he reached for his wineskin, found his hand shaking too badly to trust it, and thought better of the idea.

"On your feet, Doktor," he said instead, hauling Raymond up. "And next time you feel the urge to test your theories, do it somewhere I'm not standing downwind."

Kessler permitted himself one more pull from the wineskin before he corked it.

The Master

Media nocte clamor factus est.

At midnight there arose a cry. (Matthew 25:6, Vulgate)

The thralls were dead. Creatures that had traded their souls for a taste of eternity, their bodies finally committed to the grave. For a moment the party allowed themselves to believe the worst of the night was behind them. Braun and the smith came stumbling up from the garden to find the others gathering by the little shrine, breath heaving white in the cold, tallying what the night had cost them.

The laughter came in that one unguarded moment of relief.

It rolled out across the rooftops of Kurtstein from no single direction any of them could name, deep and slow and utterly without mirth, a sound that seemed to come up through the cobbles rather than down through the air. This was not the tittering, girlish laughter that had drawn them into the high street an hour before. This was older. Heavier. The laugh of something that had watched three of its own fall and found the spectacle, at most, mildly diverting.

The Master comes...

The temperature seemed to drop as the sound faded, sharply enough that every man felt it in his lungs. Somewhere above them, something that was not the wind stirred the night air, and a dread settled over them that had nothing to do with wounds or exhaustion.

Falkenburg first broke the silence, hefting a rapier that was not quite steady. "That," he said quietly, "was not one of those ladies."

"No," Braun agreed, turning the smith bodily back towards the garden. "That was what sent them. Move, all of you. We are not nearly done with this night!"

Raymond needed no second telling. He snatched his lantern up and set off at a dead sprint towards the shrine, his wounded arm clutched to his chest and forgotten in the simple, animal urgency of putting distance between himself and whatever had just laughed.

The little shrine offered nothing but a scrap of carved stone and a name half-worn from its plinth; paltry protection against whatever had just laughed its way across the rooftops of Kurtstein. Real sanctuary, hallowed by a Bishop's hand, lay only in the consecrated ground of the Church proper, across the square. To linger here was to delay a reckoning that would find them regardless.

"I'll lead," Falkenburg said, before anyone else could claim the honour, despite the blood soaking his sleeve. "Whatever comes at us, we protect the smith." Jörg fell in at his shoulder, the hanger bare in his hand. Braun took the rear, crossbow raised, watching the hedgerow with the steady vigilance of a man who understood exactly what walked these streets tonight. It was he, watching the wrong direction for half a heartbeat too long, who never saw it come.

It came over the garden's hedge without a sound and was on Braun before the crossbow in his hands could do him any good. Claws raked his chest and shoulder, tearing through cloak and doublet both, and Braun's own cry joined Falkenburg's from earlier in the night as he staggered back against the hedge with blood spreading dark across his front.

There was no space to bring the crossbow to bear; the thing was too close, too fast. He let the weapon fall and his free hand found instead the glass vial of holy water at his belt, carried through every hour for precisely such a night as this. He smashed it against the creature's flank without ceremony, with the raw certainty of a demonologist who had run out of cleverer options.

The spray caught it full across the shoulder and neck, and the effect was violent. A thin, steaming mist rose hissing from the creature's hide, carrying with it a smell like a snuffed match. And the scream that tore from it bore no resemblance to anything a man might make in pain. High and utterly inhuman. It recoiled in a convulsive lurch and danced back into the shadow of the hedge.

"It recoiled from the water. Good. The old protections still hold!" Braun yelled to the others.

The shapeless dark gathered and resolved, for the first time, into something Braun could name. A wolf's shape, black and huge and wrong in ways the moonlight would not quite let him fix in his mind, its hide still smoking where the water had touched it, though nothing about it had truly been born a wolf. Its eyes fixed on Braun with a hatred that had nothing of an animal's simplicity in it. Whatever wore that shape had not been born to it. It had chosen it, as a witch might choose the form of a beast when the Devil granted such a thing.

Falkenburg saw the creature's retreat for what it was; a moment, and no more than a moment, in which the rest of the party might yet win the open ground between the garden and the church unmolested.

"To the church, all of you, now!" He turned as he shouted it, rapier drawn, his ruined shoulder forgotten in the same rush of desperate resolve that had put him at the front of the line. He went after the retreating shape alone, driving it towards the garden's far wall and buying whatever ground the others needed.

He broke from the garden's far side into the open square with the church's dark bulk rising before him at last. There, the shape stopped its retreat and turned.

Its eyes locked onto him, red and burning with the hatred of something that remembered exactly who had scalded it with holy water. The shadow that had worn a wolf's shape began to unmake itself, limbs lengthening, the black hide drawing upward into something that stood on two legs. By the time it closed the distance, it was very much a man, save for the teeth: long, yellow-white and slick with blood not its own.

Johann's rapier found only air. The creature slipped inside his guard, and then the claws were everywhere. His buff coat offered no protection. Falkenburg felt his strength depart with his blood and fell to his knees. The church tower swam above. And darkness took him.

von Falkenburg's stand against Darkness 

Jörg's shout, when it came, was pure fury.

He dropped sword and lantern both, crouching over Falkenburg's fallen shape to snatch the vial of holy water still hanging at his master's belt, and was on his feet throwing before the thing had so much as turned to meet him. The vial shattered against it dead centre, and the creature recoiled into a shapeless mass of smoke, shrieking as it fled for the deeper dark across the square.

Behind them, Braun struggled in the dark to load a sharpened wooden bolt into the crossbow's groove, cursing each time the bolt slipped free. Dr Raymond had broken from the garden entirely, moving fast up the open road with his lantern held before him, searching for any gap that might let them through to the church. Some distance behind was Kessler, halberd hefted over his shoulder and following on legs that no longer quite answered him.

The creature recovered quickly. It returned to the square in man-shape, stalking rather than charging, with eyes fixed on Jörg with an intent that needed no words. It meant to answer, in full, for the holy water that had scalded it twice over in one night.

As it came, its eyes changed. Something shifting in their depths that did not merely reflect lantern-light, and Jörg felt himself drawn despite himself, a traitorous curiosity rising unbidden. His footing loosened beneath that gaze, his anger softening into something far more dangerous than fear. Then he thought of Falkenburg, crumpled and bleeding on the cobbles behind him, and the softness burned away in an instant.

"No!" The scream tore out of him raw and absolute, and whatever hold the creature's eyes had begun to close around him broke apart under the force of it. The thing recoiled from the refusal in his voice, and turned instead towards easier prey, drifting sideways across the square to where Dr Raymond stood alone with lantern extended in one hand.

It came for him from the shadows, overconfident and certain of an easy kill. Raymond swayed back from the raking swipe and the claws parting nothing but night air. Before the creature could correct itself his own blade was already coming up and in, biting deep along its flank in a stroke cleaner than anything he had managed with his grenade.

The creature's back was to Jörg now, wholly given over to the doctor before it, and Jörg did not waste the gift. He came in from behind with a scream of no words in it, swinging his blunderbuss as a two-handed club and furiously drove the stock into the creature's shoulder. He wedged himself in beside Raymond as the blow landed, the two of them boxing the thing between them, and for one desperate moment it seemed almost possible that they might keep it too busy to kill either one of them before help arrived.

It was Braun, watching from the hedge line, who saw what the others could not: the creature's whole attention was fixed on Raymond and Jörg both, and that the ground between the garden and the church door stood, for this one narrow moment, entirely clear. A fleeting chance at best, but a chance nonetheless. The smith had crouched behind the garden wall, too terrified to move.

With Dr Rayond and Jürg engaged with the Master, Braun spies a chance as Kessler staggers down the road

"Run now!" he bellowed at the smith, who broke into a dead run across the open square. His bundle of tools clutched to his chest, and sincere but half-remembered prayers tumbling out with every stride.

The creature's eyes found Raymond again, wary now where they had been overconfident before. Its gaze had gone bottomless, twin pits that seemed to draw the doctor's whole mind down into them, his sword arm slackening, his feet forgetting, for one terrible heartbeat, that they had anywhere left to run to at all.

Braun did not hesitate. He dropped the crossbow and instead closed both fists around the missile: no bolt now, just sharpened wood and a demonologist's desperate faith behind it. He came up out of the garden at a dead sprint, vaulted the hedge without breaking stride, and drove every last ounce of that momentum down through his arms. Into the creature's left eye.

The natural 10 Reilly rolled to trigger his Demonologist skill and critically wound the Master Vampire!

The agonised scream was the worst sound any of them had heard in their lives: a shriek that seemed to come from somewhere far larger than the body it was torn from. Smoke boiled up from the creature's frame and it staggered backwards five stumbling steps before its shape came apart entirely, unravelling into shadow and a final, fading scream that swallowed itself somewhere in the black streets beyond the square. There was no body; only smoke, silence, and gore splattered cobblestones.

For the first time since they had passed through Kurtstein's gate, the night was simply quiet.

None celebrated. They knew too well how much else might still be listening in that town's darkness. Jörg hefted Falkenburg's unconscious weight from the cobbles, Braun took up the rear with the stake still clutched white-knuckled in one fist, and together they crossed the last of the open ground to the church doors and into the candle-scented confines within.

The iron-bound oak doors were slammed shut with hands that had not yet stopped shaking. There would be no sleep for any before dawn but for the first time since the laughter had first found them at the gate, they were safe.

The Morning After

Der Morgen ist klüger als der Abend.

The morning is wiser than the evening. (German proverb)

Morning came to Kurtstein the way it comes to towns that have survived something they were not certain they would. Slowly, and with a great deal of caution.

Shutters opened one at a time, and doors followed. Hesitant at first, then all at once until the high street filled instead with the citizens of Kurtstein, staring at the wreckage strewn across their cobbles, the strangers, and the familiar smith who stood bruised and bloodied and, against every reasonable expectation, alive.

Word ran through the town faster than any of the party could have accounted for: the smith had been kept safe, the pale-faced women would trouble no one again, and whatever dark thing had ruled Kurtstein's nights was, at last, unmade. Grateful hands pressed coin into the party's own, fistfuls of worn silver offered by people who had little enough to spare and gave it anyway. Others brought linen and salves and clean well-water, and it was these that Raymond seized upon with far more genuine relief than he had shown for any grenade, setting briskly to the work of treating the party's wounds and above all, Falkenburg's.

Falkenburg's injuries were grave. Raymond worked over them for many hours and for a long while even he would offer no certainty. Eventually he declared that Falkenburg would keep his arm, and his life, though the scars would remain for the rest of his days. Jörg did not stir from his master's side the entire while, crouching at Falkenburg's shoulder through every stitch, holding a bowl of clean water when Raymond needed one, and Falkenburg's good hand when he did not.

Kessler said little that morning, unusual enough that Raymond remarked upon it once and did not again. The old soldier sat apart with his halberd across his knees, turning his wineskin over in his hands without drinking.

The smith, once his own hurts were seen to, made his offer without much ceremony. To each of them, he said, he owed a debt no coin from Wallenstein could properly settle, and he meant to see it paid in the only currency that was truly his own: honest work from his own hands, before the winter roads closed.

The demonologist Braun noticed it, crouched beside the smith to help bind a graze along his forearm that none of them recalled him taking in the night's fighting. The wound was old, half-healed, silvered with scar tissue, shaped in a way that struck Braun's eye like a struck bell: a ring of small puncture marks, evenly spaced, the kind no blade or claw left behind. He had seen its like once before, sketched in the margin of a confiscated grimoire, beside a passage on binding and branding he had not, at the time, believed literal.

He said nothing of it, just glanced up to find the man watching him with an expression that was very carefully still. Whatever else Kurtstein's blacksmith might be, Braun thought as he finished the binding, he was not merely a craftsman who had been lucky enough to survive a bad night.

He was, in some fashion, already spoken for.

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Post game:

Johann von Falkenburg did not initially survive his encounter with a master Vampire but the presence of a physician with the party allows a reroll and he survived, albeit with 'horrific scars". Phew! All other wounded characters recovered from their injuries.

The party was rewarded with 100 silver coins by the grateful citizens of Kurtstein, which they chose to split evenly. More interestingly, the smith offered to craft a special item for each of the characters, suited their particular talents.

As we play infrequently we play that every survivor acquires a new skill after a Mission (but not followers, sorry oh faithful Jürg). Falkenburg took the Duellist skill, and has requested that the smith craft him a special main gauche parrying dagger.

Maybe it has silvered edge to help combat the beasts of darkness? Or it could be one of those clever tri-blade sword catching ones...

I took this pic in Castel San'Angelo in Rome, so its legit!

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House Rules & Notes:

1. Light from Windows. Due to dwellings being occupied, windows on buildings project a 180 deg arc of light to a range of 2inches. This allowed Hunters to move between pockets of light and gain their Activation bonuses, and monsters to skip between shadow zones to retain their own advantages

2. Grenades. the rules say that a grenade only needs one hand. Once lit this is probably true, but we agreed that holding the flame source to light the fuze was a 2 handed activity.

3. Hunter Development. As we play only occasionally, surviving Hunters acquire a new skill after each successful mission (unless deemed otherwise by the GM...)