The village of Wittgendorf lies on the west bank of the Reik, close to Castle Wittgenstein.
Although it is still inhabited, Wittgendorf has the appearance of a ghost town. The streets are choked with debris and rank vegetation, and many of the buildings are in ruins. Half-starved dogs (and some emaciated people) roam the streets looking for food..
The town’s wharf is the only place to moor a vessel along this rocky stretch of the river.
Most of the village is squalid and depressing. The locals are wary of strangers, but beggars shuffle towards the boat as the adventurers tie up at the wharf. Talking to the beggars yields nothing more than pleas for money and food, interspersed with incoherent ramblings that include no useful information.
Soon, they are approached by Emrer, a desperate young woman holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. She begs them to help her baby daughter who is dying. The village’s physician has been worse than useless — all Rousseaux gave her was some of his terrible rotgut, which only made the baby’s condition worse. Her baby refuses to eat, she says, and has a terrible green pallor to her skin. To make matters worse. Looking under the blanket, rather than an infant, the bundle holds a large but apparently docile spider. Eight hairy legs sprout from its body, which is covered in green fur.
The Pale Lady
As the adventurers reach the top of the track leading up from the wharf, they see a beautiful young woman dressed in dark blue, mounted on a white horse and surrounded by six armed guards amid a crowd of slack-jawed beggars. The guards bear the Wittgenstein family crest on their shields and wear full-face helmets with sleeved mail shirts.
The young woman is Lady Margritte, and she is supervising the abduction of a villager. A beggar lies on the ground with blood pumping from the stump of his arm. the adventurers try talking to Lady Margritte but she stares coldly at the adventurers for a moment, says she's not interested in whatever they have to say and then returns to the castle with her unconscious prize.
Pretty soon, the adventurers met Herbert Marcuse, the Landlord of the town's solitary pub, The Shooting Star Inn, and Jean Rousseaux, the village physician. He explains that he is kept very busy ‘alleviating the suffering of these poor creatures’ - meaning the townsfolk, most of whom are crawling with lice and wander around drunk drinking from blue bottles of Rotgut, which, they discover, is sold to them by Rousseaux's assistant, Kurt Kutzmann, a dimwitted idiot of a man.
Aeslor and Fayth wanted to check out the physician's house so they paid a visit. Rousseaux’s house is well maintained, one of the few without visible signs of decay. Rousseaux lives here with his housekeeper, Frau Blucher and Kurt.
Arriving at the house, the adventurers are met by Frau Blucher. She is an elderly woman, who is short-sighted and hard of hearing. They talk to Rousseaux and he confirms he is selling his Rotgut to the villagers as a cure for their conditions.
He also has a secret door leading to a cellar which fayth made a note of. Talking to him, it seemed he is friendly with Lady Margritte, and thinks very highly of her.
Rousseaux, Kurt and Frau Blucher decide later on to go to the pub, and it is at this point that Nobby and Fayth decide to break in. Despite Ron warning them to be subtle, Nobby decided to just kick the door in. This is when he and Fayth discover the cellar, which has a secret door leading to some tunnels. He decides not to investigate the tunnels yet. Manwhile, Fayth finds a magical weapon in the cellar which she takes.
In a desk drawer they find a letter from Lady Margritte.
When Rousseaux returns home and discovers the break in, he believes it to be villagers after his rotgut, so the players are off the hook for the time being. They manage to convince him (through threats) to search the house and cellar.
A flight of rickety wooden steps leads down into the cellar. Across the room is a table with several vials and bottles upon it. A locked wooden door leads to tunnels beneath the village. A strong stench of decay emanates from a buzzing mass of blackness lying on a bench against the far wall.
As the Characters move towards the buzzing mass, hundreds of flies swarm into air, revealing a decaying human body. The flies are harmless, and settle back onto the corpse after a few minutes. The body once had four arms, but they have all been sawn off; the bones and a surgical saw can be found in a bucket under the bench. On the table are a set of scales, a pipette, and assorted vials of coloured water and sand. There is also a gallon jar of rotgut, a length of rubber tubing, a funnel, and a stock of empty blue bottles.
The party thought that the tunnels would lead directly to the Castle, but they don't. They lead to a crypt below the Temple of Sigmar and a set of tunnels inhabited by cannibals, who have been eating the bodies in the crypt. Although the temple itself is in ruins and is closed, it would seem the bodies in the crypt are fresh enough to eat, and the cannibals are friendly enough and say that they only eat people who are already dead but that Rousseaux has been suggesting they start eating the villagers. Rousseaux has taken over a room in the Temple and it is here that they find his notes on rotgut and an unfinished letter to Lady Margritte.
The cannibals also tell the party that the tunnels don't go to the castle, but there is an outlaw camp in the forest who know of secret ways into the castle. If they want to find the outlaws, they need to talk to Hilda in the village.
In the Temple, they discovered a magic sword which Ron tried to draw but couldn't. Aeslor then tried and managed to draw it, and became attuned to it. This sword is in perfect condition. Its name, Barrakul, ‘Hope of the Mountains’ - is inscribed with Dwarf runes along its blade. It is undoubtedly the creation of a Runesmith of no mean skill. When wielded in combat, the blade shimmers, visible one moment and gone the next, and only the red glow of its runes is constant. Non-magical armour is useless against this blade - ignore the AP of any non-magical armour or shield. It possess the Unbreakable quality, but gains the Undamaging flaw if weilded against a Dwarf.
We ended the second session with the characters leaving the Temple.
