18: Missing Persons


Bezahltag 11th Sigmarzeit

In the morning you were feeling a bit better than you had been. The night’s sleep had done you some good, especially Max, and you decided to see how much you could get for those rubies. Balden didn’t go but trusted you to deliver his share of the cash.

You knew that Handelaarmarkt was the famous trading area of Marienburg where your gems could fetch some high prices, but you also knew it had a reputation for sharp trading, and they were inclined to take advantage of naive sellers.

So you opted to try the dwarf ghetto, Dwergbezit, where you had heard they traded honourably if a bit stingily. You travelled there through an area of Kruiersmuur called Esplanade which was in the middle of the halfling, dwarf, Bretonnia, Remas, and Miragliano areas. It was a sort of cosmopolitan neutral ground and as such was quite lively and had a lot of night life establishments.

You found a middling sort of jewellers in Dwergbezit which belonged to Dori Snorrsson. He offered you sixty guilders, but Dietrich seemed to know about stuff like that and reckoned they were worth much more. Dori disagreed and tested Dietrich with a random stone, which Dietrich managed to identify, and so he conceded that Dietrich did know his stuff and offered ninety. And in the end you managed to haggle him up to ninety-six.

Then you went to the Hangman to celebrate and bumped into Johan Rotter. He wanted to know where his cut of the warehouse ruse money was, and remembered it was five guilders or ten percent. Max told him that made nine guilders and twelve shillings, before you realised that he probably wouldn’t find out how much you really made, so you ended up fobbing him off with five guilders.

Rotter said that one of his nephews was missing and asked if you could help his aunt look for him. You wondered why he wouldn’t be helping with something as important as a family member but he said he had a few deals on. He said he would waive the five guilders if you helped him.

So you went up to Esplanade by the Grand Opera House and turned down a side street. You noticed how immediately the buildings got squalid as soon as you left Esplanade behind and decided it might be a bit dangerous. You asked around and found the tenement of Frances Groot, which was being guarded by a group of hoodlums. You bought a dose of Weirdroot off them, and they let you past.

You found Groot and she told you how her son Markus went missing a couple of days before. She said he was just playing in the back alley with his friends and was never seen again. She opened the shutters and you could see how the alleys converged on a bit of waste ground behind the theatre. She said her neighbour’s daughter, Gertrude, had also gone missing.

So you went out to the alleyway. You had a look around and Dietrich went into his magical trance thing and could see a strange pinky-green magical wind he had not sensed before, and it made him feel a bit queasy. There were small dots of traces all over the alleyway that looked a bit like tracks, and he followed the tracks to where they converged, a crack in the wall, at the back of the theatre. The crack was ‘rat-sized’ and when Dietrich looked into it, he briefly saw a pair of red eyes peering back at him, but they disappeared.

You couldn’t fit through the crack and so you had to go round to the stage door. It was open and there was a lot of activity in the theatre. It looked like they were preparing for a new play as there were rehearsals going on, and scenery being built and painted. There was so much activity no one seemed to take much notice of you.

You spoke to a stagehand who gave you all the gossip. He said the play was due on in a few days, and everyone was behind, mostly because the composer kept rewriting the score. He said the composer, Jacques Hoffman, was supposed to be a genius, but it just sounded crap to him. And every time he rewrote a bit, it sounded even worse.

You saw the leading lady on stage arguing with an important looking man. The hand explained that was Belladonna Firaglio the prima donna, and Halmut Klee the producer and impresario. Firaglio shouted that she couldn’t keep working under these conditions and flounced out. You also saw some chorus singing and dancing, and then the orchestra started practising.

You noticed that much of the back stage area was covered in cobwebs. You asked the stagehand about this and he said they cleaned it regularly but it just kept coming back, and then you spotted a large spider-like creature scuttling through the cobwebs. And you estimated it had a three-foot leg span.

You followed the spider thing towards the back of the stage and as the music began you agreed with the stagehand’s assessment that the music was pretty crap. It was strangely discordant, but also it sort of made sense.

And as you followed the spider through the cobwebs with the music playing it also sort of made sense that you were in a forest. You travelled through the forest much further than the size of the theatre. You noticed it was strangely pink-coloured, and the grass seemed to be grabbing at your ankles as you walked. And you saw that there were many of those strange spiders climbing around in the undergrowth and on the trees.

The spiders noticed you and began to close in. Max readied his blunderbuss and Heinrich drew his sword. But then, in time with the music that was still coming from the theatre, probably, you heard a strange hunting horn and the spiders scattered.

Then coming through the trees, travelling strangely deftly, you saw four blue-skinned, female-looking, daemonic creatures with claws for hands, wielding nets and tridents. They looked like some sort of hunting party, and they attacked quickly throwing a net over Dietrich and capturing him, while Max managed to dodge his net. And a third one stabbed Heinrich with her trident, and he was saved only by his leather sleeve which was ripped away by the barbed trident.

Then the last one attacked Max with her trident and smashed him in the face, blinding him, and sending him to the ground. As he lay on the ground he felt the grass sort of try to pull him down and it felt kind of bad but kind of nice. But with a resolute effort he struggled to his feet and let the hunters have a blast of blunderbuss. Unfortunately the shot missed, his aim affected by the blow he had taken to the face.

Meanwhile, Dietrich had managed to disentangle himself from the net, and Heinrich shouted for everyone to run for it, just as he got hit by another trident blow, and also fell to the ground. Then weirdly, the music stopped and you found yourself back in the theatre again.

You didn’t really know what to make of it all, and so you left the theatre by the stage door. As you went on your way you noticed several posters on the theatre door and around the street advertising the new play.





The Grand Opera House

Coming Soon

Halmut Klee Presents

Jacques Hoffman’s

Orron and Erris

Belladonna Firaglio, Maximillian Schloss,

Jurgen Morgens

and

Parsnip Willowwine as Peepopo



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