20: Peepopo

Angestag 13^th Sigmarzeit

You woke up the next day to find someone else in Balden’s bed. Luckily there were new sheets, too. Frau Koester had let the bed to Berta Hersh, a Marienburger who did grave digging, or something like that.

Over Gruel Frau Koester said that she thought you could be relied upon to look after Berta, because you were nice lads. You told Heinrich what had happened the previous day and Berta was listening so you had to explain the whole thing with the spiders and the magic forest. Berta said she knew of Johan Rotter as their areas of business overlapped a bit.

You explained you had a bottle of wine, which was the evidence Father Gunther at the temple of Sigmar had asked for, so you decided to head up to show him. On the way Berta bought some leather armour and Dietrich bought some cooler robes.

You went up by river taxi and the driver asked if you’d heard about the fire on the Esplanade. He said that a whole tenement had burned down and a kid had died, and you guessed that was probably the fire you had started the night before. And you consoled yourself with the idea that you had banged on the doors warning everyone, before you ran away.

Up in Ostmuur Father Gunther wasn’t impressed with your evidence. He couldn’t detect anything strange about it (Dietrich concluded that the priest didn’t have the same ability as him to see magical winds) and you were worried that he might drink it. He said you needed something much more conclusive if he was to contact witch hunter Lufthanser.

So you headed back to Kruiersmuur and saw that there was very little left of Hoffman’s building, and there was a cuddly toy and some flowers laid out. Then you went to the Grand Opera House. You spotted Belladonna Firaglio chatting to a halfling who was painted blue and pink, and had a blue and pink sheepskin outfit and some fake ears. You thought that might be a character from Orron and Erris.

Firaglio and Max started flirting again, and Berta recognised the halfling as Parsnip Willowwine the famous comic actor, and he told you some bad jokes. Firaglio said she would meet you later at the Hammer and Bucket and she would be able to get you into the Flamingo again. And they told you that Hoffman had been at the Bucket the previous night after you had left. They hadn’t heard his apartment had burnt down, though.

Then you went backstage and spoke to the scenery bloke and he told you there hadn’t been any rewrites that morning. He said that he thought Hoffman usually went out drinking all evening, then stayed up all night writing his operettas and then slept all day, which is why he wasn’t at the theatre much.

You had a look round the back of the stage and there was no sign at all of the magical forest, except a few cobwebs. And then you went below the stage and saw some machines for propelling people onto the stage, which Max liked, but no sign of anything unusual. Dietrich tried to focus on the magical winds but couldn’t manage it.

Then you went off to the Flamingo and tried to get in but the bouncer wasn’t having it. Berta challenged him to an arm wrestle to let you in, but he won it easily enough and so you sloped off to the Hammer and Bucket.

After a while at the Bucket, Firaglio turned up and you had a chat and then you moved on to the Flamingo. They had the usual tall, athletic, dark-eye makeup waitresses. Firaglio had her usual drink. Heinrich said he wanted their best wine, but Dietrich noticed the waitress checking with Firaglio but she shook her head, and he took it to mean she did not want Heinrich to have the ‘special’ wine.

While Firaglio and Max were flirting again, Berta decided she might be able to to sneak out into the back, and so Dietrich distracted the waitresses by pretending to be drunk and arguing with Max. And Berta impressively sneaked out the back door before the rest of you had even noticed.

She found a store room with some barrels and crates in, and then an office area with opened crates and some of Firaglio’s wine, and a desk with ledgers on. She grabbed a couple of the letters from the desk, and prized off the bit of the crate that had writing on it. Another door led out to the alleyway at the back of the Flamingo, and Berta took the key from that door.

Berta returned, and after chatting some more with Firaglio, and the evening moving on, you left the Flamingo and wandered down the Esplanade. You heard music being played at the Bucket. Heinrich recognised it as the music that was playing when you were in the magic forest, and he recalled that the moment the music had stopped was the same moment the forest had disappeared.

You saw some sort of argument between two groups outside the tavern and they seemed to be disagreeing about a strange, small, pink and blue creature. One of the groups was angry with it and the other group was trying to protect it. Max and Dietrich decided that the creature was lovely and deserved to be protected, but Heinrich and Berta hated it. So you joined the argument and it escalated.

The creature only seemed to be able to say ‘peepopo’ over and over again, which was really lovely or really annoying, and so you guessed it must have something to do with the character from the play, but it definitely wasn’t Parsnip Willowwine.

Heinrich punched one of the people defending the creature but it wasn’t much of a punch, and so he grabbed a stick and despite Dietrich trying to stop him, smacked him over the head and he fell unconscious.

Berta decided that the discordant music coming from the Bucket needed to be stopped. She went in and saw Hoffman playing his cello and so grabbed his bow. Hoffman ploughed on, however, and started finger plucking. But Berta managed to wrestle the instrument away from him and he fell to the floor. And as the music stopped, the tavern went quiet, and then suddenly some different music started up, and everyone was fine with it.

The music had stopped but Peepopo was still there. Dietrich felt that the creature was surrounded with the same wind that he had sensed around the spiders, and in the wine, and in the forest. He still had the half bottle of wine you had taken from Hoffman’s and Dietrich changed his mind about the wind being nauseating, and decided it was actually sweet and enticing, and so he decided to have a drink. And once he did, without needing to concentrate, he could see that the creature was surrounded by that wind.

Max and Dietrich decided that the temple of Sigmar was the safest place for the creature, and convinced their side to get in a river taxi. And Berta managed to join them. Heinrich and the other haters followed and hailed their own taxi. And so you had a taxi chase across the water to Ostmuur.

You managed to get to the temple, and Father Gunther opened the doors for you. But as soon as he saw Peepopo, he grabbed his ceremonial Hammer of Sigmar and smashed the creature over the head with it. And immediately the creature disappeared. And while Max and Dietrich were upset, and Heinrich and Berta delighted, in a moment you weren’t any more and were left wondering what all the fuss was about.

So everyone piled in the taxis and made their way back to Kruiersmuur. You could all remember what had happened but you couldn’t really appreciate why you had been so invested in it.

Back at Frau Koester’s Berta showed you the stuff she had taken from the Flamingo. The stamp on the crate said ‘Van Vriessen, Handelaarmarkt.’ One of the papers was just a random bit of bookkeeping, but the other said,

To the Devoted Custodians of Midnight’s Embrace,

The vintage Euphrasia Nocturne has arrived from our friends upriver — a deep, claret delight drawn from only the most exquisite presses. You will find the aroma heady, the finish lingering, and the afterglow transcendent.

As per our understanding, keep this for the private salons, and offer only to those who seek it or those you want to turn in our direction. You will know them by their eyes: a hunger unquenched, a gaze that lingers too long.

Ensure the staff understands not to overindulge. As we learned, the uninitiated are not always graceful in revelation. In time, once the appetite has been whetted, we shall host the Tasting. Until then, cultivate pleasure, loosen boundaries, and dream.

Your Sister of the Unfading Rose