23: Going Underground

Marktag 17^th Sigmarzeit

The next day, Berta’s ear had healed a bit, and so she joined you on your way to the Smaalkanaal. Dietrich was not there, however. Berta wheeled her cart down, with her tools in, to the canal and you found some planks and stuff in case the tunnels needed shoring up.

At the Smaalkanaal the four guards the MEG had sent were nowhere to be seen. But there were those locals still checking you out. You went to speak to them and they told you that the guards had gone home because the area was haunted. You asked them what was haunting it, but they weren’t very clear, they seemed to think things from the past should stay buried.

You entered the tunnel, and it still smelled badly, but you all managed to cope with the stench, even Heinrich who had felt ill the day before was able to tolerate it.

At the crossroads you spotted some symbols on the wall and floor at the left hand turning. They were triangles with a circle inside but none of you knew what that meant. In front of you you could see that the tunnel opened up a bit but it was unclear what that lead to, and on the right the tunnel disappeared into darkness.

You went straight ahead and soon the way widened into a cavern with an old derelict boat in, lying against a quay, and it looked like this would have been part of an underground canal system had the tunnels still been flooded. The boat was lying in a few inches of water, and you decided it would sink if it went anywhere deeper.

Beyond the quayside the cavern became more natural with many small caves disappearing into darkness. You had a look on the boat and it was covered in excrement and mold. And you decided that this area didn’t merit any more exploration.

You went back to the crossroads and headed right (which would have been left as you came in). In about sixty yards or so the tunnel ended in a wooden wall, with a door. It looked like the tunnel had been deliberately blocked with a well-made wooden wall. You tried the door but it was very solidly barred or locked, and so you decided that whoever built it didn’t want you there, so you headed back to the crossroads.

Then you went down the right hand route and after a hundred yards, there was a tunnel to the left, and the straight-on way looked like it was blocked by a load of mud. You couldn’t tell what might have caused the mud slide, though.

So you headed west along the left turn and after a few dozen yards you had the choice of turning right or going straight on through some standing water. You tested the water and found it was only a few inches deep and so you went that way, and soon after that the tunnel got more natural and narrower, until you saw that you would have to squeeze through a narrow gap to continue, and you thought better of it.

So you went back to the junction and headed north. And soon you came to some steps heading up, and you could hear the sound of water with perhaps walking through the water ahead of you. And at the top of the steps you saw a round pool in a large chamber, and about half a dozen people bathing in the pool, and they were surprised to see you and scrambled to get their robes on and there were about another half a dozen around the room wearing robes already.

They didn’t know what to make of you, and you didn’t know what to make of them, but soon a robed woman who looked like she might be in charge, stepped through the crowd and addressed you. She introduced herself as Sister Catrina and blessed you in the name of Shallya and asked what you were doing there.

Berta wondered about Shallyans and knew what everyone knew, that they were known for being merciful and kind and healing the sick and feeding the poor, but she had also heard that they caused people to be sick and protected mutants. But that was just from some bloke in the pub.

You knew that the most common order of Shallyans in Marienburg was the Bleeding Heart who used a red heart symbol, and you saw that Catrina and the others had green heart symbols over their hearts on their robes, and you also noticed that there were three darked circles set within Catrina’s heart symbol. You asked her about that and she said that her order was called the Verdant Heart. And you also noticed that some of the bathers looked like they had had sores and lesions on their skin.

You mentioned the mutant colony you had visited and Sister Astrid, and Catrina said that there had been a Sister Astrid at this temple many years ago, and she had been very protective of the afflicted (you asked ‘how afflicted’ but she ignored that) and said she was driven away and Catrina had heard she had settled in the marshes with some of the afflicted. And you agreed that that must be the same Sister Astrid.

You said you feared for Sister Astrid because of the witch hunter, and so Sister Catrina insisted on you all say a prayer for her, and the prayer went on a bit too long.

And then you made your excuses and left. And she bid you go in peace. You wondered whether there was an actual temple of Shallya above where you were, but decided that there was a genuine temple on the Winkelmarkt Doodkanaal border which would be pretty much exactly there.

So you made your may back to the wooden wall and door to the south. Heinrich tried to crowbar it open but dropped the crowbar, and so Max hammered and spiked one of the hinges which worked, but as Heinrich crowbarred the door again he managed to break the crowbar.

And you’d made such a racket that whoever was behind the door was ready and as it opened, and a crossbow bolt was shot through it, but it missed you all. Beyond the door was a chamber containing a number of crates. And there were two more thugs, who looked like the sort of run of the mill hoodlums you get all over the seedier parts of Doodkanaal. And they ran at you wielding swords.

As fate would have it, one of them only just missed Max and the other missed Berta. Max fired his pistol at his opponent and hit him squarely, sending him to the floor, and he scrambled away towards a boat that was in an underground canal on the other side of the chamber.

Heinrich tried to shoot the crossbow guy but managed to damage his bow. Meanwhile the other thug wounded Berta. And the one with the crossbow was so nervous he didn’t manage to reload. Heinrich charged the one fighting Berta and ran him through with a single blow. And the crossbower thought better of it and jumped onto the rowing boat as it was being rowed away.

As they went Max shot at the rower with his handgun killing him, and the survivor faffed around a bit trying to turf his dead mate from the rowing position so he could escape.

You had a look round the chamber which had a ladder leading upwards. You climbed the ladder and tried to get through the hatch but it wouldn’t budge. The chamber you were in had about a dozen crates in it, all with strange writing on it, which you identified as Indic, but you had no idea what it said.

You opened one up and it was lined with a fine gold coloured foil and when you broke the foil you could see it contained a strong smelling, pungent, black tea-like leaf.

You decided that you now owned it, and so you loaded up Berta’s cart, and carried what you could, and made off with five of the crates. You took them to Rotter at the Hangman and he agreed to pay you twelve guilders for them, even though he didn’t seem to know much about tea. And you took them to his warehouse.

Max went to the MEG. He told van der Willi that the guards had disappeared, and Willi explained that they had reported that the area was haunted and they refused to do the shift. And so Max gave Willi the key to the lock of the Brass Serpent and said the guild should be able to finish the dredging.

Willi agreed that Max could become a member of the guild for fifteen guilders per year and ten percent of all income derived from guild business. And he said he would send a charter to Frau Koester’s which he commented was probably not the best pace to run an engineering business from.

And Max insisted that the guild should deal with de Klerk’s sick pay, and Willi agreed and said they would take the two guilders he had paid Frau de Klerk off of his guild dues.

Berta bought a new crowbar, and you had the idea to superimpose your view of the underground system onto the surface, to see if the temple of Shallya was directly above the pool you found, and then work out precisely which warehouse was above the tea stash.