25: Balden the White


Bakkertag 18th Sigmarzeit

After leaving the temple of Shallya you went for a coffee and bumped into Heinrich. Berta and Dietrich went off on their own, while Max decided he should check on the dredging, and Balden and Heinrich went along with him.

When you got to Smaalkanaal the new engineer and his labourers were making steady progress. Max decided they would be finished early tomorrow at that rate. But he noticed that the strip of mud left between the Doodkanaal and the Smaalkanaal holding all the water back was a lot narrower than he would have made it.

In the interests of health and safety he told the new engineer that, but he just told him that he had been engineering for thirty years and Max should mind his own business.

You also noticed some of the cynical locals looking on with mild hostility, but you guessed that watching dredging was pretty boring and even they had got a bit bored with their doom saying.

But then the green daemonic disease creature emerged from the tunnel and began to attack the Brass Serpent. And the locals gave you an ‘I told you so’ look before fleeing. The engineer managed to get out of the dredger and made a jump for it onto the dockside and ran away, and so did the labourers, leaving you to deal with things, as usual.

The slug daemon slithered towards you along the base of the canal, and Max thought that there wasn’t much point firing at the thing as his shot in the tunnels had just been harmlessly engulfed by the creatures weird flesh. But he had a pot shot anyway and was surprised to see the impact look like it genuinely hurt the creature. You wondered whether it was because it was now out of the tunnel and no longer under the protection of Shallya. So Heinrich tried his bow, but missed anyway.

As the slug-thing closed on you, Balden decided he needed to cast more powerful magic and so he concentrated on channelling as much power as he could into his spell. Then he tried to entangle the daemon in the weeds and stuff on the bed of the canal, but he couldn’t control the magic and it dissipated harmlessly. Max reloaded one of his pistols, and Heinrich shot at the creature and managed to hit it, and it looked like his arrow also did it genuine harm. But not much.

The creature slithered towards you and nearly made it out of the canal, but Balden tried to cast a spell to entangle the daemon again, and, against the odds, he managed it. The thing slashed about but was stuck among the weeds and detritus. And so Max and Heinrich were able to stand back and shoot at it without fear. And they both got decent hits on it. And again, it was damaged.

The creature looked extremely strong, and capable of freeing itself from the spell, but as hard as it tried, it wasn’t able to get itself loose, so powerful was the mind of Balden. And Max and Heinrich were able to have more free shots. And some of them hurt the creature, and some of them were harmlessly engulfed by its strange flesh. And you concluded it was just plain luck whether your hits damaged it or not.

The creature thrashed around more but was still not able to free itself, and Balden fired a blast of magic at it, while Max and Heinrich shot at it. The creature did manage to loosen the magical grip a bit, but Balden just cast another spell and it was entangled even more, and still you kept shooting it, and the thing took massive damage from your weapons but struggled on.

And then eventually it pulled itself free of the magic bonds and slithered up the side of the canal towards you. And it must have realised that Balden was responsible for its entanglement because it slithered straight towards him. And it nearly reached him, but Balden entangled it again, and the three of you finished the helpless, and pretty annoyed, creature off.

You wondered how you would have ever beat the thing if Balden’s magic hadn’t kept it at bay. And you left the blob of green mouldy flesh on the side of the Doodkanaal and went for a drink at the Hangman.

Balden bought everyone dinner, and everyone agreed he was the best wizard they had ever seen, or even heard about, and much better and more powerful than the pale moody death wizard you sometimes hung out with. You thought that he had gone out into the marsh still a mediocre wizard but something must have happened, because he had returned with great powers.

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