37: The Puppetmaster


Wellentag 6th Sommerzeit

So, seeing the bird-puppet flying towards Laangmaar Dock with moony in its beak, you decided to follow them there. Berta was still shocked and wounded from the pink fire, and decided not to come. But the rest of you arrived at Laangmaar a good few minutes behind the marionettes.

The fairground was now deserted and felt eerie in the misty darkness. Dietrich cast his wizard’s eye over the fairground but couldn’t spot any conspicuous magical winds, but you could at least remember which tent the puppet show had been set up in.

As you approached the tent, Max felt something grab his leg and he looked down to see the halfling strongman had crawled from under one of the tents and was trying to tackle him, badly.

Then one of the acrobat sisters emerged from behind a tent and did a flying somersault combo to try to charge at Balden, but missed him completely. The second sister vaulted across the fairground and landed on Dietrich’s shoulders and tried to strangle him. Balden managed to get a sword strike on her, missing Dietrich's head.

And looking down at the halfling Max warned him he would be considered an accessary after the fact, and this remarkably reasonable chat convinced the halfling to back away. The other two of you were fighting off the acrobat sisters, with Dietrich dazzling one of them with his magic, and Balden hitting the other with his sword.

And then the fire eater, who you remembered from the fair, turned up carrying a torch, and you knew what was going to happen next. He breathed a jet of fire towards you, but luckily that missed. The fairground performers were obviously much more competent doing their rehearsed routines, and not so effective at fighting. And they all fled the scene. You decided that they might not be part of the murderous conspiracy but just sent by the puppeteer to delay you.

You reached the puppeteer’s tent and opened the flap. It was dark outside so extremely dark inside, and you found a lantern and lit it. There was a stage on the far side and you tentatively made your way towards it. You could see a marionette on the stage, but not one of the ones that had visited Bluecher.

Balden tried to cast a spell to unfasten it from its strings but got into a bit of a mess and ended up unfastening his own trousers. Meanwhile Dietrich summoned two spooky magical hounds to his side, which the rest of you could barely see, and they might not have even been there. In the lantern light Max aimed at the puppet and got a direct hit on it shattering it into pieces.

There was a wall across the stage, hiding the backstage area and you made your way around it, Dietrich going round one side and Max the other, while Balden pulled up his trousers. Max spotted a giant spider, and shot at it, and then remembered it was one of the puppets from Orron and Erris. And you could see loads of other puppets hanging up on racks behind the stage. The bird one and the moon-faced one weren’t there but Dietrich and his imaginary dogs smashed them all up anyway.

After making a complete mess of the puppet tent, you emerged to see one of the fairground boats setting sail from the dock. There were a number of small rowing boat tied up around the docks, and your understanding was that it was quite common in Marienburg to borrow whatever boat was handy for small jobs as long as you returned it in good repair, and so you decided to take one. Balden grabbed the oars and you were soon gaining on the fairground boat.

As you got closer you could see the puppetmaster at the tiller, and moony looking over the gunwale at you. And the puppet bird flew into the sky and then dived at you and just missed you.

And then Moony cast a spell, and Dietrich and Balden were suddenly overcome by depressing thoughts about their life and sorely tempted to give it all up and row back to shore. And Max who wasn’t affected by the spell sort of agreed with them, anyway. But Dietrich found the resolve to press on, and he grabbed the oars from Balden and headed for the sailing boat. Meanwhile the bird puppet swooped down on Max raking his head with its claws.

Then Balden, despite all the depressing thoughts, decided to help Dietrich row and you managed to reach the fairground boat, as Moony hit Dietrich with a blast of pink fire.

Max shot at the bird, but missed, and Balden tried to climb on board the sailing boat and the bird swooped down on him, raking his head, while Dietrich managed to pull himself aboard. Balden was now stuck in the row boat being terrorised by the bird puppet and it was all he could do to heal himself of his wounds.

And finally Max managed to get a good hit on Moony, blasting the puppet to matchwood. And Dietrich approached the puppetmaster with the pink fire still licking around his limbs. And he smashed his staff into the puppetmaster's leg, breaking it and causing it to bleed profusely. And Balden finally got his sword onto the bird puppet and swiped it from the sky and it crashed into the water. The puppetmaster, now mostly helpless, looked up plaintively at Dietrich, but Dietrich just smashed his staff down on the man’s head, killing him.

You tidied up a bit, grabbing the remains of moony and sticking it in a bag, as Dietrich said his college might be interested in it. And you pushed the remains of the puppetmaster over the side and watched it sink. Then you sailed the boat down the canal a bit and tied it up out of sight of Laangmaar Dock.

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