39: Leihafen


Marktag 8th Sommerzeit

You decided to try to get some work on a boat heading to Wrecker’s Point but after asking around a bit that turned out to be a bit harder than you thought, as it was a bit of a backwater and not many ships were going there. And then you looked around the Suiddock for any boat going east, probably to Salzenmund or Erengrad.

You talked to the quartermaster of the Oso, and he gave you some friendly advice, telling you that although boats often needed labour, it would be hard for so many of you to find work on a single vessel. And captains didn’t generally make detours to drop off their casual labour for no reason.

So in the end, you spoke to his captain, Wilma van der Vliet, and she said she would take you there but you had to pay six guilders each for your passage, and be expected to work, and pay her ten guilders for the lost time it would take the boat to detour to Wrecker’s Point. So you all agreed to pay this, and Max added it to his list of expenses that Drakwald had assured you he would pay back, along with the two hundred guilders he had offered you for the job. The captain said the Oso would sail with the tide first thing in the morning, and if you weren’t there it would leave without you. And you managed to negotiate a one guilder discount for any pirate you killed, but the captain didn’t seem to think you would run into any.

You did some shopping for supplies and new coats and Max kept a count of your expenses and you went back to Frau Koester’s for the last taste of her gruel you would be getting for a while.

Backertag 9th Sommerzeit - Wellentag 14th Sommerzeit

The Oso set sail and you were soon in the Manannspoortsee. You kept a look out for Rotter’s yellow boat that you had abandoned to the bog octopus. And by night fall you anchored on the edge of the bay ready to enter the Sea of Claws the next morning.

And when you did you felt the air get noticeably colder and windier, despite it being high summer. The journey was rainy but mostly uneventful, keeping the coast always in sight to the starboard, and you did whatever chores the crew asked of you. Max checked out the ship’s swivel guns, and you spoke to the crew and the captain about Wrecker’s Point and you tried not to break any of the many superstitions that the crew held.

You learned that in the past Wrecker’s Point used to have a bad reputation for piracy and wrecking, but Marienburg had sent punitive raids against the pirates, which had been controversial as it was part of Nordland, but now any piracy and wrecking was on a much smaller scale.

There were any number of small islands off the coast, and when you turned south for Leihafen you had to round Manann’s Teeth which was an archipelago of hundreds of mostly deserted islands.

Aubentag 15th Sommerzeit

And then you arrived in Leihafen, a small town at the mouth of the Shaukeln river. You disembarked with all your stuff wondering what to do next, and realised that the only inn in town was the Queen’s Grace. As you were chatting about what to do you noticed a young spiky-haired woman approached the Oso and started talking to the captain. So you tried to eavesdrop and you realised she was checking to see if the boat was heading for Marienburg.

Berta got into a casual chat with her and you learned her name was Agnes and you got her to explain that she was from Marienburg but had been up here on a job, and that job had finished and now she was heading home. And after a few more questions she admitted that she had been sacked, but she didn’t mind because it was the best paying job she had ever had, and she was loaded.

She also told you an elven boat had recently sailed up the Shaukeln, and you had heard that the Shaukeln was the cleanest river in the Empire because the elves who lived up river cleaned it, or something.

You got a room at the Queen’s Grace, and had some food and asked the landlady, Frau Hoffen, and here son Jens, about the halfling. She said he had stayed here for a few nights and then headed west with a local guide Ditte Fogh, and she told you about Agnes getting into an argument about which is the best, Marienburg or Altdorf, and causing a scene.

You noticed a map on the inn wall of Wrecker’s Point and so you checked it out, and planned your route across Wrecker’s Point, which involved heading west to Dunkelkiefer, the biggest town on the head land, and then continuing over the Raven Hills towards Wulfhaven.

And then Agnes came down, and you gave her loads of drinks while subtly questioning her. She said that the halfling, Ted Brambledown, had hired her and a thug called Kurt Schluegel, to get the painting and escort him to Wulfhaven (a town about three days away on the other side of Wrecker’s Point). They couldn’t get a boat directly to Wulfhaven because of its reputation as a pirate den. She described the picture and it was pretty much what you expected.

But then she started trying to get into an argument over which was the best city, and she threatened you with her dagger if you said Altdorf. And you realised she was a terrible drunk, and that could have been the reason she was sacked, and you decided it might be best to go to bed.

Marktag 16th Sommerzeit

You set off early with some food and sandwiches from the inn. And you put most of your stuff in Berta’s cart. Shortly after leaving town, Berta spotted a figure observing you from a wooded area to the south and she thought it might be an elf.

Then you followed the road up onto Sentinel’s Heath. It was rainy, and much of the heath was waterlogged and you began to lose sight of the road. And by the afternoon you were walking ankle deep in water, and you used your staffs to check the way ahead and see if you were still on the road.

When, suddenly, Berta felt something around her ankle. She tried to pull away from it, but it was holding her fast. Dietrich bent down and felt around her leg to see what it was, and he felt a hand, or something similar, try to grab his wrist and he quickly pulled his wrist away.

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