43: The Painting

43: The Painting

Angestag 20^th Sommerzeit

Berta was still talking to Flosse Drakwald. Flosse asked why she had been heading to Wulfhaven but Berta said that she couldn’t tell her because of client confidentiality. Flosse said that she had thought Brambledown was a halfling of discretion and tact, but that turned out not to be the case. And then she went off on a rant about how men couldn’t be trusted, and Berta agreed with her.

Meanwhile, Max readied his blunderbuss, and Balden channelled his magic. Dietrich channelled his magic and was ready to summon some magical dogs to his aid, but couldn’t make his spell work. And a small goblin at the back heard something, and when he looked round he could see Dietrich sticking his head up from behind the wall.

Balden entangled the goblin chief, his makeshift wooden throne growing branches that grabbed the goblin. And Max fired his blunderbuss, killing a group of five goblins instantly and spattering the painting on the goblin chief’s robes with blood. And then he shouted for Berta.

Dietrich gave up on his magic and charged at the chief hitting him on the head with his staff. One of the goblins tried to defend his boss and got a good hit back on Dietrich. The other goblin jumped up onto the wall and nearly got a devastating blow on Max’s arm, but he dodged it at the last moment.

Hearing the blunderbuss and her name, Berta ran back towards the farmstead. She shouted at Flosse as she went, ‘I think I saw someone in your colours.’ And Flosse replied that she wasn’t surprised, and that he was a bastard.

Max drew a pistol and shot and killed the goblin on the wall, and Dietrich dodged the goblin attacking him to have another go at the chief. He got a great hit on the chief’s leg, and blood spurted from a knee wound, going all over the painting again, and all over the courtyard, mixing with the sheep’s blood. And in a few moments he was dead. The goblin guard had another go at Dietrich ripping into his guts, and sending him to the floor bleeding.

Berta arrived at the main gate to see the scene, with blood all over the place and all over the painting but the goblins already beaten. Max drew another pistol and aimed at a goblin, but the weapon blew up in his hand, burning his fingers, and wrecking one of his finest pistols beyond repair. But without their chief the goblins were already beginning to slink away.

Balden ran to Dietrich and bound his wounds to stop the bleeding. Making a good job of it, and soon Dietrich was all bandaged up and on his feet.

Berta could see Flosse and her soldiers making their way across the fields towards you, taking the odd pot shot at the fleeing goblins. She tore the painting off the dead goblin’s robes and gave it a bit of a clean, and quickly explained her meeting with Flosse to everyone else.

And that reminded you of the goblin’s prisoner who was tied up in a corner of the courtyard on a stake. You asked him if he had stolen the painting, and he explained in an Altdorf accent that he had borrowed it for research purposes and was just doing Sigmar’s work. And he demanded you cut him down before Flosse got there. You didn’t trust him, of course, but he said that if you cut him down he would share the treasure with you. And that made you wonder, what treasure.

So you had a really long quick discussion about what to do. Balden was all for grabbing the painting and running, as you’d be assured of a pay day from Rudolf Drakwald. But the rest of you favoured trying to find the treasure. And in the end you decided to wait for Flosse Drakwald.

When she got there and saw the painting she praised Berta for getting it for her (although the others felt like they’d helped a bit), and went to grab it, but Berta insisted you negotiate some sort of payment first. You told her it would be reasonable to get Brambledown’s fee. But she said that she had already paid him half up front, and the other half had been stolen, and she indicated the prisoner, who she called Gustav.

You decided that if Gustav had had the money then the goblins would have taken it. And Max did a quick search around the chief’s throne but didn’t find anything.

Flosse ordered her soldiers to cut Gustav down and went over to him and vented her anger on him. You got the impression that they were lovers and he had double crossed her, or something like that. Then she had him carried off and locked in a shed.

You got back to talking about a deal for the painting. You started talking about shares of the treasure. Flosse pointed out that she was a Marienburger and so would drive a hard bargain, and said that she had eight soldiers and you didn’t, and she was negotiating from a position of strength.

She offered you two shares out of twelve, and you said six. And in the end you settled for one share per person, which meant you would get four of thirteen. Gustav shouted out from the shed that he should be included as well, and Max offered to kill him.

It was getting dark and so you decided to get some sleep, and sort the painting out in the morning. The soldiers were very efficient at making camp, and you had some nice mutton stew. Flosse told you not to bother keeping watch as you had earned a good night’s sleep and her soldiers would do it, but you didn’t really trust her, so you kept watch anyway.

You took one of the rooms of the farmstead. It looked like it was part of a proper family home that had only been abandoned very recently. Probably when the goblins arrived. And it was comfortable enough that you all got a decent rest.

Festag 21^st Sommerzeit

In the morning you came down for breakfast and were surprised to see Gustav at the table. He had been cleaned up, and healed, and given new clothes and he seemed to be smirking at you. And as Flosse was talking to you, she was occasionally touching him affectionately, and she called him Gussie.

After a quick breakfast, Flosse couldn’t wait to take the painting to the cliff, and two soldiers held it up on the edge of the cliff while she tried to work out the exact spot the painting had been painted, using the three islands in the background as the key reference points.

Max decided that the angles were a bit wrong, and he directed the soldiers a couple of hundred yards along the coast. And after a bit of fine tuning was happy that you were in the right place.

And at that point, Berta got out her shovel and started digging. The soft earth was good for digging and it wasn’t long before she had cut out a perfect grave shape in the earth and eventually hit bedrock. But she found nothing.

Then you had the idea that the key to the mystery had something to do with Sigmar’s sword, and so you made Gustav stand in Sigmar’s position holding his sword. And you looked along his sword to see where it was pointing, but it was only vaguely along the coast line at nothing special.

You spent some time wondering what the painting actually meant, and eventually decided to have a close look on the painting at the point of Sigmar’s sword. And you could see on that exact point on the middle island there was a dark spot three quarters of the way up the sheer cliff side that looked like it might be cave. You also spotted some detritus on the rocks below that area.

And so you had the problem of how to get to the island. The three islands were joined by countless small rocks breaking through the surface of the sea and it looked like a very dangerous place to sail. You thought about the canoe you had left at the mouth of the river but decided that using that to cross the strait would be suicidal.

Flosse said she could send for her boat in Wulfhaven, but it would take three days to get there. Gustav volunteered to go back and fetch it, and so you volunteered too, to keep an eye on him.

And, thinking about payment from Rudolf Drakwald, Dietrich asked Flosse if he could keep the painting after it was all done, and Flosse said they could discuss that at that time.

And so you were discussing how to get across to the island when you spotted a sailing ship rounding the headland. And as it got closer you could see that it was an old cargo boat, but it had been modified with lots of badly constructed wooden fortifications, and depicted on the mainsail was a bad moon symbol, which you had seen before, and knew that it meant goblins.