Adelbert Schreiber

A thin, relatively young man, perhaps a shade shorter than average had watched the falling star with fascination and at once moved to mark the event in his diary. The scritch-scratch of quill on parchment broke the silence. It was followed seconds later by an oath as the cart started again and the jolt caused the writer to blot his page, obliterating the entry he had just made.

"Not the best of omens," he said in annoyance rather than superstition and mostly to himself, though his voice was plainly audible. His accent was that of the southern Empire most likely Averland or Wissenland and clearly refined, though his dark clothing was of no better quality than the others in the cart. His hair was dark brown and he wore the short goatee beard of a would-be rake. As he looked up his shrewd grey eyes scanned the faces of his fellow passengers wondering what they made of the comet.

Had circumstances been different, he Adelbert Schreiber would have been the toast of Nuln with the Elector Countess herself as patron. Alas circumstances were what they were and the scribe had been forced to desperate measures to make his name in the world of scholarship; desperate measures like traveling to the Border Princes to research a few moldy old ruins in search of the fabled Varagoths, the 13th tribe of the Empire. The Varagoths were supposedly a lost tribe of Sigmar's time that had migrated south out of the Empire (or had been exiled - the sources were maddeningly unclear) despite their chief being the nephew (or cousin - again the sources were vague) of Sigmar himself. Conventional scholarship held that the Varagoths had never existed in the first place and had been invented by the early Emperor Theodahad to give illustrious origins to one of his mistresses who was not so illustrious in reality.

Adelbert disagreed. He was certain that not only had the Varagoths existed they had left evidence and descendants in the people of the Broken Reaches. He'd find that evidence, rewrite established history and gain the acclaim of the finer minds of the Empire that should have been his to begin with.

When he had started this journey he had jealously guarded his notebook in case any of them might steal his ideas and publish them first. Sure several looked the very definition of yokeldom but still... Glancing around he cleared his throat before asking: "Have any of you been to Nuln my friends?"