[WFRP] The Hour After Midnight

[LCP]

Jumping up onto Ithelus’ shoulder, the cat looked expectantly at Illiiya’s pack, licking the back of its paw – their host seemed to notice it for the first time.

“Hey, you can’t bring that mangy thing in here! ‘s probably infested with fleas!”

He made a shooing motion at the animal – it hissed at him, and went back to grooming itself.

“It’s alright, we’re going,” said Lothar. Heading back down the rickety stairs, they walked out into the sunlight – the cat trotted after them, still watching Illiiya in the patient expectation of food.

Hearing the plan to enquire after the carter, Seth excused himself. “The beggars around the Neumarket must have seen something when our friend was moving his barrels from Karlsen’s the other day,” he said. “I’ll see where the trail leads, and meet you later.”

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OOC: Care to define a rendezvous?

Agreeing to his plan, the main group split off, heading out of Helstrum’s Ward at a respectable pace – the street cat watched them go, seemingly torn as to whether to follow them.

There was a faint squeaking from one of the alleyways, and a large black rat began to shuffle out of the shadows, a hungry look in its eye. With an alarmed mew, the cat took off after its new friends...

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Raffy, Illiiya, Ithelus & Lothar (& Cat)

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Heading north towards the Drakwald road, the group found itself beginning to approach the outskirts of town – the buildings here were lower, many looking of recent construction. Poorly-constructed thatched roofs and flaking wattle-and-daub walls were the common denominator, the occasional group of better-constructed buildings marking where an old house had stood outside the town before its recent expansion.

The Carter’s Rest was one such building: a high stone wall enclosed its sprawling stable-yard, arches high and broad enough for a cart to pass through piercing it in two places. Its front door opened onto the rutted road, the doorstep scored and muddied by the passage of countless boots.

Inside, the inn smelt of hay, mud and stale sweat. At this time of day, it was mostly empty, the innkeeper sitting behind the bar idly polishing a stein. He was a big man, with thick arms and a bushy brown beard – seeing the new arrivals, he stood up, meeting their eyes with an expectant air.

“What can I do for you, gents?” he asked, amicably.
“We’re looking for a fellow called Friedrich Hoffer,” said Lothar. “Wondering if you’d seen him round here?”
“Friedrich? Sure. Old customer,” said the innkeeper. “Stables his horse and cart here. Don’t speak to him much these days, though – he’s got some night job. Takes the ol’ cart out every evening, reg’lar, and it stays mewed up here in the day. Don’t know where he goes in the meantime – s’pose he catches up on his sleep.” He began polishing the stein again. “You friends of his?”

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Seth

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Heading back to the Neumarket, Seth stopped at a corner – the beggar who sat leaning against the damp wall here was clearly advanced in years, a matted grey beard stretching down to his waist. He was asleep, an empty bottle of some rotgut stuff lying by his hand – slow snores rumbled over his lips, picking up a resonant growl in the man’s surprisingly broad chest. His cap lay empty at his feet, picked clean of others’ charity by the gutter children of the lower town.

“Excuse me,” said Seth, looking warily down at the slumbering beggar. The man continued to snore.

“Excuse me,” he repeated, crouching down and gently shaking the man by the shoulder. He started awake with an alarmed snort.
“Sorry to disturb you, but I want to ask if you’ve seen a man with a burned face –“
The beggar sat bolt upright, grabbing two fistfuls of Seth’s mail shirt and pulling the squire’s face down until the tips of their noses were a mere inch apart. The man’s boozy breath gusted in Seth’s nostrils, wide, wild eyes staring unblinkingly into his own.

“I’ve seen things,” breathed the beggar. “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. Men wi’ daemons in their eyes. A man wi’ eyes in his beard! I’ve seen the things what wait down in the dark! Hungry things! I’ve seen a dog what could talk! A naked tail! A grave in a box! Evil it is, the stink of evil on this town!”

“Yes,” said Seth, struggling to extricate himself politely from the man’s vice-like grip, “but – have you seen a man with a burned face?”

The beggar blinked, letting go his hold.
“...Nope,” he said, with a calm shrug, and fell directly back to sleep.


Continuing in the same vein, he found the burned man frustratingly elusive – while there were a multitude of beggars plaguing the streets around the Neumarket, their powers of observation left something to be desired, and their numbers trailed off sharply towards the more affluent old town. Only two had anything useful to say: the beggar-woman Ithelus had found the previous day, and another, a one-legged man who sat on the corner of Neumarket and Trough Street.


The woman watched Seth suspiciously, as if she feared he might attempt to arrest her – when Ithelus put the question to her, however, she answered.

“Burned face? There was a cove like that hangin’ about Karlsen’s powder store a couple o’ days ago. ‘Im an’ ‘is mates ‘ad a little cart – headed off t’ward the old town.”


The one-legged man, meanwhile, looked cynically up at them from his seat on the ground, listening with a knowing expression as Seth recounted Puderbrand’s description.

“Yeah,” he said. “I seen ‘im.”
Stretching out his arm, he pointed at the green-painted roofed wagon that sat in the corner of the market.
“He just went in there.”

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