Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

[*] Answers Reasoned To Bits
-[*] PREDECESSOR LOYALTY: I believe that they were truly suborned by the Von Carsteins.
--[*] Loyalty Reasoning: The primary factors are, how agents of Drakenhof knew enough to move the ledgers, which should only be known to the prior count and his administration, how the Von Carstein aligned nobles knew we didn't have them, how the League benefited from the loss of the ledgers and the various undead and monsters literally buried within the castle at the barest inspection.
---[*] While the last factor could be achieved through incompetence or sloth, this does align with the former pieces, which points to a highly competent individual who knew they were in league with monsters. Either his loyalty lies with the monsters, or his greed lies beyond mortal means to fulfill.
-[*] PREDECESSOR APPROACH: The rot lives on; we must excise it.
--[*] The case of the stablehand to feed us poor information, and the Ledgers placed where they could be recovered intact, rather than much more simply burned or thrown in the river, points to further plots aimed at us rather than simple obscuration of loose ends. As such, the previous spymaster should be considered an active party rather than a simpler historical note.
-[*] STIRLANDIAN LEAGUE: Do not clasp the snake to your bosom. Destroy the League.
--[*] Intelligence wise, with what we know of their affiliates, the entire network's integrity is suspect, and its continued operations highlight the possibility of its former master still being in control, which would make it too easily suborned a source of deliberately bad information. Economically, the vast amounts of wealth running along the League has to be funding SOMETHING, and indications are that this is not to our benefit. If there were to be such a drain upon our economy, it should at least go towards paying for our operations rather than a mystery party's.

[*] Plan Backlog
-[*] Do your job:
--[*] The Wurtbad Watch already has their ear to the ground. Make their information flow to you.
--[*] Personally vet everyone that works in the castle, and replace everyone you're not sure of the loyalties of.
---[*] ... and make sure some of the new hires and trustworthy ones report to you.
---[*] Ask the good Brother to assist you. Can't hurt to double check when it comes to HERESY.
--[*] Much of Western Stirland is under the de facto direct control of the Elector Count. Meet with each of the local leaders and make it clear that you're to be kept in the loop.
-[*] Secret Base:
--[*] Diggy Diggy Hole, Outsourced: Pay someone to do the digging, then Mindhole them on their way out. (no action required, -personal gold)
-[*] Research:
--[*] A large number of Shyish-stained weapons were uncovered from the Barrow. Perhaps you should:
---[*] Examine them yourself and see if they're useful, or dangerous, or both.
---[*] Ranald's Blessing
----[*] Bring an example or two to show your master while you are in Altdorf.
-----[*] Lead-lined steel case. Magic lock on top of mundane one. Carry on your person.
-[*] Go to Altdorf:
--[*] Van Hal is considering candidates for the post of Marshal, and he has asked you to vet them.
--[*] That damn Asp has still been quiet, but maybe it's just biding it's time. Finally admit it's existence to your contacts back in the College and see if they know anything that can help.
--[*] Filled with Potential: You've got a room cleared out and ready to be put to use. It should make an excellent enchanter's workshop after a bit of furnishing and some purchases in Altdorf. (no action, -personal gold)

---

You consider the questions at length. "The primary factors are," you begin, unconsciously taking on the tone of voice you used to use in debates back in College, "how agents of Drakenhof knew enough to move the ledgers, which should only be known to the prior Elector Count and his administration; how the Von Carstein-aligned nobles knew we didn't have them; how the League benefited from the loss of the ledgers; and the various undead and monsters literally buried within the castle, exposed at the barest inspection.

"While the last factor could be achieved through incompetence or sloth, this does align with the former pieces, which points to a highly competent individual who knew they were in league with monsters. Either his loyalty lies with the monsters, or his greed lies beyond mortal means to fulfil."

"Compelling reasoning," Van Hal says, motioning for you to continue.

"The case of the stablehand who attempted to feed us poor information, on top of the ledgers placed where they could be recovered intact instead of being simply burned or thrown in the river: this points to further plots aimed at us rather than simple obfuscation of loose ends. As such, the previous spymaster should be considered a still-active party rather than a simpler historical note."

"I'm inclined to agree. And the Stirlandian League?"

"Intelligence wise, with what we know of their affiliates, the entire network's integrity is suspect, and its continued operations highlight the possibility of its former master still being in control. This would make it too easily suborned to be a good source of information. Economically, the vast amounts of wealth running along the League has to be funding something, and indications are that this is not to our benefit. If there were to be such a drain upon our economy, it should at least go towards paying for our operations rather than those of some unknown party."

"Mmm," Van Hal says neutrally, swirling what remains of his liquor in its mug. "That was my thought too, but I wasn't sure if it was the proper caution of an Elector Count or the leftover instincts of a Witch Hunter. I'm glad your thoughts on the matter align with mine."

"Happy to put your mind at ease," you say, and Van Hal smiles at you.

---

Your first instinct was to immediately begin galloping off to Altdorf, but it occurs to you to at least wait until they arrive, so you cast around for something else to spend your time on. You don't want to get started on something and be unable to complete it. So you visit the treasury, open up the large steel-and-lead crate, wince at the wave of Shyish that flows out, and select a candidate for investigation - a large iron greatsword.

Then you glare at it suspiciously, before putting it back in the box and going to find a blacksmith that can make you a case to carry it around in.

A couple of days later, you have transported the suspect greatsword back home and are ready to start examining it properly. Sure, you've got nothing more than magesight, an unhoned talent for enchantment, and some half-remembered lessons on the subject from back when you were an apprentice, but what's the worst that can happen, right?

In the peaceful quiet of your excavated spare room, illuminated by a softly glowing ball of Ulgu, you peer closely at the sword. The Shyish is unmistakable, densely twisted in on itself in a spiralling lattice, and as far as you can tell untainted by Dhar. You frown and look closer, not sure what it is you're seeing.

Magic, you know, is fundamentally about taking the unreality of the Winds and forcing them into reality, softening the fundamentals of what is and twisting them according to the will of the caster and the nature of the Wind in question. If you push Aqshy into reality, fire can appear from nothing, because the Aqshy temporarily and locally changes reality so that fire can come from nowhere. But where spellcasting does so for mere seconds, enchanting does so indefinitely. In reality fire needs fuel, but a magically burning sword does not, because the sword is no longer entirely real and therefore no longer beholden to that aspect of reality.

But just as the sword becomes partly unreal, the Winds become partly real. An enchanter isn't just bringing the Winds into reality, they're changing the nature of the Winds themselves.

But that isn't what you're seeing here. The Winds are densely-packed but unchanged in their fundamental nature - but that can't be right, because the fundamental nature of Shyish isn't being stacked up in a sword like apples in a barrel. So you look for the barrel itself, peering closer and closer to try to make out what would be a tiny amount of magical framework around the overpowering glow of the trapped Shyish. It's like trying to see a candle in front of a bonfire, and your vision blurs as your eyes strain to make it out, and you wince at the sudden coldness as your nose touches the iron of the blade but you think you just caught a glimpse of it, right at the edge of the-

Sudden agony shoots up your leg and you drop the sword, its point embedding itself in the soil. You whirl around to see a cat sprinting out of the room, its mischief apparently done. You rub at your calf and wince as you feel dampness of the fabric. The little bastard drew blood through your robes, and how did it even get down here, what sort of horrible demon cat-

Your thoughts are scattered as the sensation of the raw energy of death unleashed fills the room, and you whirl once more and then take several steps back as you see sinister purple light arcing across the length of the sword. The Shyish dances up and down the blade, seeking an escape, and then turns inwards and the sword turns red with rust as it ages decades in seconds. Before your eyes it flakes away to nothing, and the now-released death energy sinks into the earth.

You stare in horror. If you had still been holding the sword...

[TEMPTING RANALD: Breakpoints 30/60, Learning, Ranald's Blessing 11+13+20=44. Ranald's got your back.]

Shaken, you spend the next few days curled up with a freshly-bought novel or two as you await the arrival of your potential new coworkers. Finally they arrive from Altdorf, escorted by pistoliers and unknowingly observed from the wall as you try to put faces to the names you've been given. The first candidate is unmistakable, with their horse just as clad in steel as the man himself, and wielding a hammer that would put Brother Kasmir's to shame. Sir Berthold of the Order of the Hammer of Sigmar, you presume. The second is more difficult to spot, blending in as he does among the ranks of the pistoliers, but you identify him by his more ornate half-plate and the missing plume on his helmet - Outrider Champion Gustav von Jungfreud. And bringing up the rear is an overweight man driving a cart, covered with a bulging sheet. That must be Master Engineer Otto of Nuln.

Three very different candidates. A tricky decision to be made. Hopefully what you find in Altdorf will simplify it.

---

After consulting a map, you realized that the trip by road to Altdorf is actually shorter than the trip to Leicheburg. An overnight stay in Nuln and you'll be there at the end of the second day.

You are, however, reminded that no travel in the Empire is trivial as part way through the first day, you encounter a group of beastmen trotting along the path, on the hunt for travellers. You were sorely tempted to draw your greatsword and set about them, but you didn't want to risk dropping your cargo (a second greatsword from the crate in the treasury, hopefully less temperamental than the first) so you just blasted right past them at full speed, chuckling to yourself at the frustrated man-goat noises they made as they tried fruitlessly to match your speed. You report them at the next roadwarden waystation you pass.

The rest of the trip is uneventful.

---

Altdorf is just as you remember it - overcrowded and full of snobs. You're also struck by how... ignored you are. In Stirland, you get looks everywhere you go, albeit mostly nervously respectful ones lately. But Altdorf is practically bursting with wizards, and though you aren't exactly getting jostled by passers-by, neither are you given any undue attention.

You're not sure how you feel about it.

The morning after you arrive, you're enjoying a quiet drink in the tavern you've rented a room in when your Master walks in, exactly as you remember him - same robe, same hat, same hideous fox stole he insists on constantly wearing dangling from his neck. He heads straight for your table and sits himself down uninvited, not even glancing away from you as the bartender hurries over with a tankard of ale.

"You could have waited until I sent word," you say with feigned exasperation.

"What's the point in knowing everything if you can't show it off?" he replies, his deep, booming voice ringing around the tavern. "So, what's got you running all the way back home? Not shooting for Magister already, are you?"

"Not this year," you reply breezily. "Mainly, I'm checking up on the candidates to replace the previous Marshal."

"And didn't that business cause some red faces here," he chuckles. "There's an old tale about a scorpion and a frog that leaps to mind."

You wonder whether the scorpion is supposed to be the late Professor or Van Hal. "I don't suppose you could save me the work?"

"And what kind of teacher would I be if I did that? Go, do your investigating, then come back to me and I'll tell you if you missed anything important."

You huff. "There are a couple of other reasons. The first is that I've got a bit of an ardent pursuer, if you get my meaning. Vain, too. Really likes mirrors."

The smile falls off Regimand's face at that. He looks over to the bartender and jerks his head towards the door, and the man hurries out from behind the bar and starts shooing the morning crowd out the door, steins still in their hands. In moments the room is empty, and the bartender scurries through a back door and closes it behind him, leaving the two of you alone. "What foolishness have you been getting up to in that blasted province-"

"Oh, it's not new," you reassure him. "This has been an ongoing thing since... '65, I think. When I filled that practice room with sticky fog that melted candles."

"Why didn't you say something," he asks, aghast.

You shrug. "At the time, I didn't want to admit that the incident was an even bigger screw-up than everyone thought. After that... well, I guess I just got used to it. There's actually less mirrors around than you'd think, and it's easy to get in the habit of dulling the shine on blades and silverware."

He shakes his head in disbelief. "I wonder if it's too late to transfer you to the Bright Order..."

"None of that. Come on, what's the solution here."

He sighs, and thinks. "There's a school of thought that such manifestations should be left to run their course, to cull the wizards that result in them. But miscasts happen to the best of us, I say. Go to- wait, no, you can't. Okay, I'll have an apprentice dig through the archives. There's a book somewhere in there that has a device to catch this particular variety of creature."

"Thank you," you begin, but you're interrupted.

"Don't thank me yet. The cost of having a new copy printed will be added to your debts."

"Can't I just borrow it?"

"If we lent out books, the archives would be empty within a generation." You sigh, and finish your drink. "So what was the third reason?"

"Oh, right," you say, and get up to go fetch the case from your room. When you return with it, he eyes the case thoughtfully. "Birchwood would be better," he says, taking it from you and working the clasp and opening it. "Oh, lead-lined. Well, that works too, though for short-term storage you want iron instead of steel on the outside." He eyes the sword inside thoughtfully. "Speaking of iron. Pre-Imperial?" You nod, and he leans in closer to it - though, you note sourly, not so close that he risks prodding it with his nose. "Hmf. Found in Stirland, I take it? So Asoborn construction... oh, I know what this is. Bloody primitives. There was a belief back then that the Winds of Magic were the souls of the dead, so some twit wizards put enchantments on the weapons to absorb ambient winds thinking that would mean it would eat the souls of those killed with it. Nasty stuff, except wrong in literally every way." He closes the case with a click. "So instead you end up with the swords sucking in all sorts of magic and it ends up mixing and curdling and next thing you know it's Dhar. At that point the best thing to do is find a nice volcano to drop it into. You've got the exception to the rule, though - looks like it's been soaking up nothing but Shyish, so it hasn't been tainted." He shrugs. "Not that it's any good. The enchantment itself is lost and could be interesting to work with, but you can't reverse-engineer the enchantment without grounding the Shyish, and unless you do it right the first time, that takes the blade and thus the enchantment with it and you're left with nothing."

You feign a disappointed look, thank him for his insight, and take the case back to your room, your mind alight with possibilities.

---

The Markets of Altdorf, however, refuse to cooperate with your ambitions. There's so much equipment that could be of use to you - looking glasses, magnifiers, prisms, crystals, lenses... and not a single one is anywhere to be found.

Wizard Chic, you discover, is in fashion among every spoiled rich youth in Altdorf that wants to outrage their parents. All over the city the damn brats are using genuine components to craft absolutely useless monuments to their own foolishness, and have sucked up everything that looks like it might be magically useful, and then commissioned more on top of that, so that every glassblower in the city is too busy catering to the whims of Altdorf's feckless youth to craft you the enchanting components you need.

You miss Wurtbad.

[REGIMAND'S EXAMINATION. Roll, Learning, 92+18=110. This is why he is the Master.]
[SHOPPING FOR ENCHANTING EQUIPMENT: Roll, Stewardship, 8+10=18. Ayn Ranald's free market destroys your dreams.]

---

You abandon the markets of Altdorf in disgust and go about your official business. First order of business: the chapterhouse of the Order of the Hammer of Sigmar.

You knock on their door, introduce yourself, hand them your letter of introduction, and the door is slammed in your face.

You scowl at the door. Now you'll need to get a new letter of introduction.

Still, you're not so easily put off. The Knights themselves might not feel like talking, but there's others inside the Chapterhouse that might not be so tightlipped. You spend days lurking in the pubs, bars, inns and taverns nearest to the Chapterhouse, and finally you find someone who works there that's willing to talk to a stranger.

He peers at you through the haze of smoke and his own drunkenness as he recounts his tale. "There's a group of 'em that are always together, and though I ain't ever seen your boy getting up to mischief, the others in that group are right proper arses. Always makin' us recite hymns to Sigmar, and if we don't know the words we get a beatin'. And if we say we follow one of the other Gods we get a bigger beatin'. I asked my Priest, and he says that's not right."

You murmur agreement that it's not right, your eyes narrowing.

---

Four days it took, to head back to Wurtbad and ask the bemused Van Hal for a replacement letter of introduction and come all the way back to Altdorf. And now you finally stand at the door of the Outrider's Barracks. They're not a Knightly Order, so you figure they'll be lacking the heady mix of arrogance and self-righteousness that made the Knights refuse to even-

The door opens. You introduce yourself. You hand them your letter of introduction. The door is slammed in your face.

Literally in your face. You prod at it gingerly, hoping it's not broken. As it is, you're going to have one hell of a bruise.

Four more days to Wurtbad and back. Van Hal couldn't decide whether to laugh at your predicament or worry about the hideous bruise that had spread across your face by then.

When you knock on the door of the Pistolier barracks, you're ready to draw your greatsword and jam it in the doorframe if it looks like it's going to be slammed in your face. But instead, you're invited in by the enthusiastic young noble, who apparently is a follower of Wizard Chic and compliments you on how authentic your outfit looks. You assure him that it looks authentic because it damn well is authentic, and he's awestruck.

You're introduced to a dizzying array of young nobles with more pistols than sense, and none of them have anything bad to say about Gustav von Jungfreud. They seem to hero-worship him, each competing to tell stories of the man charging impossible odds with a repeater pistol in each hand, dealing out improbable amounts of death. You listen carefully nonetheless, and a picture forms in your mind. Gustav is always the first into the fight, the boys are all eager to tell you. Now, you're no strategist, but it occurs to you that leading from the front is all well and good, but there's a time and a place for it, and the time isn't always and the place isn't everywhere.

Hmm.

---

Another day of travel to Nuln, to visit the famous Gunnery School. The famous Gunnery School that you're going to level to the ground if they even think of slamming the door in your face.

Luckily for the famous Gunnery School of Nuln, they're entirely welcoming to you, and more than happy to talk of the man who put his chances of tenure in jeopardy to volunteer for service in Stirland. Everyone speaks of how brilliant he is; how he miniaturized the bird-bomb, how he demolished the stables with what he insisted on calling the greatgreatcannon, how he tried to replicate the Dwarven gyrocopter and ended up creating a sort of ballista that fires enormous spinning blades.

You're shown into his workshop, which is a picture of absolute chaos. Parts and pipes and tools and scraps of parchment lie everywhere, half-covering prototype devices of unidentifiable purpose. You eye writing scrawled across the stone wall in charcoal, which appears to be calculating how big you can scale up a mortar until steel is no longer sufficient to contain the blast. Then it starts speculating about the properties of gromril.

Ambitious. Inspired. And quite possibly insane.

[INVESTIGATING THE KNIGHT: Req 60, Intrigue, 28+14=44. Door slammed in face.]
[ALTERNATE ROUTES: Req 80, Intrigue, 73+14=87. A fortunate encounter.]
[INVESTIGATING THE OUTRIDER: Req 50, Intrigue, 4+14=18. Door slammed in face, literally. Ow.]
[INVESTIGATING THE PISTOLIERS: Req 70, Intrigue, 95+14=109. They're eager to gush about their idol.]
[INVESTIGATING THE ENGINEER: Req 50, Intrigue, 76+14=90. They're happy to show him off.]

---

In Wurtbad, you thought of Altdorf as home. But after spending time in Altdorf once more, you find yourself yearning for Wurtbad. So after you finalize your investigations, you waste no time in heading back to Stirland.

Your Palace-Shrine welcomes you, and you sink into the welcoming embrace of your familiar, comfortable bed and luxuriate in finally being away from that damn stupid overcrowded impertinent sprawl of a city. But you can't luxuriate for long, because you've spent a lot of time out of the city and you've got work to do. First order of business is finding some more dumb muscle willing to become hermit miners for a few months in exchange for a hefty paycheck, and then you're off to visit the Wurtbad Watch.

The Wurtbad Watch, you soon discover, is the final destination for any members of the Army of Stirland too mutilated to serve but too stubborn to quit. The average member of the Watch has three limbs and nine tenths of a face, and nowhere is this better embodied than in their leader, Captain Guion 'Lefty' Ragnier, a former Brettonnian peasant with a hook in place of his left hand and an eyepatch covering whatever happened to his left eye. He doesn't let that slow him down, though, and you find him to be worryingly sharp and surprisingly literate, his desk almost as covered in paperwork as Van Hal's. He's also openly suspicious of you, bordering on hostile.

Currently, his eye is narrowed as he looks at you across the desk. "Wouldn't this be the Marshal's jurisdiction?"

You shrug. "If you've got a shovel, you can dig him up and ask him."

"Right, I heard about that. Treason, wasn't it?"

You're not sure what he's insinuating, but you're pretty sure you don't like it. "Yes, and it was uncovered and he was executed for it."

"What about the Steward, then? If we're part of the city's civil infrastructure, seems more natural we'd report to her."

"And if you were nothing but petty thief-takers, that would be the case. Look, we've gone off-track. I'm not asking for you and your men to become spies. All I'm asking is that, when you're keeping an eye out for cultists and creatures as you normally do, you keep me informed of anything you find. Then I can work with you in exterminating them before they're a threat to Wurtbad."

He looks at you long and hard, then, reluctantly, he nods. "Suppose I don't have much of a choice in the matter."

"No. You don't."

That could have gone better. But sullen obedience is still obedience.

[RECRUITING THE WATCH: Breakpoints 40/60/80, Diplomacy, 51+8=59. Reluctant obedience.]

---

As much as you hate leaving Wurtbad again so soon, your next priority is seeing to the allegiances of the regional representatives of the Elector Count's demesne. Before you head out, you see to the trio of diggers who you hired to clear out another room in the Palace-Shrine - it's a bit trickier to Mindhole and pay each of them individually without tipping off the other two, but since you're barely in Wurtbad recently you had no choice. Once again you're disappointed to find a lack of treasures.

So off you go to find those regional representatives. It's an exceedingly dull task, because as it turns out, there's no one clear representative, just a snarled bureaucratic mess that runs off inertia. You spend days trying to find out who's centrally placed enough to be able to act as an information pipeline, then days more trying to convince them you have the authority to recruit them. But in the end, Munzhausen falls into line, and then Purgg.

In Worden, however, the bureaucrats are made of sterner stuff, and they stubbornly resist your attempts to untangle the confusing mess of who reports to who. You almost suspect that you're being deliberately stonewalled, but it could be entirely innocent - after all, Worden is the largest of the three areas. In the end you have to break off and head back to Wurtbad if you're going to complete what you had planned.

[ANY TREASURES? Req 80, 21.]
[MUNZHAUSEN, Req 40, Diplomacy, 42+8=50.]
[PURGG, Req 40, Diplomacy, 79+8=87.]
[WORDEN, Req ??, Diplomacy, 22+8=30.]

---

Final entry on your agenda: looking into the staff of Eagle Castle. You haven't had much contact with them since you moved out, but they're a pretty straightforward bunch, largely drawn from the surrounding villages since the Wurtbadians are oddly skittish about the castle.

Things get off to a bad start right away, as Brother Kasmir gets the impression that you're checking up on his work. He declines your request to assist him with icy politeness and strides off before you have a chance to rephrase. You consider going after him to try to smooth things over, but decide to leave things be before you jam your foot any deeper into your mouth.

Still, you've got a job to do.

Things start off innocently enough. Some of the staff know you and the rest know of you, so they're comfortable answering your questions, and you compare everyone's stories together and find that everything matches. Then one day, you're barely paying attention to the fifteenth interview of the day when the man mentions his relation to the headman of Biderhof. You prompt him to continue, remembering the agonizing detail said headman went into when describing his family tree, and notice that the picture being painted for you doesn't line up at all with the one the headman himself gave to you.

The man's voice trails off, apparently picking up on your suspicion. For a long moment the two of you stare at each other over the table, filling the room with silence.

When he moves, it is with inhuman speed - if his legs hadn't been tucked under the table, he would have had you. As it is, him having to push his chair back and rise to his feet before he could throw himself at you gave you time to draw your greatsword and meet his pounce with your swing.

Once again, silence descends upon the room, broken only by the the blood dripping from the enormous gash in the man's torso, almost splitting him in half.

You stare in horror at the cleaved body of the man that seconds ago you were talking to. You look down at the spray of blood marring your grey robes. You look at your trusty flamberge embedded in the flesh of the thing that just tried to kill you. Then you turn away, and vomit your half-digested lunch against the wall.

[RECRUITING BROTHER KASMIR: Req 30, Diplomacy, 7+8=15. You're not making a lot of friends lately.]
[TRY TO UNDO THE DAMAGE: Req 60, Diplomacy, 40+8=48. Best to leave him be.]
[HOW BAD IS IT: ???]
[WHAT DO YOU FIND: Req ???, Intrigue, 52+14=66. Inconsistency found.]
[STAY COOL: Req 40, Intrigue, 9+14=23. Failed at playing it cool.]
[REACT: Roll, Martial, 82+10=92. GREATSWORD!]
[POST-BATTLE COMPOSURE: Roll, Martial, 17+10=27.]

---

ENCHANTED SWORD LOST. 49 remaining.
STUDENT LOANS INCREASED.
BOOK ACQUIRED: Light And Its Properties, by Leonardo da Miragliano.
KNIGHT INVESTIGATED: Kept over-zealous company.
OUTRIDER INVESTIGATED: Always the first into the fight, always.
ENGINEER INVESTIGATED: There's a fine line between genius and madness, and he's trying to weaponize it.
INFORMANT GAINED: Captain Guion 'Lefty' Ragnier, Head of the Wurtbadian Watch
PALACE-SHRINE UPGRADED: Spare room excavated!
INFORMANT GAINED: Munzhausen Bureaucrat
INFORMANT GAINED: Purgg Bureaucrat
BROTHER KASMIR RELATION CHANGES: -1, now 4/10.


Discretionary Income: +150g
Embezzlement: -35g
Sword box: -5g
Altdorf trip accommodation: -20g
---
Net: +90

Personal Income: +50g
Embezzlement: +35g
Tithe: -5g
Student Loans: -35g
Excavations: -20g
---
Net: +25g

---

You have just become very aware that something is very, very wrong.

WRITE IN what you do next.

---

YOU are currently in a small room near the Great Hall you have been using for interviews. It is roughly equidistant between the Chapel, the Courtyard, and the Great Hall. It is not much further to the Study. It is far away from the Archives.
ANTON is in Steinbachthal.
WILHELMINA is either in the Archives or out of the Castle.
KASMIR is sulking in the Chapel.
SCHULTZ is in Southern Stirland.
MARKUS is in the Courtyard.
BERTHOLD is in the Courtyard.
You noticed about twelve GREATSWORDS in the Courtyard.
GUSTAV is with VAN HAL, wherever he is.

You do not know where OTTO is.
You do not know where VAN HAL is. He may be in his study.

There are roughly two hundred SERVANTS in the castle. You have interviewed sixty of them without incident.