Of the Chalice, Overflowing - A Mordheim Quest

Will work on getting the story side post up either in the next hour or two before I sleep or first thing that I'm up tomorrow.

This, Ditmar Dolch had concluded, was too lucky a find. For all his prayers, he knew deep down that the Night Prowler had no true love for men of his profession. Yet, there, in a small clearing in the forest, perhaps a half-hour's ride off the road from Stirland to Ostermark, was an abandoned merchant's wagon. Beneath him, he could feel's Bernadine's muscles tense and her heart set to racing. Leaning forward to rub a gloved hand against her flank and calm her, for he could smell the corpses of the wagon's draft team from here, overpowering the leather of the mask on the bottom half of his face. They couldn't have been too long gone; they reeked so. Tying Bernadine to a stout-enough looking tree and shaking the excess rainwater off his semi-sodden cloak, he padded with long-practiced care toward the steel-bound, chain-wrapped money chest left locked to the dark, water-stained wood of the driver's bench.

At precisely the moment he got within reach of the coin chest, Ditmar felt a sharp point press itself to his back, lined up between two ribs and pointed straight at his heart. Freezing, hand still in the process of drawing a set of picks out of his cloak, the dark-haired highwayman stopped moving, fingers warmed by the still-burning match of one of his brace of hidden pistols.

"I'd stay entirely still, were I you. Do so, and you might survive trying to rob me." The voice was low, for--at a guess--a woman. It was smoky as a damp campfire and soft-yet-textured as the fine velvet jacket he'd once lifted off a minor member of the Grand Duchy's aristocracy. It also--strangely--had a Stirlander accent.
The boom of his pistol going off was echoed shortly after by the snap of a leather lead, as across the clearing, a terrified Bernadine tore free from where he'd tied her and bolted. Ducking into a roll as the shot went off, Ditmar could feel the speartip tear a long scrape across his back to his shoulder. Coming up from the roll, he spun and drew his rapier, only to freeze at the figure in front of him. Her dark hair hung in lank tippets about her neck and face, like the fur of a rain-drowned wolf. The face it framed was pale, uncomfortably so. Neither was what froze his muscles or choked off his breath, however. A fanged snarl twisted the otherwise beautiful face. Even that wasn't what most stopped him, however.

What stopped him was the visible bullet wound where his shot had hit her heart; well, plus the fact that she was still moving and standing in spite of it.

That, of course, was when his body ceased obeying his mind's frantic orders. Behind him, he could hear the horse-corpses shake themselves and stagger to their hooves, rain sluicing off exposed bone and tattered flesh-scrap alike as they did. As the blade of the spearhead rested against his neck, Ditmar had no chance to react before the vampire's arm tensed and:

VOTE: Choose ONE (1)

Highwayman:
[ ] tore his throat out.
-This Kills the Man
-Gain +1 Corpse, suitable for reanimation into a zombie, at no additional cost.
- Gain Equipment, following:
-- One (1) brace of pistols
--One (1) rapier
--One (1) cloak
--One (1) dagger

[ ] tossed a pouch of coin that barely weighed less than a fifth of brandy square into his chest.
-an Offer He Couldn't Refuse
-Spend 35 gold as hiring fee, leaving you with a remaining 465 gold in your war-chest.
-Gain Hired Sword: Highwayman -- Ditmar Dolch.
-Ditmar retains his equipment, and he is eventually able to retrieve his horse.
-He is (as demonstrated) an expert shot with a pistol.
-He is additionally an excellent rider.