Introduction:
Apologies for the delay. I thought I would manage to get this out before family arrived for Christmas. Obviously, I did not. Still, I'm back in the office and getting into the groove of writing again. Happy Holidays, and hoping for a great 2025.
This chapter was hard because I had to finish filling out all the squads, and try not to make it feel like an absolute information dump. We are finally getting into the core mechanics of the quest, where you can assign squads to cases, and rely on their skills to solve the case. Pay attention to what skills the watchmen have — marked in the google sheet — and what the cases that you have available might require. For instance, if you are trying to track down a smuggler, you might need someone with underworld contacts, or strong tracking skills.
As you stand above your assailant, the adrenaline and battle high starts to fade, and the pain and exhaustion catches up. You aren't dumb enough to show weakness in front of the assailant, but the wound to your leg is serious. Just a few inches deeper and you would have been dead; the artery severed and your blood staining the streets. Swearing you yell for anyone to come attend to you, but the fog swallows most of the sound.
In the end, it took you nearly half an hour to attract the attention of the other guards, standing screaming in the square with your assailants held at sword point until the handful of guards that bunk at the watchhouse woke up. The first man on the scene seemed shocked that you managed to subdue two attackers and stood there silently gaping until you swore at him savagely to bring manacles for the assailants. The first dies before the restraints arrive, his dark artery blood framing his pallid corpse. You would have loved to get some information out of him, but there's a dark irony to him dying in the exact way he had planned for you, alone on the stones of Wailer's Square.
You catch whispers of conversation from the men as they help you back to the guardhouse and fetch supplies to bind your wounds. It's funny how it works you think. Yesterday half of these men were being disrespectful to your face, openly mocking your qualifications to lead the company; so sure they knew the truth of your backstory. Now they treat you with a somewhat awed mien. Few of them are trained fighters -- and despite some bravado to the contrary -- none would feel confident surviving the ambush you just went through. You've elevated yourself in at least some of their minds, you are a man they want at their side in a fight, and hopefully, at least some of them will start to look towards you to solve this type of problem
(+1 Watch Morale, now 4/10)
Of course, your good mood is immediately ruined, by the snide rumors of the sergeant of the third squad,
"Look how good a fighter he is. Bet you his squad would have survived if he hadn't abandoned them to pursue his own goals. Wonder if these assailants are just family members getting their revenge"
You've just survived an assassination attempt, and already the whispers surrounding you are being reinforced and adapted to fit the situation. Is there nothing you can do? Are you doomed to endless mockery? It drives you mad as the surviving assailant is swept into one of the Watchhouse's cells and searched.
The Watchhouse is just small enough that you can still hear the results of the search from where you are laid up on one of the tables in the mess haul. The surviving assailant is dressed in all black, but Wilbert -- who is overseeing the strip search -- remarks that the quality of the clothes is very poor. It's something an out-of-town peasant would wear. Coupled with the extremely fine handguns, it seems like the assailants were selected just for this job, and given the weapons needed to murder you by a wealthier patron.
You think briefly about what you want to do with the surviving assailant. Official policy is to hand them over immediately to the watch headquarters at Empire House, but you would like to try to get some information out of them first. It's not that you necessarily think that your superious had anything to do with the hit, its more that you are worried that in the hurried court bureaucracy, the assaliant won't be properly interrogated before being messily executed
- [ ] Keep the Assialint: You will be able to interrogate them later, but there is some chance of escape. Still, this is your best chance at getting what you need out of them
- [ ] Hand them over: There's no chance of escape, but in turn your chances of learning all the clues from them is very very small.
After that, the pain in your leg makes further decision-making impossible. Physician Freer is quickly summoned, and after receiving his customary payment in hard coin, stitches up your leg with steady hands. You don't love his mercantile ways, but you can admit he's good at his job. The stitches are as neat as any you saw in the army, and he gives you an herbal tincture to apply to your leg that will accelerate the healing. Unfortunately, despite his skills, he's no priest or wizard and you'll have to heal the old-fashioned way.
Thumping and Wilbert help you back to the inn, letting you lean on Wilbert's substantial form to take the weight off your bad leg while Thumping brings up the rear with your breastplate and sword. It's an odd procession that makes its way into the Raven's Portal, but the inn's residents are hardly bothered by the intrusion, still mostly asleep despite it nearing midday. One of the few present offers to, "Give a discounted rate on a funeral if this whole modern medicine thing doesn't work out for you". Oddly, the predictable morbidness of your roommates cheers you up before you collapse in bed, and spend the rest of the day trying to sleep off the pain.
Observing
For the first half of the week you avoid the watchhouse like the plague, claiming you need rest to heal your wounds. There is some truth to this statement — the stitches tug at your leg, and walking is damn painful — but in normal circumstances you would have grinned and beared it. In your experience, making sure that your soldiers see you as a beacon of reliability is one of the best ways to inspire men, and bouncing back quickly from a severe injury is one of the best ways to achieve that effect. After the incident yesterday, however, you aren't sure the inspiration is worth it.
You've tried the plotting approach. Show the men you are reasonable, but remember slights. Inspire them through leadership instead of fear. Try and tamp down on troublemakers so that the more serious watchmen see what the new standard is. It's had some results, individual watchmen seem a bit friendlier, but the rank contempt by sergeants has undermined these attempts at every step. At this point, you aren't sure if you will be able to work with your squads, or if you will have to kick them out and start from scratch if you want to try and make a competent watch organization. You've tried the velvet glove, now it's time for the iron fist underneath.
You set up an ambush. Squad One and Two are assigned to guard the island's two bridges, and their public station makes them easy to covertly observe for bad behavior. You pay a nice family with a house overlooking the bridge a few copper pennies for use of their balcony and set up there with a chair and some of the herbal tea Freer prescribed to watch Squad One at work.
[Leadership test => Target 51 + 20 = 70 => Rolled 59 => Success!]
It's mind-numbingly boring. Not only is the job itself boring, but you are watching a group fail to even try and stop the stream of obviously shifty characters crossing into the district. Instead, they sit around, bullshitting and generally making a nuisance of themselves to anyone that catches their eyes.
It's immediately clear to you the sergeant needs to go. Not only is he a lazy bastard who refuses to do anything he also takes it upon himself to impose "tolls" for anyone he sees rich enough to have coin on them, but not too powerful to have the connections or guards to shut down his little extortion racket. The constant cat-calls are also unlikely to endear him to any of the island's female residents. Maybe you could excuse the bribery if he was giving a cut to the rest of the group. The watchmen's pay is low, and a little low-level corruption is hardly the worst thing you've heard of. Instead, he keeps every red cent to himself, threatening the others with bared steel if they so much as complain.
More broadly speaking, the squad seems to be in rough shape. The Sergeant is the only one with even vaguely passable equipment, and even that is more in line with what you would expect from a levy spearman than a professional soldier. The rest of the squad has no armor and has to make do with ungainly truncheons and rusty knives for weapons.
Even more than the lack of equipment, it's the attitude that tells you all you need to know about the squad. These watchmen do not move like trained soldiers and are so blindingly oblivious you can't believe they've survived this long. They don't keep a watch on each other, allowing them to potentially be picked off one by one. They don't have full vision of the bridge from where they are set up in the shade, allowing several obvious thieves to scamper past as they work. And more damningly they still haven't noticed the fact you are spying on them after sitting out in the sun for two whole days!
The only highlight of the squad seems to be your old foe Oswald, who you've continued to subtly punish for the past few weeks by assigning the worst chores and shifts. At this point, you feel a bit bad for him. He's just … not that bright. What he is, however, is diligent, and monstrously strong. You see him easily lift the corner of a wagon when it gets stuck in a rut, then hold it there for a minute while a board is propped up under it for the wagon to drive on. You're pretty sure at this point that Oswald must have been set up to antagonize you. The double entendre about you kneeling for a god was a bit too clever for him to have come up with on his own. He's never going to be a leader, but a strong, obedient man like Oswald is one you would happily pay. Still, with everything you've seen, it makes you question whether or not it's worth it to keep the squad at all:
- [ ] Yes Keep the squad: They kinda suck, but they have hardly had the best role models. Give them a second chance and encourage them to be better.
- [ ] Yes but fire the leader: The Sergeant is the biggest problem in the squad, with the rest being pretty browbeaten. See if you can find a replacement for him, and keep the rest of the squad.
- [ ] No, fire the lot: These cannot be the best watchmen available in Altdorf. You honestly don't even care if that's true, you just won't have such assholes working for you.
[Leadership test => Target 51 + 20 = 70 => Rolled 83 => Failure!]
You look to repeat your trick with the second squad, but are quickly stymied. The weather has drastically changed, and a sleety cold rain buffets the island, making the streets bare and the few people you encounter surly. Unlike the main bridge, there is little cover near the island's secondary bridge and your plan of observing from a boat is quickly dismissed when you see how rough the river has become. You aren't precisely scared of the water, but you can't swim, and keeping your wound dry and safe seems more valuable to you than risking the river in a rocky boat for questionable intelligence.
Instead, you simply stroll up to them, limping from your leg wound, and covered in an enormously thick wool overcoat, lumpy from the knives you stash under it. It's pouring rain, and you note with some approval the guards have kept their weapons dry as you emerge out of the rain and into their watchpost.
"Hail there men, how goes it?" You ask. A brief grimace of pain makes it across your face as you struggle to find a stance that doesn't aggravate your throbbing leg.
The men sheepishly gather around, and nudge their sergeant to speak, "Ah alls good sir. Shouldn't you be laid up somewhere dry with that leg?" He asks.
[Leadership test => Target 51 + 20 = 70 => Rolled 21 => Good Success!]
You grunt to buy yourself space, and try and figure out your approach. These men are significantly better than squad one, but it's damn hard to put your finger on why you're so quickly certain. It's not their equipment, which is the same trash that squad one was wearing. It's not even their discipline, you found them huddling under the watchpost's leaky roof trying to preserve their warmth, when this is a perfect opportunity for ambush. Eventually, you realize it's the fact that they actually seem to be behaving like a squad. They cluster together, they look to their sergeant not with fear, but with some actual hope that he will solve the issue. Finally, you think, something I can fucking use.
The sergeant breaks the long silence, tentatively asking. "Can we help you sir?"
Mind made up you reply, "Well for one, you can stop standing out here in the damn rain, and help me get warm before my damn balls shrivel up and fall off."
The guards loosen up at your levity and slap your back as you pass by them into the dim interior of the watch post.
"Look. We've got off to a bit of a rough start, but the attempt on my life shook me out of my cobwebs. We need to stick together and start working together, or we are gonna end up dead. There are too many forces wishing for our deaths on this island, and I doubt next time they'll be as careful to make sure no one else gets caught in the crossfire" You let your statement hang in the air while you look each man in the eye to impart your sincerity.
Finally one of the men says, "Well it looks like we need to get to know each other a bit."
"Aye, I reckon we do" you reply. You spend the next few hours in pleasant company, huddled around a small fire while the rain pelts down outside. The guards are so focused on you that you're pretty sure one of the Von Carrsteins could have driven a grave cart past with no notice, but that's alright, sometimes it's more important to focus on bonding than the details of the job.
The Sergeant's name is Godfrey, and he's an odd duck even by the standards of the Altdorf Watch. He was raised by the temple itself as the orphan to a married couple of Black Guards who fell in battle against a Strogoi. His earliest toys were mortician tools, and he sheepishly admits most of his imaginary friends were tied to the various corpses brought in for processing. He's quiet, as most Morrites are, but well respected by his squad, and surprisingly knowledgeable about the beliefs of the imperial cults.
Dagobert and Filbert are brothers, out seeking their fortune after having the bad luck to be born the 6th and 7th sons of a small landholder near Bogengard. They are naive, inexperienced, and blush easily at even tame jokes, but are some of the best trackers on the whole island, able to track suspects by footprint and trail even within the confines of a city. Still young, they look up to Godfrey like a sage and are always eager to help him in exchange for instruction or a kind word.
Both of them seem to have a little bit of a crush on the squad's only female watchman, Franka. A squat and muscular woman with a face only a mother —or country yokels — could love you instantly clock her as the squad's most deadly member. It's not necessarily that she's the most skilled, she's just got that killer edge. She's constantly looking for your weak points, and figuring out how to win if she had to fight. You try to ask questions about where she learned to hold such a cold edge, but she's famously silent and responds to your questions with nods, grunts, and one incredibly expressive shrug.
Lastly, there's Nobert, who can only really be described as having the appearance and demeanor of a drowned rat. He's slight and twitchy, with big eyes, big teeth, and quick dextrous hands. A failed goldsmith apprentice, he was kicked out of his former master's shop for suspicion of being involved in a robbery. A charge he vehemently denies. In fairness to Nobert, while his entire demeanor screams thief, there's no evidence that he was involved, and he was acquitted by the famously draconian courts. Still, it would be helpful to know if he does have some underground connections, or is just an unfortunate personality.
It feels good to be sharing a fire once again, and engaging in the light teasing and joking that's universal to any group of soldiers. It's still forced, and there are plenty of polite chuckles like you yourself give when your boss tells a story, but it's progress goddamn. Still, hovering in the back of your mind is the knowledge that for these men to have survived as long as they have in the watch, they must be bent in some way. Godfrey's your best bet. He knows the island well and seems devoted to the men. To keep them alive there must have been compromises made and favors owed. He's probably dirty in some way, but offer him a better path and he'll gladly take it
_____________________________________________
The next morning you report bright and early to the watchhouse, where Squad Three has been assigned to start deep cleaning the building's accumulated filth. Thumping has been supervising their work for the last few days and is quite irate at the lack of progress so far, "Nows us halflings have a bit of a bad reputation. Lazy, scoundrels, thieves, more concerned with our stomach than we should be, and so on and so on but let me tell you no half-respecting halfling would EVER lets themselves live in a place as filthy as this. And those pure…. Louts… who are assigned to cleaning have been shirking their duties. No stew for them. NO STEW FOR THEM. Not if I have my way!"
With his pieces said, Thumping waddles back into the kitchen cursing under his breath, and you head out to the mess hall where the guards are lounging around, not even pretending to be cleaning. The squad is lounging across the room, acting like the mess haul is some kind of pub. Two of them are playing cards, one of them is asleep under a table, and the last two are gossiping over a mug of ale. What a fucking mess.
You see red. This is the same sergeant that mocked you last week with his "report" and you've about had it with him. How godsdamn hard is it to scrub some floorboards? You stomp over to the table, leg blazing with pain, grip the back of the nearest card player's head, and slam his face into the table. A sickening crack breaks out as the man's nose breaks, and his companions startle upright, hands going to the knives on their belts. You're faster though, and already have your knife under the second card player's neck, holding it there tightly.
The room freezes suddenly tension building, as your new hostage stills their body, trying desperately to make sure you don't slip and cut their throat. You acted fast enough the other two men were still sitting with their ale spilled in front of them, and under the table, the sleeping watchman has just started waking. A sudden hush falls over the room as everyone readjusts to the new situation. The man under the table is glancing around trying to understand what exactly is going on, before sitting up suddenly when he sees the bared knife, slamming his head on the table he was sleeping under. The sergeant, one of the gossipers, visibly considers the situation, before gesturing for the men to put their knives away.
"Alright you fucking morons, I've had enough of this bullshit. I've tried to be nice and win you over with good food and my actions. I've tried to be tough but fair and assign you to a minor punishment to try and get you to realize there's a new set of standards around here. And not a single thing has gotten through your thick skulls. So now you've got a choice. You walk right now and we'll call it even. You can go on being asshole reprobates, but on your own coin for once. Or if you're still here in five minutes you're gonna tell me who you are, what you are good at, and then you're gonna clean up this goddamn pig-sty like the gods-damn empress is going to visit here tomorrow. I'm not asking you to do this out of the kindness of your own heart. I intend to make this island a safe and prosperous part of Altdorf, and that means plenty of opportunities for enterprising fellows such as yourself to make far-far more coin than you can right now. But I can't do that if I can't trust you to do what I you're ordered to."
[Leadership test => Target 51 + 20 = 70 => Rolled 76 => Failure!]
For a moment as you scan the hall, you think you have them. The man under the table is trembling and looks ready to throw himself at your feet for forgiveness. One of the gossipers is visibly considering the offer and looks tempted by your promises of riches. One glance at the sergeant though and you know it's not going to be in the cards. Every line of his face is lined with contempt, and he seems to be disgusted just listening to you.
The sergeant spits on the floor, and says, "Alright then, have it your way. We've been on this island longer than you, and will be here longer than the short time you'll last anyway. Bet somebody will finish the job those idiots failed at soon enough. Well just rejoin when it's your body in the mess hall. Come on boys."
The others cluster around the watch captain, the one under the table slowly extricating themselves, and follow their leader out of the door. Once they are past you release the hostage with a boot to the back, and latch the door in their faces. Thumping has made his way back out of the kitchen and states, "It's as me ma always said. Good riddance to bad Rubbish"
Council Report:
At the end of the week, you regroup with your inner circle to discuss their findings. Thumping has been able to stretch the supplies much further with fewer people to feed and has prepared an impressive spread for lunch. You spend a pleasant hour talking to him and Wilburt, and getting their sense of the past week. Both are unsurprised that you've had to fire one of the squads and that squad one is hanging on by a thread. They just hope any recruits you can scrounge up to replace them are at least a little better.
Finally, Wilbert shifts to talking business, and you can tell immediately by the way words practically explode out of him that he's been successful with his task of trying to find you and Thumping a home base. He pulls out a series of diagrams from one of the many overflowing drawers in his desk and lays them flat on the table for you and Thumping to investigate.
[Wilbert Haggle Test = Target 70 => Rolled 64 => Success]
"Maybe if I want to retire from the watch, I could become some type of housing broker," Wilbert states.
"Turns out I really enjoy house hunting, and I seem to be pretty good at it too. I know damn near everyone on the island after living here my whole life, and I can bargain like a fish-wife over a price. I took a look over the entire island, and think I found three solid options, on the more affordable side, for you and Thumping to take a gander at."
"Starting off, I'm assuming you don't have a lot of coin to splash, but once we sell off those handguns, you should have around 6-7 gold crowns to spend, so that's what I based my budget on. As for key features, I focused on places that match your standing as a Watch officer, are easily defensible, on the island, and had potential room for expansion." He explains.
"Working to your advantage is the general poverty of the island. The land here is about as cheap as it comes within the city walls. In fact you should expect repairs and enhancements to be significantly more expensive than the initial purchase of the property. If you ever have spare coin, a potential side venture might be snapping up land conveniently located on the island. If you successfully reduce crime and, uhhh the unfortunate scourge of necromancers, the land could sharply increase in value for either sale or rental."
You nod your understanding, and gesture for Wilbert to get on with it. He reshuffles the documents and states, "This is the layout of the first option I have for you. It's by far the most standard option, a well-appointed apartment within walking distance of the square, and available for a reasonable two gold crowns a month. There isn't much special about it, but it's also the only rental option I thought was worth your time. The neighbors to either side of it are retired officers from the Reikland army, so you have some built in security. It gets you out of the inn and into some proper lodging, but its also not a permanent home, if you want to revisit this topic when you have some more coin"
Wilbert reshuffles the parchments, and gestures to the second one, a visibly much larger property than the first rental townhouse. He explains, "This is a bit more of a project, but offers very good value for money. As Thumping explained last week, the East Side of the island was a rapidly developing district a few years ago, until a huge fire burnt down much of the neighborhood, and forced out the residents. I honestly thought it was some sort of real estate fraud at first — burn down the buildings, buy it for a pittance, and then redevelop — but no one has actually purchased the properties so I think it may have just been a regular tragedy for once."
Wilbert visibly shakes his head to refocus back on the property, "Anyways, a large number of those properties have been lying fallow since then, and I think I found the perfect one for you. The Raab estate is a huge walled compound on the water, with space for gardens, stables, a large manor house, and several other buildings as required. Most of it is now just dense shrubs after the fire, but I learned the original servant's cottage is still in relatively good condition, and should be livable until a better main house can be reconstructed. The family has fallen onto a bit of hard times and would be happy to let the property go for five monthly installments of five gold crowns. Might be a little tight on the budget, but it's the type of property that would ordinarily be hard for someone of your stature to get on their own."
Wilbert shuffles the papers, and a bit of blush enters his cheeks. "This last one is a bit of a personal connection," he says.
"You may not know this, but I come from a local merchant family that's been here on Totinsel for the last two centuries. We're a large family, and prone to squabbling and disagreements. My gran always said a little friendly sibling rivalry teaches you all the skills you need as a merchant: bribery, lying, plausible liability, personal advertisement, and harsh bargaining. My Father and his brother took it a bit too far. My Dad won over my Ma, and my uncle never really forgave it for him. Split the business down the middle, and never really looked back"
"My uncle was operating out of a small warehouse and storefront on the west side of the island, when he got sick last year and passed suddenly. The warehouse got taken over by vagrants, but we technically still own the rights to the building. I've been authorized by my family to offer permanent residency to his private quarters for free, and a greatly reduced cost to rent the whole building, which includes its own docks, if you are able to clear the vagrants"
"What type of vagrants?" You ask.
"Nasty ones" Wilbert replies, "We tried to show up with some of our dock workers. Tough lads who aren't shy about knocking a few heads together. The vagrants drove them off and killed Helmer. Honestly, even if you don't want to take this as a home now, my family would be happy to pay good money for them to be cleared out, and regain us access to the warehouse"
What do you decide to do:
- [ ] Take the Apartment (2gc per month): A well-apportioned apartment. Nothing special, but it won't hurt your reputation and leaves your options open
- [ ] Take the Abandoned Compound (5gc per month, for five months): Once the home of an aspiring merchant family, it was destroyed in the huge fire that devastated the entire east side of the island. Now it's mostly abandoned but offers a charming servants' cottage and plenty of space for expansion.
- [ ] Take Wilbert's Offer (Free): Wilbert's family owns a warehouse and set of docks currently controlled by street toughs. They are willing to grant you free lodging, or greatly reduced rent for the whole compound if you clear out the property.
- [ ] Wait: None of these appeal to you yet.
Conclusion:
New year, but still some pretty questionable rolls. Going to have a combined voting period of 24 hours.
Writing Househunters: Altdorf was really fun haha.
