Winning vote:
[*] Plan Turn This Castle Upside Down And Shake It
-[*] Examine closely the corpse of the slain infiltrator, trying to determine the cause of their abilities.
--[*] Van Hal assists
--[*] Overwork
-[*] Examine and interrogate the imprisoned infiltrator.
-[*] Walk back their movements, see whether they left the castle and if so, what they were doing.
-[*] Closely interrogate every remaining servant.
-[*] Go out to the nearby villages and confirm the details of every single servant claiming to be from there.
-[*] If Kasmir is to be removed, he'll need replacing. Suggest somewhere that Van Hal could look to find someone.
--[*] The Morrites are a key part of the defense against Sylvania and care for Stirland. They can likely suggest a priest (presumably of Sigmar) who all Stirland's cults can work with well, and the other cults may have useful recommendations too. A probably-local priest well liked by the other religions here might not please the Grand Theogonist but at least they'll get things done.
-[*] Van Hal is having a crisis of faith, but as someone whose religion demands that she not talk about her religion, you don't think you can help. See if you can convince Wilhelmina to talk him through this. (no action)
-[*] Mention to Van Hal that you heard from your master in Altdorf that Schultz was the concession that brought Talabecland's vote. You have no reason to suspect his commitment to his role in Stirland, but it appears that Talabecland interests wanted him here. (no action)
-[*] Van Hal can get you veterans of the Army of Stirland - mostly uneducated and suspicious of magic, but unquestionably loyal to Stirland. (no action required, -10g discretionary/turn each)
--[*] Assign one to each of Drebkau and Langwald with orders to move in, build contacts, and send us reports regularly on recent events with an emphasis on anything unusual or suspicious. Veterans who have already retired into those locations or intend to do so anyway would be ideal.
--[*] Assign one to keep an eye on opinions in the military. Put an emphasis on the new Marshal for now, from his staff if they can manage it.
--[*] Assign one to keep in close contact with the Wurtbad Watch and personally get to know the Watchmen.
--[*] Hire a scribe to ensure that they are literate and numerate enough to send regular legible reports. (-15g discretionary)
-[*] Van Hal recommended asking Anton about sons and daughters of nobles to use as assistants. They're likely to be well-educated and politically savvy, but their loyalties would be to their family and they may be undisciplined. Line up some interviews and see how it goes.
--[*] Ranald's Blessing
-[*] Report on Gustav based upon the previous investigation, anything learned from initially meeting him and asking some general questions about his background and plans, and whatever the new hires turn up before the deadline. (no action)
--[*] Pass anything new to Van Hal, as well. (no action)
-[*] Home Comforts: Your Palace-Shrine is bursting with potential. And also mud.
--[*] Diggy Diggy Hole, Outsourced: Pay someone to do the digging, then Mindhole them on their way out. (no action required, -personal gold)
-[*] Wardrobe Expansion: Start wearing a tunic and breeches under your wizard's robes. (no action required, -personal gold)
--[*] Enchantment: So far you've failed to find suitable equipment (damn Wizard Chic) but you could always try again with local goods. (-discretionary gold, action required to set up and learn to use equipment, action expenditure can be postponed)
---[*] Postpone action. Just buy the stuff first.
-[*] That damn Asp has still been quiet, but now you've got a lead. Peruse the book Light And It's Properties, by Leonardo da Miragliano.
---
The next few months are an exhausting flurry of action, trying to get to the bottom of the infiltration of Eagle Castle. The biggest problem is
where to start. It's
all urgent. It's
all time sensitive. So you try your damnedest to do everything at once.
But of all these urgent and time sensitive things, you finally settle in the interrogation of the imprisoned infiltrator as the most of all. The rapidly cooling corpse of the man or thing that tried to attack you demonstrates damn well that she might be more than she seems. So you weigh her down with chains and interview her from the other side of a screen of Greatswords.
It's slow going at first. The woman, according to the story you got when you first interviewed her, is a simple peasant named Mihaela from Tarshof, who venerates Morr for protecting Stirland and sends money home to her family every month. That story crumbles almost immediately upon your re-asking your questions, though.
"Drakenhof," she admits, her eyes downcast, the Sylvanian accent suddenly thick in her voice. "I'm from Drakenhof."
"And your God?" you ask gently.
"If any God watched over us, I would not be here," she responds bitterly. "Why pay tribute to Gods that have abandoned Sylvania?"
You have no response to that. "Why were you trying to break into the interview room?"
"Would you believe robbery?" she asks, bitter humour thick in her voice. "I was trying to free that fool Andrei."
"Why?"
"We were to work together. All of us, to watch over 'the usurpers' and send information back to Drakenhof. In exchange, our families would be excused taxes." She grimaces. "
All taxes."
"Von Carstein," you prompt.
She seems surprised, then resigned. "Yes. The Elector Countess, she calls herself."
She paints you a story of a young woman that has ruled the town with an army of skeletal warriors for as long as anyone can remember, claiming to be the true heir of Sylvania and demanding the obedience of all who lived in the shadow of Drakenhof. Taxes were high, and those that couldn't pay were forced to surrender family members to the castle, who were never seen again. And a few of the brighter children in Drakenhof were raised to speak in a Stirlandian accent, to be sent into Stirland to infiltrate Eagle Castle and watch over the Stirlandians. And if given the command from their handler, to act.
She gives you three names, all of which were servants unaccounted for in the sweep of the castle. She gives you one more name, and an address in the city, which the Greatswords raid and find a hastily abandoned apartment, and behind one boarded-up door they find one of the servants, withered with dark magic and easily cut down when he attempted to attack them. Questioning the neighbours reveal that the inhabitant has been there as long as anyone can remember, barely ever leaving and then only for groceries, though frequently visited by people whose descriptions you recognize as the five known infiltrators. When prompted, the Watch reveal that three people that match the descriptions you give them left Wurtbad together and on foot the night of the castle being locked down.
Finally, she names her price for her help. "In exchange for my cooperation, I want to be executed in the next two days."
"Why?"
"I'm dead anyway. We were to visit our handler in town at least twice a week, or the 'blessing' inside of us would be unleashed whether we wanted it to be or not. I don't want to be walled up to bang on the walls for the rest of eternity like those that came before me. And if I'm reported as killed, then it'll be thought I never spoke, and maybe my family won't be punished for my failure."
With it pointed out to you, you can see the
Dhar pulsing sullenly in her abdomen, a vicious spell waiting to be unleashed, slowly eroding its bindings. You have her shackled to a table so you can closely examine it, and from what little you know of the tainted magic she's telling the truth - even if it isn't unleashed deliberately, the spell will break free on its own within a day or two, filling her with unholy energy for a brief period before the life is burned from her. She cooperates fully, already resigned to her own death, and after a day of close investigation you think you'd be able to achieve the same results with
Ulgu.
You consider letting the magic inside her work itself free so you can see how it works, but in the end you decide to grant her wish. You have her hanged in Wurtbad's town square for treason. She thanks you for it, and walks to the gallows with grim determination. The town crier specifically cites her lack of cooperation as a reason for her death, and a sudden drop later, she is gone. You see to it that her body is tended to by the local Morrites before being buried in hallowed ground and allowed the rest that her masters would deny her.
[INTERROGATION: Roll, Intrigue, 96+12=108. Full cooperation.]
[MAGICAL EXAMINATION: Req 60, Learning, 71+13=84. May learn technique to bind delayed spells into living creatures.]
---
It's a good thing you managed to secure the cooperation of the prisoner, because the dead infiltrator turns out to be a lot more protective of his secrets.
The careful examination of every aspect of the dead infiltrator takes place at night, in the scant few hours that both you and Van Hal are able to wrestle from your other responsibilities. Lit by candles and shrouded in silence, it could almost be romantic if it weren't for the dissected corpse the two of you were occupied with.
The problem is simple: the spell that empowered the man was
hideously inefficient. After it ran its course, huge amounts of
Dhar was left contained within the man, and had he still lived it would have burned him away from the inside out, consuming every ounce of meat and fat within him and transforming him into a pitiful creature animated only by the necromantic energies coursing through him, eternally hungry but denied the rest of death. Now you know where the creatures boarded up through the castle came from, and you wonder at the circumstances that led to the spell within them being unleashed.
But you can only piece this together because you've seen what the spell looks like before it was triggered. If all you had to work with was the body, you wouldn't have been able to piece it together, any more than you could have figured out what shape an ice sculpture had been before it melted by examining the puddle it left. You drive yourself to try anyway, and in the end all you manage by pushing yourself so hard is almost nodding off in the chest cavity of the man before Van Hal stops you from slumping forward.
Van Hal, however, is in his element, filling page after page of notes with something like excitement. At one point, he explains to you that this is an entirely new manifestation of the Necromancer's art. Though it seems to be based on something known to the Empire's scholars as Hellish Vigour, it had been modified to affect a living person. And after the effect had run its course, it resulted in an entirely new type of undead - something that resembled a zombie, but without any decomposition as the dark energy burned off flesh before rot could set in.
When finished, he enlists your help in turning his notes into a formal paper on the phenomenon, and it is sent off to Altdorf to be contained within the Vaults of the Temple of Sigmar, where it can be added to the collective knowledge of the Witch Hunters.
[AUTOPSY, Req 60, Learning, 35+13=48. Nothing new learned.]
[OVERWORK FAILURE, Roll, 96. Severe (and gross) consequences avoided.]
[VAN HAL'S AUTOPSY, Req 60, Learning, 49+16=65. He's written a paper on it.]
---
During the time you spent with Van Hal, you brought up the Kasmir issue, and suggested that he reach out to the Morrites and see if they can recommend a candidate they can work with. Van Hal dismisses it out of hand, however - at this point he's convinced that there's no good way to get a clean break from the Grand Theogonist's meddling, and if anything is considering banishing Sigmarites from the position altogether and instating a Morrite instead, because at least they'd be useful against the Sylvanian threat. You also drop in a mention that Schultz seems to be in the pocket of the Talabeclanders, and all the response you get is him muttering something about gratitude, his mood darkening further.
Your trying to get Wilhelmina to intervene goes poorly, too. "You're barking up the wrong tree if you're looking to
me to put him back on the straight and narrow," she says to you. "I'm all for him cutting ties with the Sigmarite bastards. I've always thought they've always done more harm than good, and Abelhelm's been the only exception."
[CANDIDATE SUGGESTION: Req 40, Diplomacy, 6+8=14. No dice.]
---
Using the information given to you by the now-executed collaborator, the rest of the investigation goes smoothly. You finish your interviews of the castle staff, follow up on the story of every single servant with your contacts in the nearby villages, and confirm that each of them is who they say they are and are from where they claim to be from. After months of interviews and examinations, you are positive that every single person remaining is who they claim to be, and find nothing more sinister than a few people who overstated their qualifications when they were hired and one serving girl being bribed by Anton to bring him midnight snacks. And by talking with everyone the infiltrators worked with and walking back their day-to-day routines, you can confirm what the now-dead interviewee told you: they were not saboteurs, but sleeper agents. Every part of their duties was performed perfectly, and no little surprises were left behind.
Though you don't find anything, your investigation pays dividends by setting up a procedure to vet new hires, which is useful since there's five freshly-vacated positions in the castle to fill. The member of the castle staff responsible for new hires sends you a report, you forward it to the villages, the villages confirm the story, and then you stop in for an interview to confirm that everything is as it should be and to run a careful eye over the candidate with your Mage Sight.
[AUTOMATIC VETTING OF CASTLE STAFF ESTABLISHED.]
[EAGLE CASTLE IS NOW SECURE. EAGLE CASTLE WILL CONTINUE TO BE SECURE.]
---
With the Castle finally confirmed secure, you can finally get to work on matters outside those four walls. First up is the military retirees, all around their late forties and scarred from thirty years of service. They look askance at a wizard ordering them around, but when they learn that all you want is gossip and for them to learn to read, they settle down. You're able to tap them for information on the new Marshal, Gustav von Jungfreud, and what you hear is heartening. The man's first priority has been to bring the Roadwardens of Stirland under his authority, centralizing their command structure and making sure there's enough men to cover all the roads of Stirland, including and especially the road running along the newly-reinforced border. He's also begun recruiting from the minor nobility and the wealthier burghers to found a Pistolier cohort, with ambitions to expand it to a full regiment. Though the men of the Army of Stirland grumble good-naturedly about the obsession of their new leader with cavalry, they're glad to have a military man as their leader after the walking fiasco that was the Professor. You prepare a written report with this information and what you previously learned about the man, and have it ready for the courier when they arrive, sending it off to whoever your mysterious string-pullers are. If that doesn't satisfy them, they can get stuffed.
With that taken care of, your veteran recruits are occupied for the duration with learning to read and write, with lessons taking place in the back room of a tavern near the castle. Soon they'll be dispatched to their assigned locations to start enjoying their retirement and start funnelling gossip, news and current events to you.
---
When Anton reappeared to get his next assignment before heading off again, you managed to grab him for a moment and asked him if there were children of nobility who'd be willing to work for a spymaster. He seemed delighted to be able to help you and promised to send off some letters, before shooting off to deal with whatever political hot potato is next on his agenda.
You end up with two interviews, and the first goes terribly when the young man starts responding to your questions with ones of his own and it quickly becomes apparent that somewhere along the line he got the impression that this was a
date. You consider going along with it for half a second, then eye the young man's foppish clothes, braying laugh and overabundance of teeth and send him on his way, promising to yourself that you will get vengeance on Anton if it was deliberate on his part.
The second, however, goes
much better. The young lady in question is the third child of the Grand Mayor of Flensburg, and has a keen mind and practices archery as a hobby. She's been shut out of the family business of getting obscenely rich by trade because of her complete lack of ability when it comes to making money or friends, so she's been at a loss for something to keep her occupied, until her good friend Anton suggested you. You spend an evening getting to know her over dinner and drinks, and in the end think she might be just what you're looking for to help with your burgeoning information network. Her price would be five crowns a month, supplementing the pocket money she gets from her family.
Julia Antoinette Massif
Diplomacy: 6
Martial: 16
Stewardship: 7
Intrigue: 14
Faith: 10
Learning: 16
[LOOKING FOR CANDIDATES: 33+10=43, two candidates.]
[FIRST CANDIDATE: 13. Awk-ward.]
[SECOND CANDIDATE: 71+20. A strong possibility.]
---
Also occupying your tragically limited time is a shopping trip. After the...
robe incident, you're determined to never be caught out like that again, so you buy up a wardrobe's worth of suitably grey breeches and tunics to wear underneath your robes. You also go hunting for enchanting gear, only to find that Wizard Chic has spread to Stirland, and once more the local nobility has snapped up everything even slightly suitable. You want to scream.
You also begin the now-familiar process of lining up a candidate willing to become a shut-in for six months while they dig out a buried room. This time, however, it ends in disaster. Three months into the digging, you're reading in your room when the sound of a shovel on soil is interrupted by a rumble and then a strangled scream as earth falls. You're unable to dig the man out in time, and end up having the money you would have paid him sent to his widow, and smuggle his body out in the dark of night to hand over to the local Morrites. And you don't even have a newly-excavated room to show for it.
[ENCHANTMENT? Roll, Stewardship, 4+10=14. Ranald laughs.]
[HIDDEN TREASURE?: Req 80, 9. Disaster strikes.]
[HOW BAD IS IT: Roll, 90. One-off, no ongoing effects.]
---
Finally, you're occupied with the book 'Light And Its Properties'. It's a densely-packed exploration of the properties of various forms of light, and you quickly find the relevant part: where it describes the properties of mirrors. Though
physically they act by simply reflecting light, they're also
metaphysically gateways to other dimensions, not because of any properties they intrinsically have but because of millennia of belief along those lines making it true - or so the author theorizes. He also describes a device he claims can 'store' light, and he theorizes on ways to slowly 'release' that light over time to save money on candles, though he never quite managed the release mechanism. The structure itself is a strange three-dimensional maze of baffled mirrors inside a cube, the blueprints of which take you weeks to understand.
Though the concept of storing light is fascinating, you're most interested in what would happen if the bizarrely absent snake tried to manifest inside it...
[STUDYING: 87+13=100. Full grasp of the concept.]
---
The mood in the Meeting Room is tense. Kasmir is quietly brooding in his chair and Schultz is clearly upset over something. Even Anton has picked up on the mood, his trademark cheerfulness muted, and Wilhelmina is occupying herself with a dense ledger of figures. Only the newest face at the table, Gustav, seems immune to the atmosphere, and gives you a cheerful grin in greeting as you enter.
Van Hal has yet to arrive, and you're glad you've only good news to give him.
---
EAGLE CASTLE STAFF NOW IMPENETRABLE.
RESEARCH NOW AVAILABLE: Bound Spells.
VETERAN INFORMANTS NOW LITERATE.
VETERAN INFORMANT ASSIGNED: Drebkau.
VETERAN INFORMANT ASSIGNED: Langwald.
VETERAN INFORMANT ASSIGNED: Army of Stirland.
VETERAN INFORMANT ASSIGNED: Wurtbad Watch.
MIRRORCATCH BOX: Construction will be possible next turn.
Discretionary Income: +150g
Embezzlement: -35g
Veteran informants -40g
Scribe to teach informants -15g
---
Net: +60
Personal Income: +50g
Embezzlement: +35g
Tithe: -5g
Student Loans: -35g
Excavations: -20g
New clothes: -10g
---
Net: +15g
---
Decisions:
[] Do you hire Julia Antoinette Massif? If so, describe her duties, as well as where she'll be living and working.
[] You, like all the Councillors, now have a squad of Greatswords assigned to you as bodyguards. Do you keep them somewhere nearby while you're at home, or do you leave them in the Castle?
[] Write in your report
[] Write in a one-on-one report (optional)
Possible orders for the next turn:
Investigation:
[] There's definitely evil afoot in Drakenhof. Perhaps there's a way to survive investigating this.
[] The disappearance of your predecessor is very concerning, especially since he's actively trying to sabotage the hunt for him. He must be found, and you've got a lead: Julbach.
Infrastructure:
[] The Stirlandian League is a gold mine of information, and it must be yours.
[] If you had proper facilities, you could do better work. Would Van Hal fund renovations to a base he's never seen?
[] You've got a whole bunch of friends now, but you could always use more!
[] You've got the town of Biderhof eating out of your hand. If you could think of a reason to justify it, maybe all the taxes from it's lumber sales could flow into your pocket instead.
[] The Wurtbad Thieves Guild is basically a church group right now, instead of an actual organization. If you started throwing your weight around, that could change. Imagine the power you would wield if the criminal underworld reported to
you. However, imagine how much more damage they'd do to Stirland if they were united... and you're not sure that Van Hal would be easy to convince.
Action:
[] The Stirlandian League is a cancer eating at Stirland's economy, and it must be destroyed.
[] The spell used by the informants is like nothing you've heard of before. You want to investigate it, and see if you can detect or replicate it.
[] This religion business has gone far enough. It's not really your place, but maybe you should step in and deal with it yourself... somehow.
[] Other (write in)
---
- Your crit on the Interview did render most of the other investigations unnecessary, but at this point you can be absolutely sure that Eagle Castle is and will continue to be free of infiltrators, and free of surprises left behind by the infiltrators you do have.
- Van Hal's crisis of faith has deepened.
-
I'm slightly brain-fried today, and as such there's probably something I've missed and more than usual a write-in order might be a good idea, as I couldn't really think of new approaches for you. Also, apologies for any dip in quality this may have created.
- In case I didn't make it clear in the text: the gribbly you killed way back in the first turn was a previous infiltrator who triggered the spell inside them and then was shut away by their collaborators before the spell turned on them.
