The Witches of Vorburg

In the previous session of our Zweihänder game, we had found the two women who had led the orx to the village of Vorburg, and they had admitted to being the wife and daughter of the merchant Max who they blamed for the death of the women twelve years ago. Eva continues her account of what happened.

Johanna asked me to swear an oath to deliver her demands back to Vorburg, and I was about to agree when she started muttering words under her breath and making signs with her hands. I haven’t had much practical experience of magic, but I knew this was an attempt to cast a spell. I screamed out “Magic!” to the others and darted back away from her.

She seemed shocked by this, as was Djarin who looked to the others to see what to do. Calthar stepped in, drawing her Zweihänder and swings a mighty blow at Johanna – but she brings up her dagger and just deflects the blow enough to be able to step aside. She quickly casts another spell, trying to take control of Calthar, but Calthar resists the magic.

Djarin recovers and shoots his crossbow, hitting Johanna directly in the head and pinning her to the wall behind.

Player’s Notes: This was our first real combat in the game, where the opponents actually had a chance to fight back. At the end of the previous session, I had said that Eva would scream out a warning and run back, so the GM gave me a surprise action to do that. Which was good, because when it came to the actual Initiative check Eva was going last.

Johanna went first on 20, but since no-one else had reacted she waited to see what would happen. Djarin also delayed to see what the rest of us did, but fortunately Calthar went next and decided to act.
Each round, we get 3 Action Points to spend, and you need to keep them in reserve if you want to dodge or parry. Eva had spent one in moving away and kept the rest for dodging, and Calthar spent one moving in, then another attacking. She rolled a hit, but even with a big penalty (for using a small dagger against a big sword) Johanna succeeded with a parry, so turned the hit into a miss.

Johanna cast her spell, and Calthar failed her resistance check but spent one of our Fortune points to re-roll and getting a success.

Enraged by the death of her mother, Katherina’s eyes flash and a bolt of lightning strikes from them towards Djarin, who is smiled upon by Fortune and dodges aside. This blatant use of magic shakes all of us, but I try to shout encouragement to the others as Floquert runs up to Katherina to try and pin her down. I think my words were pretty much ignored though.

Calthar spears Katherina with her great sword, then almost cuts her in two. Worried that the kobolds outside may have heard something, I nervously keep an eye on the entrance to the cave, but are informed by the others that the kobolds were all killed earlier.

Searching the cave, we find a couple of books which seem to contain spells. They are given into my possession to look after. One has a cover decorated with arcane symbols, the other is more plain looking. There is also plenty of orx supplies here, which we burn.

Outside, the others loot the dead kobolds, and Calthar asks me to put a bunch of herbs she found in the cave into the cauldron. We don’t know what they are, but a mix of them probably aren’t good if the orx eat from the stew when they return.

We head back towards the village, avoiding a small group of orx at the cottage, and are welcomed. Apparently a small number of orx had attacked but hadn’t got past the palisade.

The first thing we do is have a quick wash, since we all stink of orx. We then meet with Max, Andre and Waldman who we inform of the events. Calthar has brought the heads of Max’s wife and daughter back as evidence, which is a bit bloody but the elf doesn’t seem to be concerned by such things. We inform them of what the women told us, and all decide to not let complete knowledge of the events to spread beyond the group of us.

Though the rest of the orx are still out there, we hoped that with the death of the two witches they would disband and leave. By morning, this seems to be the case since there was no attempt by them to attack the village. We head back up to the Horned Monk to see the orx packing up and leaving.

The following day we perform one final check and confirm that the orx have all left, much to the relief of the village. Max asks us to ensure that the bride price gets back safely to the town of Swanzi and his new father in law.

We earn a respectable 490 brass pennies for our efforts, and seem to be something of a sensation in the area now. However, we still need to pay for food and lodging, and as I write this I’m sitting in a hay loft above the stables of one of the inns in Swanzi, which has been my home for the last week. 490 seemed like a lot, but it actually doesn’t go far. I’ve spent some time helping out at the local church of the God Emperor, writing up my notes on what I’ve discovered and trying to come to terms with my experiences.

Player’s Notes: We received our final experience rewards, and were able to purchase some more of our professional abilities. Each profession has 20 abilities associated with it, and once they’ve all been purchased you can move on to a second profession.

During character generation I’d actually purchased all the skills I really needed, so this time spent the experience buying up the stat bonuses. These give secondary benefits, such as extra initiative (for a Perception Bonus). Some abilities are based off the stat bonus (such as number of targets affected by a Leadership test), and it starts as the ‘tens’ of your stat value (so 2-5, for stats of 25% – 55%), with modifiers for race.

I’ve just received an invitation from someone in the town to meet them in one of the posher taverns. Apparently they have heard of our recent exploits and wish to hire all of us for some job.