Ashes of Middenheim (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying 2e) - A Review

 Ashes of Middenheim was the first major adventure book publish specifically for WFRP 2e.  It is set in the city of Middenheim, the location which had been covered most in WFRP 1e so there was lots of earlier source material to build on.  It also builds on the sample adventure in the WFRP 2e core rulebook, Through the Drakwald.  

The book consists of a background section which has details of the city and its sewer and tunnel systems - and a new career, the Sewer Jack.  It also contains some adventure seeds for a bit of inspiration for side-quests and additional adventures.  The second half is given over to the adventure proper.

The story is quite a roller-coaster ride although some of the dynamics can seem a bit 'same-y'.  Macguffins are found and handed over, which then causes the characters to be sent on the next investigation, possibly to find more macguffins, which are then handed over etc.  Invariably chaos-inspired ne'er do wells of various sorts are involved and try to stop the characters.  The tone and atmosphere are generally fine although the whole setting is now in a slightly post-apocalyptic phase (in the aftermath of the Chaos invasion).  Personally, I don't like this variation of the setting but to be honest it doesn't impact too much on this particular adventure, except that several of the most important political figures are absent with the army.  As long as the GM can think of any reason to have these figures outside the city - or just inaccessible - then it can run fine in whatever setting. The general WFRP elements are all there though, so it does deliver on the minimum promise: an exciting adventure in a Warhammer-themed story.  It is another story which exploits the Ulrican-Sigmarite cult divisions which WFRP writers have found so inspiring over the years.

Although the over-arching plot is fine for a Warhammer game and lots of the individual incidents are exciting enough, it a highly railroaded adventure: there are many bits where the characters will definitely end up in a certain place or doing a certain thing and the only question is how much fighting the characters do on the way, or how inventive they have to be to unlock the next plot coupon.  There are lots of problems with all of this, so let's go through them:

It takes away player agency (although a good GM may be able to disguise this somewhat) since que sera, sera at nearly all points. 

It privileges combat skills over other types of skills, since there is no way of avoiding many of the combats and "dying" is the easiest way to fail.  The non-combat orientated characters are then mainly valued for how they can buff up other characters in combat OR if they can reduce the number of combats.  But there is little sense that a non-combat orientated character can achieve as much.

It can feel like one is collecting plot coupons, like a video game.

There is relatively little replay value in the adventure.

I think this highly railroaded approach might be very good for novice players and GMs since the adventure itself is programmed to keep you on track but for more experienced players, they may sense the limitations.

As an aside, one thing I have noticed in playing through this game is that the combat dynamics have changed a lot as a result of armour being much more effective than in 1e, characters having more wounds (i.e. hit points) than in 1e and going to a d10 based system (which reduces somewhat the chances of exploding damage).  Against armoured enemies, missile-focused characters are a lot less useful than they were in 1e because there was a much higher chance of causing some catastrophic damage. Some of the comments in the book strike me that some of the authors might not appreciate this, and they over-rate the importance of marginal differences in Weapon Skill versus the importance of armour. Conversely, multi-attack armoured characters are even more valuable than in 1e.

One distinctive element of the adventure is the opportunity for a set piece in which the players take on different characters briefly to conduct a trial.  The adventure does not insist on it being done this way but I imagine a few groups might quite enjoy that.

Successfully concluding the adventure should get a character through most of the advances in one career, possibly up to starting a second career (although obviously this can be varied to taste).  The enemies in the book are reasonably well-calibrated to be challenging but not more than that for a group of 4-6 first-career characters.

One area in which this adventure is much less good than the WFRP 1e adventure set in Middenheim, Power Behind the Throne, is that the characters are somewhat less memorable.  The baddie isn't bad but the supporting cast just didn't engage me the way that some of the splendid PBtT characters did.  Partly this is a function of the much higher attrition rate, partly just that they are genuinely less inspired.  There are some characters on the players' side (mostly) which are heavily inspired by a certain TV show.  They are fine, but somehow they don't catch alight on the page the way they might have done.  Perhaps the writers were subconsciously assuming that everyone would know what these characters personalities were so they didn't have to be emphasized, which was a bit of a mistake in retrospect.

In summary, it is a solid 6 out of 10: there isn't anything horrendously wrong with it, there is plenty of atmosphere and plot twisting - but it never really fires me up in the way it might have done and the railroading is a bit too obvious, on the assumption it has to be there at all.

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying Second Edition - A Review

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying was (and is) a well-loved game, so it isn't surprising that there was a second edition, although it took a very long time to see print: WFRP 1e was re-issued in its entirety first and only later was there a proper 'new' version (my review of the First Edition is here).  It was published by Fantasy Flight games and was quite well supported for a time with a large number of adventures and sourcebooks for a while.

WFRP 1e was liked but it was a slightly messy game.  Individually its mechanics were reasonably intuitive if sometimes a little wonky.  It also wasn't a bit balanced: in particular the character generation spat out a character that might be quite good or might be unbelievably awful.  The magic system sort of worked but it seemed quite a straight port from a battle game and it really showed: there wasn't really a way to talk about magic in the game without talking about mechanics i.e. characters in the game would kind of have to ask "is there a level 3 cleric in the house?" or something not far off that.  Some individual skills and so on flat out didn't work or were pretty useless.

Anyway, WFRP 2 came in and cleaned up most of that whilst retaining most of the distinctive elements of the system.  Most things were based of a d100 roll against a score out of 100 to succeed, with a couple of sub-systems (damage, casting spells) using something slightly different.  This always brings problems - essentially the failure rate will nearly always be unrealistically high - although there are ways around this.  The two most straightforward are, firstly: make sure the adventures are structured so that the opposition has to make lots of rolls too (to give them plenty of chances to fluff things); and secondly, to allow many automatic successes for simply having the skill.  This latter is the most important, I think.  If a character with Trade(Cook) skill has to roll against a characteristic to produce a tasty meal, then a not-tasty meal will be produced probably half to two-thirds of the time, but if the skill itself is sufficient in most circumstances, then the character will produce a tasty meal 100% of the time (and might only have to roll if trying to create something extra-special, or with minimal ingredients, or similar).

Character generation remained very similar in structure although the calibration was different.  Pick a fantasy race, roll up some characteristics, roll for or choose a career, get a bunch of skills based on that career and race.  Most careers have a few this or that skills and talents allowing a degree of customization.  I haven't counted them all out but it felt as if there are slightly fewer basic careers in WFRP 2e, since some of the 1e careers got put into 'container careers' like "Peasant" and "Burgher" and "Rogue" which swept up some conceptually quite similar 1e careers and jumbled them together: this allows each character to have more, and more choice of, skills. On the other hand, some players did consider this a loss of flavour and they did have a point.  And in any case, not all areas where treated in this way: there were more individual flavours of soldiers and professional fighters, even though those are perhaps more similar than some of the careers which got lumped into container careers.  Be all that as it may, the careers were a lot more balanced mechanically, having much more equal advance schemes and numbers of skills and talents.  Everything was a 'skill' in 1e, but 2e broke this out into skills (which were tied to a characteristic and could be developed independently) and talents (which could not) i.e. a skill could be taken up to three times, with the skill being given a +10% bonus for the second time and +20% bonus for the third time.  This was basically much better than the previous system, where skills were straightforward yes/no things and only the characteristic really mattered (although, as is on brand for 1e, there were a couple of exceptions to this).  Conceptually too, the WFRP 1e skills are all over the place and the 2e skills are much more coherent.  This was mainly achieved by putting many skills into similar categories and then making these skills into sub-skills.  This was good in itself and also allows easier customization, since these container skills (like "Common Knowledge", "Trade" and "Performer") explicitly recognize that you can just add them in if you need them.  Want 'Cartwright' to be a specific Trade skill? Go for it.  Fighting with weapons still isn't a skill, amusingly enough: it is basically a characteristic, and special weapons are 'Talents' (so the bonuses don't stack).  I think this was a missed opportunity, base WS and BS should have been a derived score from Strength and Agility or somesuch, and then you could take actual skills in weapons.  Maybe that is just me.

The different player character races remained the same as in 1e, although the strengths and weaknesses were quite different.  In 1e, Elves were pretty much 'better', the only downside being that the lower number of Fate Points (i.e. 'lives') put a higher premium on not fluffing important rolls early in the game.  Halflings were pretty weak.  Dwarves weren't great but given that they had an extra point of Toughness - which given some experience, could lead to the almost invincible 'Naked Dwarf' (a Dwarf so tough that even without armour they were normally immune to damage from peer opponents) and a high average Weapon Skill, they were a reasonable choice for Warrior characters.  Since 2e reduced a number of Elvish characteristics, including Weapon Skill, then Dwarves are clearly the best choice for warrior characters in 2e.  Overall, Elves were really downgraded from 1e, now being no longer better than Humans in Intelligence, Willpower or Fellowship.  I can see why all this was done from a game balance point of view but I am not sure about several of the individual characteristics myself.

As an aside, characters are universally weaker than in 1e.  This is from a maths quirk, which I am not sure if it was intentional or not.  Characteristics like Strength and Toughness are now percentage based like Intelligence and Agility and so on, but to make them usable in the combat mechanics, they have a 'derived' score, which is the first digit in their percentile score.  So a character with a Strength of 37 has a derived Strength bonus of 3 - all fairly clear.  However, for a human, this is generated by rolling 2d10+20 (as are all the other percentage characteristics) , thus giving a range of 22 to 40 with an average score of 31.  In the 1e by contrast, there was only the Strength bonus characteristic which was generated by rolling D3+1.  So in 1e, a full third of human characters had a starting Strength bonus of 4, and now that is down to 1-in-a-100.  This is modified a little by the possession of certain skills/talents and 'Shallya's mercy' - in 2e, you are allowed to substitute one roll for an average score - but this is fiddling in the margins.  Weirdly Strength and Toughness were given this treatment but Movement was made really vanilla: every Human and Halfling begins the game with same Movement score.  I don't know why they didn't apply the same logic to this characteristic.

The one area where some strange inconsistencies appeared is in the cost of the trappings given to each character.  Mostly these are fine, but 2e introduced some quite high costs for certain types of weapons and armour as a limiting factor for access...but then handed them out to some of the starting careers.  The Roadwarden gets an absolutely eye-watering amount of equipment for free, for example.  I think that some of the world-building here is wonky: it posits some quite advanced gunpowder weaponry simultaneously with gunpowder weapons being very rare and very expensive.  This is hard to justify, but also hard to make work in game terms.  Why bother buying them (or if you are a mercenary captain or someuch, several), when you can buy a house complete with private bar and harem for less?  Don't get me wrong, the equipment chapter is good, introduces some useful new concepts (e.g. variable craftsmanship products, and what that means in terms of price and effect), but some of the calibration seems wonky.

The combat system is quite similar to the 1e version, although it has been made more complicated by introducing menus of specific actions.  I can see why the designer did this although it wasn't particularly to my taste: I am guessing that lots of WFRP games emphasized precise resolution of tactical combat in a way that my games didn't.  Basically, in tactical combat there are a bunch of actions which are either free, cost half-an-action (and can thus be combined with other stuff) or cost a full action.  At this point, we must go on a slight detour and talk about the 'Attacks' characteristic.  1e had (and 2e retained) the characteristic of 'Attacks' which was basically how many times a character could attack in one round.  I think this was to allow Aragorn or Jackie Chan-esque moves by which our heroes could dispatch multiple enemies very quickly.  Because 1e is weird and quirky, lots of creatures got lots of attacks by means of having different natural weapons (doing this off the top of my head, but some creatures who aren't notably better designed than humanoids for combat might get 2 attacks, one for biting and one for kicking with hooves).  This always led to logical problems: if my character can attack twice in a turn, why can't my character do two lots of other stuff which would normally 'cost' an attack?  The 2e 'actions' seem to be a long way round of solving this, which it kind of does, at some cost in complexity.  For me on the other hand, it solves a non-problem: I had always seen Attacks as a highly specialized combat multiplier with nothing it needed to explain beyond that, and otherwise, the limit on a character's activity is what could reasonably be achieved in 5, 10 or 60 seconds, or whatever.  Anyway, diversion over - it is basically the same system, with a more complicated and yet cleaner action system overlaid, with various bits tweaked.  Unarmed combat and parrying seem to have been sorted out from the (un-errata'd) mess in 1e.  Ulric's Fury (exploding dice for damage) is still in there, but since the system is d10 based, it comes up less often.  All-in-all though, it is still the same system: reasonably random often quite lethal, faster than some other games.

The magic system was the most revised of all the sub-systems.  The 1e system worked, more-or-less, but was very quirky, particularly for magical novices and experienced wizards.  Apprentices were pretty useless at magic, both by not having many spells and the chances of fluffing them being quite high.  Career advancement mostly eliminated the second issue but not necessarily the first - spells could cost a lot of experience points to obtain.  In any case, the 2e uses a 'Spell List' system which gives characters access to more spells earlier on, but not realistically the ability to cast them.  This does work better although at the cost of a degree of individuality compared to 1e wizards who were learning each spell individually: this was in line with the 'schools of magic' which had been introduced into the background material.  I actually prefer the 1e approach personally, but 2e is definitely mechanically cleaner.  Ingredients were made as optional boosters rather than absolute requirements too: this avoided the weirdness of 1e in which some spells had trivially easy to obtain material requirements, and some had insanely difficult ones, and these were absolute requirements.

The above gives a decent indication of the direction of travel of the whole volume: the mechanics are cleaned up, tied in more closely to developments in the Warhammer battle game and often made more directly linked to the background material; and made the game more balanced.  This was on the whole a very positive development but with one downside: where the battle game changes were made to give better battle games, this did not necessarily lead to a better roleplaying world.  For myself, the magic system is an example of this.  But in all the other areas: religion and cults, psychology, diseases, languages, game economy etc. then 2e is definitely better, minus the odd quirk.  As an example, I liked the Gods of Law, the slightly less caricatured cults, Dwarf and Halfling wizards and so on.  As for the general DM advice and background stuff, it is all better done and better presented but there is perhaps a tad less of it.  This is most obvious in the Bestiary, which has far, far fewer creatures in, although this is partly redeemed by having a more useful set of NPCs.  All this stuff is fleshed out much more in the extra published material for 2e but 1e had, I don't know, the feel of an RPG grimoire with just 'more' packed in, even if lots of it was in sketch format.

One area where 1e is much better is the sample adventure. I prefer The Oldenhaller Contract in almost every way to Through the Drakwald.  The latter seems much more geared to introducing the setting, whereas the former is a basic, but basically fine, dungeon-crawl adventure.  It is perhaps a bit of a railroad, but the less so than Through the Drakwald. As long as the characters survive the first fight, it is more or less plain sailing after that and it basically doesn't matter what they do in the sub plot.  The sub plot is 'interesting' as a story and some groups will be able to get some good roleplaying out of it...but more action-orientated groups might not make much of it.  I also don't like it that the major magic-using NPC isn't really using the magic rules from the rulebook, which is bad twice over in a starting adventure.  Ultimately, whenever I have played it with new players, they absolutely love it if they succeed in escaping the sewers in the Oldenhaller Contract but it is hard to even imagine the same at the end of Through the Drakwald.  In all honestly, it needs a few more encounters and a few more rewards, it is just too light as it is.

In summary, if you liked Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1e, you should like this and nod in agreement with most, if not all, of the changes.  It is relatively easy to take elements you prefer from 1e into 2e in any case.  I have played through Through the Drakwald and the Ashes of Middenheim adventures recently, so please look out for the playthroughs being posted up (will contain spoilers!).

Through the Drakwald - A Playthrough WFRP 2e

The starting adventure contained within the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2e is entitled "Through the Drakwald".  It is very simple in essence: in the aftermath of a large war, a group of player characters earns the trust of a group of villagers when the village is attacked.  News comes of the approach of a larger enemy warband which cannot conceivably be fought off, so the village is evacuated and the villagers set off with their belongings to reach a nearby city, where they can remain in safety until the danger is passed.  This post is a record of the game; comments about it will appear in an upcoming review of WFRP 2e rulebook.

There are six player characters:

Kazalin Hakgrothson (m), Dwarf Shieldbreaker

Mormacar Shadowstar (m), Elven Envoy

Gaffella Willowand (f), Halfling Hunter

Johann Hofstetter (m), Human Mercenary

Carlotta Reifsnider (f), Human Hedge Witch

Magreta Reiss (f), Human Camp Follower

Character: Kazalin Hakgrothson, Dwarf Shieldbreaker

Character Profile:

MAIN	WS	BS	S	T	AG	INT	WP	FEL
STARTING	47	28	31	41	28	31	36	23
ADVANCE	+10		+5	+5	+10		+5
CURRENT
SECONDARY	A	W	SB	TB	M	MAG	IP	FP
STARTING	1	12	3	4	3	0	0	3
ADVANCE	+1`	+2
CURRENT	2

Weapons: Dagger, Hand Weapon, Crossbow 10 bolts,

Armour: Mail Coat, Leather Jack, Leather Leggings, Shield,

Skills: Common Knowledge (Dwarfs), Dodge Blow, Navigation, Perception, Scale Sheer Surface, Shadowing, Speak Language (Khazalid), Speak Language (Reikspiel), Trade (Miner)

Talents: Coolheaded, Dwarfcraft, Grudge-born Fury, Night Vision, Orientation, Resistance to Magic, Stout-hearted, Strike Mighty Blow, Strike to Injure, Strike to Stun, Sturdy

Trappings: Shirt, Breeches, Boots, Cloak, Sling Bag/Backpack, Blanket, Wooden Cutlery Set, Wooden Tankard, Purse Grappling Hook, 10yds of Rope, Water Skin

Money: 13gc

Character: Mormacar Shadowstar, Elven Envoy

Character Profile:

MAIN	WS	BS	S	T	AG	INT	WP	FEL
STARTING	35	37	31	35	43	42*	30	35
ADVANCE	+5	+5			+5	+10	+5	+10
CURRENT		42
SECONDARY	A	W	SB	TB	M	MAG	IP	FP
STARTING	1	11	3	3	5	0	0	2
ADVANCE		+2
CURRENT

Weapons: Dagger, Hand Weapon

Armour: Leather Jack, Bow, 20 Arrows

Skills: Charm, Common Knowledge (Elves), Common Knowledge (the Wasteland), Evaluate, Gossip, Haggle, Perception, Read/Write, Secret Language (Guild Tongue) Speak Language (Eltharin), Speak Language (Reikspiel), Swim, Trade (Merchant)

Talents: Dealmaker, Excellent Vision, Night vision, Savvy, Specialist Weapon Group (Longbow)

Trappings: Shirt, Breeches, Boots, Cloak, Sling Bag/Backpack, Blanket, Wooden Cutlery Set, Wooden Tankard, Purse, 2 sets Good Craftsmanship Clothes, Writing Kit

Money: 15gc

Character: Gaffella Willowand, Halfling Hunter

Character Profile:

MAIN	WS	BS	S	T	AG	INT	WP	FEL
STARTING	20	50*	20	22	49*	26	33	42
ADVANCE		+15`		+5	+10	+5
CURRENT		55
SECONDARY	A	W	SB	TB	M	MAG	IP	FP
STARTING	1	10	2	2	4	0	0	2
ADVANCE		+3
CURRENT

Weapons: Longbow, 10 Arrows

Armour:

Skills: Academic Knowledge (Genealogy/Heraldry), Common Knowledge (Halflings), Concealment, Follow Trail, Gossip, Outdoor Survival, Perception, Search, Secret Signs (Ranger), Silent Move, Speak Language (Halfling), Speak Language (Reikspiel), Trade (Cook)

Talents: Lightning Reflexes, Marksman, Night Vision, Rapid Reload, Resistance to Chaos, Specialist Weapon Group (Longbow), Specialist Weapon Group (Sling),

Trappings: Shirt, Breeches, Boots, Cloak, Sling Bag/Backpack, Blanket, Wooden Cutlery Set, Wooden Tankard, Purse, 2 Animal Traps, Antitoxin Kit

Money: 6gc

Character: Johann Hofstetter, Human Mercenary

Character Profile:

MAIN	WS	BS	S	T	AG	INT	WP	FEL
STARTING	35	31	30	35	29	38	27	34
ADVANCE	+10	+10	+5	+5	+5		+5
CURRENT
SECONDARY	A	W	SB	TB	M	MAG	IP	FP
STARTING	1	10	3	3	5*	0	0	3
ADVANCE	+1`	+2
CURRENT	2

Weapons: Dagger, Hand Weapon, Crossbow, 10 Bolts, Shield

Armour: Medium Armour (Mail Shirt & Leather Jack)

Skills: Animal Care, Common Knowledge (Kislev), Common Knowledge (the Empire), Dodge Blow, Gossip, Haggle, Ride, Search, Secret Language (Battle Tongue), Speak Language (Reikspiel), Swim,

Talents: Disarm, Fleet-Footed, Sixth Sense, Strike Mighty Blow, Strike to Stun,

Trappings: Shirt, Breeches, Boots, Cloak, Sling Bag/Backpack, Blanket, Wooden Cutlery Set, Wooden Tankard, Purse, Healing Draught

Money: 14gc

Character: Carlotta Reifsnider, Human Hedge Witch

Character Profile:

MAIN	WS	BS	S	T	AG	INT	WP	FEL
STARTING	32	24	25	38	31	34	37	34
ADVANCE				+5	+5	+5	+10	+10
CURRENT
SECONDARY	A	W	SB	TB	M	MAG	IP	FP
STARTING	1	12	2	3	4	0	0	3
ADVANCE		+2				+1’
CURRENT						1 0

Weapons: Dagger, Hand Weapon

Armour: -

Skills: Animal Care, Channelling, Charm, Common Knowledge (the Empire), Gossip, Heal, Magical Sense, Perception, Speak Language (Reikspiel), Trade (Apothecary),

Talents: Artistic, Hedge Magic, Petty Magic (Hedge), Resistant to Magic

Trappings: Shirt, Breeches, Boots, Cloak, Sling Bag/Backpack, Blanket, Wooden Cutlery Set, Wooden Tankard, Purse

Money: 10gc

Character: Magreta Reiss, Human Camp Follower

Character Profile:

MAIN	WS	BS	S	T	AG	INT	WP	FEL
STARTING	27	34	33	30	31	34	27	41*
ADVANCE				+5	+10	+5	+5	+10`
CURRENT								46
SECONDARY	A	W	SB	TB	M	MAG	IP	FP
STARTING	1	12	3	3	4	0	0	3
ADVANCE		+2
CURRENT

Weapons: Dagger, Hand Weapon

Armour:

Skills: Common Knowledge (the Empire), Charm, Drive, Gossip+10, Haggle, Perception, Search, Sleight of Hand, Speak Language (Kislevian), Speak Language (Reikspiel), Trade (Tailor)

Talents: Dealmaker, Flee!, Seasoned Traveller, Suave

Trappings: Shirt, Breeches, Boots, Cloak, Sling Bag/Backpack, Blanket, Wooden Cutlery Set, Wooden Tankard, Purse, Trade Tools, Pouch, Tent

Money: 14gc

The party is composed of six travellers who have ganged together for protection in the confusion of the aftermath of the great Choas invasion.  They happen upon the village of Untergard, where they learn that the Graf of Middenheim is sending them a convoy of supplies, partly for relief and partly as a reward for their steadfastness in the recent struggle.  When this turns up, the local Watch commander and de facto Gauleiter, Captain Schiller makes a speech to thank both the Graf and the local inhabitants, when a small group of mutants attacks.

Six Mutants

Main Profile
WS	BS	S	T	Ag	Int	WP	Fel
31	31	31	31	31	31	31	31
Secondary Profile
A	W	SB	TB	M	Mag	IP	FP
1	11	3	3	4	0	0	0

Skills: Animal Care, Concealment, Outdoor Survival, Perception, Silent Move, Speak Language (Reikspiel)

Talents: Flee!

Weapons: Club

Mutations:

Tentacle-like Arms (+10 Grappling)

Horns and Thick Fur (Horn weapon SB-1, 1 AP/All)

Snout (Follow Trail Skill)

Three Eyes (+5 Perception)

Grossly Fat (+1W, +5S)

Tail (+5Ag)

 The attack begins with an unknown mutant firing at Captain Schiller, which misses.  The characters push the crowd towards the bridge in the middle of the village - the mutants are approaching from the other side.  A couple of the characters manage to loose off an arrow at the advancing mutants.

Gaffella fires at Mutant 1, misses; Mormacar fires at Mutant 2 misses

The fights begins in earnest around the end of the bridge - a maximum of four characters can face off with each other, so two mutants and Gaffella and Mormacar hang back, looking for opportunities to shoot or to fill in for any gap.

Mutant 1 attacks Kazalin, hits, Kazalin parries.

Mutant 2 attacks Johann, misses

Carlotta attacks Mutant 3, hits in Body; loses 4W (now 7W)

Mutant 3 attacks Carlotta, hits in Head, loses 12W (now 0)

Mutant 4 attacks Magreta

Magreta misses Mutant 4

Kazalin hits Mutant 1 in the left arm, loses 5W (now 6W); then misses

Johann hits Mutant 2 in the right arm, loses 6W (now 5W); then hits in head, loses 5W, wounded to W0

Gaffella fires at Mutant 3, hits in the left leg; takes 4W (8W)

Mormacar fires at Mutant 3 also, hits in the head, takes 5W (3W)

Mutant 1 attacks Kazalin, misses.

Mutant 2 attacks Johann, misses.

Mutant 3 moves and attacks Johann, misses.

Magret hits Mutant 4 in the head for 20W, instantly decapitated

Kazalin hits Mutant 1 in the left leg, loses 8W (-2W) leg numbed; then misses

Johann misses Mutant 2, then hits Mutant 2 in the head for 6W (-3W); ears bashed and dazed

Gaffella fires at Mutant 3, hits in the body, loses 6W (-3W); Mutant 3 down, serious internal bleeding

Margret attacks Mutant 5, hits in left arm, loses 1W (10W)

Mutant 6 runs away

Mutant 5 runs away

The characters are congratulated on their victory.  Granny Moescher, the village elder and wise-woman tends the wounded Carlotta.  Later, one of the village hunters returns to inform everyone that a large warband of Beastmen are approaching and the village cannot hope to hold out.  Captain Schiller makes the argument that the who village must be evacuated to seek refuge in Middenheim.  This sways the villagers - the PCs agree with the logic and agree to protect and be protected by the convoy.  They join the village folk and refugees moving off the next day.  Johann and Gaffella join the advance guard, Mormacar joins the rear guard.  Kazalin stays in the centre, looking out for Carlotta and to advise Captain Schiller.

The first day is uneventful. Gaffella tries hunting, but without success.  On Day Two, the Convoy avoids Grimminhagen (the village has a long-standing bitter feud with it). The group (less Carlotta and Kazalin) go to the village to warn it of the approaching Beastmen.  The group discover that the local Graf is still in his keep and that the Emperor visited the village. At dusk, noted that Granny is away. Gaffella find the trail and leads them to her. She is surrounded by Elves, but Mormacar convinces them that Granny means no harm and is who she says she is.  The PCs tell Gilmir, the Elves' leader, of the approaching Beastmen.  They depart on friendly terms.

On the Third Day, Gaffella succeeds in her hunting trip and bags two deers to share with the villagers.  Later the site of an ambush/massacre is found: it appears that a convoy of merchants and their families.  Johann, Mormacar and Kazalin assist with the bodies, all gain 1 Insanity Point.  A shield and some crossbow bolts are recovered.  Mormacar realizes that is was a group of goblins which attacked these merchants from Delberz. Father Dietrich dies in an accident.  With his dying words he asks the PCs to agree to deliver a Sigmarite icon to the temple in Middenheim - the PCs agree.  The convoy reaches the village of Immelsched in the evening (it is in the same state as Grimminhagen).  During the night it is apparent that Granny is missing once again!  The orphan children Granny was looking after tell the PCs that a Raven suddenly appeared and flew out of their tent and that Granny had been acting strangely, saying strange things to do with the Graf of Grimminhagen's persecution of her family and cowardice now.

The PCs follow the trail, find Granny around a bonfire surrounded by Dark Animal shapes: it is clear she is trying to perform some magical ritual. The PCs rush on her, doing feint attacks; her concentration breaks and the ritual is ruined.  The PC tell her that whatever it was that was upsetting her, then her duty is to the villagers and the children now.  She explains that she was carrying out a ritual which would curse the current Graf and his family, heirs to the Graf who had killed her father, for their abandoning of their people.  The PCs convince her that everyone would be best served by her dropping it.

 The journey continues uneventfully for another couple of days and they reach Middenheim in safety, the PCs receive thanks from Captain Schiller and all the refugees.