La tua povertà mi fa incazzare
Adventure account from the perspective of the young mercenary Elvino.
“Well this can’t be good”, Elvino thought to himself, they had dumped off the two ponies alongside everything else expendable, only to climb in that - only gods & dwarves know, why this thing is even flying - balloon again. While restocking on rations, Oberon had as it turned out mistakenly picked up the wrong drunk Halfling Karl, and by doing so, he was reunited with an old friend of his, who himself wasn’t actually too ecstatic about being halflingnapped after sobering up a bit.
Anyway, it was a cold, but comfortable means of transport, certainly less exhausting than traveling by foot or cart. So much the young Tilean mercenary, Harad the Dwarf, Oberon the Elf, and their short and involuntary new companion Karl had figured out: One could hardly steer this thing, let alone safely land it, which still, appeared pretty much guaranteed once they ran out of things to burn.
The only question was, where the winds would carry them, and how fast they’d lose altitude at that point. After a bit of light sleep in the tight basket, they reached the outskirts of Altdorf, the Empire's capital city. Luckily, they were still high enough, but one could see from afar, guards in shining armour, pointing at the unidentified flying object. Losing height quickly, they made use of some hard liquour they conveniently had on board, as well as Karl's artistic talents. He spew fire, apparently being an entertainer of sorts, and only thanks to him, they narrowly avoided crashing down too quickly, when suddenly, they found themselves on collision course with some sort of tower. Below them was the Untersteg, bellowed the Dwarf, apparently the worst of Altdorf's districts, still, there wouldn’t be a lot of guards around, they hoped. The Halfling Karl took a leap of faith, while being tied to the balloon's frame on a rope, and fixed them to the tower's roof. Somehow the gods had allowed them to land in one piece.
You can’t even begin to imagine how slaphappy the young Tilean was to have solid ground under his goosebumpy feet again, at least as solid as the ground got in the Untersteg anyway. It all resembled a muddy, stinking pile of excrements much more, than part of the Empire's glorious capital. Before they could leave the towers rooftop, an apparent makeshift city guard appeared, every single one of them shabbily clothed, armed with clubs or no weapons at all. They asked some questions, clearly the "balloon" crew’s entrance hadn't been something they'd see every day, and after some negotiating the uneven party was free to go, better even, they were allowed to make rest in the adjacent "Cellar Theatre". The name deriving from the whole structure having been a theatre a long, long time ago. The only thing that remained of it was the reminder of a stage in the middle of the oversized hall on one of the upper floors, where the bar was located.
The barman wasn’t a local, but rather a chinky eyed foreigner, and spoke a weird, atonal language, still, with hand and feet they conveyed their thirsty intentions. In hindsight of course, it wasn’t the best idea, as whatever it was that they'd been served, it reeked terribly and didn’t leave a particularly great taste as well. Thus Karl and Elvino got acquainted with each other and soon they found some local poor folk to gamble a bit and distract themselves with some literally more down to earth entertainment. All the tables were bolted to the ground, probably a safety measure, with all those drunks and rapscallions roaming that part of the capital. They managed to challenge some of them to a game of knife throwing at a makeshift target, which Karl won with ridiculous ease, even doing acrobatic balancing stunts while doing so.
Impressed by his skill, the leader of the aforementioned neighbourhood watch wanted to enlist him into said organisation. Karl reluctantly agreed, if he hadn’t hurt himself during the contest by falling off the stairs during a failed salto attempt, he would probably have been sent out on a patrol by the hour. The two subsequently engaged in some gossip, apparently they had unluckily landed in a part of the Untersteg that was under quarantine, an ominous kind of disease had broken out days before. Oberon was the one more interested in these kind of things, after all he was a barber surgeon now, still, Vino was more focussed on getting out, into "better" parts of the city. Buy some shiny new equipment with his recently earned gold and get a good night's sleep for a change.
As he asked around a bit for a way out of the quarter, one of his opponents from the earlier throwing contest by the name of Sebastian volunteered to show him around. Maybe they’d find a way out, or so the mercenary hoped at least.
You can not, without ever having seen it, imagine the amounts of filth, rubble and poverty seen on these streets, that is, if you can even call them that. All that was only made worse by all the poor folk, beggars, some of them sick and coughing, that roamed the surroundings. Luckily most of them were harmless, only some of the vigilantes were illegally armed, and they only were so, as not even the imperial guard would patrol the quarantined parts of the city more than twice a day, only marching straight through to suppress uprisings.
Elvino studied they routes in and out, but there was no way one could get in or out unseen through the gatehouses, and one best avoided the guards' attention, who'd make short work of anyone, if they found them carrying weapons.
So Sebastian showed the young tilean some planks and ladders, ways over the rooftops, a far cleaner way of traveling through this godforsaken part of the city. Maybe they could reach the walls, with some luck even unseen, but how would they ever get down on the other side? Surely they couldn’t take on any of the guards on the walls, that could only lead to their sudden and painful death.
Still, it was a start, maybe those planks, which were leading in all sorts of directions over the quarter's rooftops, would be useful later on. They had just decided to head back to the Cellar Theatre, when that fool Sebastian out of the blue tried to rob Elvino in a dark alleyway. To the thugs surprise Elvino had none of it, pulled his sword, gave him a good smack, and off the poor lad ran.
He headed back alone to their willy-nilly accommodation, and decided to try to sleep a bit on one of the benches in the inn, since there were no rooms and if there were, they’d probably not be any more comfortable than that.
Karl woke him up painfully early, he probably couldn’t sleep due to his injured back, still hurting from the throwing contest. They got to know each other a little more, and after a while, Oberon joined them and they headed out to find anything resembling an apothecary for the halflings back pain. That way they could also get more familiar with their new surroundings, so they now roamed the parts of the Untersteg that were even worse than the ones before. One of them by the name of Kohlebecken consisted of completely burned down, smoking ruins. They also got to the river Talabec, and found some former docks and a shipyard, but as the rest of the quarter, they were also in shambles. They passed through another neighbourhood called the Drecksack, and the name was more than fitting to its looks. Decrepit wooden barracks, no actual windows, and even more poverty than elsewhere, beggars roaming the streets in flocks, and ragpickers that sold the dirtiest cloth one could possibly find anywhere in the Empire.
They headed back, were about to reach the western gate to the Untersteg, when the evening patrol of city guards was about to pass them, so they waited a bit to let them go by. Nobody wanted to be caught with weapons in there, and get beaten up for it or worse. Suddenly Elvino spotted a child, which apparently only he noticed, it was barely clad in rags and dirty linen. Elvino spotted something on her leg, he had seen those things before. But it couldn’t be, could it? His eyes must have tricked him. But that little girl caught his attention in a most discomforting way, and so he went after her, still unfamiliar with the surroundings, he lost her, yet found himself in an abandoned construction site if you will, and explored it further promptly. Up above he found some more of those planks, that functioned as some sort of pathway system throughout the whole of the Untersteg it seemed. It wasn’t even noon yet, so they decided to venture further. Apparently this construction site was an intersection in a way. One plank-way, they found, only lead towards the inner city wall, a dead end, unless one somehow made it on top of the wall. The boards and ladders along the rooftops that led north, brought them back towards the Talabec, and they discovered what they thought to be a hideout in the upper parts of the former dockyard, but it did seem to host rather unwelcoming and unfriendly folk, so they decided not to inspect it more closely, instead they headed back to the intersection in the construction site building. They went eastward from there on and after some dangerous climbing and jumping, they crossed the square with a lonely rag-picker-lady selling her dirty cloth, and crossed into the inner Drecksack for the first time.
Its buildings and people seemed much poorer and hungrier, and the roofs they tried to cross gave even less stable footing, due to the brittle, unmaintained and rotten tiles. After making some headway, trying to remain unseen, they spotted an ominous robed person, that came out of a bustling and highly illegal looking black market area. It was hard to spot from their vantage point, and maybe his eyes fooled him again, but he thought he saw that girl with the mutation, who he had seen before again down there, as well as some other sort of gnarly mutated creature in a cage, vaguely resembling a person covered in fish scales. There apparently was a lot of ungodly folk down there, and the whole place might have been infested by chaos and its dirty followers.
It wasn’t long until the robed figure ascended their way, so they intuitively decided to hide below the planks in an open rooftop. Elvino didn’t have as much as a plan, but he grabbed the figures feet as it went by, at best they could gather some information, at worst they’d have killed a person that frequented this hoard of evil. A muffled wrestling match broke out, and Vino’s companions were as surprised about his sudden action, as the, to him, obviously criminal, victim of it. He was about to gain the upper hand, and had a dagger on the stranger's throat, when suddenly the wooden roof under them collapsed, as it apparently couldn’t bear the weight of three and a half people, and the man hurled downwards, crashing through several floors, into the water that was below them. It seemed the building was built on stilts, and the black river consumed the person not to be seen again.
He couldn’t possibly have survived that fall, could he? Given how much litter and wood there was in the shallows below them... Being lowered down by his feet Karl fired an arrow and a crossbow bolt into what in the darkness looked like a struggling man, just to be safe.
Unfortunately a small boat left the black market not to far from them and two more robed figures approached to spot on the water under them, where the first unlucky one had vanished. No one wanted any eyewitnesses, and so after a brief argument, Karl and Elvino pulled out their crossbows, and fired on them, hitting each boatman once. If it wasn’t for that damned, tiresome crossbow reloading, they’d surely have killed them, and even gotten a boat for their troubles, which could help them flee this forsaken part of the capital, but alas.
The boat drifted away, they couldn’t have seen them from down there, but they decided not to hang around. When they had made their way back to the Cellar Theatre over the planks, turmoil had already grasped the Untersteg. People assumed it was an Elvish attack, there had been differences between Sindelfingen - the Elvish quarter which they hadn’t visited yet - and the Drecksack, and so naturally they thought it was an attack by them. This could only mean a lot of problems, especially for Oberon, the high elf that was with them. Christian, who was by the way treated as if he was the leader of the neighbourhood watch, suspected Elvino's party had something to do with it, which maybe, just maybe wasn’t entirely wrong, but obviously nobody would confess to anything.
Anyways, it was better to lay low for a while, and wait for this whole thing to blow over, maybe even have a pint in the cellar theatre while they were at it. Unsurprisingly though Christian didn’t want them around, and so he reluctantly tasked them with taking out Max, who used to be one of the members of the neighbourhood watch, and his now mutineering men, including Sebastian, who had welcomed them on top of the roof only a day before when they were still under Christians command.
After some preparations which included stocking up on bolts and some arrows, they headed out for the dockyard again, over the planks and rooftops, northbound. They had to stay hidden for a while due to some city guards atop the inner walls, which might have spotted them if they didn’t. When they ventured closer toward their target, Elvino suddenly spotted Sebastian below them, who had just left the hideout and was unaware of their presence.
A good bit of quick thinking, alongside a tad juvenile recklessness had Elvino just heading forward in plain sight of the rooftop entrance, which was barricaded by a table of some sort. He had covered his head in a robe as they had seen it before with other folk who traversed the planks, but if he got inspected closely surely their targets would find out who he really was. In accent-free Reiksspiel Elvino imitated Sebastian's voice, which he had heard plenty of the day before when that scoundrel tried to rob him. The young tilean has always had a talent for mimicking voices and accents, as he used to do that a lot when he was little and had still been living on the vine yard near Pavona where his Mama used to be employed. Many times, he imitated all sorts of travelers who usually stopped for food or shelter on a cold night. He had a good ear for different accents and languages, and funnily enough he fooled the five or so guys within the hideout. He said something along the lines of, “I just took a leak, I’ll take over the next shift of the watch, just do what you always do.” Vino was kind of baffled about his successful deceit, but the weird smell of smoke that lingered in the air could have had something to do with that.
Oberon and Karl were equally surprised and so it took them a while to get that the mercenary signed them to come closer. Inside the gang "guards" cracked some dirty jokes, while Vino was atop the dockyard's rooftop outlook, keeping “watch”, while planning his next move.
When his companions were close enough, Vino shouted down, again in Sebastian’s voice: “Hey, leave something for me, somebody replace me up here”. And after a short while, they removed the table from the window, and a young lad climbed up to him. Before the guy realized, that this wasn’t in fact the unsuccessful robber from a day before, the young tilean, had already given him a solid bump, attempting to throw him off the roof, just to even out the odds. Unfortunately, the guy just landed below him, and dropped to the floor instead of off the roof, and so Elvino jumped after him swiftly while drawing his long knive in an attempt to shake things up a bit in that relaxed smokers round. Mercilessly he struck a guy with a club in his hand, the others hadn’t even picked up their arms yet, and landed a good blow, that made him tumble a bit. Enraged by that, the guy tried to bat him in the face, but while he hauled the puny club towards Elvino, he accidentally smacked a halfing, by the name of Waldi, onto the head. Another deciding blow from the tilean sent the thug off the roof, and he had been dealt with for now.
Suddenly a bolt and an arrow struck next to him from where Karl and Oberon where sneaking up to them, one hit Max, the other one missed by only inches, and it seemed as if they had gotten the upper hand. When one of the still unarmed goons grappled Vino, who had briefly been distracted by the incoming missiles, and before he knew what was happening, he was sent flying off the roof, at least ten feet high. If it wasn’t for that ragpicking woman and her cart below him, that softened the fall, he would surely have been out of commission or even worse.
A bit battered but mostly unharmed, he threw her a silver shilling, and tried to rejoin Karl and Oberon as quickly as possible. You could still hear the fight going on in the upper level of the dockyard, and after a short run around the dockyard he found an entrance. Within, Elvino spotted a small sort of hut, it had probably been an accomodation for shipyard workers a long time ago, that also reeked of that weird plant everyone around here seemed to smoke. Next to it was a crane, lots of ropes attached to it, and a wrecked little boat, that had been left next to a small repair bay. He had to wade through the freezing water, leaking through the shoddy floor everywhere, and rapidly found a way back up towards the ongoing fight.
Elvino was abruptly stopped by a thug armed with a spear, who blocked the way and one could hear the halfling Waldi call for help stumbling down from the fight. Eager to aid his outnumbered companions, Elvino tried to draw some attention, and started charging the spear-armed guy with a menacing shout, when Waldi drew his bow. A fierce battle broke out between the mercenary, and his opponent, but just as he was about to land a deciding blow, Vino was struck by a well aimed arrow from Waldi, leaving him vulnerable for attack. The short lance, opened his leather and wounded him on the side of his torso, a arrow was sticking out below his clavicula. Tears in his eyes from the overwhelming pain, he almost decapitated the guy before him, but not before his shield had cracked and fell out of his grip when he parried an incoming hit. Without remorse he stormed towards Waldi, that had insidiously shot him just seconds before, and he made quick work of the wounded Halfling, who hurled a leg lighter into the dark abyss below the boardwalk upwards.
Abruptly the uproar from the fight was drowned out by the sound of a floor or some big structure collapsing. His companions, and whoever they were still fighting at the time, had crashed down to the ground level, and were now unreachable for Elvino, so he headed back towards the crane while still being badly wounded.
After a lot of trial and error, he managed to cut a rope with about 45 feet length that would be useful later on, since he wanted to get his companions up again, or down towards them. He shouted in Tilean “Elfo?”, the word for elf as to not publicise his name, and he responded. All three of them were battered by the fight, but apparently their opponents hadn’t survived the fall, or had been slain beforehand.
Quickly, he lowered the rope to get them out of the storage room they were trapped in. Before his rescuing rope the only way out seemed through that small hut Vino had seen before. It was obvious that there were still some people, or witnesses as they called them, inside there. Either they must have been completely intoxicated or they didn’t dare to leave the safety of their hut.
The first, fat guy that got out to check on what in all gods' names was going on was not long for this world, and Oberon slit him right open. The Elf's face was bloody, he had apparently been hit hard by something blunt smack on the nose, and you could tell his rage had no boundaries at that moment.
Fittingly the youngster from the south, picked up the spear dropped by the guy, he had dealt with before, as to keep his opponents at a distance, and fighting with a spear felt somehow only right proper for a lad from Tilea.
An uneven fight erupted, and while their opponents outnumbered them, they were no match for them in terms of weapons. One guy wielded cutlery of some sort, and another one, tried to smack them with a broken off table leg. Astonishingly they didn’t flee the scene as one’d expect, given the massacre that was going on, but they kept fighting and in an unwary moment, Elvino got struck badly with the sharp end of the table leg.
It sank, right into his upper thigh, and he could feel warm blood drizzle down his leg. Almost overwhelmed by pain, he tunnel visioned, and by their god's mercy his party managed to fend off the attacks just before Elvino went down, and passed out. He thought he would meet his makers, and even though the Elf tended to his wounds quickly after the fight was brutally ended, all strength left his body, and he was close to fainting right then and there.
He did not know how but his friends succeeded in stopping the arterial bleeding, but nobody could tell whether he would survive, or be able to keep his leg in one piece. The only good thing about being half unconscious was that he didn’t fully grasp the sheer slaughter that had just taken place in that ship yard. He passed out silently praying to Myrmidia and Sigmar, to spare his young, adventurous life once more.
Impressed by his skill, the leader of the aforementioned neighbourhood watch wanted to enlist him into said organisation. Karl reluctantly agreed, if he hadn’t hurt himself during the contest by falling off the stairs during a failed salto attempt, he would probably have been sent out on a patrol by the hour. The two subsequently engaged in some gossip, apparently they had unluckily landed in a part of the Untersteg that was under quarantine, an ominous kind of disease had broken out days before. Oberon was the one more interested in these kind of things, after all he was a barber surgeon now, still, Vino was more focussed on getting out, into "better" parts of the city. Buy some shiny new equipment with his recently earned gold and get a good night's sleep for a change.
As he asked around a bit for a way out of the quarter, one of his opponents from the earlier throwing contest by the name of Sebastian volunteered to show him around. Maybe they’d find a way out, or so the mercenary hoped at least.
You can not, without ever having seen it, imagine the amounts of filth, rubble and poverty seen on these streets, that is, if you can even call them that. All that was only made worse by all the poor folk, beggars, some of them sick and coughing, that roamed the surroundings. Luckily most of them were harmless, only some of the vigilantes were illegally armed, and they only were so, as not even the imperial guard would patrol the quarantined parts of the city more than twice a day, only marching straight through to suppress uprisings.
Elvino studied they routes in and out, but there was no way one could get in or out unseen through the gatehouses, and one best avoided the guards' attention, who'd make short work of anyone, if they found them carrying weapons.
So Sebastian showed the young tilean some planks and ladders, ways over the rooftops, a far cleaner way of traveling through this godforsaken part of the city. Maybe they could reach the walls, with some luck even unseen, but how would they ever get down on the other side? Surely they couldn’t take on any of the guards on the walls, that could only lead to their sudden and painful death.
Still, it was a start, maybe those planks, which were leading in all sorts of directions over the quarter's rooftops, would be useful later on. They had just decided to head back to the Cellar Theatre, when that fool Sebastian out of the blue tried to rob Elvino in a dark alleyway. To the thugs surprise Elvino had none of it, pulled his sword, gave him a good smack, and off the poor lad ran.
He headed back alone to their willy-nilly accommodation, and decided to try to sleep a bit on one of the benches in the inn, since there were no rooms and if there were, they’d probably not be any more comfortable than that.
Karl woke him up painfully early, he probably couldn’t sleep due to his injured back, still hurting from the throwing contest. They got to know each other a little more, and after a while, Oberon joined them and they headed out to find anything resembling an apothecary for the halflings back pain. That way they could also get more familiar with their new surroundings, so they now roamed the parts of the Untersteg that were even worse than the ones before. One of them by the name of Kohlebecken consisted of completely burned down, smoking ruins. They also got to the river Talabec, and found some former docks and a shipyard, but as the rest of the quarter, they were also in shambles. They passed through another neighbourhood called the Drecksack, and the name was more than fitting to its looks. Decrepit wooden barracks, no actual windows, and even more poverty than elsewhere, beggars roaming the streets in flocks, and ragpickers that sold the dirtiest cloth one could possibly find anywhere in the Empire.
They headed back, were about to reach the western gate to the Untersteg, when the evening patrol of city guards was about to pass them, so they waited a bit to let them go by. Nobody wanted to be caught with weapons in there, and get beaten up for it or worse. Suddenly Elvino spotted a child, which apparently only he noticed, it was barely clad in rags and dirty linen. Elvino spotted something on her leg, he had seen those things before. But it couldn’t be, could it? His eyes must have tricked him. But that little girl caught his attention in a most discomforting way, and so he went after her, still unfamiliar with the surroundings, he lost her, yet found himself in an abandoned construction site if you will, and explored it further promptly. Up above he found some more of those planks, that functioned as some sort of pathway system throughout the whole of the Untersteg it seemed. It wasn’t even noon yet, so they decided to venture further. Apparently this construction site was an intersection in a way. One plank-way, they found, only lead towards the inner city wall, a dead end, unless one somehow made it on top of the wall. The boards and ladders along the rooftops that led north, brought them back towards the Talabec, and they discovered what they thought to be a hideout in the upper parts of the former dockyard, but it did seem to host rather unwelcoming and unfriendly folk, so they decided not to inspect it more closely, instead they headed back to the intersection in the construction site building. They went eastward from there on and after some dangerous climbing and jumping, they crossed the square with a lonely rag-picker-lady selling her dirty cloth, and crossed into the inner Drecksack for the first time.
Its buildings and people seemed much poorer and hungrier, and the roofs they tried to cross gave even less stable footing, due to the brittle, unmaintained and rotten tiles. After making some headway, trying to remain unseen, they spotted an ominous robed person, that came out of a bustling and highly illegal looking black market area. It was hard to spot from their vantage point, and maybe his eyes fooled him again, but he thought he saw that girl with the mutation, who he had seen before again down there, as well as some other sort of gnarly mutated creature in a cage, vaguely resembling a person covered in fish scales. There apparently was a lot of ungodly folk down there, and the whole place might have been infested by chaos and its dirty followers.
It wasn’t long until the robed figure ascended their way, so they intuitively decided to hide below the planks in an open rooftop. Elvino didn’t have as much as a plan, but he grabbed the figures feet as it went by, at best they could gather some information, at worst they’d have killed a person that frequented this hoard of evil. A muffled wrestling match broke out, and Vino’s companions were as surprised about his sudden action, as the, to him, obviously criminal, victim of it. He was about to gain the upper hand, and had a dagger on the stranger's throat, when suddenly the wooden roof under them collapsed, as it apparently couldn’t bear the weight of three and a half people, and the man hurled downwards, crashing through several floors, into the water that was below them. It seemed the building was built on stilts, and the black river consumed the person not to be seen again.
He couldn’t possibly have survived that fall, could he? Given how much litter and wood there was in the shallows below them... Being lowered down by his feet Karl fired an arrow and a crossbow bolt into what in the darkness looked like a struggling man, just to be safe.
Unfortunately a small boat left the black market not to far from them and two more robed figures approached to spot on the water under them, where the first unlucky one had vanished. No one wanted any eyewitnesses, and so after a brief argument, Karl and Elvino pulled out their crossbows, and fired on them, hitting each boatman once. If it wasn’t for that damned, tiresome crossbow reloading, they’d surely have killed them, and even gotten a boat for their troubles, which could help them flee this forsaken part of the capital, but alas.
The boat drifted away, they couldn’t have seen them from down there, but they decided not to hang around. When they had made their way back to the Cellar Theatre over the planks, turmoil had already grasped the Untersteg. People assumed it was an Elvish attack, there had been differences between Sindelfingen - the Elvish quarter which they hadn’t visited yet - and the Drecksack, and so naturally they thought it was an attack by them. This could only mean a lot of problems, especially for Oberon, the high elf that was with them. Christian, who was by the way treated as if he was the leader of the neighbourhood watch, suspected Elvino's party had something to do with it, which maybe, just maybe wasn’t entirely wrong, but obviously nobody would confess to anything.
Anyways, it was better to lay low for a while, and wait for this whole thing to blow over, maybe even have a pint in the cellar theatre while they were at it. Unsurprisingly though Christian didn’t want them around, and so he reluctantly tasked them with taking out Max, who used to be one of the members of the neighbourhood watch, and his now mutineering men, including Sebastian, who had welcomed them on top of the roof only a day before when they were still under Christians command.
After some preparations which included stocking up on bolts and some arrows, they headed out for the dockyard again, over the planks and rooftops, northbound. They had to stay hidden for a while due to some city guards atop the inner walls, which might have spotted them if they didn’t. When they ventured closer toward their target, Elvino suddenly spotted Sebastian below them, who had just left the hideout and was unaware of their presence.
A good bit of quick thinking, alongside a tad juvenile recklessness had Elvino just heading forward in plain sight of the rooftop entrance, which was barricaded by a table of some sort. He had covered his head in a robe as they had seen it before with other folk who traversed the planks, but if he got inspected closely surely their targets would find out who he really was. In accent-free Reiksspiel Elvino imitated Sebastian's voice, which he had heard plenty of the day before when that scoundrel tried to rob him. The young tilean has always had a talent for mimicking voices and accents, as he used to do that a lot when he was little and had still been living on the vine yard near Pavona where his Mama used to be employed. Many times, he imitated all sorts of travelers who usually stopped for food or shelter on a cold night. He had a good ear for different accents and languages, and funnily enough he fooled the five or so guys within the hideout. He said something along the lines of, “I just took a leak, I’ll take over the next shift of the watch, just do what you always do.” Vino was kind of baffled about his successful deceit, but the weird smell of smoke that lingered in the air could have had something to do with that.
Oberon and Karl were equally surprised and so it took them a while to get that the mercenary signed them to come closer. Inside the gang "guards" cracked some dirty jokes, while Vino was atop the dockyard's rooftop outlook, keeping “watch”, while planning his next move.
When his companions were close enough, Vino shouted down, again in Sebastian’s voice: “Hey, leave something for me, somebody replace me up here”. And after a short while, they removed the table from the window, and a young lad climbed up to him. Before the guy realized, that this wasn’t in fact the unsuccessful robber from a day before, the young tilean, had already given him a solid bump, attempting to throw him off the roof, just to even out the odds. Unfortunately, the guy just landed below him, and dropped to the floor instead of off the roof, and so Elvino jumped after him swiftly while drawing his long knive in an attempt to shake things up a bit in that relaxed smokers round. Mercilessly he struck a guy with a club in his hand, the others hadn’t even picked up their arms yet, and landed a good blow, that made him tumble a bit. Enraged by that, the guy tried to bat him in the face, but while he hauled the puny club towards Elvino, he accidentally smacked a halfing, by the name of Waldi, onto the head. Another deciding blow from the tilean sent the thug off the roof, and he had been dealt with for now.
Suddenly a bolt and an arrow struck next to him from where Karl and Oberon where sneaking up to them, one hit Max, the other one missed by only inches, and it seemed as if they had gotten the upper hand. When one of the still unarmed goons grappled Vino, who had briefly been distracted by the incoming missiles, and before he knew what was happening, he was sent flying off the roof, at least ten feet high. If it wasn’t for that ragpicking woman and her cart below him, that softened the fall, he would surely have been out of commission or even worse.
A bit battered but mostly unharmed, he threw her a silver shilling, and tried to rejoin Karl and Oberon as quickly as possible. You could still hear the fight going on in the upper level of the dockyard, and after a short run around the dockyard he found an entrance. Within, Elvino spotted a small sort of hut, it had probably been an accomodation for shipyard workers a long time ago, that also reeked of that weird plant everyone around here seemed to smoke. Next to it was a crane, lots of ropes attached to it, and a wrecked little boat, that had been left next to a small repair bay. He had to wade through the freezing water, leaking through the shoddy floor everywhere, and rapidly found a way back up towards the ongoing fight.
Elvino was abruptly stopped by a thug armed with a spear, who blocked the way and one could hear the halfling Waldi call for help stumbling down from the fight. Eager to aid his outnumbered companions, Elvino tried to draw some attention, and started charging the spear-armed guy with a menacing shout, when Waldi drew his bow. A fierce battle broke out between the mercenary, and his opponent, but just as he was about to land a deciding blow, Vino was struck by a well aimed arrow from Waldi, leaving him vulnerable for attack. The short lance, opened his leather and wounded him on the side of his torso, a arrow was sticking out below his clavicula. Tears in his eyes from the overwhelming pain, he almost decapitated the guy before him, but not before his shield had cracked and fell out of his grip when he parried an incoming hit. Without remorse he stormed towards Waldi, that had insidiously shot him just seconds before, and he made quick work of the wounded Halfling, who hurled a leg lighter into the dark abyss below the boardwalk upwards.
Abruptly the uproar from the fight was drowned out by the sound of a floor or some big structure collapsing. His companions, and whoever they were still fighting at the time, had crashed down to the ground level, and were now unreachable for Elvino, so he headed back towards the crane while still being badly wounded.
After a lot of trial and error, he managed to cut a rope with about 45 feet length that would be useful later on, since he wanted to get his companions up again, or down towards them. He shouted in Tilean “Elfo?”, the word for elf as to not publicise his name, and he responded. All three of them were battered by the fight, but apparently their opponents hadn’t survived the fall, or had been slain beforehand.
Quickly, he lowered the rope to get them out of the storage room they were trapped in. Before his rescuing rope the only way out seemed through that small hut Vino had seen before. It was obvious that there were still some people, or witnesses as they called them, inside there. Either they must have been completely intoxicated or they didn’t dare to leave the safety of their hut.
The first, fat guy that got out to check on what in all gods' names was going on was not long for this world, and Oberon slit him right open. The Elf's face was bloody, he had apparently been hit hard by something blunt smack on the nose, and you could tell his rage had no boundaries at that moment.
Fittingly the youngster from the south, picked up the spear dropped by the guy, he had dealt with before, as to keep his opponents at a distance, and fighting with a spear felt somehow only right proper for a lad from Tilea.
An uneven fight erupted, and while their opponents outnumbered them, they were no match for them in terms of weapons. One guy wielded cutlery of some sort, and another one, tried to smack them with a broken off table leg. Astonishingly they didn’t flee the scene as one’d expect, given the massacre that was going on, but they kept fighting and in an unwary moment, Elvino got struck badly with the sharp end of the table leg.
It sank, right into his upper thigh, and he could feel warm blood drizzle down his leg. Almost overwhelmed by pain, he tunnel visioned, and by their god's mercy his party managed to fend off the attacks just before Elvino went down, and passed out. He thought he would meet his makers, and even though the Elf tended to his wounds quickly after the fight was brutally ended, all strength left his body, and he was close to fainting right then and there.
He did not know how but his friends succeeded in stopping the arterial bleeding, but nobody could tell whether he would survive, or be able to keep his leg in one piece. The only good thing about being half unconscious was that he didn’t fully grasp the sheer slaughter that had just taken place in that ship yard. He passed out silently praying to Myrmidia and Sigmar, to spare his young, adventurous life once more.
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| Aside from mostly looted corpses, rubble and arrows, this macabre message was the only thing anyone searching the site of the massacre would later find, carved at child's height into a small hut's door, next to a fork, knife and absinth spoon, sticking in it... |
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