Pollo? Solo sopra il mio corpo morto freddo - Elvino, Oberon & Karl stuck in the Untersteg

Pollo? Solo sopra il mio corpo morto freddo

Adventure account from the perspective of the young mercenary Elvino.

Elvino briefly woke up in the cellar theatre, only to be immediately overwhelmed by searing pain hailing from his previous leg injury, resonating through his entire body, accompanied by the stench of rotten cheese. The  wound needed treatment badly, and he could feel the inflammation pulsating. 

Elvino the Tilean Mercenary

Luckily the Elf Oberon was around to tend to his wounds. He bandaged them, put some ointment on the wound and cleansed it from splinters and dirt, that had contaminated the gash.

During a lucid moment, somebody told the incapacitated mercenary that he might just survive the whole ordeal, but the amount of pain he went through made him severely question the statement. And even if he survived, would he keep his leg? Otherwise he’d just be a useless cripple unable to fight, walk, or even stand. Fever dreams entwined with reality, so he was not too sure about what happened the next couple of hours.

Oberon the Elven "Healer"

He remembered the squinty-eyed bartender offering him some sort of oddly tasting fish roll, still, better than what was usually served in the Untersteg. What’s more is thatElvino was unable to walk particularly far, so he resorted to jump on a single leg, thus he managed to investigate the cellar theatre more thoroughly.

Apparently Christian was sufficiently pleased with their “work” at the former dockyard.The motley group of Karl, Oberon and Elvino found the time to listen to the market crier, who finally brought news about the quarantine, which annoyingly was still to be prolonged. Also the authorities apparently wanted to gather further information about the incident in Heideldorf. One was to contact the guardsman by the name Basil.

Karl: Halfling, Acrobat, Bird Trainer

Summoning up all his stupidity and naivety at once, Elvino simply strolled up to the closed gate, asked for said guard in order to provide some insight about the recent events at the Wurstfest. Moreover forgot to get rid of his hidden weapons first, was quickly disarmed and subject to lengthy interrogations. He had to explain himself to a Colonel Winzik, alongside a particularily menacing looking guy called Luther. The only one who seemed only so much as half decent was a medicus from Tilea, who agreed to take a look at his naive countryman’s wounds. Vino cursed himself, nothing good has ever happened when dealing with the authorities around here, yet somehow he still thought it was a good idea to just waltz in and unabashedly talk about, albeit toned down, the highly classified events had taken place days prior.

Well, it mostly resulted in further questions, a very significant loss of weaponry, and he henceforth was required to gather intel about whatever interesting or criminal was going on in the Untersteg. Therefore he was told to report back every morning before the patrol, or else they’d find him. Reluctantly he agreed, and made his way back to the cellar theatre, exhausted by the interrogations.

He really wanted to take a nap in Karls dirty chamber at that point, but first he had to check out a certain accommodation that was “recommended” to him by the guards. The name was “Mange” and it was a fitting one. The Mange was even worse than Karl’s room and there were no doors, no beds, and people were crowding whatever free space there was. Elvino took a look at the chamber that was offered to him by an old and nasty looking wench, he had already decided he wasn’t going to spend the night there. Yet it couldn’t hurt to peek around a bit, he could always leave later, and his injured leg needed some rest anyway.

After gathering his thoughts and stamina he found a scrap piece of paper, with all kinds of signs on it. Elvino couldn’t read them, but Oberon surely could, and nobody would miss anything here, so he took it. After consulting with the Elf it turned out to be a map of sorts. It also suspiciously resembled the plankways and ladders that ran through these slums like a road system atop the roofs. On it, they found some symbols, and so they decided, after some more rest for Vino’s beaten body, to investigate the spots that were charted on the map.

They all turned out to be smaller hideouts, or resting places along the path system. Very hard to find, and those places surely provided shelter from nosy eyes and could have been used as a meeting point, or to stash some things there. With some complications due to Vinos still injured leg they ventured further but split up at some point. The limping Tilean found a rooftop entrance into a small room, and to his surprise it was unlocked. Within he was greeted by a familiar stench, surely someone had smoked that weird drug everyone seemed to use around the Untersteg. It didn't take him long to find the culprit asleep and very inebriated, on a makeshift couch - or so the mercenary thought.

After making sure the guy wouldn't randomly wake up and cause a problem, Elvino scoured the room for anything useful, but he wasn't lucky apart from some leftover drugs which he left there. "It can't hurt to know this hideout though", was going through his mind when he was suddenly interrupted by a bellowing voice, "Hey! You there! Get off of that roof. Now!“, a guard from the inner city walls had spotted him. Luckily he couldn't quite make out Vinos face, and he hid behind some dirty rags that someone had put up there to dry. "Just finishing my laundry Sir, I'll be gone in a second", the young lad shouted in his, surprisingly convincing, old lady voice. Ranald was on his side and he limped out of sight further contributing to his charade of being an elderly woman. 

Soon after he met up with Oberon again and they took some time to check out the other places but they all seemed abandoned, still knowing a place to vanish could surely be useful later on. 

They headed back to the cellar theatre, the slightly illegal rooster fight was going to take place there soon. Also they hadn't seen Karl in a while, given enough time his loose tongue surely had gotten him into trouble. There wasn’t any sign of Karl, but it was already pretty crowded in the tavern. People were betting, discussing odds, drinking, throwing some knives to pass the time when Elvino entered the room. The dark skinned southerner, who was in charge of taking bets, asked him if he had seen Christian, who hadn’t been seen in a while now. They were still talking, when suddenly turmoil took over the bar. One huge and ugly lad, he seemed to be talking with a strange accent as well, began scaring people, and throwing furniture around. Everyone wanted the fight to begin, but they had to wait for Christian, and so those thugs started a full scale tavern brawl. Vino tried to intervene, but was quickly sent to the deck. If only his leg wasn’t injured, surely he would have taken down the oversized loudmouth. No two questions about it. At least that’s what he thought as his head hit the wooden floor, and he got dragged out of the room by someone.

Again he woke up in Karl’s room, again he was hurt, although not quite as heavily as before. In any case,he definitely had taken a good punch, ashe felt quite dizzy and lightheaded. He wanted to rest for just a bit before the rooster fight was to start, he had already placed his bet earlier anyway. Some peace and quiet and a good nap would surely be more helpful for his regeneration than the turmoil out there. Where was Karl anyway? He hadn’t seen him for a while but given his smaller size that was no surprise. Usually one would hear him first anyway, he was probably still hanging out with those other two halflings and their huge rooster. Pretty frightening thing that was: Huge beak, menacing yellow eyes and you could tell from his posture, he knew, he was the biggest cock in town.

A little bit of drool dripping off the side of his mouth, he was woken up by Karl’s voice. It took Vino a while to come to his senses, but he had very apparently been shaken and yelled at for help. As he would find out later, Karl had accompanied Dagot and some more of Christian’s men, into the underground below the cellar theatre. There was a basement dug into the muddy ground of the Untersteg below the cellar theatre, where they’d dump all the waste and leftover food. And even further down there was a trap door that led to a dark moldy kind of catacombs. Without knowing what they’d get themselves into and still barely able to walk, let alone fight properly, Oberon, Vino and the bet collector came to aid Karl. Something had obviously gone wrong on their little expedition down there. Initially they were looking for the missing Christian, but what they had uncovered was much grimmer and scarier, than someone lost in the catacombs without light.

Unbeknownst to all the guests in the cellar theatre still eagerly waiting for the rooster fight, they ventured downwards, and tried to locate Dagot and Christian. Karl warned them about thick black smoke, that loomed on the ground and surged upwards from time to time. Vino couldn’t quite believe it, he felt his lungs camp up, gasping for air, drawing breath, yet no feeling of relief when sucking in those treacherous fumes. Something surely was foul down there. Karl directed them to a cart, atop which Christian laid, dead, or very much looking like it. No colour left in his face, with a blank stare. He was breathing, but only barely.

Something tingled on their legs and Roquo the bet collector shouted down to them, bones were moving even up where he was staying on top of the ladder that led to the trapdoor. Quickly, Vino fixated his rope around Christian, and tried to pull him up and out of this mess, he wanted to get back to safety as quickly as possible. While Oberon and Karl were searching for Dagott, but for him it was already too late. Vino was still struggling on the ladder with Christian’sunconscious body which was apparently stuck somewhere. Suddenly he heard shouts from below him. Due to his small size Karl was even more endangered by the suffocating smoke, and he had already inhaled quite a bit earlier apparently, so he passed out, vanishing in the dark mist while a dark silhouette approached from deeper down the tunnel.

Reacting on the spot, Oberon grabbed Karl and tried to haul him towards the trapdoor over them, when the Halflingsuddenly came back to his senses. Surprisingly awake from the adrenaline rush he surged upwards without hesitation, kicking the Elf’s face and crawling over Vino so that he got to the upper floor alongside Roquo. 

With their combined efforts they managed to pull up Christian out of the smoke and to safety, or so at least they thought. Taking two steps at once, the elf followed swiftly, his face even paler than usual, who knows what else he had seen down there. They slammed the trapdoor underneath them shut, only to be welcomed by a heap of small bones, suddenly twitching and twirling on the ground. All the leftover bones from the countless unceremoniously discarded chicken suddenly came back to “life”.

Something very, very bad was happening right here. Vino stood there. He couldn’t move, clearly it weren’t fumes but he was still frozen solid. Never before had he seen something so foul and evil happen. Bones, clearly dead for ages, suddenly moved, came back to life. He still just stood there, his knuckles gripping his sword, bloodless and as white as his face. In the meantime Oberon and Karl tried to fend off attacks from these undead bird skeletons. Most of them could be kicked down before they could form anything dangerous, however one huge “bird”, if one could even call it that, formed towering over them and started to attack.

It’s huge pale and boney beak glimmered in the little light they had, and it attacked Karl. It must have been his halfling simple-mindedness, or sheer panic, but he suddenly grabbed some birdseed and tried to feed the cursed thing. Vino tried to move, to intervene, he was the most adept fighter of the group after all, even while injured. But to no avail, his legs just wouldn’t move. He just stared at the thing before him, he thought of Dagot, who was still lying down there, what would become of him? After all, Elvino was barely an adult, he longed for home, for warmth, for Tilea. Anywhere actually, but here, yethe wouldn’t get to see any of that ever again, if he died down in this dirty cellar of Altdorf’s nastiest quarter. 

Hiding behind his shield, he just watched as Karl raised his arm, to feed the skeletonized chicken. “Perhaps this works”, Vino thought, when the beak slammed into the Halfing’s upper arm, tearing it right off. Blood sprayed, bones cracked, and Karl collapsed to the ground like a lifeless piece of meat. While the apparently somewhat sentient being started pecking up bird seeds from the dirty floor, only for them to pass through it’s crudely assembled oversized skeleton and fall right down again.

Shocked and also wide awake  from witnessing the events that had just unfolded before him Vino decided it was do or die time. And he wouldn’t meet Morr down here, if he could help it. Together with Oberon he attacked, and they struck swift and fierce. They chopped enough bones out of the bird creature that had arisen from death to temporarily incapacitate it, still they saw more and more bone constructs assembling, and fumes crawling from the closed trapdoor under them.

Vino grabbed Karl’s life- and armless body, and carried it up. He passed the wounded Roquo who had apparently tried to fend off those creatures while they were struggling down below. Senseless and still shaken to his core, the young tilean ran towards the only place that felt safe for him at this very moment. He held the halfling like an infant in his arms, ran as fast as his injured legs would carry him, towards the inner city gate. Even before arriving, he started a turmoil and shouted for help. Some of the guards that had interrogated him earlier surely had to be on duty, somebody had to help them, even the poorest quarter of the Empire’s capital couldn’t be allowed to be left to die, he thought, not comprehending the concept of a plague-containment-quarantine. Especially after what they had just seen, he couldn’t fathom what would happen to dead human bodies if they were left down there.

Apparently word had already spread, and there were more “incidents” or so they called it outside of the quarantine zone. Vino begged them to help Karl, to save him and possibly his arm, which was still dangling from some bleeding pieces of skin and torn muscle. It was overwhelming, Vino had to sit down. They interrogated Vino what had happened, and some of them rushed to help the little guy from the Mootland, but all life seemed to fade from his face, that was usually so full of vigor. Still unsure what was truly going on in the Untersteg, Elvino urged them to send troops into the quarantined quarter and take control of the situation there. He even offered to lead them towards the catacombs below, but they were either indecisive or unwilling, and additionally they had to deal with more incidents at the time.

A priest of Sigmar rushed to aid the Halfling who had fought so bravely against those corrupt enemies of the living. Vino was silently praying in his mother tongue to Myrmidia and Sigmar, he felt guilty for what had happened. If only he had acted quicker, and came to his senses earlier. Karl’s arm, couldn’t be saved, that’s what the priest said. But somehow, he could stop him from dying right then and there, while they took Vino in a cell to interrogate him even further. He couldn’t care less though. Truth be spoken he was just relieved that Karl wasn’t dead, and he hoped the sturdy little guy would make it. Also being in custody of imperial guards didn’t seem like the unsafest place to be during whatever was currently happening in the slums of Altdorf. When they finally threw him into an isolation cell, he fell into a restless sleep full of nightmares and fear. He scratched Sigmar’s hammer and Myrmidias spearhead into one of the bedposts, and held on tightly to his hidden dagger all throughout the night...