TEWR Ep 36 - The Mad Apothecary & the Three Eyed Dilettante

The Enemy Within Revisited Cast:
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Gustav Myrthenbaum the Dilettante (Davy White)
Falco the Apothecary (Michael Morgan)
Hargrin the Troll Slayer (Kevin Bronakoski)
Bran the Amber Wizard (David Crapper)
Rutger Horstmann the Zealot (Chris Taylor)

It was…6 Sommerzeit?  7 Sommerzeit?  I could not be sure. 

​Our party left that accursed cave, hounded by the rat-things.  Over the course of the next few hours, Bran led us back to the canoes, the sound of our pursuers growing closer and closer.  Falco took off ahead, however, and it was all we could do to keep him up.  He moved like a man possessed of demons, his strength seeming endless as we slogged on in the heavy air…thick with moisture and insects, it itself was nearly enough to spell our end. 

It wasn’t long before we saw our canoes, lying on the rocks just as we left them, our salvation and escape from this hellish landscape, plagued by spectres and rat-devils.  Alas, our escape from this land wasn’t without difficulties.  The…rat-things caught up to us, chittering madly from the shore, as they threw…strange shaped metal pieces at us.  Both I and Hargrin were struck by the hellish projectiles, as our boat hadn’t found the current that Bran, Gustav, and Falco had found.  It seemed as if their canoe was miles ahead of ours, and both Hargin and I were weakened from blood loss and the six hour flight to where we had left the boats, but we were able to finally catch current ourselves and a goodly portion down the river, we met our party once more.

We decided to beach ourselves so that both Hargrin and I could have our wounds attended, as well as Gustav.  All had born injury from the trip into that cavern, and for some of us the damage was physical, the cuts of foul blades, but for others, the lacerations were beneath the skin.  Falco attended to Hargrin’s wounds while Bran began to place the tents.  Falco mixed some sort of strange…poultice that he placed on both Hargrin’s as well as my wounds…the poultice induced us to expel the contents of our stomach, not being much, though, as our flight the previous evening had left us unable to sup.  Hargrin looked much better afterwards; however, I felt the sting of the wound, in addition to the roiling of my stomach that the poultice caused.  I don’t believe I could have eaten should the opportunity have presented itself at the time.

We all bedded down for the night, and although we rotated the watch duties, our sleep was deep, and most of us awakened feeling refreshed, if not a bit sore from exertion.  Save one in our party…Gustav.  He cried out that he had fallen out of Sigmar’s light, with such anguish that I have rarely heard in the depths of men’s voices.  The cause for this was apparent after a few minutes, as he showed me the strange lump high upon his forehead..what appeared to be a third eye.  He begged me to not let him see the flame of the witch hunter’s pyre.
 
So, the next few days were a quagmire of conflict for me.  My allegiances to the Holy Order of the Templars of Sigmar should have made this an easy decision; give Gustav the mercy of a quick, painless kill and go on.  But I am not to that point yet.  It is my hope that the Shallyans can help him, to cure him of this mutation.  Should that fail, I will perform my duties as expected by my superiors, as mercifully as I can as expected by a friend.

However, the current situation we find ourselves in is more pressing.  What happened here at Unterbaum?  Why are there dead lying in the street, with the shafts of arrows sprouting from them?

by Rutger Abend (aka Chris Taylor)