162: Greta von Thulenburg

We followed the stream further along the gorge, and for the time being, perhaps it was because of her drug inspired vision, Blume was being unusually quiet.

We came to a patch of those moving mushroom poeple we had seen earlier. Willow tried to make friends with them and feed them some of her rations, but they were not interested. She didn’t know what they liked to eat so I suggested she might want to defecate for them.

We continued and a little further along the gorge a column of rock had fallen and was partly blocking our way. And there was a picture of that bipedal bird man on it. And here, the goblin’s defensive gantries above the gorge ended, so we guessed this was the end of goblin territory. Willow fetched a mushroom man to show it the picture, but it didn’t react.

So we walked past the column and on through the gorge, now without the protection of the goblins. And as the light was fading we were looking out for a sheltered spot to make camp. We did find one, but there were two old tents already there.

We had a look inside them, and in one there was a man lying down with an expression of horror on his face, and he was covered in a yellow fungus. He was still alive, but the more we looked at him the more fungus and less human he looked.

Greta retrieved his purse and his copy of the Life of Sigmar. And she noticed that the book had been published in 2184, and the latest coin he had had been minted in 2234. So it looked like this scene was nearly three hundred years old. The man had been there, in that pose, half man half fungus for three hundred years. And Willow wanted to collect some of the spores in a jar. I told her not to, but she did it anyway.

And then I did the decent thing, and razed everything to the ground. Fred went up the gorge a bit to look for a better campsite and to make sure the fire hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention.

And then we continued on and found a patch of the purple mushrooms that we had sampled at Cacklespit’s. Needless to say, Willow collected as many as she could. While she was gathering them up, however, she disturbed a small goblin who screamed in shock. And she had to give him some rations to shut him up.

And then we eventually came to the expected waterfall. But it was not any old waterfall, it was falling into the gorge in strange ways and looked wrong, and sometimes some of the water looked like it was flowing the wrong way. I checked out the magical winds around it, and it all felt a bit dark.

We decided to back up a bit and make camp, and found a spot with a lookout point where we could see both ways along the gorge. We could hear the noise of the goblin caves during the night, and on Willow’s watch she spotted an old goblin herding some younger ones on a mushroom picking trip.

And in the morning we were all feeling recuperated, and I had lost the fuzzy hangover from the purple soup. We soon found a passage that went behind the falls and into a cave. And we saw a figure that could have been a sculpture, but looked more like an actual skeletal figure had been captured by the rock. And as we passed it, it whispered something in classical, and Willow said it was saying, ‘Surrender hope, everyone entering. Raiders always regret going exploring tunnels. Resist urge’.

Fred suggested that whatever we found in these caves we should leave it behind, unless we really needed it. But I think we were here to find Ghal Maraz, which, if we were wise, we should probably leave behind. But we really needed it. Willow said we should probably bury the skeletal figure, but I think it would have been too difficult to get it out of the rock, as it was half buried anyway.

And we emerged into a large cavern with many stalactites and stalagmites, and there was no sign of the waterfall. The cavern felt strangely silent and dark, and we were completely dry again. This didn’t feel right, at all, and Greta began a prayer to Sigmar. I lit a fire and we could see a passageway leading out of the chamber, and so we followed that, glad to get out of the eerie atmosphere.

And we found ourselves in a sort of circle with three more ways out, and so we followed the left hand way. And we came to a cavern entrance that looked like the jaws of a monstrous beast. And there was a gamy stink like musty wet fur, and I sensed the Amber wind. And as we entered we felt the floor of the cavern was covered in a thick slimy mud and it felt like it was full of writhing slimy creatures. And it was difficult to even walk through it.

We heard a low growling, so I gathered some Aqshy, and a three headed beast of the dark gods ran towards us. We could see the creature was almost skeletal and it looked famished. I shot the great fire of U’Zhul at the thing and hit it directly. The flames exploded across the beast, injuring it, and setting it on fire.

Fred tried to close on the creature but got stuck in the foul mud. And so Greta stood and shot a pistol, hitting the creature. The monster worked itself into a frenzy and charged at Greta. It bit her and then followed up with its scorpion tail, which looked to be venomous, and Greta fell to the ground into the mud.

Willow ran towards Greta and tried to distract the beast by showing it some food, but I think Greta herself looked like a more satisfying meal to the creature than our rations. Willow threw the food straight into the beast’s mouth, but it did not assuage its hunger.

I summoned some more magic, needing a powerful spell against the beast, and Fred stayed where he was, still entangled by whatever slimy creatures writhed throughout the mud.

Greta pulled out her second pistol and shot the creature, but it was to no avail, and the thing bit right into her and snapped her pelvis, sending blood everywhere and killing her instantly. And then, still on fire, the creature was consumed by the flames and fell alongside its victim.

We decided we needed to leave the cavern as soon as we could, and so we dragged Greta’s body with us. While Fred had been struggling in the mud, he had found a very fine looking elven blade, and so he took that with him.

So we set Greta’s body down outside the bestial entrance to the cavern and Willow said a few words. We wondered whether to press on, or to carry the body out the way we had come.

She had been a loyal servant to Sigmar, and since we had fortuitously crossed paths in the mountains, a valued member of our group. And, despite all her bluster about her readiness to inflict the pain of Sigmar to interrogate his enemies, had never actually resorted to torture, that we had seen. Instead, resorting to more subtle methods to serve her god.

Greta’s dooming had been, ‘fearsome engines belch forth fires of thy destruction!’ I would say I am a fearsome engine that belches forth fire, but I didn’t do it.