WFRP Empire Campaign Sessions 6, 7

Spoiler Warning

Session 6

Session 6 picked-up where Session 5 left off, with the party investigating an apparent group of cultists in Bogenhaffen.  It was another investigative session with the characters meeting with stonewalling and beurocracy at every corner.  At the end of the session, the DM summarized the following plot-points from the campaign: 

What the PC's think they know:

• Chased down a 3 legged goblin and found it's remains, and a demon, in the basement of Steinhager offices
• Met the thieves guild- Baumann is a very nice guy, deeply concerned for his friends etc…
• A cover-up- the goblin is said to have died in a warehouse (Steinhager) with a drunken guardsman and a flawed cover story
• Amadman is getting prophetic, haven't found him - yet!
• The moon is looking a little freaky…
• stiffed for $ and a nice stay at the inn
• Stonewalled at the town hall
• The secret temple has been stripped and locked up tight as a drum.

People the PC's have met:

• Magistrate Richter- said he would look into things- seemed concerned. When the PC's returned to speak with him, he was suddenly "ill"
• Dr. Malthusius- friendly fellow- not brave but has been helpful
• Gottri- dead dwarf- heart removed- a drunk that was seen being escorted away from the festival by a young man wearing the liery of the Teugen house.
• Tuegen has big canines… and is not very helpful.
• Councillor Magirius took them lunch- the order is a charitable organisation.
• Reiner Goertrin- Watch Captain- serious guy, doesn't believe a word of it…

 

Places the PC'sare aware of:

• The warehouse where the goblin DIDN’T die
• Steinhager's offices
• The Adel ring- all the rich houses are here
• Temple of Verena- large library
• Temple of Shallya- runs the soup kitchen
• Mourners' Guild- Karl Teugen died 2 years ago- purple skin, huge tongue…nasty. Died In 2 weeks flat.

Inter-Session Planning

Frustrated with the slow progress and out inability to charm or bully anyone into giving us the information we desire, us players made a plan for session 7.  Out intention was to eliminate the two likely cultist-leaders that we know about and try and force any remaining cultists to come out of hiding and confront us.  After much debate we came to the following plan: 

1. Tell DM we want to go to city hall and meet Steinheiger in his office. We want to try and join Ordo Septinarious.
2. Once in his office, we shut the door and declare him a demonologist and assassinate him
3. We then quietly make our way to Teugen the Vampire's office. We kill him and drive a stake through his heart and "Drugs" can sprinkle garlic all over it.(we might need some garlic to defeat it anyway)
4. We flee to the slums across the river(A) or the sewers or the thieves guild and lay low until the heat is off

Things didn't go entirely according to plan, but they went well.  I wonder if this is the key to running long-running mystery games: getting players to plan and talk between sessions.  This seems to solve the problem of slow sessions--if the planning is done between sessions, then the session itself can be spent putting the plan to action.
  

 Session 7

Anyway, so we immediately ran into the problem that Steinheiger would only meet us in his private office, so we'd have to move fast to reach city hall and get Teugen too.  Anyway, as for Steinheiger, we pulled it off quite well.  We didn't tell the DM that we intended to kill him until he had already said that we were alone in the room with him.  And it was a profitable assassination:

• We found a secret door by which to escape down to the sewer-level room where we defeated the demon in session 3.
• 1000GP
• An OD amulet
• A grimoire of spells
•  Various documents

 That said we did mess-up a few things:

1. Our attempts to cover-up the assassination were half-baked, so now we're on the lam
2. Our escape was too circuitous and by the time we made it to Town Hall to go after Teugen, the place was swarming with guards
3. Various clues we got later seemed to indicate that Teugen was the more dangerous cultist

Expanding on that last point:

• Analysis of the Grimoire seem to indicate that Steinheiger was a minor wizard--small stuff
• A note we found seems to indicate that Teugen is calling the shots
• The cultist council later met at Teugen's house, which seems to confirm this

Anyway, the biggest reveal was that the Demon Room was some sort of cult temple and that Teugen is preparing a replacement Temple somewhere.  Also that they have a ritual planned for the end of the Festival which they all plan to get rich from, though our research at the library suggests that everyone will just get eaten by Tzeentch.

And Councillor Magirious is supposed to meet one of the PCs in secret next session, so we'll see what comes of that(my money is that he turns-up dead beforehand).