Session 2 The Children of Schilderheim

The party makes their way to Applegate Farm, situated in thewoods right outside of the city of Scheinfeld. Upon arrival they could already see 4 PD horses hitched to the post outside of the main house with a PD guard standing right next to them.
When seeing this the party decides to split up. Plum, obviously the most athletic one of the party, decides to put his floofy little butt to good use and used a stealthy approach sneaking through the corn field towards the house. Roda, being the only human of the party and the one with the least amount of brains decides to approach the situation head on. Meanwhile, Orn and the horse stay behind and eventually hide in the bushes. Plum manages to successfully sneak through the corn field at the same pace as Roda approaches the house. Because even chubby kitties are sneak masters!
The guard asks him to state his business and Roda says he plans to ask if he can stay here for the night

The guard kind of mocks him, big bad barbarian too scared to spend a night out in the woods. (Well the man did have a point.) However he allows him to knock. Upon seeing Rodachan the old lady that owns the farm instantly recognizes him as the lad Morgain described to her earlier in the town square and pretends he's a long lost friend of the family and takes him in so the guards won't question it too much. The couple is still in distres over their dead son. When the PD officers leave, the rest of the party pop up at the door one by one and enter. They leave the horse tied up outside and the lady tells them about how her son disappeared. She informs the party that her son is not the only child that went missing. After noticing her son was missing she went around to ask the neighbouring towns if they had seen anything but instead ended up with a whole list of children who disappeared in the days leading up to her son's disappearence. She hands this list to the party.
She then shows them a lock of brown hair that the PD had given her as proof that her son was dead but nothing more. The party manages to convince the couple to not trust the PD and that they will go look for their son the next day but right now they have to go catch a necromancer like the badasses they are!

While the party was inside chatting to the wife her husband had gone outside and removed all the PD armor off of the horse. Orn and Plum easily fit on the horse just as before. Unfortunately they do not have an extra mount for Roda. However Winnie did tell him they had an aggressive bull called Blue in the shed out back. So Roda (thinking something is better than nothing) runs off to tame it. And after a magnificent display worthy of a spanish matador, he manages to tame the wild beast and use it as his ride.
They venture towards the graveyard and on the way they find the body of Hopkins slumped against a tree with the words 'Filthy Dwarf' carved into his forehead. Orn decides to take him along and they continue their journey. Upon arrival at the graveyard they hear sounds coming from the trap they had set up earlier.
They decide to investigate and see Elsa, the same women they had encountered on their first trip to the cemetery, hang upside down from the noose. They decide to interrogate her. However she isn't very coöperative. As they continue to ask questions she gets more and more distressed and upon hearing her cries her late and now zombified husband appears. He is distressed and upset because his wife is in trouble and reaches for his greatsword. She tries her very best to calm her husband down but to no avail. Orn channeled his divine powers to ward the undead husband off. Roda then cuts Elsa down and ties her up. They hastily make their way out of the Graveyard without a battle, thanks to Orn's divine intervention, and take Elsa to Appelgate Farm with them.

Once they arrive back at Applegate farm Orn takes Hopkins' body out back and decides to bury him next to the shed, giving him his final rites before covering him with dirt. He then goes back inside with the others. They have a talk with Elsa, asking her about her actions. It turns out her husband had died a couple of months after being drafted. They were supposed to get married when he got back... However it was not to be. Overcome with grief she desperately searched for a way to bring him back. This was when she stumbled upon an old lady at the Imperial Shipping Company that sold her the necromancer book. She never intended to cause trouble and begs not to be given to the PD as they would take her head. Meanwhile as the party thinks about what to do with her Winnie provides everyone with a warm meal, giving fresh milk to Plum who greatly appreciates it. They eventually decide not to kill Elsa and decide to go retrieve the head of the cookie witch they met in the forest to collect the necromancer reward. Meanwhile Winnie promised to keep an eye on Elsa who then in turn promised to stop her necromancing ways.
Plum and Orn then go off to collect the head, meanwhile Roda tries to pray to his patron Lugh but with no success. He isn unable to connect.

Once they return to the farm. They go to bed and the next morning Plum finds his newly acquired cat doing a weird little wiggly dance on the windowsil but pretends he didn't see it and treats her like a normal kitty. They get ready for the day and take some supplies with them for the road after they heard about a PD settlement in Uder from the cat who eventualy did reveal herself to be possessed by the cookie witch. Before leaving they decide to leave the head of the cookie witch's human corpse with the couple so they could collect the reward whilst the party continues their search for Oliver in Uder.

Weary of travelling by horse they eventually stop at the nearby river and decide to build a raft so they could use the stream to transport them to Uder. This cut their travel time in half and allowed them to save some supplies. Due to this they manage to get there pretty quickly but upon reaching the town they see that it's all been reduced to ashes. The only thing still standing amongst all the destruction is a statue of Nina. They decide to investigate and stumble upon a mysterious cloaked man. He instroduces himself as Derek Renfri. After inquiring about the party's whereabouts he tells them about what happened to the town.
The townsfolk had been given multiple eviction notices, sent out by the PD but they refused to budge. Mostly because people didn't know where else they could possibly go. They had lived their all their lives and now they were suddenly being made virtually homeless. So the town resist and this obviously pissed the PD off so early that morning they had arrived and simply burnt the entire village to the ground. Derek only survived because he went to the neighboring villages to ask for help... But by the time they arrived the damage had been done and Derek's beautiful wife to be had been burnt to a crisp together with the rest of the village. Only a handful survived. However before the party could offer their condolences Derek quickly hushed everyone. He noticed something wasn't right and ushered the party into the bushes. It seems Derek had gotten everyone hidden just in time as another PD convoy arrived within minutes. At the head of the convoy was an old and rather crusty looking PD official. He was delighted to see the city burnt to the ground because now he could build his new estate there.

Derek eventually led the party to Schilderheim after the danger subsided with the idea that if there are any children in the area they must be there. However he refused to go further into the city, remaining on the outer edge where all the sick and poor live. The party finds this strange but proceeds. There's a lot of sick, more than expected. The river itself was also incredibly polluted with green and glowy goopy stuff.(Yes, there truly isn't a more accurate discription.) They sneak their way into the city and hear a lot of commotion coming from the large town square. So they decide to check it out. They see that almost the entire city is gathered in front of a stage. On that stage stands an old man and he is giving a speech about the mortal sin of thievery. He is clearly quite full of himself and the PD soldiers that run the city all seem to highly approve of him.
Meanwhile a poor family, children included, is being led to the guilotine right next to him. Everyone was quiet and crying, horrified by the display. only the PD soldiers were cheering as they watched the beheading unfold. However when it was the children's turn Roda found himself unable to just stand by and watch any longer. Rodachan got up and called out for the men to stop. This didn't go over well with Lucius and he quickly had the children moved off of the stage and back into their portable cages. He then ordered his men to start ransacking the crowd in search for the 'rebel'.

Unable to hide in the crowd, the party was forced to run from the muderous PD soldiers who quite literally offed anyone who ran. That is when an old little lady called out to them and helped them escape into her magic shop. Her name was Uma. However she never cared to share her reasoning for saving the party with them. Perhaps she just felt like this was the right thing to do. She helped them hide in the shop until things calmed down. Plum ends up sweet talking her and manages to steal an invisibility potion while she isn't looking. This potion he then divides in 3 and pours some in every member's flask. Sneaky bastard. Roda snoops around the front of the shop and finds the head of the divine spear he has been searching for. However he is quickly pulled back into the gruesome reality of their situation as PD soldiers run through the streets and kill another innocent soul, causing the blood to splatter on the windows of the shop. He hid behidn the register and snuk to the back where he had a minor breakdown, knowing he had caused this loss of innocent life. He was in deep shock. Uma, however, had a remedy for this and offered Roda some herbs to sniff. This turned out to be a very addictive mix of herbs and Roda ended up unknowingly getting addicted to drugs. He wants more but that comes with a price. First taste's free, coming back for seconds requires payment. Uma wants the goggles of Walter, a skaven scientist hidden in the Schilderheim Keep as payment for more herbs. Not any Skaven. He is the head skaven. "Can't miss him." She states. Roda agrees to this and then follows the party out. They have decided to go to the keep anyway to look for the children since that is also where Lucius ordered the other children to be taken.

As a way to get into the keep and inner city, the party decided to hide in the barrels of an imperial wine ship that was about to be off loaded. Once they got in Plum and Orn hid on the top deck and Roda hid below in another barrel. While hiding he noted 2 children sitting in another barrel but didn't rat them out.
A PD commander entered to search the barrels to ensure there were no illegal people or goods on board. He heard one of the children cough as she was quite sick and instantly opened the barrel. He took them out one by one and first slit the girl's throat before proceeding to take her healthy looking brother with him. He went to Roda's barrel and Roda drank his invisibility potion so that when the man opened the barrel and tossed it Roda wouldn't get caught. Another unknown man was eventually found to be hidden between all the barrels and made a run for it upon being discovered. Only for him to be shot down by archers with crossbows.

Being well hidden, Orn and Plum were taken down into the wine cellar. Meanwhile Roda snuck inside of the building on his own and managed to find the cellar door. However, he decided to put the rest of his invisibility to use and followed the guards who were dragging the boy from earlier and some other children down the hall. Eventually he came face to face with the infamous Walter. The mad scientist was sitting at his desk filling out papers and speaking in common but with a heavy accent. However he couldn't stay long as he was running out of invisibility. He had to make his way back to the cellar and hid in one of the barrels with the others. He tried to contact Lugh his patron but without much success. The party decided to wait for nightfall so they could explore the building more safely.
Which they did and after some shenanigans where Roda showed them the wrong way before showing them the right way they ended up in heavily secured tunnels. This caused the party to have to open 2 locked gates by solving the riddles on them. While doing so they wake up a Skaven guard and nearly end getting themselves killed while trying to defeat him. The Skaven had used the trap door security system to try and make Orn and Plum plumet to their deaths. Luckily Roda got them out in time. They made their way further down the tunnel and were able to hear children cry as well as guards yelling all sorts of abuse at them. They continue and finally reach the end of the hallways, causing them to come face to face with Walter, jah!
Sadly, this concludes our adventure for now.