Penny

The Sunday Group

@Naril hail to the queen!

The Sunday Group

An example character (not a binding format):

Name: Penny

Age: 32

Appearance: Tired and Stressed

Concept: Doctor Neutral

Powers/skills: Super judgey, Sublime arrogance, lofty ambition

Things Your Character Wants to Happen (probably wont):
Sleep

Things You as a Writer Wants to Happen (Maybe will):
Successful group RP

Writing Sample? - Look I can't stop you from providing an writing sample but seriously, if you tell me you are an advanced RPer, I will take your word for it.

The Sunday Group

@POOHEAD189@Skwint@Thatguyinastore@PatientBean@Atalanta@Steel Legion@Fetzen@Theyra@Theyra

The thread!

As I've stated this will be a SMALL group RP as that is the only way I can see it working.


Submitting a Character

Characters will be chosen on their merits rather than first come first served.

There is no official character sheet as I don't like character sheets that much, feel free to use whatever format you like.

Do let me know what special powers/skills (if any) your character has.

Do let me know something about the home life of your character.

Do not submit an immortal dragon vampire who is also somehow 18.

Do not submit an edgy loner who is an edgy edgelord.

Do not do not submit an overtly evil character. The world of the Sunday Group is a gray one but we are on the side of the angels. The metaphorical angles. Not the literal angels. Fuck those guys.

Do not feel the need to provide a writing sample unless you really feel it says something about your character. I trust you are all advanced!

Paranormal Detectives

Id say that is enough interest! The thread liveth!

https://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/188465-the-sunday-group/ooc

The Sunday Group

Everyone has a story. You know the story. The one you Aunt dusts off every Thanksgiving when the wine is flowing and the sense is going? The one about the old house on the end of the street where flowers never grow and maybe old Sweeny killed his wife and hid her in the drywall. Or perhaps it was the time your grandmother swore that she saw something floating in a broken window grinning at her. Maybe it was you. Maybe you heard strange voices out in the woods, or glimpsed something in the fog out at sea one night. Maybe you saw the same pale woman everywhere you went for a week and you swear the bitch had no reflection.

There are thousands of stories like these and they all have one things in common. Ninety nine percent of them are bullshit. Of course ninety nine percent certainty means that one time in a hundred you’re dead.

There are things out there in dark. Sometimes they leave us alone, hell maybe most times, but sometimes the snatch up babies and sacrifice them in stone circles. Sometimes the feed on the minds of the living. Sometime they set fires for the joy of watching people burn.

Who do you turn to if something like that happens? Cops can’t help, write you a prescription and ship you to a mental hospital if you even mentioned it. You need professionals, and frankly there aren’t that many people stupid enough to put their heads in that particular noose. People who know, know enough to be fucking terrified. Usually they find the deepest darkest hole they can climb into.

Want to turn to the sort of broken desperadoes still stupid enough to stand in the line of supernatural fire? Good luck with that.

Welcome to the Sunday Group

This RP will follow the adventures of the members of the Sunday Group. It is a story about the occult world behind the world, and those brave or foolish enough to want to understand it.

Somewhere in a big city in America, there is a nondescript building. It is a few stories tall and it has an extensive basement. It could easily be the Law Offices Of Boring, Dreary and Bland, no one would guess that it is the home of one of the nation’s only occult detective agencies.

Employees of the Sunday Group are a diverse bunch. Small time magical practitioners, those with strange abilities, broken down cops who have seen too much, or just regular folk who saw something they shouldn’t and want to do something about it. Everyone who works for the Group has touched the supernatural world in some way or another, and for whatever reason just cant let it go and sink back into the comforting security of the mundane.

The World

The world is very much like our own except there is a secret magical world beneath it. It isn’t happy Twilight Magical though, think of it as somewhere between Harry Dresden and the Call of Cthulhu. Many of the trappings of any Urban Fantasy will apply here and I encourage you to introduce them into the setting. Think a shotgun filled with rocksalt will take out a ghost? Great, it is in. Want werewolves to have a silver allergy? No problem. Anything you want to introduce into the setting will probably be ok. If I have a problem with it, Ill ask you to reconsider privately.

Magic for the Modern Age

Some humans have the ability to handle arcane forces, either innately or through elaborate ritual preparations. Some people gain magical powers via congress with spirits or demons, even Gods there is always a price to pay for subverting the natural order though. Sooner or later the bill comes due.

Magic exists in the world in a multitude of form and traditions. It is even possible to do some magic by computer. I dont want to put to many restrictions on people here. Many types of magic do not require the use of spells or incantations. Some people might be able to move small objects with their minds, read the surface thoughts of others, turn invisible or any number of other small boons you might come up with.

While magic can be very effective under the right circumstances it isn’t a be all and end all solution. A powerful practitioner might be able to hurl a bolt of lighting but it is normally much simpler, safer and more effective just to use a gun. Magic is a tool, use it wisely.

Who are the Players?

The players will take the roles of detectives in the drama, but this won't be an RP solely about solving crime. Personal relationships between characters, their families and dependents will be crucial to the story.

Be connected! The nature of the world is such that all the brooding loners with a tragic but unknowable backstory were exsanginuated long ago. You don’t need to like people, but you do need to depend on them to survive.

What Can I Play?

You can play a human (or near human) with some minor edge over the rest of the herd. You cannot play an immortal dragon vampire samurai. Your character should have some life experience. I don't want to flat out say that they need to be a certain age but my personal preference is to avoid the teenage types who no sane detective would want covering their back when the tentacle hits the pentacle.

Notes On the RP

This will be a small group RP. I’m looking for 3-4 players tops. I want personal interaction to matter and I just dont see that in large group RPs.

This will be a collaborative rp and we will create the world as we go, feel free to introduce detail! I will exercise some limited forms of narrative control if necessary but my instinct is to let it ride if it fits in the framework of the fiction.

This will be an 18+ RP. Sex, drugs, sex drugs and horrible nightmares from distant space times ect.

Inspirations and Style

Inspirations for this include Call of Cthulhu, Harry Dresden, Supernatural, Delta Green, the Laundry Files. The goal is to be not quite as bleak as Lovecraft but to maintain something approaching that level of horror and danger. The protagonists can effect the outcome but plenty of stuff out there is well beyond the weight class of the Sunday Group.

How to Write a Collaborative Mystery

As long time Pennyphiles will know this is my third fourth attempt to get his rp up and running. In the past one of the problems with it was how can we present a mystery in a way that lets players interact with the mystery rather than I as the GM doling out all the intel? Fortunately I have recently played an RPG called Lovecraftesque which has given me a potential solution. I'm going to allow players to introduce clues, and then have players formulate their best guess as to what is going on in the OOCs to steer the whole thing towards a coherent narrative. I may ask you to rewrite occasionally to facilitate this, or your character may simply be wrong or deceived about events you have describe.

This is somewhat experimental and may change.

Pacing

As my Father is fond of saying 'We didn't come here to fuck spiders.' What does this mean? I honestly don't know, but the tone of this RP will be active. I don't mind a certain amount of the internal life of the character being presented but wherever possible do something rather than picking up a cup of coffee and taking four paragraphs to do it. Quality is not quantity ect ect ect.

Paranormal Detectives

Everyone has a story. You know the story. The one you Aunt dusts off every Thanksgiving when the wine is flowing and the sense is going? The one about the old house on the end of the street where flowers never grow and maybe old Sweeny killed his wife and hid her in the drywall. Or perhaps it was the time your grandmother swore that she saw something floating in a broken window grinning at her. Maybe it was you. Maybe you heard strange voices out in the woods, or glimpsed something in the fog out at sea one night. Maybe you saw the same pale woman everywhere you went for a week and you swear the bitch had no reflection.

There are thousands of stories like these and they all have one things in common. Ninety nine percent of them are bullshit. Of course ninety nine percent certainty means that one time in a hundred you’re dead.

There are things out there in dark. Sometimes they leave us alone, hell maybe most times, but sometimes the snatch up babies and sacrifice them in stone circles. Sometimes the feed on the minds of the living. Sometime they set fires for the joy of watching people burn.

Who do you turn to if something like that happens? Cops can’t help, write you a prescription and ship you to a mental hospital if you even mentioned it. You need professionals, and frankly there aren’t that many people stupid enough to put their heads in that particular noose. People who know, know enough to be fucking terrified. Usually they find the deepest darkest hole they can climb into.

Want to turn to the sort of broken desperadoes still stupid enough to stand in the line of supernatural fire? Good luck with that.

Welcome to the Sunday Group

This RP will follow the adventures of the members of the Sunday Group. It is a story about the occult world behind the world, and those brave or foolish enough to want to understand it.

Somewhere in a big city in America, there is a nondescript building. It is a few stories tall and it has an extensive basement. It could easily be the Law Offices Of Boring, Dreary and Bland, no one would guess that it is the home of one of the nation’s only occult detective agencies.

Employees of the Sunday Group are a diverse bunch. Small time magical practitioners, those with strange abilities, broken down cops who have seen too much, or just regular folk who saw something they shouldn’t and want to do something about it. Everyone who works for the Group has touched the supernatural world in some way or another, and for whatever reason just cant let it go and sink back into the comforting security of the mundane.

The World

The world is very much like our own except there is a secret magical world beneath it. It isn’t happy Twilight Magical though, think of it as somewhere between Harry Dresden and the Call of Cthulhu. Many of the trappings of any Urban Fantasy will apply here and I encourage you to introduce them into the setting. Think a shotgun filled with rocksalt will take out a ghost? Great, it is in. Want werewolves to have a silver allergy? No problem. Anything you want to introduce into the setting will probably be ok. If I have a problem with it, Ill ask you to reconsider privately.

Magic for the Modern Age

Some humans have the ability to handle arcane forces, either innately or through elaborate ritual preparations. Some people gain magical powers via congress with spirits or demons, even Gods there is always a price to pay for subverting the natural order though. Sooner or later the bill comes due.

Magic exists in the world in a multitude of form and traditions. It is even possible to do some magic by computer. I dont want to put to many restrictions on people here. Many types of magic do not require the use of spells or incantations. Some people might be able to move small objects with their minds, read the surface thoughts of others, turn invisible or any number of other small boons you might come up with.

While magic can be very effective under the right circumstances it isn’t a be all and end all solution. A powerful practitioner might be able to hurl a bolt of lighting but it is normally much simpler, safer and more effective just to use a gun. Magic is a tool, use it wisely.

Who are the Players?

The players will take the roles of detectives in the drama, but this won't be an RP solely about solving crime. Personal relationships between characters, their families and dependents will be crucial to the story.

Be connected! The nature of the world is such that all the brooding loners with a tragic but unknowable backstory were exsanginuated long ago. You don’t need to like people, but you do need to depend on them to survive.

What Can I Play?

You can play a human (or near human) with some minor edge over the rest of the herd. You cannot play an immortal dragon vampire samurai. Your character should have some life experience. I don't want to flat out say that they need to be a certain age but my personal preference is to avoid the teenage types who no sane detective would want covering their back when the tentacle hits the pentacle.

Notes On the RP

This will be a small group RP. I’m looking for 3-4 players tops. I want personal interaction to matter and I just dont see that in large group RPs.

This will be a collaborative rp and we will create the world as we go, feel free to introduce detail! I will exercise some limited forms of narrative control if necessary but my instinct is to let it ride if it fits in the framework of the fiction.

This will be an 18+ RP. Sex, drugs, sex drugs and horrible nightmares from distant space times ect.

Inspirations and Style

Inspirations for this include Call of Cthulhu, Harry Dresden, Supernatural, Delta Green, the Laundry Files. The goal is to be not quite as bleak as Lovecraft but to maintain something approaching that level of horror and danger. The protagonists can effect the outcome but plenty of stuff out there is well beyond the weight class of the Sunday Group.

How to Write a Collaborative Mystery

As long time Pennyphiles will know this is my third fourth attempt to get his rp up and running. In the past one of the problems with it was how can we present a mystery in a way that lets players interact with the mystery rather than I as the GM doling out all the intel? Fortunately I have recently played an RPG called Lovecraftesque which has given me a potential solution. I'm going to allow players to introduce clues, and then have players formulate their best guess as to what is going on in the OOCs to steer the whole thing towards a coherent narrative. I may ask you to rewrite occasionally to facilitate this, or your character may simply be wrong or deceived about events you have describe.

This is somewhat experimental and may change.

Pacing

As my Father is fond of saying 'We didn't come here to fuck spiders.' What does this mean? I honestly don't know, but the tone of this RP will be active. I don't mind a certain amount of the internal life of the character being presented but wherever possible do something rather than picking up a cup of coffee and taking four paragraphs to do it. Quality is not quantity ect ect ect.

Cold Iron and Black Powder

The Temple of Morr was large and imposing, with soaring arches and great windows of glass which had been artfully stained in shades of blue and gold. Skull iconography sprouted from it with depressing regularity, spreading out into the Gardens that surrounded it. Altdorf’s dead were too numerous for any Garden of Morr to hold for long, so all but the greatest were exhumed after a time, the dry bones stacked in ossuaries or buried in large common pits. The work was continuous and at any given time one could see the black robed acolytes of the temple stacking bones for disposal. For obvious reasons it wasn’t a particularly well attended temple. Hannah hadn’t been here since her father had died two years earlier, and she wasn’t keen to visit again.
Koenig had, at least, allowed her to return to her garret where she had taken a much needed bath and changed her clothes. She was dressed now in a simple grey leather tunic over a gold and black hunting shirt that had been given to her by an Averlander for whom she had won a duel. A dark woolen cloak hung over one shoulder concealing her pistols and her fencing steel from casual observation. Fine leather riding boots rose to mid calf over brown doeskin trousers. All in all the outfit was designed to avoid showing any kind of sectarian allegiance. Rioting had been avoided this morning, but come tonight, when the end of the work day released men to their drink, things were likely to get very heated. It might be worth your life to be wearing a strip of red or white cloth in the wrong part of town.

“This little job of yours dosen’t involve anything… unnatural does it?” she asked Koenig as they passed a pile of skulls in a wheelbarrow.

“Be serious for once in your idot life, will ya?” Koenig snarled. Hannah realised with a start that the watch captain was nervous, though whether his nervousness was about the task he had in mind for her, or just general unease in the presence of so much obvious death, she couldn’t be sure. The entered the temple through an unobtrusive rear door, moving down a flight of dingy steps to a set of large oak doors. Koenig knocked and they were admitted by a young woman in the black robes of an Acolyte of Morr. Hannah gave her a smile, but the priestess didn’t acknowledge either of them, merely turning and leading the way deeper into the temple. The went down into the embalming vaults, heavy with the smell of death and the unguents that Morr’s priests used to preserve them until burial. It was cold. Very cold. The walls seemed to sweat moisture and Hannah’s breath began to steam. Finally they reached their destination, the deepest embalming chamber in the temple. Inside on a stone slab lay a man, his face contracted into a rictus of pain. He wore the robes of a sigmarite preacher, somewhat the worse for several large blood stains that spread from tears in the cloth. He seemed somewhat familiar to Hannah though she couldn’t quite place him.

“This is Helmut Greefer,” Koenig stated as they entered. Greefer. Hannah remembered now, one of the charismatic preachers who spent their time whipping people up into a frenzy at the Sigmarplaz. She looked him over, noting he couldn’t have been dead more than a day, even with the cold.

“What do you think?” Koenig asked, his voice serious. Hannah peered at the wounds, obviously knifework.

“There appears to have been a murder, someone should inform the Watch,” she replied filppantly. Koenig growled in frustration.

“Would you pull what passes for your head out of what passes for your arse for a minute?” he demanded. Hannah threw up her hands in surrender.

“Fine, looks like he was stabbed to death, I bet they get a dozen just like this in here everyday,” she replied, not understanding why the Watch captain had brought her here. She wasn’t a barber surgeon, or for that matter an acolyte of Morr, either of whom could certainly have tole him more than she could.

“Two dozen,” the Priestess, whose presence Hannah had forgotten, put in unexpectedly. Hannah cast her another look, amused to see her leaning against a bier and picking at her nails. It was quite the most ordinary pose she had ever seen a priestess adopt.

“Herr Greefer was hit by a wagon,” Koenig stated flatly. Hannah arched an eyebrow and leaned close as though scrutinizing the wounds carefully.

“Looks like three very small, very sharp wagons,” she commented, earning a snicker from the Priestess. Koenig gave the acolyte a black look and then sighed as if explaining something to a very young, very dim child.

“If Herr Greefer was stabbed then it’d be murder wouldn’t it?” Koenig began. Hannah’s eyes went very wide.

“Why I believe you are right! With insight like that you might consider a career with the Watch!” Hannah couldn’t help herself. The priestess burst out in laughter, quickly covering her mouth to stifle such sacrilegious sound in such a sacred place.

“Use what passes for your brains Fischer!” Koenig snapped, clearly losing patience with her insouciance. “What happens if a popular preacher is murdered at a time like this?” Hannah sobered, imagining the Sigmarite mob howling for the blood of their Ulrician counterparts.

“There it is, all the sense the gods gave a goat working together at last,” Koenig observed. The priestess continued to snigger.

“Don’t you people take a vow of bloody silencer or some’in’,” Koenig demanded.

“No,” the priestess said, clearly unabashed. “Its just most of what we have to say is pretty depressing. Hello Sir, would you like to hear about the inevitability of death?” Her voice sing songed in a pleasant contralto and Hannah gave her a longer look. The priestess was a young woman, perhaps younger than Hannah herself with a soft rounded face that looked vaguely Brettonian despite a lack of accent. What hair she could see beneath the black cowl of her robe was very pale blonde, almost white.
“Well do us a favor and embrace your inner corpse while I’m talking,” Koenig snapped. The priestess mimed buttoning her lip.

“Now as I was trying to say, this man died in an accident, because if he didn’t we will have a real bloody problem on our hands. I let anyone in the watch in on this and the whole precinct will know, and someone is bound to go pin the tail on the nearest wolf and then we will have the watch station burned down around our ears.” Hannah nodded, understanding the difficulty. With the best of intentions this murder would look suspicously like the work of Ulricians. For all she knew it had been, that was as likely as a random knifing, maybe more so considering these preachers usually at least put on a show of being little more than beggars.

“Ok, so, pistol ball dodged, just toss him in the ground and call it an accident?” she probed. Koenig leaned back on one of the damp walls, folding his arms. His face was troubled, uncharacteristically so in Hannah’s experience of the man.

“Something is going on here Fischer, something… wrong. I don’t know much, but I know this city and there is something strange about all this religious turmoil. Never seen the like. At first I thought, you know, times are hard people are looking for something but now…” he made a gesture to the corpse, “I’m not so sure.”

“Ok, well unless you want to call out a vague sense of unease and have me fight a duel with it, I still dont see what you want from me.” Koenig sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples.

“You're a clever woman, Fischer despite all evidence to the contrary. Better yet no one will look at you and think you are anything more than a drunken idiot who said some stupid things. You can go places, you can ask questions.” The penny dropped.

“You want me to investigate a murder for you?!” she gasped in shock. If there was one simple rule to surviving in the shadow world of Altdorf it was that you didn’t work with the Watch. You didn’t see anything, you didn’t know anything, you were actually from Nuln and here on a pilgrimage.

“A miracle! Can it be that she has finally gotten the point?” Koneig asked the vaulted ceiling.

Cold Iron and Black Powder

Hannah picked at the hard bread without enthusiasm. The loaf that sat between her and the watch commander was stamped with the seal of one of the guild bakeries, which meant the saw dusty feeling was counterfeited by her mouth. Altdorf was awash with criminality, it was true, but it was worth your life to pass polluted bread; more than one merchant had been thrown into his own oven for the offense. The Full Moon was a workman’s tavern not far from the Watch house on Grabbler street, which Koenig commanded. The beer was good though and it soothed a tender stomach without being strong enough to recreate the original problem. The smell of cooking meat came from the three large black pots which hung on an iron bar across the impressive hearth. The Full Moon was a favorite with masons and navies and that patronage was shown off by the magnificent working of the simple river stones, painstaking planned and polished till they shone like marble. Mistress Tull and her three daughters were carrying arm loads of vegetables to hurl into the pots, adding oats to make the stew that would be the midday and evening meal. A little food seemed to be helping and she tore a bigger chunk from the bread.

“If you puke again I’m putin’ it on ya tab,” Koenig remarked. The Watch Captain wasn’t eating, but he had already put away three pints of the mediocre ale in a hearty liquid breakfast. Hannah stuck her tongue out at him and went back to chewing. Truthfully she felt much better, having washed in the watches simple changing room and accompanied Koneig to the garret that she rented above Barinson’s pawn shop for fresh clothes. Her breastplate had been oiled and tucked away under her bed, safe from thieves unless Barinson was late on paying his tithe to Ranald, which the dwarf never was. Koneig had chidded her for wasting time with it, but Hannah came from a humble background and her funds might not run to food and replacement breastplates if she let it rust. Besides, it was lucky, and no duelist took chances when it came to luck.

“So what is it you want me to do,” Hannah asked, finally getting to the point when it was clear Koenig was in no hurry. She needed to do some business today, people expected money from her, people who knew she had won yesterday and would want their gelt before she drank or gambled it away. There would be some left after she squared Tilean Tom and Squeaks Garvey. Not a whole lot, but that was how it went in Altdorf. After that there would be work, over to the Sigmarplatz to lounge around and look dangerous, after yesterday she didn’t doubt some nob would want to hire the fighter who one the rosette on Sigmartag.

“Oi, you bloody list’nin’,” Koenig demanded, snapping his fingers in front of her eyes. Hannah belatedly realized he had been speaking. It had been nearly two days since she had slept, if you didn’t count drunkenly passing out.

“Right, sorry, what?” she asked. Koenig rolled his eyes.

“I said, you might have noticed things are a bit tense right now, which might, now that I come to think of it, be giving you a little too much credit.” Hannah chewed her mouthful of bread stoically and nodded.

“You mean between the Sigmartyrs and the Ulridiots?” she asked. Koenig cuffed her around the ears, it was a casual blow but it smarted.

“Keep your bloody voice down will ya? Last thing I need is this lot scraggin’ ya!” he snapped.

“I’d certainly hate to inconvenience you,” Hannah replied dryly, feeling that it would indeed be a terrible thing if Koenig were inconvenience by her unfortunate murder. She leaned forward across the table so she could whisper to her companion.

“What do you mean this lot?” she demand, “is this an Ulrican tavern?”
“And the penny drops, well done Fletcher, I mean its called the Full Moon and has pictures of wolves all over it, but you still managed to deduce that in a little over an hour.” Hannah was not amused.

“Are you out of your tiny jackbooted mind? I need to lay low and…” Koenig stood up and cleared his throat, the eyes of the dozen denizens of the tavern swiveled to him. It was only mid morning, but these were the serious drinkers, tavern regulars who would be here most of the day.

“This here is Hannah Fletcher,” Koenig declared, grabbing her by the arm and hauling her to her feet.
“The talkative one from the fountain last night,” he elaborated, incase the narrowed eyes and covert drawing of weapons hadn’t already made it clear that she had been recognized. A bouncer took a step towards them, lifting a truncheon from his belt.

“Now I interviewed miss Fletcher here, and she was pretty drunk,” Koneig continued, ignoring the fact that Hannah was trying to pull away from his grip, the thick ham sized fist clamped like a vice around her wrist. Disapproving mutterings circled the bar. The words ‘blasphemy’ and and ‘Sigmarite bitch’ featured prominently in the soto voce chorus.

“ She insulted Great Ulric!” someone at the back of what was now looking terrifyingly like a mob shouted.

“Called him a ‘great dumb ox from his great dumb mountain’” Koenig supplied, massively unhelpfully to Hannah’s mind. More angry mutterings.

“But like I said she was really drunk,” Koenig continued and “besides did you hear what she said about Sigmar?” Koenig chuckled and shook her wrist in the general direction of the mob. The bastard was a decent orator, decent enough that they hadn’t torn her appart yet, but that couldn’t last.

“What did she say?” one of the mob called, a skinny man with a flowing mustache. Hannah recognised him as one of Koenig’s watchmen, though he was in casual clothes, looking every bit like a mason drinking away his pay in a tavern. Koenig shook her wrist insistently and Hannah thought she understood what the whole pantomime was about.
“I said that anyone so obsessed with waving a stick around is trying to draw attention away from the fact he hasn’t any stones,” Hannah called, relieved to find her voice didn’t crack or squeak with fright. There was a laugh from the back of the crowd, Koenig’s plant again, but it got a chuckle from several other men also. The Watch captain had released her wrist but it would have been suicide to try to run now, and she only had her two pistols, her sword stowed away under her bed. Hannah didn’t doubt she could drop two of them with perfect heartshots, but that wouldn’t be that much consolation when the rest of them tore her appart.

“I said that if his priests were anything to go by the reason he did so well with that jawbone is that he was part ass himself!” General laughter followed and weapons were at least lowered if not put away. Koenig snickered theatrically and cuffed her across the back of the head.

“Its a good thing she’s pretty, cause truthfully old Fletch’ is a bit dim, but she’s all right,” he concluded. There was a general snicker from the crowd and the tension eased further. Mistress Tull, who probably didn’t care if Hannah was killed, but certainly DID care if her patrons rioted and destroyed her establishment, wisely chose that moment to intervene.

“Stew! Stew’s ready!” she bawled the top of her lungs. It almost certainly wasn’t but the crowd began to break up. Koenig let out a slow breath and Hannah punched him under the ribs as hard as she could. It was like hitting a slab of beef, and had about as much effect.

“Are you trying to get me killed?” she demanded, her voice was steady, long practice at keeping her nerve, but she was trembling on the inside.

“Ra’tha the oppoisit’, ” Koenig replied, slipping back into his seat. It was clear he had been more nervous than he had let on. You didn’t get to be Watch captain by being a fool, not unless you had a rich father a little too fond of didling the serving girls.

“Now we just have to do the whole dog and pony show over at the Three Bells and everyone will believe you are on their side see?” he explained. Hannah put a hand over her face.

“Remind me not to apply for a job with the watch,” she groaned.
“No fear on that score luv, mosta my boys are smart enough to get themselves nicked for burglary or somethin’ without pissing off the whole city. You don’t meet our high standards you see?” Hanna was about to retort when a boy, perhaps a grandson of Mistress Tull burst breathlessly into the bar.

“The White Wolves, the White Wolves have sent an army to the city to help us!” he crowed jubilantly. Gasps of delighted amazement went round the tavern.

“Ulric be blessed!” someone shouted. “Now we will show those snooty bastards.” There was a generalized surge out into the street, leaving Mistress Thull and her daughters holding a dozen plates of undercooked stew that suddenly had no one to eat them. Koenig stared after them agog.

“Ranald’s balls,” he sighed, gesturing the women over with the food. “What timing, there will be riots for bloody sure.”

Cold Iron and Black Powder

“Seven!” The call was almost drowned out by the roar of the spectators. They lined the east and west sides of the Duellplatz, leaving the northern and southern sides clear. Chips in the ancient masonry from where thousands of pistol balls had spent their fury proclaimed the wisdom of that choice. The Duellplatz had once been a series of cloisters devoted to Shyalla the goddess of healing. A scowling statue of that worthy looked down on the proceedings with disapproval, the detail of her sandals and legs worn away by the brushes of duelist’s hands as they sought her protection.

“Eight!” The crowd continued to shout, drowning out the clinking of coins and jewelery as wagers were placed. Tonight was Sigmartag, and now that the sermons were over the Capital was well and truely in its cups in celebration. For a certain set of Altdorf high society, that meant watching duels. Unfortunately, even Altdorf’s famously touchy nobility didn’t manufacture enough affairs of honor to meet demand for the sport. The solution was to fight for the honor of the duel itself. Professional duelists, like Hannah Fischer, and the dillitant children of nobles and merchants, like her opponent, fought mock battles for notoriety and prize money, to the delight of their terminally bored peers.

“Nine!” Hannah was near the top of the ranks, having done passably well in the swordplay earlier in the evening, placing at the top of the middle of the field, and avoiding the scars that were a frequent, and to some, desirable, scars. Even though the bouts were to the touch, Altdorf’s barber surgeons had enjoyed a busy night also. Now that the pistols had come out though, she was climbing the ranks rapidly. So rapidly in fact, that if she won this bout, the prize would be hers. She began to steady her breathing, drawing in air in slow measured breaths, flexing her hand on the grip of her pistol to settle her grip just so.

“Ten!” Hannah spun, her vision blurring the ivy that crept up the walls of the cloister into a green swirl. The weight of her breastplate, a single chest piece that covered her from hip to neck, gave her more inertia than was normal, but she compensated for it, allowing the momentum to pull her around and lift her left shoulder slightly. Her opponent, a similarly equipped young man with dirty blonde hair, slid into her rising sights. Her breath stilled as her eye connected the barrel of her flintlock to to the blue and gold corsage pinned to his breastplate. Rudolf Cassenbaum was quick, his own weapon staring back at her, gaunt profile disfigured by one of the stylish slager scars that were so much the rage these days. Cassenbaum was good, but he was a swordsman by inclination, the second place in the steel today, a result that had disappointed many gamblers, Hannah included, but pistols were not his bread and butter, not like her. Not like Hannah Fisher, twenty duels with two fatalities and no defeats. She squeezed the trigger. Time seemed to slow, and though the crowd was screaming louder than ever, she couldn’t hear anything other than the thudding of her heart and the click of the mechanism. The hammer seemed to slide forward like a ladle moving through cream. The sharp flint struck the pan, driving back the frisson in a shower of sparks which touched off the powder in a fizzling cloud of gunsmoke. It hung for a subjective moment before the touchfire sucked into the barrel and touched off the main charge. The pistol roared and slapped back against her palm, fighting to lift the weapon, she didn’t fight it, merely controlled the lift. Smoke and flame blossomed from the chased steel barrel. She saw a flash from Cassenbaum’s weapon, but it was the touchfire rather than the barrel. Time seemed to speed up suddenly, the roar crashing in on her like a wave in a Marienburg storm. Cassenbaum’s weapon cracked at the same instant the corsage on his breastplate exploded in a spray of ribbon and red dust. Something slapped against the lower right section of her breastplate. She staggered slightly under the impact, reaching down and lifting her hand to see red clay dust on her palm. The dueling rounds were clay with a thin firing of glaze around them, rarely fatal unless one was hit in the eye or mouth. Cassenbaum had hit her, but the gold and red corsage on her breast was untouched.

“FISCHER!” the umpire, or crowd, or both roared, surging in from all sides. She just managed to lift her smoking weapon clear of the crowd before she was lifted up onto their shoulders.

“Fischer, Fischer, Fischer!” they chanted, carrying her towards the exit of the cloister. She glanced back to see Cassenbaum, pulling the straps of his half plate free so it fell the ground. He caught her eye and lifted his pistol in a salute that seemed to say ‘next time’. She echoed the gesture. Next time.

_______

Icy cold water crashed against Hannah like a wave of winter frost. She let out a mewling cry. It was so unfair that after spending a life time trying to get away from the wet and the damp that she was going to die in the rain.
“Wake up Fischer you ‘orrible little woman!” The shouted order cut into Hannah Fisher’s mind like an axe. It was delivered in a thick Dives accent, the way people spoke down by the docks and in Wharftown. Fish-ha, with the emphasis on the second syllable. Hannah’s own accent had been not so different once, before she trained the distinctive twang of the fisherman’s croft out of it in order to make herself more acceptable to Altdorf’s polite society. Hannah did not want to wake up, she wanted to finish dying in peace.

“Up an at ‘em lovely!” the voice continued with a jovial good nature that somehow made it worse. It got considerably worse when the sound of a wooden nightstick being dragged across steel bars joined in for emphasis. Hannah tried to get up, felt her guts clench into a knot of agony and then vomited. Or tried to vomit anyway, all she managed to produce was the taste of bile in a throat that already felt like it had been flayed raw. Her head was splitting and her hands trembled so violently she didn’t trust herself to unclench her fists.

“Oi! Nuff o’ that, I just had this place cleaned!”

With colossal effort, Hannah managed to peel back an eyelid. It felt tacky, like dirt and honey had been rubbed under it. She was in one of the Watch cells, and if it had ever been cleaned it must have been before she was a gleam in her father’s eye. It was a simple six foot square of stone closed off at one end by thumb thick iron bars. There was a slimy residue on the floor of which vomit and urine were probably two of the more palatable components. The smell was intolerable. Retching miserably, she managed to sit up, keeping one eye firmly shut. Her body was trembling hard and her skin felt clammy. Surely the pox would take her soon. On the other side of the bars stood a grinning man with a broad lantern like jaw and a pair of small eyes that flashed with malicious amusement. Walther Koneig was balding and in middle age with an aggressively receding hairline and though years of good living had swathed him in a comfortable layer of fat, he was still as squat and solid as a fireplug. He set the now empty water bucket down with an exaggerated flourish.

“Oh fuck me,” Hannah moaned miserable, trying to clutch at her chest. She was still wearing her breastplate, a fact underscored by the way the bottom of it scraped her thighs as she tried to sit. It was covered in mud, though, for a wonder, the dueling rosette was still in place, if a little bedraggled.

“Reckon you fucked yerself there girl,” Koneig put it with a snicker. At least the bastard had stopped ratting his steel shod nightstick on the damned bars. Hannah finally managed to open her other eye and immediately regretted it. Walther Koneig was something of an Altdorf legend. He was legendarily incorruptible in his service to the watch, which was a little ironic given the fact that no one of his low birth could hope to be a watch commander if he wasn’t blackmailing the living crap out of someone. Still in Koneig precinct things were done… if not by the book at least as fairly as one could hope where the watch was concerned. Rumors about his past deeds were a constant feature of the tall tales which circulated in the taverns late at night when the wine was flowing freely. The thought of wine made Hannah’s stomach lurch again. She tried to remember how she had come here, but the preceding hours were hazy and indistinct in her mind. She remembered drinking to celebrate yesterday's victory, vaguely she recalled loud drunken singing as she and some other duelists and hangers on had made their way down the street of a thousand taverns.

“Sigmar’s balls,” she muttered, reaching into her breastplate and finding her coinpurse. It was light but it was a surprise it was even there. Normally the watch would roll a drunk as a matter of course, if some cutpurse didn’t do it first of course. Well if it were Koneig and his boys who picked her up, maybe there was something to the vicious rumors about his honesty. Koneig made a face that was meant to be a smile but showed the two blackened teeth at the back, giving him an evil aspect.

“Oh I think you have had quite enough to say on the subject of our Lord and Savior, and his balls, or lack there of to hear you tell it,” he chuckled. Hannah shook her head in a vague effort to clear it and was wracked by a fresh bout of nausea. Gods save her, how much had she drunk? With a gasp she grabbed for her pistols, not in an effort to draw them, but in horror that they might have been stolen, the pair had been master crafted for her by her father and…

“Relax,” Koneig said, a hint of sympathy entering his voice for the first time, “we got yer kit back in lock up. Cant have armed drunks in the cells now can we? Set a bad pr’ec’dent.” It was a valiant attempt but had way too many glottal stops. Hannah relaxed slightly, moving from miserable and terrified back to miserable. It was tempting to berate herself for her stupidity, but there seemed little that self reproach could add to the misery of her pounding head, cramping guts, and shivering limbs. Evidently she had already thrown up to the point her stomach was empty and the muscles were exhausted besides.

“What are you holding me for?” she asked after a moment, the wine fumed fog in her mind not reminding her of any murders or other capital crimes she might or might not have committed. Koneig’s grin was back, he leaned forward allowing his broad forehead to rest against the bars.

“Well that’s a funny story that is. Seems you went on quite the bender.”

“Me and the rest of Altdorf,” she managed, though it was hard to feel indignant when you were about to die.

“Right right,” Koneig agreed, far from seeming put off by her objection.

“No one else in Altdorf though, decided it would be a good idea to climb onto the Emperor’s fountain and give a sermon.” Hannah felt her stomach sink, a distinctly unpleasant feeling considering the state that it was in. Now that he mentioned it she could dimly remember something about a fountain. For almost a month the city had been gripped in religious turmoil. There was a grand new statue being erected to Sigmar in a square which opened onto one of the few temples of Ulric in the city or some such nonsense. The issue had pushed the always fractious population to a boiling point. There had been two major riots already, during one of which the mounted Reiksguard had tried to intervene only to be pelted with roofing slates until they retreated. Luckily someone had better sense then to call out the full strength of the Knights, something which would certainly end in a blood bath and possibly in a civil war. Alfons, who so far as she knew had never been to a temple in his life, had been going on about how Sigmar had been a devout Ulrician and all the normal nonsense people spouted when they wanted to sound knowledgeable. Koneig chuckled.

“Climbed up on the fountain and started preaching, asking what all the fuss was about Sigmar and Ulric,” Koneig continued. Hannah felt her stomach plummeting now, her core muscles locking up around her chest in an instinctive reaction to panic that precluded speaking or vomiting.

“Why would anyone worship Sigmar when all the world can see that Myrmidia’s tits are the greatest sign of divine providence!” Koneig was howling with laughter now, his powerful form literally shaking the bars. The statue of Myrmidia in the Altplaz was a marble import from Tilea and did indeed bear a spectacular pair of breasts.

"Such brilliant the-o-logy Fischer, simply brilliant, always said you had a sharp mind ain't I?" Koneig laughed, clearly enjoying himself now.

“And anyway what woman would ever go for Ulric with that great ugly beard all scratchy between her legs,” Koneig pressed on. Literal tears of mirth were standing out from his eyes now, a sentiment which Hanna most certainly didn’t share. She had to get out of here, out of the city even before a mob showed up and burned down the watch house.

“And what’s Sigmar trying to compensate for always holding that huge hammer up over his head!” Koneig was howling with laughter now, but the icy bolts of pure fear were lancing through Hannah’s body like winter cloud bursts. Gods, gods, gods. This was bad. Really, really bad. Burn you at the stake bad.

“Are you insane?!” she exploded, fear finding vent on the only available target.

“They will have me executed for blasphemy!” Hannah shouted. The they in this case was fluid, but it seems like she had managed to offend most of the major religious groups in one drunken ramble. Fortunately it appeared that she hadn’t commented on Taal or Ranald, so running and hiding in the forest were still options. Koneig was wiping tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. He pushed himself back from the bars with his arms, muscles bulging with the impromptu exercise.

“That is the real funny bit. Normally, the Sigmarites would be down here demanding to use you for firewood and the Ulricians would be…. Well however it is Ulricians kill people. I suppose Myrmidia’s lot might be recruiting on the basis of your now well publicized appreciation of their deity’s lady apples. You did say some stuff about Shyalla too but I guess being the Goddess of Mercy and all it would be bad for the image to have you drawn and quartered.”

“Not really seeing the funny part yet Koneig,” Hannah managed, forcing her voice into some semblance of calm.

“They can’t! You pissed off everyone, but the only thing they are more pissed at than you is each other. If the Sigmarites arrest you the Ulricians will riot, if the Ulricians do then the Sigmarites burn half the city,” Koneig roared with laughter. Hannah could see how, if it were happening to someone else, it might be a little amusing.

“So what are you going to do with me?” she asked, feeling a stirring of hope for the first time since her impromptu sermon had been reported to her. Koneig snickered.

“Well, all the temples expect me to do something, and so I have a proposition for ya. You see these riots have put me in a bit of a tight spot and I need someone to do a job for me. Get it done and I’ll let everyone know that I spanked you as hard as you suggested spanking Shyalla, I let you go, and everyone goes home happy.” Hannah groaned and pulled herself to her feet. She had no idea what Koneig wanted her to do, but if it got her out of this reeking cesspit it had at least that to recommend it.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“That’s the spirit Fischer!” Koneig grinned, “Just stand still one second first.” Hannah paused, swearing, and not for the first time, that she was done with drink. Before she could react a second bucket of icy cold water hit her full in the face.

“The smell you understand,” Koneig said, lowering the empty bucket without the barest hint of apology.

Cold Iron and Black Powder

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