Saturdays are great. Particularly when not taking your ADHD meds.
Contained within Landsknecht of 4/2/2016 are events various such as multiple electrocutions, a satanist cult, attempted assassination, a very unconvincing viking, a vampire, and an explosive tampon.
Read on only if you have an appreciation for the puerile, the crass, and the absurd.
Before we begin the story, a brief introduction of names and their players:
Karoline von Zahlringen (Me!): a proud and very out-of-her depth knight from a family of mercenary knight-errants with good hearts and very bad budgeting skills. Locked on a quest for vengeance and honor, she has only her wits, her horse, and her (loyal?) squire / voice of (peasant) logic, Adalbert.
Adalbert the Set-Upon (Thuan): forced to serve the Zahlringen family as their personal servant to atone for his elder brother’s unwise antics, he’s a well-educated, well-armed, and reluctantly heroic peasant, sworn on pain of death to accompany Karoline and keep her from getting herself killed by foolhardy heroism.
Rollo the Hooded (Josh): a north-African Norman mercenary who still clings to the old gods of the homeland he’s never seen, visiting painful death for a flat rate of 2 Guilders per neck. Also, now a werewolf.
“Smelly” Jenkins (Brandon): an ignorant, crass, and joyously insolent British yeoman archer who got lost from King Edward the 13th’s (49th?) army on the last campaign, and has since been vacationing through the Baltics and upper Moravia, enjoying his pay and making trouble for anyone who will pay him. Secretly enjoys chimney sweeping.
Helga the Unwise (Megan): a random old woman who rides a goat, complains about the food and smell, occasionally tries to feed the others some indigestible cocktail of decrepit wives’ tales, and has the best poker face since cliff faces were invented. No magic powers, no ancient wisdom, just dementia and a bottomless bag of tea leaves.
Turd: just a random guard we found who seems to really like Rollo, so much so that they drank themselves unconscious in a guard tower.
The Backstory:
The party is trying to infiltrate a satanist cult in the cathedral of Reefsburg on behalf of Sir Reef to bring evidence of their heretical activities to the King of Moravia and depose Lord Reef (Daddy Reef) from his town, Reefsburg, to prevent the breakout of war from Lord Reef’s incorrigible greed and demonic dalliances.
To this end, we disguised ourselves as pilgrims and volunteered to stay on as monks (pilgrim volunteers would never leave, and Sir Reef suspected they were being sacrificed to Satan.) Cozied in our private cells, we were ready to infiltrate.
It did not occur to us that we were now separated and unable to assist each other. And as luck would have it, Karoline was the first to be taken, down a tight, ominous looking trapdoor tunnel.
Playing along, she found herself in a dark, cavernous chamber, mere steps from a pentagram, surrounded by satanists. Naturally, she panicked, and threw a knife at the nearest man (sticking it right in his jaw) and immediately began crawling back through the tunnel she had come, while the head of the cult began hurling lightning bolts at her, attempting to paralyze her limb by limb. Courage and resolve carried her back to the trapdoor of her cell with one arm left functioning, at which point a very helpful vampire dragged her up to her cell, and then dragged her by the feet through the cathedral as the party legged it for the exit. Encountering a dozen guards, we opted for the other exit- a well in the garden. Shedding our armor and weapons into a compost pile, we dove for safety, nearly drowned, and emerged in the city river, climbing back ashore, sodden wet in autumnal central Europe.
The ragged adventurers plus one soggy vampire managed to bluff our way back inside the city gates by means of Helga acting like herself ( a cantankerous and manipulative old woman), and Karoline and Adalbert pretending to be newlyweds looking to get a proper ring in the city.
Rollo did not endure any of this, as he was dead drunk in a tavern cellar, controlling his lycanthropy by replacing it with Seasonal Affective Disorder and alcoholism. The party stumbled their way to his tavern, and passed out on top of him.
The next morning, Lord Reef made a speech in the town square. Next to him was the esteemed prince, with a giant bloody wad of bandages around his head. With terse wording and stern condemnation, Sir Reef the Younger was blamed for the assassination attempt, and war declared.
Karoline’s cheeks will likely remain blushed until the end of her natural life.
END OF NO CONTEXT, PART 1: WHOOPS. STAY TUNED FOR NO CONTEXT, PART 2: EXPLOSIVE TAMPONS
From the City on a Hill 