My campaign thread goes into The Witch's Song next, and so I will leave that until that supplement has been out for a while. So, meanwhile, here's an old playtest we did of Winds of Change with the same players, but different (starting) characters. Again, I kept to the RAW as much as possible, but this is based on a test version and so will not be exactly the same as what got published.

Winds of Change Session One

Clock Fight

Edrich, Human Watchman
Cornelius, Bright Wizard
Jerome, Dwarf Thief

Cornelius was called into his master's office at the Bright College and told that as he was nearing the end of his time as an apprentice he should begin to prove himself and convince the College he was worthy of becoming a wizard. The master told him about strange eddies of the Winds that seemed to be centring on a slum area in the south of the city. They had sent another apprentice, Hermann Gratz, down there, a few days ago, to check it out, but had heard nothing from him. Now the College was getting concerned because tomorrow was Geheimnisnacht and any bad magic would be much more potent at such a time.

Cornelius went to find two people he knew who should be able to help. He approached Jerome the Dwarf who he knew could handle himself in such an area, and Edrich the watchman who would be good to have in a missing person search.

The three of you wandered down to Schmutzplatz in the district of Oggasse which is where Gratz had headed to. It was after midday and so you had less than 36 hours before midnight on Geheimnisnacht.

The square looked like it had been nice once, but was very run down. The clock tower in the middle was broken and leaning, and the watch post was un-manned. You checked out Magpie's pawn shop, which Edrich and Jerome knew belonged to Oggasse's Mr. Big, a halfling you shouldn't mess with. There was Dove of Love, a Shallyan soup kitchen which had a bunch of down and outs hanging around outside it, waiting for it to open. That was next to the Eagle of Luccini tavern. There was also a coopers, a scribes, a fishmongers and a pet shop.

Jerome went to talk to the gang of down and outs, attracted by the strange appearance of the Kislevan marauder looking guy who was plainly their leader. They weren't interested in his chit chat, though, and the Kislevan taunted the dwarf for being short. Jerome made his excuses, but made a note to seek revenge on the Kislevan.

The soup kitchen opened and you noticed two young Shallyan priestesses were in charge of feeding all the homeless and ne'er do wells.

Edrich went to the Eagle and overheard one of the locals telling a story of how he confronted the Monster of Oggasse. Everyone was buying him drinks, and the story changed a lot, but the gist was, he saw a man-sized feathered creature swoop down from the rooftops and attack him in the street and he fought it off. Edrich tried to make conversation, but the locals blanked him too.

Cornelius walked around the square using his magical sight to detect any unusual eddies of the Winds of Magic. Eventually he caught a whiff of strange magic mixed in with the cabbage soup of the soup kitchen. He also visited World of Bird briefly and saw that the place had mainly birds for sale, and the old man behind the counter talked to his pet bird a lot.

Jerome got speaking to a patron of the Eagle about the monster of Oggasse. The man gave him a reward poster apparently offering 50s for the body of the monster.

Then you all went to World of Bird to check it out. For some reason you thought it might be connected to the feathered monster of Oggasse. Jerome implied that he was an agent of Magpie and that a gift of an exotic songbird might be a good idea. The shopkeeper seemed to agree and gave you a bird in a cage as a gift to Magpie.

You took it to Magpie's pawn shop. You spoke to a halfling covered in bling and offered the gift, which he accepted. He didn't seem particularly interested in talking about the monster, though. While you were in there, Cornelius noticed some goldy looking symbols for sale which had obviously come from the Bright College. He asked about them but the halfling said he had better things to do than remember everyone who came in selling stuff. Edrich was anxious that Cornelius did not pursue the matter too strongly. You began to suspect that Gratz had met a bad end down in Oggasse.

Back on Schmutzplatz night was falling. You saw a bunch of kids shouting 'stone the mutant!' and throwing stones at a poor dwarf with no legs. You went over to help him out, and the guy explained he was a war veteran who lost his legs fighting the goblins in the mountains, and that kids today were worse than back in the old days. You talked to him about the monster and he said old Sally Rachmann reckoned it was living on her roof. The dwarf said he didn't believe in the monster of Oggasse, but you kinda worked out he wasn't telling the whole story. You asked if the dwarf would help you look for the monster, but he said he would be rubbish at it.

When he had gone you noticed a sudden fluttering of big wings up at the top of the clock tower. You decided it could well be the monster of Oggasse. Cornelius had to go back to the College, because it was apprentices' bed time, but the other two of you decided to climb up the tower to see what was up there.

You could feel the thing creeping and straining as you climbed each storey; the whole building felt like it could fall at any moment. As you approached the top a birdlike head with black iridescent feathers and dead black eyes showed itself through the trap door. Acting quickly Jerome threw some rubble in its eyes and Edrich poked it with his halberd. It scratched back at you. Then Jerome threw a dagger at it, and Edrich smacked it with his halberd once more, and the thing was dead. You could see the thing was some sort of mutant abomination about man size and weirdly unnatural. You lowered it carefully to the ground and tied it to the halberd and carried it off to the watch house.

You spoke to Captain Steik who agreed that it was the monster of Oggasse and promised your reward would be ready for you in the morning. You took some of its feathers as a trophy and receipt. And Steik wrote you an iou. Jerome didn't want to trust him, but Edrich was confident there was honour among watchmen.

You decided to head back to the Eagle. The Kislevan nutter was there. Jerome managed to swipe his purse. He found rather too much money in it, for a homeless thug who eats at a soup kitchen, and also there was a crumpled up map. Jerome thought the map must be a sewer map, and it showed an entrance and a route leading to a large round area, though there was no way of knowing which entrance to the sewers it could be.

He decided to buy the Kislevan and his gang a load of drinks. But when the Kislevan rudely mentioned that he would have preferred a short, Jerome drank half of his drink.

Edrich spread the news that the monster of Oggasse had been killed and everyone was relieved at this. Then you decided to call it a night.

Winds of Change Session Two

Magical Leeks

Edrich, Human Watchman

Cornelius, Bright Wizard

Jerome, Dwarf Thief

Shrike, Wood Elf Mercenary

Grimm, Dwarf Soldier

You woke up on the morning of Geheimnistag. Cornelius decided that it was getting too close to Geheimnisnacht and he needed some more manpower in the search for Hermann Gratz, so he recruited Shrike and Grimm to the cause.

Jerome and Edrich headed straight for the watch house on Klammeringstrasse. As promised Captain Steik had the money waiting for them, and they shared it out between them. Edrich made a small donation to the watch house's Geheimnisnacht party fund.

You all met up on Schmutzplatz. Cornelius sniffed around the place looking for magic signs. He detected a similar sort of cabbage-y magical miasma around the soup kitchen, again. You all went for breakfast at the Eagle, which was pretty poor.

You then decided to have a closer look at the soup kitchen. Jerome went round the back, and tried to pick the lock, but he couldn't manage it. Then covered by the bunch of you hanging out round the front, he tried to break into the front of the place, but couldn't manage that either. A group of down-and-outs joined you outside, thinking you were in the queue for soup.

When the two Shallyan priestesses turned up, Edrich invoked his authority to have a chat with them. Lena, who was in charge, said that nothing really odd had been happening except she noticed that all the people who had gone missing, presumably eaten by the Monster of Oggasse, used to eat at the kitchen regularly. He asked her if she had noticed Hermann Gratz around, but she said she hadn't. The only bright wizard around had been Cornelius.

Lena offered Edrich some cheese, which was good stuff, standard Grubetreich, and said that the man from World of Bird had donated it. Edrich noticed that the wheel they were cutting the cheese from seemed to have had a circular shape cut out from the centre of it.

Ethel, the other Shallyan had overheard and offered that she had seen someone who answered to Gratz's description and he had gone to Kemperbad to visit some sick family member, or something. Edrich decided she was lying very badly.

Cornelius inspected some of the food and soup but didn't get any magical sense from them. He tasted some of it, and it wasn't very good.

As you were all leaving the Dove of Love, you noticed the mad Kislevan, Yuri, had been queuing outside, waiting with his gang for the kitchen to open. He shouted another shorty insult to Jerome. Jerome decided he didn't have to take it anymore, and Grimm was more than miffed about it.

Jerome waved the map he had stolen from at Yuri. Yuri got mad at this and ran towards him, backed up by his four mates. There was a brief scuffle, where Grimm and Edrich smacked Yuri down, and Shrike beat one of the other yobs. Yuri was left lying on the floor, where Jerome taunted him. And Edrich made sure none of the locals thought it might be a good idea to join in.

Jerome tried to get some sort of clue what was going on from Yuri, telling him they had already killed the monster, but Yuri said that there were too many to stop and it was already too late because the plan was coming together and soon things would be going down into the darkness and then rising up to destroy the city in the name of Tzeentch, the lord of change, or something.

Lena and Ethel came across and castigated everyone like naughty boys for fighting in the soup queue, and Ethel began tending Yuri's wounds. Edrich told Ethel that she was breaching the peace and should leave the area or he would arrest her, which she reluctantly obeyed.

You manged to clear everyone out of the way. Yuri and his gang went back to the Eagle. You noticed Ethel having a heated exchange with Yuri, before she went back to the soup kitchen with Lena. You decided it would be best to keep an eye on her. Shrike and Jerome decided to hang out outside the Dove of Love and Cornelius and Grimm pretended to be drinking in the Eagle, keeping an eye on Yuri and his friends.

Edrich went to the Dove to question the priestesses some more. He asked them about their ingredients and the cheese, but didn't get too much out of them. Lena gave him permission to take a look around the kitchen, but he couldn't find any hidden places, that he was looking for. He confiscated some of the grubentreich and took it back to the Eagle for Cornelius to have a look at again.

As soon as Edrich left, Ethel legged it out the back of the Dove and made her way through the surrounding alleyways. Jerome and Shrike managed to follow her without getting seen. They followed her through the slums and she emerged at the back of World of Bird. She made a distinctive knock, which you noted, and you saw the proprietor of World of Bird let her in.

You waited outside for some time, but she did not emerge. Grimm saw Shrike hanging out outside the shop and went over to see what was up. He decided to go in. The place was open but no one was in the shop front. The proprietor poked his head round from the back office and told Grimm that the shop was shut for Geheimnistag, so he left.

Jerome sneaked up round the back of the shop and listened at the back door. He heard the proprietor and Ethel talking about getting stuff ready for tonight, and things like that. They said they would go down later.

All this was interrupted by a disturbance coming from the Dove of Love. Cornelius, Grimm and Edrich rushed there to find people leaving in a hurry. One of the down-and-outs was collapsed in agony on the floor. And as Lena looked on in genuine horror, the man seemed to be sprouting feathers and a beak before your eyes. In a few moments, he had mutated into a man-bird-thing extremely similar to the one you had killed the night before. You conquered your fears and rushed to attack it. Cornelius threw a fiery bolt at it, and Edrich whacked it with his halberd while Grimm axed it and in a few moments the pitiful creature was dead.

Lena thanked you for delivering them from the agent of the dark gods. You asked her where Ethel was, and Lena thought she had probably popped out for a bit. She told you that Ethel was not a real priestess and had only been helping out there for a couple of months. She also told you the unfortunate who had mutated had been eating there for ages.

Edrich was extremely suspicious of the food in the soup kitchen and was convinced that it was the cause of all the monsters of Oggasse. Remembering that he had had some cheese that morning he rushed off to the temple of Sigmar to get himself blessed, and he took the cheese with him. Cornelius had had a mouthful of soup, too, but was not too worried about such a small amount. You thought perhaps you had to eat the stuff regularly, for weeks, to be affected.

So, it's about two o clock in the afternoon, and in ten hours you believe something important might happen that will threaten to destroy Altdorf in the name of the Lord of Change, or perhaps Yuri was exaggerating a bit.

Nicely done so far. I've got my group running through this right now, I'll post the way we went about it once you get finished here.

Planning on running it this weekend.

I'll be coming at it from a different angle however,

The burrough features a lot of immigrant workers from up north, mostly people that are faithful to Ulric.The party cleric is an initiate that is travelling with an Arch Lector of Ulric who wants to visit this enclave of followers to check up on the status.
There is a kinswoman in the party as well, so they should not have too much trouble with the locals, once they get known for what they really are. However, Yuri is not likely to welcome them at all.
We've got an apprentice grey wizard, which to me sounds like the ideal target for Yuri to
1) complete his project
2) get back at the party for costing him some of his hold over the community.


Has anybody tried a version where one of the party-members actually got abducted?

Winds of Change Session Three

Sewer Crawl

Edrich, Human Watchman

Cornelius, Bright Wizard

Jerome, Dwarf Thief

So Shrike and Grim took the body of the feathered mutant off to the watch house to try to get another reward, and you never heard from them again.

You decided to keep watching the World of Bird, while Cornelius went into Magpie's to get the jewellery that you suspected was Gratz's. After some hard bargaining by the halfling, Cornelius managed to spend all his money on one piece. Then he took it back to the College to see if anyone recognised it.

Your stake out took a while and not much seemed to be happening. In the end, Edrich decided to talk to the scribe at Owl's Quill about his neighbour. He pulled the official watchman schtick, and soon had the guy talking. He was pretty clear that Hugbert, the proprietor of World of Bird, was a quiet, pleasant person and model neighbour who never caused any trouble. Edrich convinced the man to let him up into his attic, where he could climb out onto the roof and break into World of Bird.

After a few hairy moments on the roof in the fading light, Edrich managed to get across to the attic of World of Bird and smashed the window. He attracted a bit of a crowd, who soon left, as night began to fall on Geheimnistag, and they were anxious to get to the safety of their homes. Edrich also got the impression that a harrier-like bird was gliding over him, taking a keen interest in his activities.

The attic room was very strange. It was decorated with bloody runes and dead birds. There were robes covered in runes and feathers hanging up, and an altar like thing upon which was a bony feathered wand thing. The bony wand felt light, and Edrich thought it might be good to break it in half, but it was stronger than it looked, so he confiscated it instead.

Then he made his way down through the World of Bird, which seemed to be empty, and he went out the back to meet up with Jerome and Cornelius and got them to come in. The back office of the place had a desk and some supplies and a trap door leading down. You were about to check it out, when it opened, to reveal Ethel coming up. You all tried to grab her, but she screamed and made a bolt for it. Edrich jambed his halberd into the door to stop it closing and Jerome jumped down into the cellar. As he landed Ethel tried to stab him with her dagger but he dodged.

Cornelius managed to throw some fire at her. Edrich jumped down too, and there was a scuffle on the floor of the cellar. Edrich seemed to have it under control, tackling her and lying on top of her, but the struggle revealed that Ethel seemed to be inhuman, having sinewy limbs of repulsive pink and blue daemonic flesh. This freaked him out and he tried to get off her, and as he did so, Cornelius condemned her to a cleansing and fiery death.

The cellar had a load of sacks of birdseed that had been recently moved to reveal another trapdoor, and there was a man-sized iron bird cage. You opened up the trapdoor and smelt the sewers of Altdorf directly below you.

You climbed down into the smelly darkness, and Cornelius could barely stomach the stench. There were narrow walk-ways to move along, keeping you out of the sewage for the most part. Edrich looked for tracks and managed to find some leading into the darkness, Jerome checked his map and tried to work out if it applied to where you were. It wasn't very clear if it did. And Cornelius lit his staff so you had plenty of light.

You followed what tracks you could discern through the sewers, and made a few turns, but could still not work out if you were on the map. Then you came to a bit where you had to cross the channel of sewage. Jerome managed to jump the gap but Edrich and Cornelius couldn't make it and ended up calf deep in effluent.

You suddenly got strangely drowsy and realised that there was bad air around you. After a moment's thought you decided to press on in the hope of getting to some good air pretty quick, rather than turn tail. Luckily, in a few moments you did come to some good air, and your drowsiness soon left you.

You continued on into the sewers and came to a pool of sewage where a cave-in had stopped the flow. Edrich waded through it checking the depth with his halberd, and found that the cave-in had also opened up a gap in the rock, which seemed to lead to somewhere that was lit up with strange lights. Jerome attempted to get there by climbing around the sewer walls, trying to keep himself free of sewage, but failed and finally got his legs covered in it.

Sneaking through the fissure, you could see it soon opened out into a quality, dwarf-built, round structure. In the middle of the room was Hugbert holding his pet parakeet in a cage. The floor was painted in an eight spoked wheel, in blood with many bloody runes. At the end of each spoke was a large bird cage, and each one contained the drugged up body of an apprentice wizard. You saw a red one which you assumed must be Gratz. Each cage had a feathered mutant thing next to it, too. And the no-legged dwarf you'd talked to earlier was there, walking around on four long, prehensile tentacles.

Edrich got a bit concerned about the wand he was carrying and decided it might be best to destroy it there and then, and so got Jerome to break it, which he managed easily enough.

Hugbert seemed to be making some sort of incantation, and some coloured magical stuff was flowing from one of the apprentices (the blue one) towards him. Then the blue apprentice died, and the room was filled with blue light. Hugbert channelled that blue light back towards the feathered mutant, next to the blue apprentice's body, and that mutant began to change.

It turned into something that looked a bit like a Celestial wizard, but it was sort of ethereal and monstrous. The thing floated up, out of the room you were in and disappeared out of an opening at the top of the structure.

After studying the scene, you got the impression that the bird in the cage was actually telling Hugbert what to do, and feeding him the lines of the ritual. You decided it might be a good idea to target Hugbert. He began to focus on the Jade apprentice next, who you could see dying in his cage as the room turned green.

Cornelius fired a blast of flame at Hugbert. It was an excellent hit, but the man seemed to be wreathed in that green magic, and a lot of Cornelius' fire just dissipated on the wall of green magic, though he was still slightly injured. Cornelius threw more fire at him, with a similar result.

The dwarf saw you and scurried towards you on his tentacles. Edrich made some sort of excuse and managed to slip past him and headed for the birdcage. The dwarf flailed at Jerome with his tentacles, but he managed to evade them, and he stepped back and threw a dagger at the dwarf, hitting him.

Cornelius threw fire at the dwarf, but was getting pretty hot under the collar by now. And Edrich managed to grab the birdcage off of Hugbert. Hugbert was shocked at this and shouted after 'Bobo,' and his ritual magic began to fade.

As Jerome finished off the dwarf and Cornelius killed the now unprotected Hugbert, Edrich tried to carry the parakeet towards the sewer, where he intended to drown it. But as he did so, the cage got heavier, and the little bird began to morph into an ever larger and terrible daemonic figure with pink feathers and pale blue featureless eyes and burst out of its cage. As you watched the terrifying transformation and the creature grow to about eight feet tall, you all got pretty stressed.

The daemon headed for Jerome and with one blow managed to smash his head in, killing him instantly. Cornelius was tempted to run, but realised he could not let this thing loose on Altdorf, and so bravely faced the monster. They traded a couple of blows, but he too was defeated and fell dead. And so Edrich faced the daemon alone, and inevitably, in a few moments he was hit by a fearsome blow and joined his colleagues in a heroic death.

Jikes,

apparently Bobo's bitchslaps bring the pain!

I suppose since both Ethel & Hugbert are gone, the ritual is stopped until next Geheimnistag though?

Yeah, I suppose they did save the day, although no one will ever know it, and they'll go unmourned. I expect Cornelius will get chucked out his College for going AWOL, too.

Really, though, that wouldn't have been a TPK in a campaign. Both Cornelius and Edrich would have had the good sense to leg it, but as they were only playing a one-off, they charged in at the end knowing they were very likely to die.

monkeylite said:

I like that the best about Warhammer

It's just that I did not expect Bobo to be such a combat monster. Was the stress from Bobo's transformation what prevented them from taking Bobo on?
I should probably do a few test-rolls with my party, to see what their odds are.
I hope they'll have the sense to stick together, at least that time


By the way, I was wondering something: How did Edrich both convince Rudo the dwarf that he's a city guard, AND then tell him that he was going to casually break in next door through the roof?

Yeah, iirc everyone failed their Terror test, for Bobo, and also no one in the party was a combat build. I don't think Bobo would be that tough against a decent coordinated attack.

I don't recall exactly what Edrich said to Rudo (we played this over a year ago), but it's pretty clear from his write up that the guy will believe some outlandish nonsense. In any case, generally, I don't think Altdorf watchmen have the same sort of formalities and procedures that modern law enforcement have to go through.

That's true, I forgot who Edrich was talking to

My players have yet to meet him come to think of it. They were too busy schmoozing with an extra NPC restaurant-keeper I added, or taking advantage of his daughter behind his back.

I'm still going to do a little dry-run of Bobo in combat, just to be prepared.

Monkeylite, thanks for the excellent write-up. Although this is by now 5years old, it helps me preparing our run-through of Winds of Change starting next week. It will have the extra twist of one of the PCs being a former gang member of Oggasse area, with his brother being the thug who ran Yuri's gang before Yuri too, him out and made him a festhered fiend.

Monkeylite, thanks for the excellent write-up. Although this is by now 5years old, it helps me preparing our run-through of Winds of Change starting next week. It will have the extra twist of one of the PCs being a former gang member of Oggasse area, with his brother being the thug who ran Yuri's gang before Yuri too, him out and made him a festhered fiend.

I second that. Great read and truly in the spirit of WFRP.