I've written up tonight's session from "A Time To Mourn" as a Google+ post. I warn you that it's a bit long and it contains HEAVY SPOILERS...
A Bit of a Gathering Storm Play Report
Good stuff. WHat's the party make-up?
jh
(There will be Gathering Storm SPOILERS below. You've been warned.)
My apologies, I've been away from the computer since I posted, juggling work and visiting in-laws.
We currently have a group of three, using (and living up to) the Ne'er Do Wells party sheet. Two have just hit rank 4 with this weeks session and the third is just about half way through rank 3. I've read various opinions around the internet that characters around this level are perhaps "too powerful", or become difficult to challenge but this hasn't been an issue for us.
Wolfram von Stahl is a drunken, noble-born Gambler turned Agent with an illustrious past. He was raised in Altdorf by an aunt who was burned at the stake for her connections to the Cult of the Unblinking Eye. The witch hunters cleared him of any involvement with the cult, though he and the remnants of his family have remained under constant scrutiny from the church of Sigmar. After this week's session, which was spent mostly recuperating from the incident at Stromdorf's garden of Morr, he's just transitioned into the Charlatan career.
Harkaitz is a visiting High Elf, originally sent to the Old World as a Burgher to manage the affairs of the Cloudborne family, he's taken up the role of Merchant with aims to set up an import/export business in Ubersreik. He attempts to be the polite and respectable face of the group, which tends to be rather difficult given that most Reiklanders find him a bit unnerving and intimidating. Given the events of the Gathering Storm so far, he's just made the very logical transition to Investigator.
"Nobby" is an interesting case. We wanted a wizard for our run through of Winds of Change, so one of the players set aside his dwarfen Pit Fighter and made up a Grey College Apprentice. I gave the player some extra experience and made the suggestion that it might be interesting if the character had a previous career prior to joining the college. Nobby's story became that he had been a thief who had broken into a house in Altdorf only to find the owner waiting for him with a very simple message, "You're late, your room's upstairs, second door on the right. I'll speak to you in the morning".
We had a fourth for most of the campaign, a thick skulled Priest of Sigmar, Marius Hagendorf, oddly enough a childhood friend of Wolfram von Stahl who later became his "minder" after the incident with Wolfram's aunt. The story went that the two noble children had grown up together and one had taken a path that led indulgence and gambling while the other had chosen a more pious road. Unfortunately, the player moved away last month as we'd just finished the first chapter of the Gathering Storm. In his last session Marius went toe to toe with Izka Madtooth and took him down rather quickly with some very good dice rolls. Izka, however, had some decent rolls as well and there wasn't much left of the priest when the fight was done. He ended up getting trampled almost to death by the marauding Gors fighting for leadership of the tribe. The group took his mangled but still breathing body to Stromdorf's temple of Sigmar where they left him in the dubious care of the slightly insane Magnus Gottschalk. The player had moved before the next session, and as I'm a GM to never pass up a good opportunity, I ruled that Marius had died in the night and joined the numbers of the zombies in the attack at the start of Chapter Two. I'd worried that this little twist might be done in bad taste but the group really enjoyed it and thought it was a very fitting end for the character.