Solo Black Powder and Brimstone: The Enemy Within - Episode 4

--/-- Welcome to a Black Powder and Brimstone Solo attempt at The Enemy Within. BPnP, by Benjamin Tobitt, is a 3rd-party creation of the Mork Borg family of RPG rules. 

--/-- Mature content warning: content refers both to the original WFRP campaign and to the more hellish world of BPnP. Listener discretion is advised.

--/-- Episode 4: A flareup at the Weissbruck docks: increasing doubts of old friend Josef: parting ways at Bogenhafen.

--/-- Background music "Dungeon Collapse" and "Upriver Recon" from Tabletop Audio

https://larrymannplayssolobickering.blogspot.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

This podcast is rated filthy. Ha! Filthy! Ha ha ha ha! Ha! That played into my hands. Starting a fire on the barge? I ramp amongst them. Zweihenda scything. One. Two three four. And I'm kind of expecting what comes next. Yep. Across my boat from the dark and on the docks. But I'm ready for it. Leaning back already. It sails by. I charge down the gangplank, roaring. But Max Ernst is already moving away. I guess he's decided this ain't the time to face me, blade to blade. The six other dock rats he's hired, I guess locals here and Weisbrock are already in flight. And me, after Max, it's like a Doberman being pursued by a big old boxer dog. I give up after twenty paces, roaring with laughter. Let that carry Max to the next destination. We're doomed to be enemies, it seems. I run back to the barge. Volmar's already trying to put out the fire. Gilda clutching baby Elsa. I join in stomping out the embers. Not too much damage, I judge, although when he finally boards, Joseph will be the judge. As we douse the area of final time, Voma asks me if that had anything to do with the two dead bodies back in Altdorf. And that's something to consider. Welcome dear listener to episode 4 of my palette cleanser, using black powder and brimstone rules to follow the plot as best I can of the enemy within. In case the disclaimer at the front of the show did not warn you, this is not a PG show. Chaos, depravity, and unspeakable vileness stalk the roads and cities of the now decayed empire. Arsene has moved to Weisbruck, a town along the canal between Altdorf and Bogenhaven. Where Josef Barge, the Berebeli, is bound. And as usual, we'll let Todd take us back a few days in the past as he muses over what has taken place. As Joseph pays off some major toll or other gold coins, I notice, he comes back with a thoughtful look in his eye, looking at me from under his grey eyebrows. Couple of bodies found in the docks last night. I raise my eyebrows. Nothing unusual about that, I would have thought. He doesn't say anything more. By then, I've met his crew, such as it is. A young man named Volmar, his young wife Gilda, and their cute little baby daughter Elsa, who's mostly cradle-bound at the moment, and she's not at her mum's tit. Yosef is a three-bottle man, I observe as the days rolled by. Easy days. Josef drinking and laughing at the tiller, reminiscing about old times that I really don't recall. I guess the boat train was a different world to us at the front. He doesn't just praise Sigmar like I might. Grandfather Reich is often on his lips. And a god named Tal. We approach Weisbruck, kind of a halfway point. And at each night we moor, and Joseph effusively invites me ashore to have a drink and take it easy. The only thing of note, apart from this or that inn, is a road warden patrol led by one, Sergeant Kluka. It seems a cheerful jab. We're stopping at a lock, waiting for the water to fill up. It's still interesting to me, so I'm just watching and listening. Kluka's chatting to Josef about bandits, a couple of important sounding people. Maybe locals have been killed last night. As for Volmar and Gilda, the world of young married life is a foreign country. One I wonder about, but have no prospect of ever visiting. I wonder what it would be like trying to raise a babe in these terrible times. What it would be like to hold a woman that was my own alone. Still, dreaming is not for me. As Todd says, nights aboard the Berabili or ashore at Inns are safe rest time. Todd gains a level. He has a plus one and a plus two to spend, and a d6 to hit points. The hit points roll is a slightly disappointing three, bringing hit points to 14. He moves the plus one to his presence for a neutral plus zero, and the plus two to agility to move it to a net zero once he dons the chain armor. I use the timer board in between bottles to ask Josef about my business in Bogenhaven. He kind of brushes me off, answering, Bogenhaven is thick with lawyers, Bad says to him, when I ask him about the deed of ownership. As for the other paper about the mission adventurers wanted. I hear they already left, he says. And finally, in the matter of the oil coat to go with my chainmail. He just says, No idea. We might strike the right kind of armor here on the canal, but most likely not until Weissbrock. Which brings us nicely to Weissbrock. We get there late in the day as usual, and what do I see? But an obvious doggy or tow sniffing us out from the shadows. Seeing me clocking in, he takes to his heels. Well, no point chasing him, and I can guess what that's about. And my guess is, Axe Ernst couldn't live down the ribbon he must have got about being kicked in the bollocks. I'd say two or three fast horses would have got him here well before us. He's got money for sure. He's probably hearts of muscle by now. A local gang, maybe. I tell Yosef I'll be staying aboard. And that brings us to the Stadamata. I hear the clonken of the alarm puts it up under the gang blank. So I'm ready for them as I sneak aboard. They elected to light a fire aboard the barge. Not sure why. Max might have wanted to create a diversion to cut me down while people were fighting the fire, I guess. Either way, it's my Svaihander who decides the quarrel. At this point, since I'm no longer using the bounty hunter Adolphus as the pursuer, I turn to the Soloborg Oracle to find out what Max has organized. The thugs that he's organized locally, I get nervously aid, so they're definitely not hardened veterans. They're just locals working for the coin. And, as for Max's plan, I use an oracle again, and oddly enough, I get exactly the same scenario that the module itself envisioned. A fire aboard the barge. Although, in my case, it's a D6 to decide how close to the barge the fire was set, from one being right on the barge to six being well along the docks. The arson gives Todd the upper hand. For a change, he doesn't have to roll to see if he's going to be last. He just acts. As previously noted, once he's killed one mook, he can spend health points to cut down the others. There were three others. So Todd's health has dropped from 14 to 11. And at that point, Max Ernst takes his shot. I ask a direct question of the oracle to find out if Ernst thinks he can take Todd on directly, and I get a yes to that. I read this as wanting to provide himself with some particular advantage. And a crossbow at a distance makes sense. Todd rolls a good evasion on his agility. And now it's a strength death to charge down the gang flank and get the jump on the scared remaining six legs. And Ernst himself. I decide that Max Ernst's attitude means he simply puts a distance between Todd and himself. There's no point taking on a man with his vihender at the charge. He'll wait for further down the canal or even on the Reich itself. As with the sex slugs, I roll their moralgic and they break, rolling at eight on that seven. There's no point consulting any chasing. He heads back to the barge in time to help put out the fire. Joseph's eagerness to once again get me ashore, take it easy and amenable company. Yeah, things are beginning to add up now. Although reading it the best way possible, Joseph might be trying to keep me safe by keeping me in crowds. So after giving him a look from under my eyebrows, as much as to say, aren't I your muscle? Why are you trying to get me off the badge all the time? I stay aboard. And the result is what you've heard. When Yosef turns up with many more of the Dockland visitors and locals, he calls on all manner of gods as he sees the bloodshed. It sounds kind of awkward. Almost as though he was expecting something. Come morning, he says, so much blood requires so much paperwork, heads ashore again. It seems to have been delayed. I ask around about an armorer. Get referred out to a farrier. Visbruck crouches over the canal like a smoking black toad, picking its way out of the mud. But I find my way to the farrier, tell him I've got maybe two hours. Tells me he can't do anything in that kind of time, but yeah, the basic idea is feasible. I should follow it up in Bogenhaven. And no, he can't refer me to anyone. There is a further piece of business in Weisbruck, where the killing on the canal, or more specifically on Josef's barge, had a magistrate get involved, but it's not germane to the plot. In terms of scene by scene plot points, it's simply further delay. Todd's devil's luck will be fully restored by the time the barge gets to Bogenhaven. I've decided it restores one per safe rest and one per Nat 20. For experience, I'm following the DCC approach, so now that I'm level 2, I need to get 30 XP to get to the next level, which will bring Todd a feat. In terms of what is XP, I can fairly easily convert the Warhammer XP by saying that 5 equals 1, 10 equals 2, and so forth. The module provides fairly detailed notes about what kind of XP has been earned for what particular submission. As the barge reaches Bogenhaven, Joseph may be able to reveal what his true nature has been. I've kept this out of bounds to me so far. Except for establishing that the Adolphus character and the Joseph character are conflated. We don't yet know if Joseph actually means Todd Hahn. But Todd still has no reason to connect papers plus doppelganger plus strange man equals Joseph Huntingham. He just knows there's something off. Stepping off the bare billy may reveal things, or may not. At Bogenhaven, a canal meets the Reich, and the city spews its vomit into both equally as far as I can tell. The stench and the pleasant shade of shit brown are obvious within a half a mile of the city. Smoke rises. It seems to carry a toxic green in the mid-afternoon. We moor without further incident. Seems like the toll Josef paid originally covers everything. Joseph counts out the coins remaining of my pay. And, very much as usual, but not exactly meeting my eye, advises me to enjoy the Shavon fest. It's the thing to see, and to enjoy life. To which I say, Well, Josef, someone knew I was on this boat. Someone knew Weisbruck. You sought out who that was, Josef. Because I have. He shifts uncomfortably, still won't meet my eye. Then, very much as though he had been thinking about this for a while and was ready to do it, he fishes out a much-handled letter, quite a thick paper, an official letter, then, and hands it, still folded, over to me. I tug it away. No further words. Time to go. Time to see what Bogenhaven will reveal.