14th of Dust, 1045 - The Fate Dial

“I have found the location of something called The Fate Dial in one of these old notebooks.”

Agatha Grunt held up a slim, battered book, waved it at the assembled group, and threw it backwards onto the cluttered desk against which she leant.

“It doesn’t have much to go on, little more than a rough area and a brief description. But it is clear that if we find the Dial and stand on it just so, we’ll be rewarded with clear knowledge of the future. Or at least what it describes as “the most likely potential” future. Which would obviously be incredibly useful and why every time I said ‘we’ I meant ‘I’. Got it?”

She looked at the halflings before her, most of whom were still listening. Her apprentice, Belinda, seemed to be concentrating on replacing "we" with "I", mouth working silently as she mentally worked back through what Agatha had just said. The effort seemed almost audible. Arthur was hopping from foot to foot with excitement and Edna was nodding slowly as she lovingly rubbed oil into her rolling pin. Percy, with a faraway look in his eyes, was staring at Edna from across the room, his hands absently playing over a stained leather pouch at his belt. Agatha frowned, momentarily distracted. 

“Er, right” she said, trying to refocus and not think about Percy’s rumoured collection. “When we get there I’m heading straight for where I think the Dial is. Edna, Rupert, you’ll be with me making sure nothing comes too close. We don't need a ghoul or something learning its future. Stanley, find somewhere high to watch over us. Ephraim, see that the rest of this lot find something valuable to bring home. Oh, and my scrying suggests we can expect to run into that idiot dwarf Merthyn again, so you’ll need to take care of that for me too.”

Ephraim positively bristled at the word dwarf.

“Bloody midget dwarves” he spat, upper class affectations slipping for a second. “Filthy creatures. Can’t trust the little buggers any further than you could throw ‘em.” 

“Okay” Agatha said slowly. She shared neither Sir Ephraim’s lack of introspection when it came to racial stature or his venom for dwarven-kind: Agatha shared her contempt equally amongst all she did not consider her intellectual equal irrespective of size, and Ephraim was fast dropping out of that category. 

“Just deal with him please, Ephraim, and make sure he stays away from-”

She was interrupted by Belinda Twiglet snorting loudly, and turned to see her apprentice wiping snot up the back of her robed sleeve.

“That’s vile, Twiglet, absolutely fucking foul” Agatha grimaced. “I’d ask if there was something wrong with you if I didn't already know the answer. Look, you’ll not be much use around the Dial and I already know your future and it’s not bright. So your job is to… just… oh, I don’t know. Just steer clear of me and try to stay out of trouble, will you? You can take Percy with you.”

Belinda looked on impassively. If she was offended by Agatha’s words she chose not to show it.

“We’re leaving in half an hour” Agatha finished. “Get your stuff together and meet downstairs.”

A vision of the future would be invaluable to her as she explored the Ruined City. She was not getting any younger and she badly needed one of these expeditions needed to make her rich enough to retire. Her mind drifted once again to its recurring vision of a honey-coloured stone cottage somewhere out West, well away from the mud of the Eastmarch, with a hot stove in a well-stocked kitchen, and which she shared with an extraordinarily well muscled blacksmith…

Agatha was snapped out of her reverie by Belinda snorting again, and she sighed. 

One day, she thought. One day in the hopefully not too-distant future. 

She did not need the Fate Dial to know that her most likely future, for far longer than she would like, involved all together too much of Belinda Twiglet, Percy Fucking Tosskettle and Merthyn’s bearded rabble.

11th of Dust, 1045 - Agatha Grunt's Diary

Heading into the ruins, early in the game. Agatha Grunt (Elementalist), Edna Chuff (Thug),
Arthur Danglesack (Manboy-At-Arms) Belinda Twiglet (Apprentice), Stan Gusset (Archer)

It went well. Far better than I had expected for a first outing, given some of the idiots I have working for me this time. I got the grimoire I wanted and while it wasn’t as useful as I’d hoped, it is still worth having.

Having asked about a reward for finding the book, Edna Chuff just so happened to be the one who found the tome. I had half expected some push back about rewards, but it seems that what happened to Norris on the way in was enough to scare her into compliance. What a fortunate accident that was.

We actually came away with a second grimoire - similarly useless but again interesting - and Stubb found some Boots of Speed in that old warehouse. We’d have had even more treasure if Stan and Arthur hadn’t dropped what they were carrying just to run away from some ghouls. Still, far from a terrible outcome. 

I just wish we’d come away with a little more gold: only 30 crowns, once I’d paid Bunion his share and I begrudge him that, given his performance. Ran straight into combat with that awful dwarven wizard and his knight attendant, which is commendable, but failed to fell either of them. And then, on being magically pushed out of combat, turned tail and fled having been shot by an archer. Useless. Perhaps I’ll give him the boots. At least he might be able to run away quicker.

We’ve set up a temporary camp in an old Library of some kind. It’s dry and fairly secure and lots of the books still survive. I’d set Belinda to searching through them for something useful if only she could read but as it is she’d just look at some pictures and, oh I dunno, chew the rest, probably. I have to do everything around here. That said she accounted for herself well enough back in that scuffle. She dealt the final blow to some horrific construct thing (though I did the bulk of the damage, of course), re-killed a ghoul with a surprisingly good elemental bolt, and cast a few other spells like telekinesis and fast act. Twiglet is capable of some surprises, it would seem: I will have to watch her.

Only two of the gang went down: one of the thuggish types, Rupert, and Bertha, a thief. They both made full recoveries, which makes it cheaper for me but was much to the dismay of Stubb, who was more than ready to start going through their pockets.

On a completely different note, Bunion has come to me with a report that one of the hired thieves I took on, Percy Tosskettle, was apparently seen collecting the contents of Bunion’s chamber pot into a leather pouch and pocketing it. Bunion insists I speak with Tosskettle. 

Now I don’t know the truth of this and honestly it sounds to me far more like an Ephraim problem than an Agatha problem. So in response I pointed out that the day-to-day minutiae of dealing with employees was something that really ought to fall to the Captain and that I was in any case too busy; I then asked him what else he thought I paid him for, as it certainly wasn’t his martial prowess if the afternoon’s events were anything to go by.

For some reason these perfectly reasonable statements of mere fact seemed to make Bunion quite angry, to the point of turning a fetching beetroot red and threatening to leave. So I have once again adopted the moral high ground and have agreed to speak with Tosskettle in the morning. 

Again, I have to do everything around here. 

Twiglet provides covering fire as Edna Chuff and Brenda Stubb sensibly run away with treasure

Percy Tosskettle, fresh from killing the dwarven Apprentice, destroys a Ghoul in the basement and claims his reward

Grunt fires long-range bolts at a dwarven knight, while Stubb escapes

The complete warband pre-game

Meta

It really did go well. I drew the “I must have it” Ulterior Motives card and through some lucky dice rolls managed to secure the central treasure, two others, kill a whole bunch of uncontrolled creatures that the card summoned in, and cast a good number of successful spells. In total, managed well over the 300 experience points cap, two grimoires, the boots of speed and no fatalities. At one point I held all five treasures. It's a shame the gold total was low and that Bunion underperformed significantly - he was expensive, and takes a cut of the pay, too!

The opposing dwarves were routed, losing their apprentice (the third apprentice this wizard has lost) and escaping with just two members left alive. They rolled terribly all night. At least as much hostile contact was had with the Uncontrolled Creatures / NPCs, of which there were seven Ghouls and two Large Constructs, thanks to core rules and UM mechanics. The Constructs were too slow to be as scary as their stat-line suggests, but the Ghouls, low HP though they were, moved fast and hit hard. Anyway, I am going to need more minis if we keep on rolling NPCs like that. Shame.

Some good narrative developed, with Grunt fighting effectively but sensibly, and Twiglet making a series of brave, if stupid, decisions which ultimately ended well. I reckon Bunion’s underperformance, if continued, will create a rift between him and Grunt.

I have opted for the Library base option which, I think, best suits Agatha Grunt's character. At least I can't see her going for any of the other options any more than I can see her going for the library. She's arrogant and petty and utterly chaotic, but also not stupid and reckons that the library is most likely to give her the tools she needs to come out of the campaign alive and with some good money.

10th of Dust, 1045 - I Must Have It

“It’s a book. I assume some of you at least know what a book is, right? My research suggests it’ll be bound in dark leather with this distinctive symbol on the cover. Study it. Recognise it.” 

Agatha waved a crude drawing on a scrap of parchment to the assembled group, sat or perched in a loose semi-circle before her. They had taken shelter in the largely-intact ruins of a house, tucked away on a back street on the outskirts of the Ruined City. Here they would spend the night in relative safety, subject to boarding up a few doors and windows, before heading into the old city centre in the morning. 

Belinda Twiglet, sitting cross legged on the broken remains of a table, looked intently at the parchment. As if Belinda was capable of retaining such information even with a week to study it, Agatha thought. There is nothing behind those daft, bovine eyes. 

In contrast to Twiglet, Sir Ephraim Bunion completely ignored her drawing and instead surveyed the seven lucky halflings selected for this outing from the coterie that had followed them from St Plumbus. Agatha was fine with Bunion not paying her too much attention: his role was seeing to the “rank and file morons”, as he put it, and making sure they understood the task at hand.

“You got it?” she asked the group, waving the parchment. There was a small chorus of “yeses” and some nods.

“Good” she said, discarding the scrap with a wave of her hand. It caught alight as it drifted to the floor, burning quickly with an intense blue flame. 

“The book itself is written in a magical language none of you will be able to understand, so don’t even try to open it. I dunno, with any luck it might burn your eyes out or something. But I want this book, I need this book, it is the only reason we’re even going to that bit of the city and I am not leaving without it.”

Edna Chuff, one of the group’s thugs, spoke up.

 

“Will there be a reward for the halfling who finds it?”

“What, other than Sir Ephraim giving you your normal pay?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“Fuck’s sake” muttered Chuff.

“If that’s a problem, Edna, Sir Ephraim can point you in the direction of St Plumbus. It’s about sixty miles in that direction” - Agatha pointed - “but first you’ll have to get out of the Ruined City on your own. And as you’ll have seen on the way in, even in the outskirts as we are, that might not be such an easy task. May he rest in peace, poor Norris, eaten far too young…”

Prologue

Weary and muddied from the road, Agatha Grunt climbed stiffly down from her donkey. Wincing, she stretched and twisted some sensation back into her arse and legs. Gods, but she was getting too old for this. A cart would be a good investment, if money ever allowed for it.

She cast an experienced eye up and down main road through the village of St Plumbus. It looked more or less like every other village in the Eastmarch. Buildings of timber, brick and render surrounded a modest marketplace which stretched down to a bridge where the road continued ever onwards. Once again she was thankful that there was no shortage of places like this where she remained unknown, even though she had by necessity spent her life moving from one to the next.

"What's the plan?" came a voice from behind her.

Agatha sighed deeply and pinched her brow. Again? Gods grant me patience, on her better days my apprentice is at best a quarter-wit.

"The same as last time, Miss Twiglet, and the several times before that. I’m not repeating myself again."

There were two inns on the market place. Appraising them for her needs did not take long.

The Six Pigs was a smart red-brick building, stood proudly alongside the Village Hall at the very top of the hill. Neatly clipped low hedges defined small formal gardens each side of the front door, beside which stood a guard. He wore a doublet on which was neatly embroidered the eponymous six pigs. The Dodo, by comparison a long, low timber affair that slouched rather than stood at the very bottom of the market, was neighboured by the village's smellier industries. Ezra Chum's Budget Tannery was to one side and Mrs Dough's Wash-house - No Clothes Too Dirty to the other. Even from this distance Agatha could see that the Dodo's sign had like been painted by someone who had never before seen a brush let alone a Dodo and the sounds of a raucous gathering drifted through the open windows. It was an easy decision.

"Go and get us some rooms and stabling at the Six Pigs, Belinda. I'm going to The Dodo."

Agatha had been to many villages like St Plumbus, to many taverns like The Dodo, and raised many a group of enthusiastic followers from deep within their cups. If all went well in a few days time she would lead such a group north, back to the Ruined City, and her unsettled scores.

And there they would remain until her supporters dwindled beyond usefulness through retirement, injury or worse, at which point she would head back into the Eastmarch and find the next village where her reputation was as yet unknown and begin all over again.