Dan (Koa so k'Terr) is currently in far-off lands, and is unable to join us. Tim (Sir Brindal Karth de Hazat) is burdened by his various academic pursuits, and finds himself forced to arrive fairly late. However, the rest of the group shows up in good order: Paul (Sean Punch), Nick (Brother Xavier) and Chris (Peter Sangaree).
Last session, Sir Brindal Karth de Hazat hired a Gassler Wren complete with a pilot and a cargo master from the Flyers' Association to provide transportation. The pilot tells them that they have two choices for airfields within the Duchy Schillmachen. The city of Sauenbeck is the actual garrison town for the Schillmachen Regulars Legion and has it's own airfield, but nonmilitary aircraft are normally not permitted to land. The alternative is the city of Wellgen, located about 100 kilometers away. It has an airfield operated by the Flyers' Association that is open to all aircraft.
The characters decide that they are not particularly eager to start the business part of their trip off by annoying Hawkwood ATC, and elect to fly into Wellgen. During the flight, everyone has plenty of opportunity to look down upon sub-arctic Delphi in winter. The land even looks cold, with patches of snow alternating with brown, frost-seared fields.
The city of Wellgen turns out to be the regional capital of the Duchy, and has a population of about 100,000 folk. Sadly, it doesn't appear to be a particularly interesting place. The local architecture is split between Conservative Stalinist and Modern Ramshackle, with few structures taller than four stories. The air is bitterly cold, and the few people visible on the streets are wrapped in heavy furs. They scurry from building to building with purposeful desperation.
The characters quickly determine that they are freezing their warm bits off, and decide to make a run to a marketplace so they can buy some more appropriate garments. They find that the city's Agora is located in a converted Second Republic-era warehouse. The exterior walls of the building have been removed, and replaced with heavy thermal drapes to keep out the cold. The interior is also subdivided into stalls and specialized markets. Some of these areas are pleasantly heated. Others are not.
The characters find that a peasant's winter garb, stitched together from the hides of local animals, will cost about 1 FB. Imported synthetic winter gear from Ravenna (including paper-thin gloves that don't tear and can resist subzero temperatures) costs some 20 FB. The characters choose to go with the high-tech option, purchasing four sets of the stuff.
After investigating the various unpromising ground transportation options available to them, the characters find the Wellgen Wheeled Transport Cooperative. They determine that hiring a bus to take them to Sauenbeck will cost 5 FB, a cost they are quite willing to pay.
Their driver is a fellow named Martin who speaks with a disturbing whistle, owing mostly to the fact that he is missing several teeth on the left side of his mouth. Martin is rather unhappy about the idea of driving during the night, and recommends that the characters stay in Wellgen overnight, departing first thing in the morning. He is afraid that the bus might break down in the darkness, forcing the characters to walk in the bitter cold. He further suggests that the Snow Wasset Arms is a fine inn. The characters decide that they aren't that interested in pressing the issue, and that trying to convince Martin that they aren't particularly worried about having to walk in the dark, so they go along with his suggestion.
Peter Sangaree asks to look at the bus motor, to make certain it is in good shape. Martin appears to be horrified by this request, and explains that the bus motor housing has been sealed by an Orthodox priest to keep the souls of those who must work with it reflective. He refuses to break the seal on Peter's behalf, even when Peter explains that he is an Engineer, and works with motors like this all the time. Peter eventually decides that the man isn't going to give ground and heads off to the Snow Wasset Arms emitting a stream of curses.
The next morning, Martin collects everybody and heads out onto the Sauenbeck road. The characters notice that the bus' engine isn't the most enthusiastic of machines. It clatters and grinds and pours black, sooty smoke out from the vehicle's underside. Martin calmly hands out face masks to his passengers and suggests that they refrain from breathing deeply.
The characters jounce and jolt their way across the Schillmachen landscape for the better part of the day, doing their best to enjoy the tundralike vistas and to ignore the bruises slowly accumulating over their bodies. Sadly, their reverie is broken some 30 kilometers out from Sauenbeck when Martin starts to have real problems with the engine. It gives out a number of epileptic wheezes, then sags to a halt at the side of the road.
Peter, barely able to deal with the way that Martin is mistreating his machine, immediately demands to be allowed into the engine housing to see if he can fix the problem. Martin refuses to hear of it, and instead suggests that he will walk to a hamlet about a kilometer away to find a runner who can get a priest and a mechanic. He estimates that the journey will be delayed by anywhere from six hours to three days, and urges the characters to arrange lodgings in the hamlet's common house. Peter is deeply upset.
Just at this moment, the Snow Wassets choose to attack. Two of them approach Peter from behind and menace him with antiquated-looking shotguns. Peter slowly turns and tells them, "Yes. Please shoot me. I'm wearing a shield, my friends are armed with the sort of weapons that only dedicated sociopaths carry, and I'm having a really, really bad day." The Snow Wassets plainly lack the wit to assess the truth of Peter's statements and try to gun him down. He responds by drawing his blade and forcing them back. About this moment, seven (yes, seven!) more Snow Wassets emerge from their hiding places in the snowbanks and open fire on the bus.
What follows is not so much of a fight as a massacre. Xavier starts out by using his theurgic powers to flatten the two Snow Wassets facing Peter. Meanwhile, Sean Punch carefully opens up one of the bus windows, readies his laser rifle, and lets loose with a wave of devastation that overwhelms the Snow Wassets in the snowbanks. Xavier wastes valuable seconds of slaughtering time by running into the bus to find his rifle, but manages to locate it in time to gun down another Snow Wasset. Meanwhile, Peter stabs and cuts at any Snow Wasset so foolish as to come within arm's reach of him, finishing one of them off.
By the end, the characters have killed five of the Snow Wassets and captured two of them. Only two Snow Wassets manage to make good their escape, dodging through the snowbanks and losing themselves in the countryside. The characters collect the weapons of the dead, gathering up a total of seven cheap shotguns (each holds only two shots and inflicts only 4d damage, rather than the normal 5d), 23 shotgun shells, seven cheap machetes, a few pairs of boots, and a collection of 150 Schillmachen Crowns. The characters find that Schillmachen Crowns are made from stainless steel, and recall from their experience in Wellgen that one Firebird is worth about 100 Crowns.
In a rare moment of unabashed bloodthirstiness, Peter proposes beheading the bodies of the fallen Snow Wassets, but nobody else seems particularly eager to actually do the deed. In the end, the characters simply leave them to lie on the road.
The characters bundle their two captives into the bus. Peter notices that Martin, the driver, is nowhere to be found. He concludes that the bus probably actually still works, and validates this theory by restarting the engine after a few gear-crunching false attempts.
The nearby hamlet isn't too impressive. It consists of a few wooden buildings set around a square. A mill silenced by winter stands nearby. The characters leave Brindal Karth to guard the prisoners, which he manages by simply stunning them whenever they start to twitch. It takes only a few minutes for the characters to locate the common house, where they encounter Hettie, the proprietor, and William, the Constable, among a slow-moving crowd of locals. Most of the locals appear to be paying attention to the radio, which is set to a station from the Shiro Urban Zone. Hettie pushes mugs of watered ale upon each of them, then demands a Crown for each of them. A couple of the characters try to purchase better quality libation, only to be told that there's nothing available except for watered ale because (in Hettie's words), "I gotta make the stock last the winter."
The characters tell Constable William their story. The Constable tells the characters that there is a 200 Crown reward for each of the Snow Wassets, working out to a total of some 1400 Crowns. The Constable explains that he doesn't have that kind of money around, so he calls out the hamlet priest to fill out a receipt that he initials. He tells the characters to give it to the Count's factor in Sauenbeck. Peter gives the Constable the 150 Crowns the characters took from the Wassets. The Constable accepts, but is amazed that Peter is willing to give up such a huge sum.
Seeing an opportunity, Peter gets the rather timid priest to open up the engine seal. He finds cobwebs in the engine housing, in addition to a lot of other problems. He strongly suspects that the employees of the Wellgen Wheeled Transport Cooperative do not believe in changing either the oil or the filters in their engines. After an hour of work and 50 Crowns worth of pipe he dramatically improves the bus engine's performance, eliminating the clouds of black smoke and the worst of the grinding and clattering. Even then, he recognizes that the bus still needs a lot of work.
The characters depart the hamlet and drive another 30 kilometers to reach Sauenbeck.
The characters arrive in Sauenbeck expecting to find a garrison town with a population of some 60,000 folk. They are not entirely surprised by what they find. The entire city is surrounded by a substantial-looking ceramcrete wall, though the battlements are crumbling and the structure is apparently undefended. Most of the city buildings are two- or three-story wooden-frame structures with thick, sod-packed walls to keep out the cold. Roofs are either thatched or made of thick slate. The frozen Sauen River passes to the west side of the city. It looks like the ice is thick enough to support vehicles, but the characters elect to not test this theory.
The characters drive into the center of town and look for the Count's Factor's offices. They find them in a three-story building with the Count Sauenbeck's device prominently emblazoned upon it. The characters pick their way into the front office, finding the place jammed with people attempting to carry out official business. Most of the people present are townsfolk, waiting in line to try and pay their taxes or conduct other business with the Count's representative. The characters resign themselves to waiting in line, despite the fact that most of those ahead of them don't appear to have anywhere close to their status.
The Factor himself is (to use a phrase dear to my heart) a bloated tick of a man. He carries out his duties with a singular dreariness, as if he can't even remember when he lost his passion for his work. He acknowledges the characters' receipt for 1400 Crowns, but it is almost too much effort for him to call out to his assistant Jeremy in the back room to count out the money. When Sir Brindal Karth offers that he would much rather collect the reward in Firebirds, the characters fancy that they can almost see the last breath of life escape from the Factor's lungs. Eventually, he agrees to the request and hands over the money.
The characters notice that there are actually uniformed soldiers sitting around the corners of the Factor's office, apparently set to guard the place. All of them are dressed in the uniform of the Schillmachen Regulars, 1st Battalion. Peter Sangaree speaks to one of them, a Corporal who from his insignia has seen a substantial amount of action, and learns that while practically all of the 2nd Battalion shipped out to Gwynneth to fight the Vuldrok back in aught-three (some two years ago), there are still members of the Battalion's supply group in Sauenbeck. The Corporal explains where the base is, and notes that it should be easy to find the 2nd Battalion's barracks: they're the buildings with "II" painted on the walls.
The characters are able to bypass the guards at the Sauenbeck Base gate without significant trouble. From there, they follow their noses to the 2nd Battalion's quadrangle, a series of three-story wood frame buildings with slate roofs set around three sides of a parade ground. The Quartermaster's staff occupy one building at the edge of the quadrangle. Their location is obvious in large part because their windows are the only ones with lights on.
The characters spend some time debating how to approach the Quartermaster staff. They hope to raise as little suspicion as possible, but after several minutes the best they are able to come up with is, "Don't tell them that we're working for the Hazat." They decide to simply walk into the office and see what happens.
They find that the remaining Quartermaster staff are little more than low-ranking clerks, led by the Lieutenant Margaret Powell, who holds the office of Assistant Quartermaster. The actual Quartermaster turns out to be a Major Howard Childress. He departed Sauenbeck two years ago with most of his staff and the rest of the Battalion.
Peter Sangaree gains Lieutenant Powell's trust by lying through his teeth. He claims that the characters need to locate the Battalion commander, the Colonel Reynald Cromwell, regarding a matter involving money and an inheritance. It really is a tremendous lie, and the Lieutenant buys it hook line and sinker.
The Lieutenant is an aging career officer who is clearly at a plateau in her career. She tells the characters that she has had the same rank and position for the last seventeen years. She and her staff no longer deal with the day-to-day supply needs of the Battalion, and are responsible only for unusual equipment requests that cannot be filled on Gwynneth. The last such request came in six months ago: 500 sets of vacuum armor and 100 air necklaces. Lieutenant Powell claims that she simply filled the request and shipped the gear off to the WardenCo station.
The characters find some more information in the person of Major Friedrich, the 2nd Battalion Recruiting Officer. Peter gives his name as Simon Keystone and repeats his amazing lie. The Major still has significant local responsibilities, as he is still responsible for recruiting and training local personnel for the Battalion. It turns out that he is also looking for the Colonel. Two months ago, he dispatched 100 newly-trained recruits and a Lieutenant to escort them to the WardenCo station as replacement troopers. He recently received a message from the Lieutenant, reporting that the detachment reached the WardenCo station but was unable to locate the 2nd Battalion.
The characters thank everyone and take their leave of the place. On the way out, Peter tells the Lieutenant that he'll cover the cost of her commission (500 FB) if they can find the Colonel. She is incredibly grateful. The other characters wonder why he has suddenly decided to raise up false hopes in people like this.
Upon their return to Wellgen, the characters hit up the Wellgen Wheeled Transport Cooperative for a finder's fee for the bus. The characters very reasonably complain that the driver betrayed them to the Snow Wassets, and then disappeared when the robbery didn't go according to plan.
The WWTC employees the characters meet are both unhappy and filthy. They tend to wear jackets made of some sort of mangy fur covered in motor oil. The pit boss tries to threaten the characters after they list all their various complaints, then menaces them with what he colorfully describes as "a fuckin' big wrench", at which point Sir Brindal Karth stuns him.
The pit boss eventually gives the characters 100 FB and tells them to get lost.
The characters decide to take a side trip of some 2000 km to Lenbow to threaten Director Stephen Yie of the MachtArbeiterBank. The characters are happy to see that Lenbow is much the same as they remember it: the three fusion furnaces on the outskirts of town create a region of mucky heat that raises the local temperature above freezing and converts the streets into mud. The black, miserable sky constantly rains soot.
The characters check into the Sunshine House at a cost of 10 FB per night each. The place does it's best to live up to it's name: all of the rooms have magic windows that make the outdoors appear as a pleasant pastoral scene. The building is also equipped with filters to remove the stench and heat of the streets. Sir Brindal Karth de Hazat cares little for these amenities once he discovers that the inn also girls available for hire.
The characters decide to make a formal appointment with Director Yie so it won't be obvious that they're going to go apeshit as soon as they walk into his office. They think about hiring a gang of 20 fearless guys with clubs, rather like they met up with the first time they were in Lenbow. Eventually, they decide not to do this.
The next day the characters arrange an appointment, getting one upon the following day at 10:00.
When the characters actually show up, they are met by Director Yie's secretary, an effeminate man who simpers so much that Sir Brindal Karth can barely restrain himself from stunning the man. He tells them the Director will be a touch late, and will meet them in a half hour. He brings tea and sea-lion sandwiches. Later, he shows them into Director Yie's office, where the Director eventually meets them.
A very polite conversation ensues, in which both the characters and Director Yie do their best to threaten each other, all the while holding a very polite conversation. By the end, the Director has not agreed to renegotiate the terms of the characters' deal with him, but at the same time the characters have not caved in to the Director's threats of ruination and death.
As the characters depart, the Director offers to let them stay in his isolated mountain chateau. The characters decline the offer. He then suggests that they should move to the Clarion Arms, a much nicer hotel than the Sunshine House. Again, the characters decline. Director Yie finally gives up and allows the characters to leave his office. The characters are convinced that through their refusals they have managed to avoid assassination. They promise that they will return to the Director's office in four days.
The characters are in Lenbow, waiting for four days to pass so they can once again lean on Director Yie. Each character gains four experience points. Sir Brindal Karth spends one point into Beam Weapons and two points into Stealth.