Lamentations of the Flame Princess – Better than Any Man, part 3

Bob - The Referee
Me - Hildigard, an impoverished murderhobo [Fighter]
Andrew - Thilvos, a wood elf [Elf]
Dave - Dieter, a Benedictine monk [Cleric]

Although our progress at the Infinite Tower has been meaningful, we decide against pressing our luck. We retreat from the Infinite Tower and head back to Neustadt, arriving there around noon. We buy 3 horses and a rapier for 1,260 sp. We say farewell to Otto, who is bed-ridden with his injuries still, then we travel east to Karlstadt. The roads aren't well maintained, and they're partially flooded.

Outside Steinfeld, we spy a group of ten or so travelers in all-white clothes, walking behind a small standard depicting a dove over a broken sword. They tell us that Karlstadt is being protected by angels, and that there's no war there, and we should come with them - all it requires is that we surrender our weapons. Hildigard kindly but insistently explains that she'll surrender her sword over her dead body, and the pilgrims get uppty and come after us with mancatchers and lassos. There was a bit more nuance this encounter, truth be told, but the gist was that those white-robed freaks threatened us with capture and we booked it back to Neustadt on horseback.

From Neustadt, once again, we decide to head back north to Lohr. Lower chances of white-robed pilgrims on the road.

Along the road to Lohr, we hear a scream, then chanting in the forest. Uh oh. Hildigard grabs the reins as Dieter and Thilvos slink off into the wood to investigate - they can see two dozen black-robed figures chanting and a young girl being burnt at the stake, screaming at them to stop. They can't recognize the language. Dieter and Thilvos deliberate on what to do next...

"Maybe she's Protestant?"
"Maybe she's a witch?"
Thilvos. "I don't know what to do."
Dieter. "We can watch or we can go talk to 'em."
Thilvos. "Uh... let's just get a little closer, non-threateningly, and see if anyone says something to us. And if we do, and we don't like it, we can run back to the horses."

Thilvos approaches. A man in a mask, who is leading the whole procession, sees Thilvos and shouts, "Outsiders! Get them!"

Thilvos and Dieter make their way - quickly - back to Hildigard, and the trio mount up and flees from danger for the third time today. We decide to settle in Lohr for the night, and while we're at it, hit the rumor mill.

Click this thing to see our "progress"

Rumor 1. Some drunk farmer claims there's a lion roaming the fields. Claims he's seen it in the swamp and he was lucky to get away. This is apparently an old wives' tale. The lion's been around for a while.

Rumor 2. An old man says Urspringen was wiped out by the plague. He can't verify it, but he's heard of no one from Urspringen in ages.

Rumor 3. "Shame they filled up the smugglers' tunnel leading into Karlstadt. I made a tidy business smuggling liquor, once."

We decide Rumor 2 seems fruitful. If Urspringen was rapidly evacuated, perhaps there are a few sets of silverware and valuable antiques unaccounted for...

We rest the night in Lohr, then ride south to Urspringen in the morning.

We investigate the spot where met those black-robed folks... There's a blackened spot where the pyre stood.It's huge. Piles of ashes are laid out in a specific patterns around it. It's eerie. We move on.

South of Neustadt am Main, we hear something moving in the underbrush. A group of riders appear about 80 feet west of us; they're men with pistol belts and their blue-and-yellow uniforms are soaked. They stare at us.

Excuse me," the captain says, "Are we near Rothenfels, by chance?"
Dieter - "Uh, a little south, actually."
"Ah, perfect, perfect. Have any of you seen Imperial soldiers? There weren't any left in Lohr, by chance?"
Hildi - "Uh... There were some Frenchmen. West of Rothenfels."

A bit more banter, and then

Hildi - "What do your maps say about the giant ants?"
Captain - "What do you mean, giant ants?"
Hildi - (shows chitin)

A bewildered look from the Captain. He dodges the matter of the ants, and comments

"We've talked to some people about the horrid monsters here. The witches of Karlstadt will not be allowed to live. Your leaders know that there are witches in Karlstadt, and they've done nothing to stop them."

Which seems like an important thing to know, but we have little to say about it in the moment.

At the end of our amiable conversation, we're paid 3 s.p. apiece for our troubles, and the soldiers ride off.

We arrive in Rothenfels around noon. It's a small farming community, several hundred, with an inn. It's pretty quiet. People here are choosing to stay here; they don't think the Swedes will come this far south. We ask about odd things happening - folks complain that late in the day a shadow falls over the town, as if a great tower to the west were blocking the sun.

Urspringen. We arrive around 2 p.m. We can't tell if it's inhabited. Nobody's out in the streets. No horses. Nobody in the fields. This place seems abandoned.

We hear shouting. Distant, but in town? One of the houses? The infirmary! We hear screaming and begging. A group of voices, actually. Fear and confusion. "By god, he's gone mad! What's he doing? Why's he doing it?"

Hildigard quickly ties the horses, draws her rapier, and shoulders her way into the building. It's an infirmary, all right, but half the folks inside are lying very quiet, very still. There's a man with a scalpel and a rag full of ether, covered in blood, standing like a vampire over the still corpses of half of the patients.

Us - "What's going on here?"
The doctor - "Wha? Oh, we have... visitors. Lovely. Great. What's going on here is my hospital."

I stopped taking close notes here because it got pretty intense. The short version is this: We tied up the doctor, and assessed the situation. All of the living patients were terminally ill or significnatly crippled. The doctor had been mercy-killing. A search of the premises revealed little of value except for a vial of ether and a scalpel, which we took, then deliberated what should be done next. We questioned the doctor who was, understandably, quite strung out. He said he'd been killing them gently so the Swedes wouldn't ravage them for sport. He just wants to be left to finish his work, then he promises he'll kill himself. Grim stuff. We assess the patients ourselves, and ask them what they want to do. There's an old man whose legs no longer work, and he wants to live, as does a wounded soldier and a mental invalid. We decide that the better option is to bring them to Rothenfels and leave them at the church. It's not a perfect solution or anything, but it's a lot better than the certain death awaiting them in their hospital beds. We do so, and when we return to the infirmary a few hours later, the doctor has loosed his bonds and escaped. We find the remaining two patients strangled, and see him hanging from a tree out back...

Following this depressing scene, we rested for the night in Urspringen. The next morning, we looked at Thilvos' elf-map again, and noticed a place called the Mound. With nothing to show for our time in Urspringen except bad memories, we headed off to investigate this fae-touched landmark for ourselves.

The Mound is a literal dirt mound protruding from the surrounding swamp. Eight standing stones encircle a pair of double doors built into the mound, one of which is open, as if beckoning us inside. Each stone has a carving on it: ant bee moth earwig cockroach cricket dragonfly fly.

Interesting... We light a torch and go in. There's an inky opaque substance covering the floors. It's black and thick. Hildigard steps into it, holding the torch, and dies before she has a chance to realize that it's highly flammable crude oil. The others die an instant later.

Yep. The first trap in the Mound is a save-or-TPK.

I didn't love it, but I must admit, I did have a pretty good laugh.