Our encounter with the dread pirates on the Reik left me elated. Could it be that my horrendous experiences alongside these moronic savages have not been for nought? Casting the legendary Comet of Cassandora marks a significant step in my progress towards mastery of the magical arts. But my vibe was quickly mellowed by the sombre mood onboard, with everyone concerned for Renat. Igor's epiphany was realised when he identified bite marks on her neck. Thank goodness we have a master witch hunter in our number. After some discussion, we decided that we must not deliver our cargo to its destination in Weissbruck. I had been feeling that our moral compass was becoming more of a weathercock, but valour prevailed. Uncle Luigi, however magnificent his feathered hat, wasn't going to make us the bringers of death and our fellow passenger had become our burden to dispatch. We wanted to confront him in the light where we would hold the advantage, so we dragged the cargo box to the deck. Igor and Deagol cracked it open to find an elegant man dressed in fancy, frilly old-fashioned clothes, with pointy teeth and blood running from his lips, and with the face of Tom Cruise. It was now more likely than not that this was indeed a vampire.
I felt emboldened by the staff I had acquired in the Lonely Tower. They say that you never need to run faster than a bear, just faster than the other guy. Well, I guess with my cool new staff, I don't even need to outrun those miserable bastards anymore. Though it didn't directly affect me, catastrophe then struck. Before Igor could drive his sword through the heart of the fiend, it grabbed his neck with lightening speed and started driving its unholy talons into his throat. I saw the opportunity for irony and attempted to drain its lifeforce. My mate Grok back in Ulthuan had told me it was Kosher, but in the end the wily bastard dodged anyway. The speed and intensity of the vampire's attack on Igor was astounding and we were worried that we had bitten off more than we could chew challenging this unwanted guest. Deagol smacked it over the head, knocked it unconscious and inflicted a very painful cut. Igor vented everything he had, fortune points and all, to smash the lifeless form into oblivion. We found gold and a very fancy ring with a seal on the body before decapitating it, weighing its coffin down with stones and dumping it in the river.
Our suspicions confirmed, we were forced to have "that conversation" with Renat. She was very understanding and agreed for us to gag and bind her for the night. We barricaded her in her room and mounted guard. Nothing occurred in the night and Renat was her old self in the morning, so it seems like everything is fine now. We skipped Weissbruck, to avoid the heat, and soon arrived in Grissenwald. The stevedores told us that there had been some strange occurrences at "Black Peaks", just 5 miles South of town. They said that we might extract more information from the barkeep in the "Fig and Bigalow" tavern. At the Fig and Bigalow, Stinky Pete told us that the dwarves had sold their mine down at black peaks to an aristocrat lady. The dwarves, for their part, had started causing trouble in town and had been confined to a ghetto. There was some talk of farms being looted before our gossiping was interrupted by the entrance of two dwarves. They took an instant dislike to Linthan, not so much because he's an elf, more for his ginger hair and gangly frame. They were lairy and drunk, so we bought them a pint and Deagol challenged them to an arm wrestle. Viggo sang a wonderful improvised song, but failed to score any dough. All of a sudden two burly farmers came in and started on the dwarves. The dwarves got thrown out, because of racism. We learned that a farm had been burned down and everyone was pointing the finger at the dwarves. We were directed to the Cat and Fiddle, where we found the victim farmer Smith who confirmed the arson story and also made unsubstantiated allegations about the dwarves. Linthan gave him 5 silver schillings as an act of benevolence.
We decided to get to the heart of the matter by talking to the dwarves. Linthan was sent to the boat with Igor whilst Viggo and Deagol set off for Karak slumbers. Deagol and Viggo had a hard time convincing the dwarves to talk, but were eventually admitted for an audience with the dwarf leader. There was an issue with the smokiness of the room, but they managed to "resolve" it. The dwarf leader agreed to send 2 dwarves with us on a sortie to the old mine and the research tower, which Etelka Herzen had commissioned them to build.
At first light, we set out for black peaks. At first we suspected that the path might be enchanted so as to confuse us, but in the end it turned out to be a normal path. We stopped off at the Smith farmstead, where we found a goblin sword and a dead goblin. Igor compared the pelvis with the one which he still carries on him and it matched, except for the different number of legs. There were some old tracks heading away from the farmstead, but nothing we could follow. The tracks appeared to have been made not just by goblins, but also wargs. At the next crossroads we encountered a dwarf slumped against a tree, dying, with some dead goblins around him. He introduced himself as Durak and told us that the gobbos had been stealing gold from the mine. Igor attempted to heal him, but instead his kindness killed him. Our helper dwarves appear not to have noticed, but instead got really riled up and wanted revenge against the gobbos, not Igor. Deagol sang a delightful improvised song, which was very well received.
Onwards along the track, we found an entrance to a mine and also a tower. The tower had only a main entrance and two small windows and the dwarves were really worked up and intolerable so we agreed to enter the mine first. We went left and then left again and found a room with gobbos and wargs sleeping. We charged in and attacked them. Linthan used his firebolt spell and it turns out wargs are very scared of fire, so they all ran away from it. The gobbos and wargs in the sleeping area were very easy to dispatch. However, whilst we were euthanising the defenceless canines, more gobbos and wargs arrived. Deagol and Igor lead a brave charge down the southward tunnel, but were looking to be overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of gobbos and wargs. The gobbos particularly hate dwarves and deagol was being pelted with arrows and almost died. Lin also took a hit from an arrow and almost died. Hammer was mauled by a warg and did die. All of a sudden we heard tremors and it appeared that the mine could be collapsing.
We started dashing out the mine, but then Michael's cat jumped out of a window and we all went to bed.