Eike's Journal (Part 1)

26th Sigmarzeit

Levrellian sent me a message today offering a job paying "astonishing amounts". He says he's putting a team together for it and to make my to the meet up point . Can't really turn down "astonishing amounts" so I'll head over and see what all this is about. If he's being honest about the pay-out it might be enough for me to finally get out of the badlands and settle down somewhere.

27th Sigmarzeit

Meet up went off without a hitch but we're still in the dark about the job and meeting the crew hasn't done much to enlighten me. Its just the three of us me, Volkmar Gerhart, and Elric Abs. They're both good lads but god knows what Levrellian is playing at putting together a forger, a fence, and a burglar as a crew. We're camping up for the evening then heading to meet the client at the Miner's Minstrel tomorrow, the mysterious Herr F.

\*Scrawled in the margins\* Just as I was settling down to sleep Lubin Hecker staggered his way into camp before passing out in our cart. Ranald alone knows how he found us, but if Levellian sent him there'll be hell to pay. At least the gobby half-wit has passed out, thank Shallya for her mercy.

28th Sigmarzeit

It's been a busy day. We met Herr F at the Miner's Minstrel, his name is Burlok Finnsonn and he's a dwarf. He needs us to smuggle five dwarfs through Biren and he's willing to pay us 150 gold crowns to do it, so Levrellian wasn't fucking us about. Biren, like a lot of this region, isn't fond of Dwarfs and stunties are banned from the town. Burlok's lot are rangers and just wanted to pass through the town to cross the gorge and head south but were told to naff off all the same. Apparently the nearest alternative crossing point is a long ways a way and they need to pass through quickly for some reason, hence hiring us. If the matter were just getting the Dwarfs into town it would be it'd be no bother, but getting them out the south gates is going to be a pain. Ever since some Mannslieb touched lune tried to blow a hole in Biren's southern walls during an orc attack and they've been on high alert, and access to the southern quarter is limited. There's only one bridge in town and it's guarded day and night. The only people allowed to cross are those with writs of access from the Margraf or the Merchant's guild. Thank Ranald we've got Volkmar with us.

After a bit of back and forth and some negotiation with Burlok we've got the basics of a plan and 5 gold crowns in discretionary spending. As it stands we're going to smuggle the Dwarfs into town in ale barrels, the bartender of the Miner's Minstrel allowed us to take some of his empty barrels back to his supplier, a brewer in Biren which should get us through the gates. We may need to buy some other barrels from the brewer once there, the bartender gave us his name (Wilmar Wahrman, apparently he doesn't tell a lot of people his name...) so that the brewer would know to work with us. Given we had a bunch of barrels and some dwarfs to transport we didn't have space for any drunken layabouts so we left Lubin snoring away in the Miner's Minstrel's stables and got underway to meet the rest of the Dwarfs. Thank Shallya I won't have to smell him for the rest of this job.

We reached the rest of Burlok's lot in the late afternoon. Whatever they're up to out here it's either dangerous or important because there's a whole camp of them here. Turns out Burlok's not in charge of this little expedition, his cousin Behram Gundarsson is. We'll be transporting the two of them, another two rangers, and one of those thrice cursed lunes the stunties call Slayers. Knowing we'll be travelling Berin with a red-headed barrel bomb in our cart hasn't done much to set my mind at ease. Behram was keen to be underway at once and if it wasn't for Elric's way with words we'd currently be entering Biren blind with five stunties in our cart. Thankfully Elric made him see reason and persuaded him we need some to to scout the city first.

Enroute to Biren Volkmar forged us some papers saying we were merchants from Somjek called Gurty (me), Barold (Elric), and Nilm (Volkmar). When we arrived at the gates Volkmar and Elric managed to convince Goswin the guard on duty that we were the vanguard for a merchant caravan looking to sell some new ale in town. Goswin was overjoyed to hear this and let slip to Elric that the local ale was crap, the town was run by Tileans., and that the Margraf Ulrich Von Belke may be a great general he's not the brightest spark. He also recommended we find some lodgings on MarktstraB.

We took a circuitous route to the MarktstraB so we got a look at the bridge and could get a sense of the system. While we were watching the guards inspecting carts and documents Volkmar spotted a discarded pass trapped in the cobbles near the guard post. Volkmar and Elric set about distracting the guards on duty with tales of our incoming ale shipment whilst I wound my way through the crowd and carts and quietly retrieved the document. After which Volkmar and Elric broke off their verbal assault on the two guards leaving the poor sods baffled by ideas such as customer driven market development. With our prize in hand we set about finding accommodation for the night.

MarktstaB has three inns on it, the Arm of the Dwarf (with a severed dwarf arm as it's sign), the Clueless Iron Mill Inn (with an iron mill wheel attached to the frontage in lieu of a sign), and the Margraves arms. We were initially drawn to the Cluesless Iron Mill but the landlord proved inflexible on price for accommodation, so we tried the Arm of the Dwarf. The Arm proved even more expensive, despite the presence of a fighting ring in the main bar so we headed to the Margrave's arms which proved fractionally more expensive than the Arm but offered a far better service. So we paid for three days food and board up front.