I am very annoyed at certain characters in my WFRP adventure (though not the players, since they're playing in-character). The dwarfs, in particular, played by Craig and Mike (who was actually being played in absentia and scarily in character by Jonno, the GM). Guess what, they had plans that clashed with mine.

The story so far: the Heideldorf Wurstfest (an annual sausage trade fair) is underway, but it turns out the fair's organiser, a sausage-maker called Heinz Schiller, uses human meat as the secret ingredient in his famed Sonderwurst. So, Plot 1, we have to gather evidence to expose Schiller as the mass murderer and cannibal (we assume) that he is.

Then it gets complicated. Plot 2 arrives, in the form of a group of gangsters from the city of Nuln. It turns out that Ernst Gottlieb, a major crimelord, was one of the unfortunates who got their hands on certain sausages from a batch several years ago. This batch was polluted with the flesh of a tainted Chaos cultist, and those who ate it quickly developed mutations. Gottlieb and his gangsters were amongst this number, and Gottlieb quite quickly went mad (his previously fat body wasted away until he was literally a head sitting on a tiny blob of shapeless flesh). He worked out what had caused his mutation and went to Heideldorf to get his revenge.

Unfortunately, being completely mad, his revenge involved destroying the entire village of Heideldorf, plus all the various merchants who had come along for the Wurstfest. So, our primary objective changed from exposing Schiller to preventing Gottlieb from getting his own back by slipping powdered warpstone (solidified Chaos magic) into Schiller's sausages, which would have the same effect on anyone who ate it as the sausages that Gottlieb had eaten.

Now, we broke into Schiller's sausagerie in the middle of the night (after I accidentally killed one of the guards when trying to knock him out), but couldn't find the poisoned sausages. Ignoring the fact that we were destroying evidence against Schiller, we set the building alight, to ensure that the poison was destroyed.

We still can't be sure this has been successful. However, the fire provided a major distraction, during which time the party split up and carried out four more simiultaneous tasks:

1) Mike and Craig (Toveen and Bomba, both dwarfs) went to break Geddy Ironnerve out of prison. Geddy is an insane dwarf warrior who has sworn an oath to kill Schiller, but can't quite remember why. They knock a guard unconscious and rescue Geddy. Geddy immediately sets off to kill Schiller, the other two dwarfs warning off the various mercenaries that get in their way, by destroying their weapons or knocking them unconscious.

2) I (Konrad Helsinger, mercenary sergeant), went to the boarding house to eliminate Ernst Gottlieb and his companions. Much of the party had refused to attack Gottlieb, either because they were scared of taking on a high-ranking gangster, or because they had moral objections to non-judicial executions (the guy confessed to being the head of a scheme intended to turn an entire village into insane mutants, for fuck's sake!). However, I had managed to secure the loyalty of Elanna and Bomba. I met Bomba just as the newly-freed Geddy spotted Schiller running to put out the fire at his sausagerie. Geddy and Toveen ran off to get Schiller, and Bomba went with them rather than come to the boarding house (it's a dwarf solidarity thing).

Naomi's character, an elf kleptomaniac transvestite called Elanna, or sometimes Elan, took advantage of the disturbance and fucked off. This is important, because she was carrying the three jars that contain traces of the warpstone that Gottlieb put into the sausages. I intended to plant these in Gottlieb's room after I killed him, thus signalling very clearly to anyone investigating the attack that these mutants had intended to poison the Wurstfest.

Now alone, I broke into Gottlieb's room, killed his henchman Utrecht and then tried to get Gottlieb to tell me where the poison was - "I'm going to kill you whatever happens, Gottlieb, but if you tell me where the poison is, I'll make it quick." He wouldn't tell me. I cut off one of his ears, bounced him off the wall and picked him up by the hair. He still wouldn't tell me, and was obviously so far gone into insanity he'd never have cracked, so I killed him.

3) Elanna broke into the pub. Earlier that night, she had witnessed something that made her suspect that karl, the landlord of the Dancing Dragon, was involved in the Sonderwurst scandal, so she went along to get a confession out of him and then blackmail him over it. She spent the rest of the evening in a fist fight with Karl, who wasn't having any of this being-knocked-unconscious-so-he-could-be-tied-up hoohaa.

4) Myst (Helena) and Dahlarn (president-elect Laura) broke into Schiller's house and collected any documents that might provide evidence against Schiller. Baron Giovanni (Jez) waited outside for them to bring the documents, since he was the only one of the three who could read. They found some compelling evidence, but have not yet had the chance to tell me. Please note, I deliberately assigned these three to breaking into Schiller's house because they were the ones opposed to me taking out Ernst Gottlieb and his henchman.

So, anyway, Geddy, Bomba and Toveen are chasing Schiller around the village. Several guards are attacked and wounded during the chase, and when Geddy actually starts beating Schiller to death, the fighting becomes more serious. Bomba kills at least two guards before Manfred Harwit, a retired witch hunter, gets involved. Bomba kills him in a single round, smashing his skull with a warhammer. Yes, a member of my party has murdered a witch hunter, a Templar of Sigmar. Fan-fucking-tastic. Nice one, you fucking stunty bastard. I'll set your beard on fire for this.

Now we're stuck with the situation that Schiller is close to death, there are three incredibly strong dwarfs stopping anyone from keeping him alive long enough to expose the Sonderwurst conspiracy.

Baron Giovanni is trying to persuade Geddy to stop killing Schiller, since they've got evidence to convict and hang him. Geddy isn't listening.


What happens next?
Quite simply, there's going to be more violence. All three dwarfs need taking down, or at least persuading to stop killing people.

I also need to get the jars back from Elanna and plant them in Gottlieb's room at the boarding house, before anyone notices that there are one and a bit corpses in the room.

If we can resolve the entire Heideldorf situation through legal channels, as well as prevent a mass poisoning, we could be in line for a nice reward (or hush money), as well as lots of Experience points.



Potential problems:
1) Two of our number have just killed several men, including a witch hunter, in full view of the entire village. They're in line for several charges of murder, and will probably hang for it. Our only option is to disown the dwarfs until we can prove that there was a conspiracy (which we think the witch hunter may have been involved in, although this is looking increasingly unlikely). It might get to the point where we can't defend the dwarfs for what they've been doing away from the main body of the party, and we have to cut them loose completely and let them get tried, convicted and executed. I sure as hell aren't becoming an outlaw by rescuing them, particularly since that'll involve having to kill innocent people.

2) We've killed the witch hunter. If he wasn't involved in the conspiracy, he could have been a powerful ally. If he was involved, he can't confess any more, and we lose a major piece of evidence.

3) Geddy is about to beat Heinz Schiller to death. Fuck that. I want to kill Schiller myself, or at least get him killed on my terms - he tried killing us earlier, by sending us to a ruined keep where his co-conspirators tried to turn us into sausage meat.


Things I've learned from tonight:

1) Always share your plans with the other characters. This should stop them from doing other things and turning a well co-ordinated, twisting conclusion to an adventure into a pointless bloodbath littered with the corpses of innocent victims.

2) Never allow dwarfs into your party. Elves are fine, if a bit stuck up occasionally, or too bloody moralistic. Halflings - well, we've had bad experiences with a halfling before now, so I'd probably object to any replacement. But dwarfs... They're combat bunnies by nature, and incredibly aggressive. To the average roleplayer, this means that the only way of playing a dwarf is to kill everything that isn't friendly. This was fine last term, when we were wandering through dungeons infested with skaven and mind-slaves, but the current adventure requires actual thinking and subtlety. Bomba and Toveen basically threw away any chance at a sophisticated, intelligent conclusion to this adventure by releasing a psychotic Geddy from prison and then helping him to publically murder a senior member of the community, several mercenaries, and worst of all, A FUCKING WITCH HUNTER!. Dwarfs are not all psychotic idiots, and I will be really annoyed if the next dwarf in the party is played like this. (Chances are neither of these dwarfs will survive the adventure - if I don't kill them, I'm sure the dozens of mercenaries in Heideldorf will.)