1: The Party

Growing up in the slums of Ubersreik you learn a lot about people. There are some who like to help out, like to support their fellows, cure the sick, and make the world a better place, and some who are just out for what they can get and don’t care about anyone else. I am, of course, one of the former. I’m obviously a good person. Better than most, to be honest. Why else would I have the long-term goal of opening an orphanage in Ubersreik?

Kurtis isn’t a bad person, I don’t think. He’s lazy, feckless, and a bit of a dreamer. But I don’t think he’s bad. Is it bad to want to be a famous singer and entertainer? It’s stupid, but it’s not bad, probably. Might the lives of the poor and suffering even be enhanced by some music and dance? No, I don’t think so. But that doesn’t make him bad.

When we were kids, Kurtis was always trying to hang out with me. So he had an instinct for a good role model. But he was a couple of years younger than me. I always thought that was reason for him seeming so immature. But now we’re older, I can see that I was more mature at thirteen than he is now at, what, about seventeen.

Back then he was always chatting to girls (and women, to be fair) and he hasn’t changed, while I was more interested in learning about the world and helping out at the Temple. They say he’s good-looking and charming, but I am just as good-looking and charming. I just choose to use my gifts in the service of Shallya. I recall Kurtis used to follow me to the temple, but instead of going in and helping, he’d mill around outside playing his lute and ‘singing’, and then follow me home afterwards. He seemed to go through life like it was some sort of great game. But it isn’t.

It is interesting times, now, for Ubersreik, although, I’m not that interested. It doesn’t make a lot of difference to the common person if one set of nobs from Altdorf are in charge or another set of nobs who may as well be from Altdorf. The Emperor’s men are currently crawling around the city spreading his peace, but I don’t see anyone more or less hungry than they were when the Lord von Jungfreud’s men were telling us what to do. Though the Altdorfers throw their weight around a bit more, as you might expect.

Anyway, things got more interesting for us, thanks to the stupid Altdorf military. We were hanging around in Market Square as Kurtis was trying to find a pub where he could perform his Sigmar-awful songs. My memory of events might be a little hazy, as this was a long time ago, so forgive me, but there was some sort of disturbance, and a rush of people. We thought it might be a party, or something else exciting, and being young and adventurous, we pushed our way through to get a better view of things. Had it been today, I think I would have just sloped off and avoided any trouble. But, in any case, Kurtis was eager to see what was happening, so I needed to look after him.

The Marktplatz was in chaos. A group of travelling players had got into a fight with some locals, and then some Altdorf soldiers had waded in, and any number of innocent bystanders had become involved. There was some meat-headed Dwarf pit-fighter in the middle of things. Some hapless hunter type was hiding under a market stall. And one of those Altdorf Wizards was involved. I thought he had probably started it all off, to be honest, with his Altdorf wizardly ways, making folks uneasy. The power of Wizards is legendary, and frightening. Who knows how their minds can change reality? Who knows what dark powers they let into their soul in order to manipulate the innocent? It wasn’t until I got to know him that I realised he did not have the wherewithal to achieve anything like that.

The brawl was more of an amusing scrum than anything threatening. There were fire-breathers, stilt walkers, troubadours, mime artists pretending to fight, watchmen, pigs (not the watchmen), and soldiers all involved, and the wares of a local pie seller were being used as missile weapons. I considered going into the middle of the fray to see if I could help the injured, or at least grab some of the less damaged pies to help feed the poor, but then suddenly it got ugly. One of the entertainers let out a scream. He fell to the floor, quite dead, with a crossbow bolt in his head.

At this, I bravely implored the crowd to calm down, in my best sermon voice. But they ignored me. Then Kurtis got up on a table and started speaking. He used some of the Shallyan verses and sayings he had obviously picked up from me. He didn’t really understand them, and some of them he got wrong, but unbelievably, the crowd was listening, and they stopped their fighting.

It just goes to show that the average person does not know very much at all. Despite my best efforts to give a peaceful and merciful example, the idiots were more interested in Kurtis’ speech. That really did sway them, and they did calm down. What is that? Stage presence? Learned from singing bawdy songs in cheap bars? Surely the charisma of a preacher could not overshadow the inherent sincerity and truth of their words. That would be ridiculous. That would leave the spiritual wellbeing of the common folk and the ignorant to the mercy of any charlatan or demagogue with the temerity to merely tell them what’s what. I dared not even consider the idea.

Then we got arrested. A company of Altdorfer soldiers piled into the square and grabbed everyone they could and arrested them, except their own comrades, of course, who had probably instigated the trouble in the first place. We were thrown in a holding cell with the entertainers. And then, even the entertainers were let go, presumably to entertain the troops, and there was only a few of us left. Kurtis, myself, the Dwarf pit-fighter, who to be fair had been in the thick of the trouble and probably deserved to get arrested, the hunter who had hid under the table, who obviously didn’t deserve it, and for some reason, the Wizard. Maybe, it occurred to me, the Wizard was a spy. But it crossed my mind that if they had a Grey Wizard spy who wanted to spy on some prisoners, they wouldn’t have dressed him up as a Grey Wizard.

Kurtis made conversation with the hunter, probably because she was female, but we couldn’t understand much of what she said. She had a thick northern accent and had only just arrived in town, from somewhere up in Nordland. It was obvious from her dress that she was a bit of a country bumpkin. Her name was Solvej, which I still don’t know how to say properly, and she told us she had been looking for a pub in Marktplatz but couldn’t find one and then accidentally got involved in the brawl.

She went on to tell us in her awful provincial accent that she had poached some game up where she lived, for which the penalty would be getting her fingers chopped off, so she had run away. Not sure why she ended up in Ubersreik. The only thing for sure, was that she hadn’t been trying to get to Ubersreik. She wouldn’t be able to find a smallish town like Ubersreik in the middle of the Empire, when she couldn’t even find a pub in the middle of Marktplatz. And I doubted her story about poaching game as it seemed to me she‘d have trouble poaching an egg.

I didn’t really want to talk to either the Wizard or the Dwarf. I am not sure which one is worse. A Wizard who uses the powers of the gods outside the remit and instruction of those gods – that can’t be healthy – or someone who makes a living out of bashing people to a pulp for entertainment. Incidentally I have nothing against Dwarfs, but it seems that they have their own societies and holds in their own territories, and there is no reason why they can’t stay there. The Dwarfs are welcome in Sigmar’s Empire, of course, but the brightest and best Dwarfs should stay in their mountain holds in order to ensure the future prosperity of the Dwarven kingdoms.

So Kurtis has the fanciful notion that his father is a noble from Altdorf. It doesn’t surprise me that he doesn’t really know who his father is, and I mean no disrespect to his old mum, who is a good woman. But I find it entirely unlikely that even in her day, she could entice one of Altdorf’s finest personages into her front room, let alone any of her other rooms. And on hearing of a particular noble’s death, Kurtis travelled to Altdorf to claim his inheritance. Needless to say, he was given short shrift and soon returned to Ubersreik.

But it turns out, on his way back from Altdorf he had shared a boat with the very Grey Wizard who was locked up with us now, whose name was Erhardt. As I expected, Erhardt was taciturn and bordering on the shifty. It seems to be that anyone with the talent for magicks must be lacking in some other faculties, and that is only fair, I suppose. I was however surprised at the sort of deference Kurtis afforded him. All the good work I do with the poor at the temple, and he seems to give it no thought, but dress someone up in fancy robes and give them an Altdorf education and suddenly Kurtis is full of respect. Anyway, I couldn’t work out whether the Wizard was hiding his thoughtfulness and great intellect behind a carefully calculated front, or he genuinely was clueless and out of his depth.

Finally, and somewhat reluctantly, we got round to talking to the Dwarf. He seemed sort of surprised we had not heard of him, as Gulgad the pit fighter was apparently some sort of celebrity in the fighting pits of Ubersreik. I’m not sure what he thought a Shallyan monk might be doing hanging out in the fighting pits around the docks, but I assured him I had never heard of him, though, again, Kurtis seemed attentive.

It was soon clear that Gulgad had a huge ego and wanted nothing less than to be the most famous pit fighter in the Reikland. He had clearly enjoyed the riot and didn’t seem to be too worried about being in jail. I suppose a spell in prison enhances a pit fighter’s reputation.

There can be nothing further from the teachings of Shallya than a professional fighter, so I resolved to steer clear of the Dwarf in future. He and Kurtis seemed to get on fine, though. Perhaps it was because they had a shared vocation as both wanted to become famous for doing pointless activities in front of drunken crowds. Although perhaps getting punched in the head damages the ears less than listening to Kurtis’ singing.