44: The House of the Phoenix

The party wandered through the strange forest for a bit, tired and disoriented, but they could see no sign of the Street or an end to the alien terrain. Solvej tried to navigate using Nordlander moss-based orientation techniques, but that was useless, so she tried to climb a tree to get a better view. She could sense sider-like things moving in the branches above her, so quickly changed her mind.

Kurtis wandered off, calling for help, and disappeared. Otto could see his tracks through the long grass and told Schnitzel to follow the trail and the dog disappeared into the foliage, too. And so the rest of the group followed and they all found themselves, suddenly, back in the Street of a Hundred Taverns. The sun was rising, and there was a handful of people stood around the forest wondering what was going on. Everyone could see that whereas the forest had felt like a lush spring growth when they entered it, it was now in its autumn, the leaves falling, and the undergrowth thinning.

Ursula decided that the whole forest was an abomination that needed to be razed to the ground. Despite some words of caution about this being the middle of the city with loads of wooden buildings around, the group decided to go with this. It was just at the start of morning rush hour and there was already a jam of carts lining the street. As luck would have it the first wagon was from Schmidt’s Straw and Tar Supplies. Ursula tried to intimidate the driver into handing over some of his wares, but he was adamant that his supplies would go to the orphanage. In the end Kurtis promised him double the price, later, if he handed over a barrel of tar and some straw.

Meanwhile, Erhardt was standing ready with his magical flame when he noticed a Celestial Wizard in the crowd and went to talk to him. The wizard told him he had been sent by the colleges to check the situation out and organise the handgunners who were due to turn up. He told Erhardt that the word in the colleges was that the whole thing had been caused by a drunken Jade magister. Erhardt told him that he thought it was probably a lot more serious than that, but the Celestial obviously hadn’t had the same experience of the dark gods that Erhardt did. A captain turned up with some handgunners and reported to the wizards. They set up with the intention of not letting any of the populace near the forest, but Erhardt explained that they should really be concentrating on not letting anything out of the forest.

While all this was going on, the forest passed into its winter, with the trees withering and the grasses dying, and the other end of the Street could now be seen through it. A few brave commuters broke through the remaining wood, and went on their way to work, and soon the Street was moving normally again. So, they handed their tar and straw back and Erhardt bought a Magical Forest commemorative issue of the Altdorf Celestial Body.

Everyone was shattered from the long night of drinking and strangeness and so headed off to bed. Kurtis invited Gulgad and Otto back to the place he was staying, and Solvej offered Ursula a place for the night.

No one woke until well into the afternoon. Solvej dreamt of some vague lips whispering in the darkness, and then she heard them say, ‘We know your name’ and she woke with a start, remembering that this was the same voice that whispered to us after we had interrogated the imprisoned S_______ cultists in Kemperbad.

Kurtis woke to find Paul, his landlord, and girlfriend Stella’s father, in the middle of drawing him and the others while they slept. Paul got a bit annoyed that Kurtis moved and screwed up his drawing and threw it away. Otto got hold of it, though, and asked Paul to enhance a small part of the picture so that he could send it to his wife so she would know what she was missing. There was a bit of an argument about the nature of art, and Kurtis asked Paul about Belladonna Firaglio. He confirmed what Kurtis already knew, that she was a famous chanteuse at the Grand Opera House. They decided they needed to head back to the Phoenix so that Otto could finally catch his elusive rat. Paul told them that in his day the trendy dance was the Bouffe, but Kurtis explained that these days all the cool kids were Rumping.

Yanica was keen to go back to the Phoenix. She had enjoyed the previous night and understood that Solvej had to leave early coz she was looking such a mess. She had started calling Solvej ‘Solly’ which, I go the impression later, annoyed Solvej quite a bit, but she never got round to telling Yanica not to. Yanica was happy enough to be called Yanny, though. They convinced Ursula to come with them, even though she feared it might be a cult. At least she was keen on the idea of clubbing. The two of them got to work on Ursula’s trendy makeup and Yanica lent her a wig and a little black dress, but Ursula insisted on bringing her whip, which accessorised quite nicely.

Everyone met up in the queue for the Phoenix, and they had no problem getting in. Otto, Erhardt, and Gulgad headed for the cellar while the rest went to the club. Otto grabbed some candles and down in the cellar, noticed someone had tidied away the trap he had left. He grabbed the trap and he and Erhardt followed Gulgad down to the cavern end of the cellar.

A spider dropped from the ceiling just missing Gulgad and another scurried along the floor and up his leg. The creature managed to take a couple of painful bites out of Gulgad’s leg before he was able to smack it away with his axe. As he did, the spider seemed to disappear into the aether leaving no trace it had ever been here. The second one scuttled towards Otto, who was petrified, again. Erhardt darted it and then as Otto dodged it, Erhardt hit it again with his magic and that spider disappeared, or whatever it did, too.

Up in the club everyone was enjoying themselves. Several groups, the better looking and more fashionable ones mostly, strutted through the club, straight for the VIP lounge. While Solvej and Ursula were dancing, Kurtis got the idea that they might let him into the VIP lounge and so he and Yanica headed for the door, which the bouncer opened for them, with an obedient nod to Kurtis, and they were in.

They found a booth with a strangely spaced-out couple and ordered some drinks. The VIP lounge was filled with lots of very good looking and very fashionable people. Kurtis couldn’t decide whether they were all customers or some of them had been paid to be there. Nearly everyone was young, except a few older, noble-looking characters. There was an MC doing jokes and commentating on some sort of burlesque cabaret thing, which was probably a bit rude. And there were quite a few spaced-out looking people in the place.

Yanica was very excited and decided this was the best night of her life. A waitress came and got their drinks order, and said she was surprised that Kurtis wasn’t drinking his usual drink and winked at him. Kurtis sent Yanica back to the main club to fetch Solly and Ursula.

Meanwhile, down in the cellar Otto was determined to get his rat. After Gulgad had dealt with a couple of nasty spider bites, they followed the cavern section to its end where they found a gap in the rock big enough for rats and spiders but not for humans. After a good pep talk to his dog, Otto shoved Schnitzel into the fissure.

After a nail-biting fifteen seconds, which seemed like forever to Otto, Schnitzel emerged back into the cavern, but with no sign of any rats. Erhardt had the idea that there might not be any rats after all, and had there been, they would have been eaten by the spiders. Otto left a baited trap by the fissure, but they agreed to head back into the club without the rat that Otto required to convince the guild of his skills.

In the VIP lounge a hot, young, dancer rumped over to their table and grabbed Solvej’s hand and tried to entice her to dance, Solvej was wary of this, for some reason, and resisted. Kurtis and Yanica tried to encourage her to dance as this girl was obviously one of the bright young things. She leaned over and whispered in Solvej’s ear that, ‘We know your name.’

Before anyone could work out what was going on Solvej grabbed the girl’s hair and smashed her head into the table, narrowly missing the glass she had been aiming for. And, for good measure, Ursula punched her in the face. Then they dragged her out of the lounge, through the main club, and into the street. Kurtis was wondering what the Sigmar was going on, but he wasn’t going to let an incident like that spoil his night out, so ordered some expensive drinks and had another dance with Yanica.

Out on the street Solvej and Ursula roughed the dancer up a bit more and demanded that if she knew it, she should say Solvej’s name, but she just repeated, ‘we know your name.’ She was a lithe, athletic dancer and almost managed to wriggle from their grasp, but Solvej and Ursula were too determined. Not wanting such an unseemly struggle in the middle of the street, they decided to take her up to Yanica’s where they could torture her in peace.

As a man of Shallya I do not in any way condone this, I am merely repeating the story that was told to me.