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The Petrum Expedition
A WFRP Campaign run by Tim Eccles
Dependants
Journal Updated
07.08.08
Background
Part of a mercenary company, you travelled thousands of miles to fight in someone else’s war and yet another cause.
Unfortunately, sides change, losers become victors and vice versa, and deals get done. All of which made you surplus to requirements, and a dangerous group of alien soldiers. So, you had to die.
Now you are the survivors, and you need to get home, together with your remaining loved ones and fellow mercenaries and followers. It is only about a couple of thousand miles, through foreign countries that you never knew existed – never mind speak the language.
Still, adventure is what you signed up for!
Think of Xenophon’s Persian Expedition
Twilight 2000 for WFRP
Star Trek Voyager (if you really have to…)
Players so far:- Lee, Phil, Julius, Steven, Fred, Ivan.
Dependants
Lee
Phil
Julius
Steven
Ivan
Because the PCs are survivors of a massacre of a small mercenary army, they find themselves with a bunch of hangers-on to look after. I would like each player to come up with a list and description of a few of these. I will be controlling them, but in line with your background write-ups. The more you give me, the better they will be. But, yes, they will also be there to stitch you up, get kidnapped, drink all your water and accidentally burn down the tent. And anything else I can think of. But they will also be there to help.
We're looking at mundane people predominantly - those who washed and mended clothes, and did some cooking and cleaning. Maybe they sold cider and rum or traded other things. They were nurses. Brothel keepers or workers. Etc
In WFRP career terms, the following are all allowed.
More generally, we might want to think of women and children, wives and mistresses - but WFRP is not as gender-specific as real life, and so reverses are equally plausible.
I do not really want any fighter-types, as they all died. Or didn’t, but that’s another story!
Feel free to discuss amongst yourselves to cover a number of possibly useful archetypes.
Survivors of the Petrum Expedition Slaughter – to date
Basically the following are the write-ups submitted by you, the players, as your friends, hangers-on and assorted camp followers. I have published them pretty much ‘as is’ because most of this can be public knowledge quite easily.
In terms of how we use them, then I have overall control as usual. I will ultimately run these people as NPCs. However, I have no problem with players utilising them and their skills for the individual/ common good, and as general colour to the adventure.
I will also award experience for good use of these NPCs. However, by this I mean where you use them ‘honestly’, so that they get the group into trouble as well as help.
Final arbitration goes to me, but the person who created them has the lead on what they would/ would not do. Whilst I want anyone to use them, this must be fair and equitable and in character. And I think it only fair that if you went to the trouble of creating these NPCs, you should have greatest ‘benefit’ of them.
And as we can clearly see from Phil’s write-up, Louise is definitely not a slave. Oh, no. Not at all. I’m glad that is cleared up.
Cooks - Renko & Matilda Sandtracker
Renko (35) - Husband to Matilda, quite short even for a halfling but has a cheeky demeanour and is quite popular (fairly high fellowship). Has an eye for the
ladies but has never broken his marriage vows to Matilda. He does love his wife very much and does make big gestures on a fairly frequent basis. The pair of them
met and were married in Altdorf and as of yet have no children. Obviously fond of food and drink even more so than most halflings and takes pride in his work.
Matlida (33) - Wife to Renko, fairly tall for a halfling and stands a good head above Renko. Matilda can be quite stern at times especially with Renko but it is only because she loves him so much. Matilda is pregnant but has not had the time to tell Renko yet because she found out on the day of all the trouble. She does not know if she will tell him yet because it will make Renko even more worried than he already is. Matilda is the more sensible of the two and keeps house and business in order.
Entertainers - The Cupshigh Brothers (5) Poldo, Timbul, Hanbul, Harthol & Willy
The brothers are all acrobats with Timbul and Willy also being jugglers. A travelling troupe always on the move. If one of the brothers gets into trouble or is
being picked on then all the rest will join in to defend their brother without hesitation. The brothers are not so cowardly as the general population of halflings,
infact you could call them quite brave.
Poldo (36) - The eldest of the brothers and the most intelligent. He has got them out of tight spots in the past when the twins have gotten them into trouble. He has had some training as a lawyer but preferred the entertainment business which runs in the family.
Timbul (34) - Is the money holder. Quite tight fisted when it comes to money and always complains on how much everyone else spends.
Hanbul & Harthol (33) - Twins very mischievous and always playing pranks on the audience and Poldo. Each of them claims to be the eldest and tries to play on it but no-one is quite sure. They tend to do everything together and a single call of “twins” will get them both running.
Willy (30) - The baby of the troop but the biggest and strongest of the brothers. Even though he is the youngest and gets all the bad jobs to do he doesn’t mind because he loves his brothers.
Ulrike and Reiner
Reiner is a chubby, flustered middle aged scribe and scholar who was worked for the quartermaster before the company broke up. He is good with languages (speaks
Arabic and has linguistics) and is good with money (supernumerate and numismatics). He relies heavily on his daughter for practical matters however, although he
would never admit it. Did Reiner steal something of value from the Quartermaster before the company broke up? Something the Quartermaster and his people would
persue Reiner to the ends of the earth for? Reiner would say no if asked, but then he would, wouldn't he..?
Ulrike is an attractive and sensible (possibly cynical) scribe who my character fancies, hence offering to lead them home (although he didn't bank on all the others). Ulrike knows her father couldn't tie his own shoes without her around but she always supports him. She doesn't approve of the mercenaries or their lifestyle but she realises they are their best chance to get home in one piece. And as for that mad whore...
Gretel, Kirsten and Heidi.
Whores. Put simply. And an ex-whore turned fairly successful madam in Heidi's case. They would be fairly unremarkable except that ever since Gretel came down
with a disease the 'doctor' cannot diagnose and which robbed her of her strength, she has begun to have feaverish dreams about Ulrike the scribe. In these dreams
Ulrike is a saintly Joan of Arc figure who will save them all from an unseen evil. From now on she must go where Ulrike goes and, as she is too weak to walk, the
others must take her there.
Kirsten is a kindly soul who divides her time between camp duties and acting as nurse for Gretel. Plus she's developed a crush on 'doctor' Rudolph through spending lots of time with him seeing to Gretel. But a fine gent such as him wouldn't be interested in a girl such as her would he?
Heidi (a bawd) wants to get home, and get her staff home. She had it sweet in the camp as she was servicing one of the officers who offered her and her people some protection. Now he's dead or paid off, its all gone to shit. Plus Gretel wants to follow Ulrike because of the delerious dream she keeps having. However, that merc obviously fancies Ulrike and has persuaded her he can protect her and her dad. Tagging along with the scribe and her friends with swords doesn't seem like such a bad idea really.
Gunther
A very large (S6 T6-ish) bodyguard Heidi took on in the Border Princes. The kind of man who can deal with drunken mercs who try to go a bit far with the ladies.
The problem is, he's racked up a bit of bad feeling in the camp by doing this and now he and his girls aren't protected, people want to settle old scores. As
Gunther drives the cart containing Gretel and the makeshift hospital North and away from the camp you would think he'd be happy. But the closer they get to the
Border Princes, the more nervous and agitated he seems to get.
'Doc' Rudolph;
A young-ish physician's apprentice who never completed his training for some reason or other which he refuses to talk about. Has the slightly worn look of
someone who has seen a bit too much of life, but he tries to be up-beat. Taken on by Heidi to see to the girls, he is good with diseases and cures (cure disease
and manufacture drugs) and can patch people up if they aren't too badly hurt (heal wounds). He's buggered if he knows what's wrong with Gretel though.
Stephan von something-or-other
A raconteur and general waste of space from Carroburg who tagged along with the company for the glory and stories and is amazingly still alive and is now
randomly tagging along with our heroes. Think Lord Byron minus the mad, bad and dangerous to know. Not unpleasant as such, just a deeply irritating rich-boy - like
Aldhelm minus the useful abilities (yes, he's really that bad). The really irritating thing is though, that the women love him and, even though he's about as much
use in a fight as a toffee sword, he always escapes without a scratch (massive Fel, luck skill and at least 4 fate points).
On the way to wherever it was he ended up Gerrard found himself with the winning hand of quite a considerable high stake card game. Everyone but a travelling merchant were good for their wagers and after little persuasion, well several hundred mercenaries backing you up tends to make negotiations quick, the merchant signed over a slave to Gerrard as way of payment.
Her name was Louise, she was about twenty years of age and if she smiled, some would say she was pretty but she didn’t smile or hadn’t as yet. She had dark brown shoulder length hair and her clothes were almost threadbare. Her tanned complexion and short, slim stature pointed out an origin from a southerly region, an area used to a good amount of sunshine, perhaps one that the army had already travelled through. She understood Gerrard’s tongue well enough but rarely spoke. At first Gerrard was a bit mean and heavy handed towards her, he didn’t really want a slave and had plans to sell her on at the earliest opportunity but his plans never worked out. Over the weeks that passed, he became used to her being around and his treatment of her lessened and he came to regard Louise as a slave less and less.
Louise proved good at making a reasonable meal out of almost anything and was also good with needle and thread. She fetched and carried without complaint and followed on after him in silence, she even shared his bed upon occasion.
If he just had one extra mouth to feed, he could manage with that and too some extent that’s all he did look after but during their time at their final destination and during the weeks before the betrayal, Gerrard had sort of inherited the help and hindrance of a pair dark skinned brothers.
Ahmed and Hasseem were orphans, as far as he could tell for language was a bit of a bother as they only understood a few words of Gerrard’s tongue. They were beggars and scavengers and had no qualms about looting from the dead. Both were athletic and skinny and their affection for each other was borderline homosexual.
The brothers had tagged onto the army and would beg, steal, borrow or loot at every opportunity. Gerrard cursed the day that he stood up for them that day when Ahmed was about to have his hand cut off for allegedly stealing a knife from another mercenary. In truth the man had lost it gambling the night before when very drunk and rather than admit to his ineptness at gambling and holding his ale, he decided to blame one of the brothers for his failing.
Gerrard had knocked some sense into the man and since then the two brothers had sort of attached themselves to him, especially when they got into trouble which was quite often. Since the armies rout, the brothers had curbed their thieving tendencies knowing that to alienate themselves from the group would end with their deaths or being forced away and so when they did steal, it was from the places the group passed through and not from the group itself unless the opportunity was just too good to miss.
On most occasions the brothers did pull their weight and so shared food from the pot, but there were times when Gerrard was on the brink of washing his hands of them and his patience would one day soon run out.
Fourthly, Ivan produced: Kurt and Gertrude – a love story? [top]
Kurt is the fourth son of an itinerant tinker, from the villages around Altdorf. As a young man, on his first excursion away from the protection of his family, Kurt was "persuaded" to join the fleet on his first visit to the metropolis. The fact that he could not remember any of the old sea dog’s arguments, and had a nasty lump on his head cut no ice with the ships bosun. Since he was, at the time, unable to swim, and could not quite manage the trick of walking on water, he had little choice but to bide his time, and seek to escape the harsh life of a mariner at his first opportunity.
Now, at the age of 32, that opportunity has yet to present itself, Kurt finds himself with a bride, some years his senior, and made of much sterner stuff than he, adrift on a sea of sand in far Araby. Gertrude is a dozen years older than Kurt. When she first set eyes on our feckless young hero, she new immediately that he was the man for her – someone she could easily dominate.
Gertrude is of Imperial stock, and grew up in the verdant valleys of The Vaults, in the Border Princes. She has lived by her wits since her family was wiped out in a chaos incursion, some years ago, which also accounted for most of the other population in that area. She lost her extended family, her first husband, three children, and all of the wealth and comfort that they had accumulated through hard years of toil. She decided to quit the dangerous lands of her birth, and travelled to Remas, where she worked as a “seamstress” for some years, before striking it lucky in meeting Kurt (a malleable younger man). It was she who decided that marriage was an excellent idea, and that “they” could make a lot more money by Kurt signing on to a mercenary expedition. She would work in the rear of the army, while Kurt went about the easy business of teaching the foreigners who’s the boss.
She is not pleased about the way things have turned out. While she knows that the betrayal is not Kurt’s fault, this does not prevent her from taking things out on him. Perhaps this is his chance to break free of the many tyrannies of life.
Karin Bauer (Gustav's wife): Karin is an enormously beautiful and intelligent woman. Why she would to marry Gustav is a mystery; the only explanation he can think of is that she really loves him. She and her brother, Kurt, insist that they are of noble descent and that their family was robbed of its rightful inheritance generations ago through some vague and convoluted injustice. Gustav strongly suspects that this family legend was made up by Karin's rather pompous parents, Morr rest them.
Back in Altdorf, she was apprenticed to an alchemist. This seemed to be a promising career to Gustav, with only a moderate risk of death or serious injury, but Karin's cleverness, ambition and the troublesome influence of her brother conspire to drive her in other directions. Karin gave up her apprenticeship to invent financial products for her brother to sell. Gustav's home became a whirl of 'repackaged debt instruments' and 'securitised credit derivatives'. What any of these things could be quite escapes Gustav, but it seems that they are something to do with creating money out of nothing, so he assumes that they are something to do with alchemy.
Unfortunately, these things turned out not to be all they were cracked up to be. This is how Gustav and family ended up fleeing the city in the dead of night and boarding a mercenary ship headed for foreign parts, in the hope of escaping the mob of cutthroats and assassins sent by aggrieved investors.
Kurt von Klopp (Gustav's brother in law): Kurt sits somewhere between petty thief, dodgy trader and con-man. An aspiring entrepreneur with delusions of grandeur, driven by the legend of his family's glorious past, he is an affable enough failure. Gustav would like him, if he didn't always draw Karin into his schemes. Karin adores him and appears blind to his many faults, going to great efforts to help him restore the family's fortunes. Sadly, it isn't going well.
Maxi (Karin's companion): Maxi is a small, ginger tom cat and a psychopath. Karin adores him and considers his hateful malevolence, particularly directed at Gustav, to be quite adorable.
Roberto Capa (a random Tilean): Roberto is some kind of writer or artist. Kurt picked him up in a Tilean port on the way down the coast. Kurt has misrepresented himself as an experienced mercenary soldier and was taking money from Roberto in exchange for acting as some kind of guide and expert on the hostilities. Roberto claims to work for some king of agency or publisher, but all he seems to do is poke around, drawing sketches and taking notes. Gustav is pretty sure someone is being conned here, but he's not sure who. He is sure, however, that Roberto has his eye on Karin, as he takes any opportunity for them to be alone together. Gustav has been eavesdropping on their conversations, conducted in Tilean; this has been easy so far as he has not let on that he understands Tilean.
Gerrard's Journal [top]
Phil has written up some of the musings and experiences of his character as he travels through
Araby and beyond. You can download these here:
Part 1 
49 KB
Part 2
70 KB
Part 3
90 KB NEW
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