In which our friends investigate a strange poisoning incident and make some disturbing discoveries underground.
Monday, October 22nd
Reporting and recuperating
After their ordeal in Spittelfeld, the next thing on the adventurers’ list was writing a brief report, hand it over to their contact – the barkeep Rula Haffner at the Jolly Magpie – and then wait for further instructions.
After investing in baths, food and drinks and sending their soiled and ripped clothes off to be washed and mended, they sat down to write their report. They kept it short and to the point, but reported everything relevant about the vampire, including the fact that she was wearing what looked like the remains of a heraldic badge.
Kethe and Aenlinn went to leave the report while Wernhart rested his injured legs at the inn. They dropped the report – with Doctor Alessandra Giuliani’s journal attached – grabbed a beer, and passed Harzert’s cheese shop on the way. A mild standard cheese, a strong well-aged hard cheese, a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine later, they all spent the evening in their room at the inn.
Tuesday, October 23rd
Meeting Baron Heinrich
The next day, an errand boy brought a new summons to a meeting at the Red Cockerel that evening, same time and place as last time. In the meantime, Aenlinn ran and errand to Sigulf’s Armoury in the Artisan Quarters to have the arm and leg pieces she took from Sebastian von Reuter’s armour adjusted to fit her, and Kethe sold off the silver-plated cutlery from the Spittelfeld cellars.
In the evening they repaired to the Red Cockerel – Wernhart, still recovering from his leg wound, went on horseback. Baron Heinrich Hohenfels received them in the side room like the time before, with his apparent bodyguard Veiran and this time also joined by a scribe.
Heinrich was still impeccably polite and respectful, but not quite as jovial as last time. He looked tired and stressed; probably the latest escalation had complicated his diplomatic mission. After briefly discussing their latest mission, Heinrich declared himself pleased with the adventurers’ efforts and promised to follow up any loose threads. He was especially happy to hear Doctor Giuliani was alive and hopefully recovering.
Soon, Heinrich explained, he was going to have a new and far more extensive assignment for the party, but he was still waiting for some necessary information on the matter; he expected to have everything ready within a week. In the meantime, he suggested they take a few days off, rest up – but keep their eyes and ears open and keep him informed of anything that might require his attention – and get ready to travel.
Wednesday, October 24th – Saturday, October 27th
A few days off
A few quiet days followed. Aenlinn, who knew the city, took the opportunity to have some time off, stroll around town, talk to craftsmen, fix things and enjoy herself in general.
Wernhart concentrated on healing his wounds. One seemed to be on the verge of becoming infected, but after he fretted over it for a day or so, it passed and by the weekend he was mostly recovered.
Sunday, October 28th
Master Grünwell’s disastrous dinner party
At lunchtime on Sunday, Sam, the innkeeper at the Crayfish, told Aenlinn a friend of his and his wife Annika’s needed help; he was actually staying at the inn now. Being between jobs they agreed to hear his friend out, with the caveat they might have to drop everything at short notice if summoned by Heinrich.
A small, round-faced man with glasses came up, neatly dressed by unshaven, pale and drawn. He introduced himself as Tomas Grünwell, a clerk at the City Commission of Sanitation, and asked nervously if they might speak more privately.
After repairing to a private room, Grünwell told them he hardly knew where to start, but his old friend Sam had told him the adventurers were reliably discreet. “If I hadn’t been through this, I wouldn’t believe it myself,” he muttered. Kethe answered encouragingly that she’d been through a lot she wouldn’t believe already.
Grünwell explained that, a few days ago, he held a dinner party at his home for his superiors at the Commission: Herr and Frau Dunkel, Klaus Schmidt and Andrea Schuster. Initially the evening went well and Tomas hoped to have secured his promotion, but about half an hour after the meal, disaster struck.
Herr Schmidt, feeling unwell, retired to the privy; minutes later, horrified screams were heard and they found him convulsing on the floor as what looked like streams of tangled, matted hair “grew out of every orifice of his body”. Frau Schuster began vomiting gouts of live, squirming maggots, and the Dunkels both became dreadfully bloated and then began coughing and spitting fumes so hot they set fire to their clothing and other combustibles – including Tomas’ wooden house, which soon caught fire and burned down. He, Schmidt and Schuster managed to escape, but the Dunkels died in the fire.
The survivors, fearing scandal and perhaps accusation of dabbling in the dark arts themselves, sought discreet treatment from a back-alley apothecary. Tomas himself, however, had strangely not been afflicted at all. How could that be? His own guess what that it must have been the cheese.
The cheese they had for dessert was the only thing the guests but not Tomas himself ate of; cheese and milk always disagreed with him. He’d bought the cheese at Harzert’s Cheese Shop on the Altstrasse, a place familiar to the adventurers as well.
Tomas dared not take his story to any authorities without more proof, realising how suspicious it all looked and fearing he might be blamed himself. The cheesemonger also had wealthy and influential friends and clients; any accusations made at him would need solid evidence behind them.
The clerk didn’t have many answers for the adventurers’ follow-up questions. He could think of no apparent motive for trying to kill his colleagues; nor did their work have anything directly to do with the disease which until recently ravaged Spittelfeld. He had told the cheesemonger he was going to host a party but, he didn’t think he’d mentioned any names of the guests. The cheese in question was a Wolfenburg Kurant, a local delicacy.
The adventurers asked him to let them know if he could think of any conceivable motive, and then promised to make a stab at looking into the matter, but could make no more promises. Grünwell promised to pay a generous fee if they could find out what happened and clear his name.
* * *
They wrote a short note about the matter to Heinrich and left it at the Jolly Magpie. Who knows – maybe he’d know something that would put this strange case into context?
The cheese shop on the Altstrasse
Following Aenlinn’s lead, the party walked over to Harzert’s Cheese Shop to have a look and it and its owner. The shop was only a few blocks away from the Crayfish Inn; it was housed on the ground floor of a tall, long, narrow house with three floors and an attic. The upper floors were apparently accessed by outside stairs and walkways around the back.
In the shop, customers were coming and going. Herbert Harzert himself, a rather handsome gentleman with a melancholy look, and two young assistants were behind the counter. Aenlinn innocently asked to buy a Wolfenburg Kurant. The girl behind the counter checked the shelves and found they were out of it. “Should I go downstairs after…?” she asks Harzert, who quickly interrupted her, “No! No, you handle the counter, I’ll get it. Most of it hasn’t aged enough yet, I will find a good one.”
He hurried over to a corner of the shop, opened a trapdoor in the floor and disappeared down the cellar stairs. The adventurers exchanged silent glances – time for a little breaking and entering tonight, it seemed.
When Harzert eventually returned with a nice cheese, Aenlinn mentioned she was recommended it by Tomas Grünwell. Harzert nodded; he remembered well having sold it for a party Grünwell was hosting, and he hoped it was a success. As far as the adventurers could tell, he seemed sincere – he didn’t give any impression of lying or pretending. But he was clearly hiding something… perhaps in the cellar.
Widow Distel
A large, loud woman came in to buy cheese for her children. While waiting, she started chatting to the adventurers and continued as they accompanied her out of the shop and around to the backyard. Her name was Lise Distel – usually known in the neighbourhood as “Widow Distel” – and she lived on the third floor above the shop with her numerous children, grandchildren and children-in-law. She was talkative and fond of gossip, but became defensive when Aenlinn tried to milk her for information about the cheesemonger – she seemed to be fond of him, or at least somewhat protective.
Once they’d managed to convince her they didn’t mean “Herbi” any harm, she mentioned that his beautiful but fragile wife Klara died of a fever the other year. He mourned her deeply and long; Lise’s bedroom is right above his, and she often heard him crying at night. But in recent months, he seemed to have gotten over it and begun to move on – but he still didn’t seem keen to remarry, even though being quite a lonely man. And, admittedly, a bit eccentric: the Widow’s fifth daughter Alfrieda heard a friend’s sister-in-law pass by after closing the other week, and she could have sworn she heard Harzert singing to his cheeses in the cellar! Then again, singing to your flowers is supposed to be good for them, so why not to your cheese?
The widow also recalled an episode three months ago when the shop was broken into; one of the gangs from the docks apparently. A week later they were all found dead, apparently from rampant dysentery. “The hideout looked like a slaughterhouse, apparently, and smelled even worse, but do you know they didn’t find any weapons there? Just cheese knives. Herbi got his money back, mind you, so all’s well that ends well…”
The widow took her leave and disappeared up the stairs at the back of the house to her apartment on the third floor. Kethe wondered if Harzert might somehow have blamed his wife’s death on the sanitation officers? From the back yard, they noticed a back door into the office behind the cheese shop. At least in daytime, the gate to the back yard was unlocked.
Back to the Crayfish
The adventurers returned to the Crayfish Inn. Aenlinn asked Sam and his mother-in-law Heléne whether they knew anything about the cheesemonger’s deceased wife. Heléne remembered her well: her name was Klara, a “pretty little thing” but fragile – and sadly she fell ill and died last year.
* * *
Waiting for darkness to fall, the adventurers took another walk around the cheese shop and reconnoitred. The neighbourhood was well patrolled; getting into the shop would take some stealth.
The night before Monday, October 29th
Burglary!
After dark, the adventurers crept back to the cheese shop. They were lightly equipped, but Aenlinn had smuggled her shield hidden under a cloak.
Their first attempt to discreetly sneak into the backyard was foiled by some passing watchmen who stopped to ask them what they were doing outside at night without a light. Apologising and promising to go back to their inn right away, they did so and waited a while before sneaking out again (this time bringing a lantern, although unlit). This time they managed to get in undetected.
Aenlinn failed to pick the lock on the back door, but Wernhart eventually managed it; the small office had no windows, so they risked lighting their lantern. There were some papers here, but it was just business correspondence with various cheese suppliers. They advanced into the shop (the door was just bolted from the office side), opened the trapdoor and went into the dark cellar.
The shrine in the cellar
In the cool, damp cellar, they first found only shelves full of cheeses, but at the far end, partially obscured by the shelves but with a little moonlight filtering through a high window grate, they found something strange.
A pair of portraits on the wall, both depicting the same beautiful woman in her 30s – the late Klara Harzert, presumably – framed a small wooden table covered with a cloth. Upon the table, between two candlesticks, sat a life-sized bust of the same woman. Also on the table were some parchments with writing on them. As they got closer, they noticed the bust was actually carved from hard cheese.
Kethe putson her gloves and picked up one of the sheets. Written on it was a mawkish love poem, using the image of a fine hard cheese aging as a metaphor for lasting love.
Suddenly, a soft female voice echoed in the cellar – and it sounded like it was coming from the cheese bust!
“Are you there, my love?” said the voice. “Did they like the cheese I recommended?”
The adventurers looked at each other. Wernhart stepped forward and tried to imitate Harzert’s voice and continue the conversation, but apparently not convincingly enough; the voice suddenly cut off, there was a scraping sound, and then silence.
After a minute or so of no more sounds or movements, Kethe walked around and moved the altar to look behind it, and indeed: behind the altar was a hole in the wall, large enough for a full-grown person to squeeze through it with some effort. They also noticed that the bust had been irregularly hollowed out from behind, to the point of the head being in danger of falling off.
Aenlinn crawled through the hole with the lantern; on the other side was a sewer tunnel. Wernhart scurried off to close the cellar door; then they went together into the sewers. Kethe marked the tunnels they’d passed with a white chalk so they wouldn’t get completely lost, but without a map they couldn’t expect to find much.
After wandering the sewer for a while without hearing or seeing anything, they decided to retreat to the cellar. Just as they’d started to turn back, they began hearing splashing, whisper-like noises that seemed to be getting closer – then further away – then closer again. From time to time there was also a louder splashing noise, as if something large and heavy was moving in the water.
They entered a slightly more open passage with several sound tunnels, just as the sounds were growing louder. And suddenly, there was movement: something was coming out of several of the side passages. At the edge of the lantern’s light, the adventurers glimpsed a handful of dark shapes, like nearly human-sized rats walking upright, armed with long knives and spears. From somewhere in the darkness, the same sweet woman’s voice they had heard from the altar screamed:
“Die-die! Kill-kill them!”
The Enemy Within: Remixed 
Which adventure is this from? I think I’ve read it, but can’t remember the source
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It’s based on ‘Curd Your Enthusiasm’, a short adventure from the collection One-Shots of the Reikland. I talk about it a little in the GM’s notes.
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