For the people of the Baronies, life is much like putting out a brushfire; work that is equal parts dangerous, frantic, and tiring. This past season has been no different. Through the sun-dappled leaves of spring into summer into autumn, the people of Resinderholz have made what they can of their lot.
In Wolstad they attempt to excise a very human infection within their midst; criminal syndicate calling themselves ‘The New Butchers of Wolstad’ takes to the streets in combat against competition and Magistrates.
In Krezenberg they make difficult choices and watch death unfold both within and without. Like a loving pet, the Blasserstreit follows the story of Resinderholz at every step. In Krezenberg people die, but those deaths are ordained by the powerful.
In the Ravensreach Wilds they wander into the dark in search of answers - in search of victory.
We will endure.
Grit Your Teeth and Tear the Flesh
The importance of Wolstad to the people of Resinderholz has made itself particularly clear within the past few years. By no means has this diminished by the hands of Boghoffens, nor by the crushing pressure of what feels like endless war. Such things are meager before the importance of the greatest sized settlement in Resinderholz, for its existence outweighs the dangers around it. Wolstad must endure as its peoples do, for otherwise more than forty-five-thousand souls must risk the greater Weald.
Such a thing cannot be allowed to pass.
At its core, Wolstad is a city like any other; place well-situated for trade and travel, home to places holy to The Spheres and helpful to its people alike. Many walks of Wealder life call such a place home, from the archetypal roles well-spread amongst what's left of The Baronies, to simple merchants, priests, farmers and so many more. To count the communities of Wolstad is to count too high, to guess too much, and meet too many. There is life in Wolstad, and much of it.
Yet as with all things beneath the canopies of Resinderholz, such a thing could not help but be twisted in some cruel way.
For the people of this city, the twist would come in a form all too familiar. Suffering, not at the hands of monsters, but of humans. The blood of its people spilled atop its dirt and smeared across its stone. Cruelty, however uncommon, brought about by the machinations of the criminal: gangs, their reasons and ambitions their own, of little care to the people under which the consequence is shared.
In the past season, there has been a short yet volatile gang war across the streets of Wolstad.
There are few within the city who could not know the reason for such a thing. The reasons are all too easily paraded in the form of blooded lips and fresh graves. Criminals of Lerona Mere, whispered to be the overreaching hand of a Docklands Capo, bring fiery vengeance to their local competition. They are met all too quickly and brutally by The New Butchers of Wolstad, their ties to the city apparently long and deep despite their name.
It is not clear who began the fighting, but it is clear that both gangs responded in kind. Bruise begets bruise, broken bone earns broken bone, and blood deserves blood. In only a scant couple of weeks, what was at first but a few concerning incidents quickly turned to all out combat between dozens. It was not long before the first uninvolved citizen suffered the result of such vindictive things. With Heroic attention firmly focused on the surrounding Boghoffen threat, the gangs were able to avoid immediate punishment for their actions. Such luck would not last.
The Concordian Senate, by the words and motion of The Baroness of Resinderholz, would send Civil Servants on a Grand Inquest to Wolstad. With a Vault in funding, the Grand Inquest would see Magistrates sent all across Resinderholz to hire as many local Huntsmarshalls as could be found. With time a sudden and pressing concern due to the escalation of fighting, it would not be well-paid work, but would be more than rewarding in and of itself.
Soon after, Wolstad would be flooded by Huntsmarshalls and Civil Servants in droves. The gangs, as damaging as they were to Wolstad, were not more than three hundred or so combined, and they would quickly find themselves outnumbered by professionals all too eager to do their jobs. Some blood would once again find itself upon the cobblestones of Wolstad, but this time it would be shed on behalf of the citizenry, not at their expense.
As quickly and violently as it had begun, the small war of Wolstad would end. More than a few pardons would be gladly handed to Huntsmarshalls with blooded weapons, deemed a necessity against those who particularly resisted arrest and trial, the latter still ongoing as the Autumn Summit approaches.
Despite such a quick and clean end to the violence, the ringleaders of The New Butchers would be reported to have escaped, and the particular Capo of Lerona Mere still a mystery. Reports from the Magistrates propose that such things could have been avoided, but the projected promises of the Weiland Keepers would never be fulfilled.
Regardless, Wolstad breathes a short sigh of relief as vicious criminals are swiftly evicted, and their danger cut short. Only time will tell if such a criminal presence in Wolstad is a result of its existence, but for now there is time to grieve the lost in peace.
Game Information
With very little warning, there is a violent criminal outburst in Wolstad between a Lerona Mere gang and The New Butchers of Wolstad, their local competition. Despite a volatile increase in fighting between the two, and a small amount of civilian deaths, the fighting is quickly quelled.
A Grand Inquest, passed through The Senate at the behest of Baroness Grasshoff, would see Civil Service Magistrates employ Huntsmarshalls to arrest the criminals. There would be a speedy success, but the ringleaders would remain anonymous or uncaptured. Rumours of additional assistance from the Sheriff of Weiland that could have assisted with this would pass quickly, as The Weiland Keepers never arrive.
The additional work available in pursuing these criminals is good news for the Huntsmarshalls of Wolstad. Any Huntsmarshalls based in Wolstad / The Ravensreach Wilds will receive additional funds to represent this.
Pursuing these criminals is currently out of the capabilities of the Baronies, lacking a founded Huntsmarshalls Bureau. Another Grand Inquest could be successful, but would require a Senate Motion.
You Can Live With Dignity, Can’t Die With it
Years ago—not so many that it is forgotten, but long enough that the wounds are scarring over—the warriors of the Weald stood on the banks of the Eisen River and loosed their arrows into the forms of Blasserstreit-ridden refugees fleeing Vassertal. Hundreds died in the water. Hundreds more sank beneath it. The quarantine decree from Baron Arnmeyer was monstrous in its cruelty, but no one could deny its effectiveness. Hundreds perished. Thousands lived.
It is often the duty of Barons to write orders for death.
In 224, it was no different than in 214. When three-hundred Zekartaal, cast out from their own lands and rotting with plague, arrived at the gates of Krezenberg, there was a choice to be made. The Baroness Grasshoff and Champion Lavinia Fischer did not hesitate.
Cordon off the Zekartaal. They will succumb to their sickness without our aid. Their bodies shall be burned. All our strength must serve Krezenberg.
And so it was.
The town sealed itself. Mercenaries patrolled the roads. Hunters took to the woods, eyes sharp for the desperate and the dying. No one would slip through. No one would bring death inside. And when the Zekartaal finally collapsed into their sickness, their campfires guttering one by one, the warriors of Krezenberg did what they had done on the Eisen. They filled the last of them with arrows.
The deed was done.
Then came the fire. Great pyres rose on the northern outskirts, swallowing the dead in heat and smoke. The plague was burning. The town was winning. But disease does not surrender without a fight.
The enemy was already inside.
The warriors of Krezenberg had brought Blasserstreit home with them. Not many—just a handful. But a handful is enough. By the time the sickness reached the northern outposts of Resinderholz, it had claimed a dozen lives.
Here, the work fell not to warriors, but to Doktors of the Weald.
They were few, but they had not yet been lost. Their words, written in suffering and tempered by history, laid the path forward:
Treat those who still have hope.
What is left, give to those in pain.
For those too far gone—mercy, in the form of a swift and final hand.
The decree of Doktors Genfriede Vischerin and Ludwig von Wolstad was clear. No great heroism. No desperate gambles. Just the arithmetic of death.
As it was in Amelstadt, as it was in Eisen, as it was in a hundred other towns before it, the plague was stopped. The final toll: twenty-three. Fifteen to the sickness. Eight to the surgeon’s knife.
No one thinks to count the Zekartaal.
By the decree of the Baroness, the Champion, and the Doktors, Krezenberg endured. There is no reward in this. No glory. No cause for celebration.
Only the certainty of survival—and the weight of what it cost.
Game Information
The outbreak of Blasserstreit in Krezenberg has been stopped and the infected Zekartaal outside the city are no longer. Some weeks have passed since the last infection was noted and nearby Doktors have cleared the township.
Due to the resources required to treat this outbreak, Herb Gardens in the Ravensreach Wilds will find they have produced slightly less this past season.
So long as the Krow Doktors guild remains unfounded, it is likely that outbreaks will continue sporadically.
I Am the Forgotten Forest of One
The magick of the Weald—an ancient corruption seeping from the roots of the trees—calls to all who wander near. It whispers of power, boundless and consuming; of freedom, intoxicating and final; of meaning, profound and dreadful. The Houndspriests preach that these promises are the lies of a treacherous evil. Yet any Wealder of Resinderholz only has to look to the northwest to see the undeniable truth: the Weald's magick is both monstrous and magnificent.
There, towering and unyielding, stands the Nightmare—a barrier of cursed Harbringer Stands conjured by Brother Ash through some unknowable bargain with the forest’s ancient, whispering will. His creation has imprisoned Resinderholz for months, defying even the greatest minds of The Concord. Each attempt to unweave its dark bindings has cost blood, and lives.
But at last, there is progress. For the first time, cracks spider through the Nightmare’s impenetrable weave.
At the command of Chapter Kaptain Volker Klein, a cohort of Houndspriests and their apprentices set out from Krezenberg, bound for the Nightmare. Leading them was Kima Hellrach, a revered Stallian Priest armed with the knowledge of the Shardcircle and the teachings of her Chapter. What transpired within those shadowed woods remains a secret, known only to the Houndspriests and their Kaptain. But the whispers that follow their return tell of a discovery—a fragile hope.
The weakness they uncovered is not a weapon nor a ritual. It is a single Harbringer Stand: a sentinel of bark and blight dubbed Veil the Grieving Woe. Fate itself has marked it as flawed, hidden among its more formidable brethren within the Nightmare. If this Stand could be destroyed utterly, it would fray the curse’s intricate bindings. The Nightmare would weaken, and with it, the Weald’s hold on Resinderholz. Such a victory could open the way for the warriors of the Weald to delve even deeper into the Nightmare’s cursed heart, perhaps even to claim a triumph against its ancient evil.
But these dreams of triumph are distant, and the path to them is paved with ash and sacrifice. For now, there is but one task: to bring flame and faith to Veil the Grieving Woe.
The Harbringer Stand is weaker than its kin, or so it is said. Armed with the secret knowledge gleaned by Hellrach’s cohort, there is hope that the Stand can be felled. Yet hope is a fragile thing. In the Weald, such endeavors are never simple, and the cost is always blood.
Game Information
There will be an opportunity at this Summit for 30 Heroes from the Weald to attempt to defeat a Harbringer Stand in a very difficult conflux. This conflux will be led and organised by the Chapter-Kaptain of Chapter Kristov, Volker Klein. The conflux will be on Day 2 of the Summit. This conflux will contain combat.
There will be additional information and decisions regarding the Harbringer Stands for the Champion of the Baronies, The Chapter Kaptain of the Chapter Kristov, The Ritter Kaptain of the Eisen College of War, and the Sage Superior of the Broken Vale.
Houndspriest Characters with Divine Lore - Stallia will receive a handout in their character pack detailing interactions with Houndspriest Kima Hellrach in the past.
Further reading at Winds of the World Autumn 225