Farewell to a friend.
Later that day, Lothar & Felix visit the temple of Shallya, they recieve some medicine but are told they need a much more powerful priestess to remove the sickess Nurgle's Rot. They are told to travel to Frederheim, to the Shallyan Hospice of the Order of the Bleeding Heart, near Altdorf and speak to The Matron there.
During the night, Abel has received a letter from Princess Totbringer, asking him to meet her in the rose garden. When he does, she explains she has heard rumours she is to be married "to that dreadful reprobate" Wolfgang Holswig-Abenauer. Wofgang being the nephew of Emperor Karl Franz is the heir to the throne and as such it is an honour graf Boris Totbringer cannot refuse. However, the princess wants one night of wild passion with "bad boy" Abel.
The following day the crew is invited to an audience with the Graf himself. Several members of the court are also present. The Graf tells them that his investigators have discovered several leads pointing to activity by the Cult of the Purple Hand in Altdorf. Graf Totbringer is especially concerned about the Purple hand since, a few days ago, an Imperial emissary from Altdorf came to him with a request from the emperor to marry off his daughter, Princess Katarina to the heir of the Throne, Crown Prince Wolfgang Holswig-Abenauer. He wants the Heroes of Middenheim to make sure any cells of the cult in Altdorf are destroyed or neutralised before the marriage.
To aid them in this mission, the College of Light has sent aid in the form of an elf magician named Solar Listersidra. He is a veteran in the fight against Chaos and surely a great addition to the crew. Sadly, his introduction is rudely interrupted by a grieving, drunk Gotrak.
Before they leave, the heroes do some research on the Nurgle champion they encountered beneath the Fauslag. They learn that there are still remnants of the Von Blucher family in the empire, namely in the Castle Suderberg.
Summer’s end has come and gone and fall hits hard. The Festival is finished as people prepare for winter. It is Brauzeit (fall), Middenheim still has plenty of lingerers but most file out. Rain accompanies a sudden drop in temperatures. Chestnut pies are all the rage with the halfling sellers. Middenheim is in an uproar about the Altmarket Bomber, which was an attack from Mr. Gouda. Bombs are rare so there must be a supplier. But when the crew finally tracks him down, they find him in league with the Skaven, who are successful in creating enough of a distraction for the vile Mr. Gouda to escape their clutches and just punishment.
Off to Altdorf
This group will take the Delberz road and there take an Arabyan river barge up to the capital. The weather is grim, a steady downpour and cold, whipping winds accompany the travellers.
After a couple of hours, the adventurers come upon two carts, one stuck in the mud. These belong to two families making their way to Delberz, the Kesselschmits and the Moosbarts, (Blacksmith & Cartwright) and young scholar Mirjam Langweiler. The adventurers lend a hand and decide to travel to Delberz together.
Shots in the dark
Suddenly the caravan is attacked with hit and run tactics. Beastmen hurl spears, shoot arrocs and generally make a ruckus before running off in the gloom.
This action is repeated several times. In one such action, one of the carts is attacked by a Centaur who breaks one of the wheels. It's clear the beastmen are stalling and the heroes won't reach the next village in time before dark. Then, they stumble upon a barricade and the beastmen attack in larger numbers. If their plan had been better executed and should they have brought stronger beastmen, they could have some success. However, with the caravan consisting of fine, honed warriors and two magicians, they don't stand a chance.
Having defeated the beastmen horde, the heroes arrive in the middle of the night in Malstedt, where they rest.
The next day, in the late afternoon the caravan arrives in Deberz, where they say goodbye to the Moosbarts and the Kesselschmits. The scholar, Mirjam Langweiler, who they befriended along the way will join them on the boat.
The mirror of desire
They learn that Ludwig von Blucher was indeed a resident here, at the time of Sigmar. However, the young noble was killed in a hunting accident, a couple of years later, the entire castle suffered from the "von Blucher Curse", a massive outbreak of something similar to the Yellow Brain Fever.
Down in the, now abandoned, dungeons, they find an inscription of a poem on a wall which reads:
“She made her own grave, cold, dark and wet
For a soul, so warm and true
She only felt sorrow and woe,
She could not abide, the dismal swamp, to the surface her spirit flew.
For her love had been murdered during a hunt, the culprits had died from the flu,
She will haunt the lake forevermore, until she has settled her debt.”
This leads the heroes to investigate anything about the lake behind the Castle and sure enough, various reports state the lake is haunted by a female ghost.
The heroes then deduce that this haunting must have been the girlfriend of Luwig von Blucher, who is a ghost because the murder on her lover. Which, in fact is not a murder because he obviously survived.
Meanwhile, something is wrong with the suitors of Katchen, they seem overly obsessed. And her attraction on the suitors has an uncanny feel about it. Some careful questioning of her parents reveals that these things started happening after she got an old mirror, found in the attic.
The ghost and the Demon
The ruckus comes from miss Katchen's room, when they arrive there they can just see the faint outlines of her and Von Saponatheim inside the mirror. On the outside, there is no trace of them!
The heroes soon find that by just touching the surface of the mirror, one is teleported to a weird mirror-dimension. Inside this dimension, they find both youthful nobles, trapped. They were drawn inside the mirror at the moment they kissed in front of it and they saw a deamon coming into the "real" room at the exact same moment.
The adventure concludes when the heroes finally figure out that another true love's kiss is needed to return everyone to the real world. Once they returned, they manage to banish the deamon and continue their way to Altdorf