From the Journal of one Wigmar Heck, pt 20 (White wedding, Red Crown)

 

It's been too long since I last wrote. I scarcely know where to start. With the wedding? The Emmanuelle Nacht affair? The thing about Bova? The strigany? Nuln and the things that lurk below? Grissenwald and the filth we found there? The River Reik? Kemperbad? The madness in the Baden Hills?

How about I start with why I didn't write. At first, I didn't have the inclination. Then I truly didn't have the time. By the time I rode for Nuln I had put the journal out of my mind. Now I sit here by lamplight, unable to sleep, trying to remember the order of things, what happened when, and where. Strange how quickly memory fades, even when the events were horrifying, momentous.

16 Vorgeheim, 2498

The month before the wedding was filled with a million little tasks around the fief. Had to set some things right personally.

Halmstad came to visit. We made plans for the future. He thinks I'm frightfully impatient, telling me that the seeds we sow now will take years, even decades to fully blossom. I want everyone to have potatoes for everyone right away: he tells me we can get a small harvest before year's end but that the buds will then need to sleep in cold and dark for a while before they can be replanted. In the meantime, I have given every peasant family a piglet to go with the few potatoes they've stolen from my field.

I think it's the beginning of a beautiful friendship that will outlast me.

24 Vorgeheim, 2498

Herr Müller arrived from the North and started working right away. A fine chap that. The mill won't be ready for this year's harvest so the peasants will have to go to Graustadt. But next year we'll have five times the yield or more and our own mill.

Geheimnistag, 2498

I was married to Isolde von Strudeldrof  in the Cathedral of Sigmar in Übersreik exactly one month after midsummer, on Geheimnistag. She was a splendid sight in a white gown brought up from Altdorf with a tiara of silver set with diamonds - the wedding gift from Nacht - on her head. I had Prince Hergard von Tasseninck as my best man. Guests aplenty, including Isolde's father and brother - and Herr Halmstad who decided to come after all. All of it paid with Imperial Gold. I couldn't have been more proud.

For three days we feasted. Then the guests went home and things returned to normal. Back on the estate we continue the celebration and the newly arrived strigany joined in. They are a strange folk. We hardly known each other but they seem bound to me by bonds of tradition and blood. Got offered another "wife," a girl even younger than then one I already had, but I opted to keep Johanna.

16 Nachgeheim, 2498

They tried to murder Fraulein Nacht in the month after the wedding. By chance, I was in Übersreik to discuss with the Envoy a great plan of mine: to muster a battalion of fine soldiers, mercenaries in name, but loyal to the Crown should it require aid with the Jungfreunds. 

A poison most foul - Red Sap - was given to her by an unfaithful servant. The sap was more than poison, it was an unholy brew of warpstone, sorcery, and only the Gods know what. Wizards have no means to detect it and no way to resist its foul effect: to either kill or the Dark Gods willing, turn you into a monstrous mutant.

I was able to get to the bottom of it: Red Crown cultists were behind it, a band of thugs as vile as any we met in Bögenhafen. Linked, I think, to the Order of Seven in Bögenhafen. Beholden to the same foul powers as the Purple Hand, but not allies.

I got to the bottom of the situation by my wits and many allies, bringing the enemy out into the open by using myself as bait, dealing with them most severely for their crimes against man and Empire. Oh, and I got reacquainted with Frau Bova von Dunkelberg. Handed her the ring-leader and promised to start writing to her again.  

Nacht proved tougher than most and with Halmstadt's aid, we were able to save her life. Unfortunately, she had to leave Übersreik immediately to get healed. Something to do with magic and the power of the tower. Worse, she had no time to issue me with the needed documentation. 

Fearing the Jungfreunds might make a move, sooner rather than later, I decided to go anyway. As soon as Nacht is back on her feet she’ll thank me for my foresight and determination. To Nuln and a hundred guns, four cannon, and some other paraphernalia.