Darklands: The Great Monastery

This is part of The Darklands story.

It is an uneventful journey from Hamburg to Lubeck (same city as in Stalker Online I wonder?) and again to Flensburg which is ruled by the King of Denmark himself. Unfortunately all the monks within the walls (of all those cities) have no knowledge they wish to share of St. Thomas the Apostle, which Liore diligently checks to avert any Wild Hunt attacks. This doesn't bother her though as the Wild Hunt hasn't chased them recently, and more importantly because their destination was in sight.

After resting up at Flensburg the team journeyed across a large plain to the Great Monastery, ready to face anything. The exterior simply had a graveyard and two guard houses. Opening the door to the first they are surprised to find a squad of templar knights!

The bad ass kind, like the ones you find in Priest!

These traitors are well trained and well equipped, and the team just scrapes through for a victory with River sustaining heavy,  near death damage. After looting their chamber with Liore finding a strange bone they then come across a second group of templars and having been so weakened from the first fight Syncaine and Doone get knocked out early. Before anyone is killed Liore decides to surrender instead of abandoning her comrades. They are taken prisoner and brought to the dungeons below.

Darklands: Party Crashers

This is part of The Darklands story.

Just to irritate the Wild Hunt further, Jewel decided to destroy a random pagan altar they came across as they journeyed to the town of Speyer. Alas the monks there did not know of St. Thomas the Apostle, but Vagabond did learn of a job for the Medici - to collect ancient prayer books from a hermit called Wipo South-East of Bremen - which was a long way away. After more slayings of wolves and a pair of giant spiders, as well as hiding from the wild hunt, Stubborn scaring bandits, and Belghast killing bandits the team comes across the satanist village of Buckeburg which they purge of evil.

As usual, one of them yells out something about revenge as they flee - this time North West of Gronnigen on September 22. For a change the group decides to actually go see what this "revenge" is, and to their surprise when they get there on that day it is the witches high sabbat! A huge throng of people has gathered there in the marshlands for an unholy evil time.

Cunningly, Jewel convinces the perimiter guards that they are new initiates of evil and while the accompanying guard wolves growl a bit at first they are let through into the main grounds of dark revelry. With so many people and places to go, the team decides to plan out on how best to sabotage this event.

Nearly a hundred? Need to kill 25 each!

Darklands: Wanted

This is part of The Darklands story.

In the next second it was on them.

The delay of saving the caravan caused the team time and by the very next night the Wild Hunt had found them. It wasn't hell hounds this time, just one incredibly fast and powerful minotaur like creature which almost won against the party. Almost. The next morning the group was fortunate enough to find a group of pilgrims headed to Koln which they joined for a safer journey.

Strangely upon arriving at the city the guards wanted to arrest them! With Jewel unable to talk their way out of this and the others (Stubborn and Belghast are slow :P) unable to outrun them they had no choice but to fight a few waves of the law men before finally melding with the bustling crowd, selling off the Tarnhelm to that foreign trader for a good sum of gold. They also decided to hire the 30 year old sneaky thief "Vagabond Walker" to help them elude further guardsmen and hopefully, the wild hunt too. As a bonus, Vagabond knew his way around firearms.

Not wanting to tarry in Koln the team quickly departed via a sewer grate beneath the walls and once more were chased by the wild hunt but Vagabond's stealth and speed managed to let them out distance their pursuers easily. Not long after they were approached by a Holzfrau (perhaps the same one they saved previously) who advised them to learn of "St. Thomas the Apostle" as only he could protect them from the wild hunt.