A day's journey north off of the Old Forest Road, nestled between the foothills of the middle mountains lies Graustonhain. The town is heralded by several miles of fields lining the road, green with the new growths of spring, with rocky hills rising in the distance on either side.
The town walls are impressive for the size of the village you expected to find; steep earthworks twice the height of a man, crested with wall built from large grey stones. As you near the gatehouse however, you note that the stonework is ill maintained and even crumbling in places.
Along the streets, quite a few windows and doors are boarded up, the houses they belong to in disrepair. Here and there, buildings have been demolished entirely to make room for small fields of vegetables. The locals ignore you pointedly, although you can tell they're staring when they think you're not looking.
You find lodgings either at the hospital next to the fairly impressive temple of Morr, or at a nameless boarding house across from the town pub, run by a bustling ample-bellied woman insisting you call her Karla. She's as interested in you and your story as the rest of the town seems wary. Either way, you are near enough the only tenants; the hospital's only other occupants are a badly injured young man in a tattered uniform and a taciturn roadwarden who stays but a single night.
While obviously having seen better days, it is clear that the town has somehow been spared the recent Storm; the only mark of the war is the dearth of men of fighting age.
All of you find yourself making your way to the northern gate at first bell past noon for the funeral procession. Aside from yourselves, a handful of people are present. A pair of noblemen, judging by their clothes, one elderly and the other pudgy and middle aged. A balding bhurger you may or may not recognize as the owner of the pub, holding the hand of a young boy. There's also a pair of women; one a young daughter of a bhurger or noblewoman, with black hair, olive skin and puffy eyes, the other more obviously a native of more common means, with short hair ragged in places, and whose mourning dress appears somewhat wrinkled.
A trio of acolytes dressed in the grey robes of Morr are attending the professor's coffin; the bereaved are meant to carry it from here to the professor's final resting place where the priest awaits.
Welcome to the start of the campaign! Do you want to help carry the coffin?
You've recieved word that your friend, professor Petrus Lorrimor has died, and has invited you to his funeral at his hometown village in midland. Making haste, you arrive just in time.
I've been hankering to play some Warhammer Fantasy RPG 2e for a while now, but I think the only way I'm going to get to play is if I run it. So I'm stealing an idea I saw somewhere else and converting a pathfinder adventure path to the Warhammer Fantasy 2e setting.
Backstory wise, your characters need to be someone that Petrus would trust with a somewhat strange and sensitive job in return for promised pay, probably either former colleagues, friends or employees. You also need to be physically close enough to the area around Talabheim that you could feasibly make the journey to the funeral within a month or so; his hometown is in eastern Middenland, 10 days journey on foot from Talabheim. This doesn't mean you have to be from there, you just need to be in the area for whatever reason.
about the Professor:
The professor is thus known because of his professoriate emeritus at the Royal University of Talabheim. He's also a renowned explorer and archeologist, which is likely the capacity you know him in; he has organized many expeditions within and without the boundaries of the empire. His field of study is somewhat esoteric, but includes a lot of history, and when he could be wrangled into giving lectures at the university it'd primarily be on history and anthropology.
He's a fairly honourable, jovial sort, and if he has vices it is probably his willingness to court danger in pursuit of knowledge.
You may or may not know that he is also an apprentice to the Amethyst College of Magic. Many apprentices don't have the skill with magic to become journeymen wizards, and are doomed to linger at the college in perpetuity with little hope of advancement. A few who can be trusted, both to control their arcane talents and in a more political sense, are let back out into the world to serve the college in ways that full wizards are for whatever reason unable or unwilling to. If you know that Petrus is an apprentice wizard, you suspect he's one of these.
He's well past his prime, but not yet elderly; his adopted daughter has recently come of age.
About the setting:
We're using the warhammer fantasy setting as described in WFRP2e. Among other things, this means we're just coming out of the Storm of Chaos. The armies are slowly being stood down and veterans are trickling back home. It might be interesting to know what you were doing during the Storm, if you need a direction for your backstory.
The game will primarily be set in the northern parts of the Empire. We might swerve into Brettonia briefly. Characters with ties to these places might find interesting interactions, whereas people like elves and dwarves and other foreigners will spend a lot of time as strangers. That can also be interesting.
A final thing to note, just to set expectations for anyone new to warhammer fantasy, is that society is fairly stratified compared to something like Golarion. Being adventurers from all walks of life, you'll likely find that you'll be breaking some social boundaries, and be unwelcome in certain places.
Character creation:
Stats: Roll 2d10 in order for your stats, and 1d10 for wound and fate points, as normal. Then you can apply Shalaya's mercy (take 11) to one stat, and Ranald's fortune (re-roll) to one stat.
Race: Pick your Race.
Career: You'll roll your first career randomly. You can roll twice, either on the core rulebook table or one of the tables from the Career Compendium book. You can pick different tables for each of the two rolls if you want, just write which table you're using before you roll.
Advancements: Apply the 1 free advancement at character creation as normal. From there, you get 2000xp to spend. As a special rule, you cannot enter advanced careers at character creation, but you can swap to any basic career you want (regardless of your first career's exit options) for only 100xp.
Gear: You start with the trappings of your two first basic careers for free. You also start with standard starting equipment (set of clothes, dagger, backpack, blanket, mug & cutlery, a hand weapon and a purse holding 2d10gc). From there, you get an additional 100gc to spend. During character creation, you can buy at full the listed price and sell stuff at half.
Houserules & clarifications:
We're using the Advanced Armor and Carrying Capacity variants. Remember that this means that Heavy Armor loses its speed penalty, except for whatever penalty the encumberance ends up giving.
We're using the Distinguishing Best Craftsmanship Hand Weapons and Great Weapons variant rule from Old World Armory. (if anyone doesn't have this, ask about it and I'll explain. It just means that Best Craftsmanship hand and great weapons get some specific abilities depending on if they're swords, axes or hammers)
We generally won't bother with tracking rations when travelling.
The -20% penalty for off-hand weapons applies to the free offhand parry you get from dual wielding. Generally I find that dual-wielding is a bit too powerful, this makes the Lightning Parry & Ambidexterity talents and Parry Stance more worthwhile options, and dual-wielding less of a nobrainer.
If anyone wants to play a runesmith, you'll have to pay 250gp for materials for each permanent rune you want to craft(on top of whatever Best Craftsmanship object you're going to put it on). Temporary runes will only cost 1pence in materials. You can start out with a loan for whatever you need to afford your first permanent runic item. You'll start with the item being 1d10 days work away from completion, with the loan due in two months. You've agreed to pay back double whatever you borrowed, and if you can't pay the creditors have the right to lease your journeyman's piece for 100 years and a day at the cost of 1gc. Materials needed for the creation of runes are considered of Uncommon availability; a lot of it is gems and metals, but there's also some rarer incense involved.
Generally, when it comes to trappings I will work to make the stuff you need available, although some things may require some work on your part to get your hands on.
