Franz Lohner's Chronicle - Waterlogged and Welcome

An absent-minded man of mysteries, Franz Lohner relies on his bulging journal to keep track of occurrences, intrigues and arguments around Taal's Horn Keep. Sometimes his notes are even useful, believe it or not. The Franz Lohner Chronicles are extracts from that journal.

Well, the Ubersreik Five are back.

Not that I worried they wouldn’t be. Well, not much. I certainly didn’t shed a tear of joy on seeing them traipse soddenly into the keep, no sir. Franz Lohner is as stoic as they come, ask anyone. But I won’t lie: it did my heart good to see them again.

Better than that, the mood in this mouldy old keep has shifted a bit. You don’t have to be a fellow of my perspicacity to recognise it. There’s laughter for the first time in Ranald knows hold long. Personable laughter, I mean. Not the kind that means someone’s going to hold Kerillian back to stop her using Salty as an unusual form of dagger storage. 

In fact, that pair are even talking again. They’re not exactly friendly, mark you, but it’s the closest I’ve seen since fate brought us all together. Salty’s even - mostly - stopped giving Sienna the I-am-going-to-burn-you-alive look that has grown so tiresome of late. It’s weird. Good weird. Didn’t understand it at first, not until I cornered Bardin and threatened to let Olesya know who keeps eating her candles.

According to him, it was all Kruber’s idea. Talked the others into running down the Skaven who escaped Karak Azgaraz. One shipwreck, one battle for survival and some kind of lingering daemonic presence later, and they’ve put recent troubles behind them, seemingly. Turns out Kruber had the right of it: a bit of forced adversity gave them reason to pull together again. 

Bardin holds the opinion that Kruber sabotaged their ship on purpose. Said it with the grudging respect that tells me he believes it. But I’m not so sure. For one, dicing with death on the Sea of Claws is more likely to leave you food for a megalodon than in a state of emotional enlightenment. For the other … I keep remembering how Lileath proclaimed that the Five would put their recent squabbles behind them. Seems to me that the best way for a goddess of prophecy to keep her title is to give fate a little nudge now and then.

Nah. For my money it was just dumb luck. We have our share of that now and again, and it seems that Ranald’s finally cashed up and left us to it.

Just as well, because from what I’m hearing the world’s gonna need the Ubersreik Five as never before.