The Mission

"Simple enough. Two of us put the uniforms on. Climb back up, keeping our heads down, mind you! Wait for our chance and then kick the other bastards back down into the hole!

Foolproof!"

These Nachtwolfe troopers have grenades and their own weapons: they each have a MP40 machine gun, a Luger P08 handgun, and two Stielhandgranates.

"Naaa, we don't know how many there are up there and we'd be sitting ducks as we emerged from the hole. We need another plan," Dan whispers. "A diversion of some kind?"

You haven't searched everywhere, not thoroughly for secret passages or hidden crevasses, and the mystery remains... where did the mad Romanian with the flamberge come from?

"Right. Shit on this. Wait here, and keep quiet…"

Sabine nods, then tells one of the boys that she'll tell him what to say in return if the Nazis call down from above, looking for their men...

Swann begins searching in the opposite direction of Irish.

Not to be left out, Dan also gets ready to search for another way out.

"I'm not waiting. You'll be alright, Sabine? That Romanian bastard had to have come from somewhere."

Sabine merely gives Dan a lead on nod, intending to follow him into the gloom.

Behind a bit of rubble, out of the way, you find the way in that the Romanian must have taken. A narrow crevasse leads into a chimney, and a way up into the castle ruins proper. It's a hard climb, especially for those of you who are injured, but the narrowness actually makes it easier.

You find your way up into a crypt. Most of the sepulchres are empty, or crushed in a collapse, save one. A sprinkling of blue crystals sits around the empty spot where a body recently lay.

From there, you can force open a door and climb to the surface.

It's a trial for Sabine to make the climb with one good arm, even with help, and she's hard pressed to maintain her composure when they finally make their way up into the crypt.

Soot and dirt-streaked, after a moment she brings her light closer to the blue crystals and the bare spot for a closer look. Was this an ancient burial that's been disturbed?

Irish forces Sabine up, using his shoulders as a stepping stone for the woman. With a grunt, he says:

"Won’t be long until they raise an alarm, will it? Time for us to move our arses!"

When they finish the climb, he picks up a few of the crystals, examining them.

"Spose HQ will want a handful of these for testing?"

Dan looks at the crystals as he catches his breath from the climb, frowning as he wonders what it is about them that makes them so damn valuable.

"I imagine the bosses will Irish. Yeah, we better get moving. But not before we open that thing," he says, pointing at the only unopened tomb. "Anyone got a crowbar? Failing that we can try my knife."

Examining the area around them he thinks about what Sabine says. "Seems like it. Maybe someone or something is upset about that."

"The crystals," Sabine muses, "they are associated with the airship somehow?"

When Gregg approaches the unopened tomb, Sabine places a gentle but restraining hand on his arm. "Wait," she says quietly, checking over the tomb for any markings or signs for who or what it might contain...

Moving inside the tomb with Irish and Dan, Sabine is walking slowly, carefully. There are realizations dawning. Touching the Irishman gently on the wrist, she has him turn his hand over and open his palm so she can see the shimmering blue crystals he collected. "There is a strange energy in these," she murmurs. "And I think that German airship was studded with such crystals."

Then, pointing to some scuffing tracks on the floor, she adds, "The man we fought, with the sword... 'e was long dead. 'E was resting in ’ere. These crystals were disturbed somehow... and they woke him. That angered 'im, and... well. You know the rest."

"The crystals woke him up? You think they can bring people back to life?" Irish wondered with a grimace. The thought of a half million undead Germans storming the Maginot Line swam into his mind.

Worse than the real thing…

"I don’t suppose we can rub one over your should and it might patch you up? Might work different on the living, eh?"