They ... don't have good evidence of serial killers just hanging around killing people for fun, no, the courts aren't quite bad, the sort of murderers they're thinking of killing are cases like "this boyar's main critic fell down a well inexplicably, presumably this is his fault" and "these two families have been feuding for a bit and some of the fights have resulted in deaths" and "I'm totally 100% sure personally that this particular shopkeeper killed someone but I have no tangible evidence of that". Slavers on the other hand are much easier to find - the slave trade isn't *quite* open in Erengrad but it's certainly not hard to find Norscans quietly moving shackled passengers from ship to ship, or loading them into caravans headed east. One member of the group claims that they do so much of that that it'd really be easier to just kill all of the Norscans in port and be done with it. And the killings wouldn't be extrajudicial - they have a priest of Verena right there, that has to count for something, right? 

You know, that's a good point. The Acolyte knows surprisingly little about the actual specifics of the local judicial system, he had just kind of been figuring it didn't empower priests of one god, even the god of justice, with power of life and death. Might be something good to read up on.

Still, if there's obvious slavers at work, the Acolyte will, if not gladly then at least with dour certitude, slay them and free their captives. Ideally the priest would give him some information on what to tell the slaves once they've been unshackled but if not he's willing to spend maybe as much as half his time here in Erengrad helping them get settled (and offering to teach them of Fire, and offering them a place in his own caravan or at his informal school back in Kislev City).

He can send them to the temple but they don't actually have the funding to handle large numbers of freed slaves. Still, being free and broke is almost certainly better than being sold into the hands of chaos-cultists or what have you - even if you do freeze to death in the snow, it'll be clean and honourable. 

Fair enough. He'll still make sure to let the slaves he frees know where he's staying in the city if they want to send him a message or request his tutelage.

Regardless, this sounds like a reasonably beneficial use of his time while he prepares for and charters the next leg of his voyage. He can attempt to find the slaver operations on his own if the priests give him a lead, but if they provide him more than that he can get to work a bit quicker. Either way, once he actually finds the slavers and their captives, it should be a relatively simple matter to slay the former and slash the bindings of the latter from a rooftop or dark corner, before giving the newly freed folk some guidance to the temple if it looks like they need it.

It's not hard to find slaves, the docks are split approximately based by origin culture and Norscans are the slavers around here (well, druchii and chaos dwarves are also slavers, but they're not a major slice of local trade). They have their own docklands and quarters, pragmatically placed just outside the north wall - it's one thing to trade with on and off enemies, it's another thing to keep wolfships inside your walls when those wolfships might be full of marauders instead of traders (with other cultures, it's easier to tell the difference. With Norscans ... well, often the main thing they want to sell is loot from all the marauding they've been doing). Which ships exactly are slavers is subject to some debate, but it's an argument between "definitely these six, and also probably a bunch more" on the conservative side and "even if they don't have slaves at this precise moment, they're all slavers and should all burn" on the less conservative side.

Fair enough!

What sort of structure do these wolfships have? Do they sit high enough on the water that he might be able to cut through their hulls to make an opening for slaves still on board to escape through, or would that mostly just cause the ship to immediately start sinking? If it's the latter case, the Acolyte isn't opposed to just boarding each ship and liberating their captives one by one, but it will definitely take a bit longer.

They're extremely small and light - they don't actually have a deck as such, even, having a draft as shallow as possible for speed and beach landings. Norscan thralls and recent prizes alike are simply chained to oars to keep them from wandering, perhaps unchained in expectation of battle to act as chaff, if they are expected not to turn on their masters. 

Oh, excellent! In that case, the Acolyte will simply find a vantage point where he can spy as many slave crews as he can, cut the sinews of the norscan guards, and cleave the chains of all the slaves. It might be good to have some of the Verenites nearby to gather and direct the freed slaves afterwards.

This is quite achievable. There is a moment of shocked silence after the screams, and then, after a moment, people start to make a break for it. Some flee up the road towards the city, while others head for the hills, or for the less-formal campsites outside the city, where Norscans and Ungols barter and sleep without the restrictions of urban life. Some people among those chained stop to loot the boats. Some take the chance to kick or stab their captors. Some take the chance to try and grab and chain their fellow slaves, or to assault them apparently out of fury or spite. 

The Verenites will attempt to control the crowd, but they're outnumbered by an order of magnitude and nobody is feeling terribly inclined to follow orders right now. They do help move some of those too injured or shocked to move on their own. 

The Acolyte will hang around his vantage point for a while longer, but is mostly hanging back now. The details of all these individual interactions are beyond him, he doesn't know these people personally, doesn't know what their journeys under captivity have shown them. For now he'll just watch and make sure that no big brigades of norscans that might be able to overpower and recapture the crowd arrive, and maybe occasionally protecting the Verenites if it looks like one of them is about to suffer a potentially fatal injury.

If someone comes to find him up on the roof he's situated on he'll make himself scarce, but otherwise he'll wait there (or maybe move to another roof if it looks it will have a better view of the action) until the chaos has mostly died down. He's willing to spend the whole night out here if he needs to, it wouldn't be the first time he's skipped a night of sleep and he's familiar with particular pushes and pulls he needs to make with Power to help counteract the numerous effects of minor sleep deprivation.

At least one gang of former slaves makes a serious job of re-enslaving their one-time fellow slaves and making off with a wolfship, and has to be put down, and several bands of marauders attempt to respond and are similarly put down, but for the most part, people manage to flee into the night. Nobody thinks to check the roof. Eventually, things return to quiet, the dockside littered with broken metal and dead slavers. 

Unfortunate about that one, but such is life. Better some be saved than none!

He'll make his way down and try and find the Verenites again if they haven't disappeared, double-checking with them that he didn't miss anything important that they managed to see or hear from the ground level, or if they have anything else to share for that matter. Assuming everything's all good, he'll head back to the hostel where he and his students-cum-traveling companions have been staying and either try and get a couple hours of sleep or just get an early start on writing various notes to attempt to collate into a primer on Knowledge in the future, depending on how many hours of night he thinks are left.

The Verenites have gone to ground, taking with them the least-able and most-traumatized slaves. Presumably, they will meet back up at the temple in the morning to coordinate in more detail. There are a few more hours left in the night, but not many - the early-rising bakers are already about their work.

Fair enough! The Acolyte will skip sleep for tonight, work on that proto-manuscript, and once the sun's up he'll head out to the temple to try and get the debrief on the night's events.

The overall vibe seems to be "what the fuck". Nobody really seems to know what's going on. There isn't a lot of love for Norscans in these parts though - southerners are happy that the Norscan quarter got beat up and agitating to have them expelled entirely, Kislevite commoners are much the same, though local merchants and middle-class have a steady undercurrent of concern - what if the riots spread? What to be done about these refugees, probably as bad as the Norscans? No matter the good or evil of the act, they'd rather it didn't happen again. The opinions of the rich and the powerful are not available for common gossip, but an announcement goes out that a unit of streltsi will be posted in the area in case of further riots and disruptions of comments. From the frosty home of the Ice Witches, there is no comment. 

The Verenites specifically are in good spirits! That was very productive and a great injustice has been undone. If only he'd killed more Norscans. 

The temple's outbuildings are packed to bursting with freed slaves, sleeping everywhere there's a flat surface. 

The Acolyte is happy to help, though it seems like the city will be on high alert for a while. He might be able to offer something like that again when he returns from Karak 8 Peaks, but probably it wouldn't be safe to do it again before he and his companions set sail.

Today, he'll help around the temple, since there must be a great influx of tasks to help guide and take care of the refugees. If he happens to hear any of them expressing curiosity about who, or what, broke their chains and struck their captors, he'll try and slake their thirst for knowledge.

Still, he probably won't hang around for more than a few hours, until the late morning. After that, assuming he doesn't get taken aside, he'll see if he can see what's up about that strange dwarf-ish temple, and if he has any more hours of daylight after that he'll see to making final arrangements for the trip to let them get on the water as soon as possible.

There are innumerable tasks to be done, but not too many which can be done only by the Acolyte, so he will not be missed too much if he leaves sooner than he might have. 

Many ex-slaves do want to know about what saved them - on learning that it was him, he has to shake off less people seeking to be his student, and more the Norscan cultural norm of swearing undying servitude to the more terrifying thing that you're within arm's reach of. Slaves of other ethnicities are also grateful, but many of them have been directed to the parts of the city allocated to their countrymen already, and those that remain are still shell-shocked or apathetic. 

It's nice, every once in a while, to just be another able-bodied man, not responsible for anything different from your fellows.

The Acolyte is definitely not accepting the undying servitude of anyone here today, especially not when it's simple self-preservation.

Thus, he will depart one temple and arrive at the other.

The gates are sealed, and two dwarves stand guard. They are armoured in a different style to the rangers he met before, armed with halberds that appear to have integrated firearms. They ignore him until he addresses them, standing at perfect attention and stillness, and only then, in an extremely gruff tone of voice, ask "What is your business Umgi?".

"I recognized some of the architecture, from a campaign to expel goblins from Karak Raziak, and was curious as to how it came to be here in this city, seemingly so far from the mountains? I apologize if this is not the appropriate place to ask such a question."

They seem to start to reflexively rebuke him and tell him to leave, and then remember themselves. 

"We are not our weaker cousins" he spits on the ground. "This is the embassy of Zharr to the trade guilds of Erengrad."

Ah. Memories of the Acolyte's time with the Cathayan caravan contain references to such a nation. Ill-liked by the caravaners, certainly. "I had not realized that you had any relation to the karaks of the west, which I suppose is only natural if you hold them in low regard. Regardless, my curiosity is satisfied, thank you for your time."

Going from what he's heard of these folks, he's not especially interested in mingling with them, not on this trip at least, so unless something stops him or gets his attention, he will move on yet again to the docks, and specifically to the office of the company whose captaincy he began to discuss chartering a voyage with over missive all those days ago.

Which captain is this? The intensely pious Kislevite who began every letter with three paragraphs of prayers of Mannan? The black-humoured elf who offered a free trip if he served as ship's mage? The unashamedly smuggling Sartosan who offers a good deal to take him all the way to Barak Varr? Or the Imperial who charges more than everyone but the elf's (undiscounted) fare, citing cannon unmatched by any but a dwarf ship and a properly appointed cabin.