Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

---

All around you, the men and dwarves descend into feverish activity, as the halflings melt into the woods to scout the area. The first tree had fallen before you had even dismounted your horse, and by the time the leadership has assembled for you to address them more are being felled to clear a firing line for the artillery, and shovels had been distributed to grumbling men and dwarves.

"Defensible," Gustav mutters on one side of you, as you and the rest of the leaders of the gathered forces look up at the accursed castle.

"It doesn't matter," you say. "We're not going to assault it." You smile in anticipation. "This is far beyond the archetypal broad side of a barn; this is the broad side of a mountain. We all know the history - Castle Drakenhof was built by the von Draks during their control over Sylvania, up until Isabella von Drak's marriage to Vlad von Carstein in 1797. Three centuries later, our Dwarven allies," you nod to Thori and Narfi, "introduce gunpowder to the Empire. Meaning those walls, impressive as they are, were designed to stand against catapult and siege tower."

"No rounding, no sloping, no rampart, and the bastions are aesthetic rather than functional," Narfi notes. "Even the 'circular' towers are prisms, not truly round. And it's built on rock rather than soil, and the bailey is very small compared to the height of the walls, so an earthen bank would be impossible to source and impractical to have in place. It may be impressive to look at, but it's shockingly vulnerable."

"During the reign of the von Carsteins, nobody would dare march on it," you note. "And afterwards, nobody would bother. And so it has been a ready-made fortress for any necromancer, vampire, or other troublemaker to call home, and I daresay it's just waiting for the emergence of the next von Carstein. Well, I'll not allow it to see a Fourth Vampire War. Gustav, work with Thori on a defensive plan - I daresay there'll be some sort of reaction once we start knocking on their front door with cannonfire."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Speaking of which, if there's any magical response, treat it as enemy artillery and counterfire accordingly. If it's projectiles like they tried to use in the town, you'll be able to see the source easily. Otherwise, keep an eye on the walls and balconies - the hand motions required for spellcasting mean that it can't be done through an arrowslit."

"Aye, will do."

"Asarnil, there's been precious little opportunity for you to demonstrate your abilities. That ends now. When that castle does start spitting out foes, you are to make them regret it."

"Finally," the elf says in response, a savage grin on his face.

"Wilhelmina is coordinating with Zhufbar for our supply lines; our supply of ammunition and blackpowder is effectively bottomless. Pour fire into that blasted castle until there's nothing left but rubble. After this siege, Castle Drakenhof will be spoken of exclusively in past tense."

There's nods all around and everyone hurries off to get to work, leaving you alone, staring up at the castle. The bare mountain, topped by the rubble of Castle Drakenhof, would barely qualify as a suitable memorial to Abelhelm Van Hal, but it would have to do.

---

Fifty Imperial greatcannon. Twenty mortars. Forty dwarven cannon. Thirty dwarven catapults.

There's more to deploying them than pushing them into place and firing them at the enemy; the area around the base of Castle Drakenhof is heavily wooded, and enough trees have to be cleared to allow line of sight between the cannon and the castle, and while that is being achieved earth is piled up to partially shield the guns and for the crews to dive behind, should they feel the need. The other artillery pieces are slightly simpler, with the catapults requiring a ballistic arc and the mortars a parabolic one; you're surprised to understand the mathematics at play, finding that it overlaps heavily with what you were forced to learn for your paper on your Matrix. Elsewhere, more trees are being felled to create killing fields for any forces that try to counterattack, and already the air is filled with not just the steady thunk of axe on wood but also of sawing as the ever-industrious dwarves start putting the wood to use. Wooden boards for the artillery defences, stakes for the killing fields, and beams for constructing more siege equipment - field catapults and bolt throwers, which will lack the range to reach the castle but will do a great deal of damage to any forces unwise enough to give the dwarves an opportunity to entrench.

Finally, as the sun begins to edge towards the horizon, everything is ready. One of the camp followers had delivered a cushioned chair for you to observe from, and Narfi had had one of his men craft one on the spot from scrap lumber and he now reclined next to you. A barrel of ale had been sent for from the dwarven baggage train, and you found it quite to your liking - it was something like drinking liquid bread with a comfortable burn comparable to the Ostland brandy you're familiar with. You make a note to yourself to check whether it was being imported to Wurtbad. And an awestruck artilleryman who apparently witnessed your work at Fang Island hovers nearby, ready to pass on your orders to the human artillery contingent.

"Are we ready?" you ask the dwarf to your left.

"On your order," he says.

"Are we ready?" you ask the artilleryman on your right.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Men of the Empire. Dwarves of Zhufbar. You may fire at will." You finish your mug and hold your hands over your ears as two sets of orders go out. There's a few moments as the order filters down through the ranks, and then as fuses are lit and slow-matches held to touch-holes. And then, with noise that defies description, the greatest assembly of land artillery in the history of the Old World fires as one.

[Cannon: 96]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 45]

You had expected... well, you weren't entirely sure what to expect. Possibly holes blasted in the walls immediately, or perhaps this would take weeks of plodding work. But you hadn't expected this. And the smug look on Narfi's face proves without a doubt that he had planned for it. So far away that you need to squint to make out the statues, the castle gatehouse caves in on itself, burying the only visible exit to Castle Drakenhof in tons of masonry.

As if to hammer the point home, the first of many mortar volleys, having followed a much slower arc, descend, some falling outside the walls but enough falling inside that you smile a vicious grin.

You wordlessly pass your tankard to the chortling dwarf, who refills it from the keg at his side and passes it back to you, and then you tap it against his own mug in a wordless toast.

---

[Cannon: 6]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 90]

After that dramatic start, the rest of the day's fire is anticlimactic in the extreme, as balls and bolts impact the walls to no visible effect. Your only consolation is that the mortar shells and grudge stones have all fallen inside the courtyard, though you can't see what effect they might be having; you're starting to wonder if you might be besieging an empty castle.

[Enemy Force Reaction: 75]
[Rolling...]
[Enemy Magical Reaction: 22]

At least, you do until dusk.

The castle gate has fallen in on itself, but not all forces are constrained, and you glare through the spyglass that Narfi has handed to you as the spectral, glowing figures glide four abreast down the winding path. Cairn Wraiths, the long-dead and still lingering spirits of necromancers and sorcerers who could find no better way to cheat death. Many flock to necromancers to feed on the ambient Dhar their spells give off, and still more are forcefully bound to their service, because they make a terrible enemy for any mortal army to face: just tangible enough to kill, but mundane weapons do little to harm their incorporeal forms. You're already on your feet, ready to run to the front lines and weave Ulgu into as many weapons as you can before the damnable things reach them...

[DRAGONLORD INTERRUPT: 99]

When your own secret weapon makes itself known.

Deathfang, from what Asarnil told you, is one of the very eldest of the dragons of Caledor. Deathfang predates Drakenhof Castle, predates the Empire, predates necromancy. He was old when Ulthuan itself was young, and every year has made him stronger. And as he swoops down from a dimming sky to land in front of the advancing wraiths, you're given a very quick lesson on why Asarnil the Dragonlord is the most expensive mercenary in the entire world.

For a brief but terrible moment, a second sun appears on the horizon as white-hot dragonflame washes over the advancing figures, and when the light dies away the wraiths are not to be seen.

The dragon raises its head to stare up at the castle, and roars a terrible roar of pride and defiance, before launching himself into the air and flapping his way back up into the sky.

You retake your seat and accept a newly-refilled tankard of ale from Narfi.

---

The first light of dawn the next morning is greeted by a dawn chorus not of birdsong, but of over a hundred artillery pieces resuming their tireless barrage. They're well and truly sighted in now, and the crews are entertaining themselves by trying to hit individual points on the castle walls.

[Human cannon: 44+10(sighted in)=54]
[Dwarf cannon: 55+10(sighted in)=65]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 23+10=33]

By brunch, the walls are showing signs of stress, with fissures opening up in the wall from the top downwards in two separate places.

[Enemy Force Reaction: 4]
[Enemy Magical Reaction: 4]
[Yes, that was two separate rolls]
[Rolling for miscast...]

At one point you feel magical energy struggling to manifest itself in your direction, but the spell is so badly mangled that you can't even make out what it was supposed to do, let alone what direction it was coming from. It would be the simplest thing in the world to reach out with your own magic, give it a nudge and let it fall in on itself like a house of cards, but you instead sit and watch in fascinated horror as the mistake is compounded as more energies are poured in and more strands of corrosive Dhar woven atop the spell in an attempt to correct the casting. Eventually, it's too much for the spell to bear and it snaps back in on itself in a jumble of twanging energy and then is sucked back to its origin. Whatever that energy did when it returned, you're absolutely positive it was bad for the caster.

Your good mood is compounded when Thori brings you word that the halflings found a cave entrance, the dwarves scouted it and found a tide of skeletons about halfway down a tunnel that seemed to stretch all the way from the Castle, and then detonated a few gunpowder charges to bring the entire tunnel system down on the head of the skeletal column.

---

[Cannon: 68+10(sighted in)+10(cumulative damage)=88]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 42+10(sighted in)=52]

The afternoon brings more of the same, as the dwarf and human crews start to intermix. The humans are given the rare opportunity to watch (though not participate in) the firing of a dwarven cannon and the dwarves entertain themselves by trying to get the greatcannon to actually hit something. Spirits are high all around as damage becomes more and more visible on the castle; one of the towers was knocked clean off the structure by a lucky shot, and bets are being made on how long the others will last.

[Enemy Force Reaction: 6]
[Enemy Magical Reaction: 53-20=33]

There's no further apparent reaction from the Castle; either their skeletons were all lost in the cave-in or have been unable to find another exit from the tunnels. But as you're starting to think about dinner, you feel magic start to form around you once more; from the look and feel of it, it's another attempt of what was tried earlier, except this time whoever it is is taking it slow, which is just as well because there's a significant difference in the feel of the magic even though it appears to be from the same caster; apparently the backlash's effects have taken their toll on the magical ability of whoever it is.

[Triangulation: 63]

It's simple enough to follow the 'feel' of a magical spell being formed, but more difficult to get a bearing precise enough to identify a position near half a mile away. But the spyglass is a miracle of engineering, and you're finally able to make out a figure at the windows of one of the towers, clad in a hooded black robe and hands waving in exaggerated gestures in your direction.

"Narfi?"

"Mmm?" he replies, not looking up from his diagrams.

"You see the northernmost tower on the lower walls? Tucked between the balcony and the cliff?"

He peers towards the castle. "I do."

"Be a dear and destroy it for me, will you?"

"No problem." He has a word with a dwarf that has a word with four dwarves who have words with forty more.

[Counterbattery: 86+10 (sighted in)]

"Thank you, Narfi," you say as the tower tumbles over the edge of the walls and down to the ground far below. You briefly wonder if that was the Elector Countess.

---

The third day begins, and the chorus of cannonfire is a balm for your soul. Each shot is akin to a chiselmark on the monument to the great man you knew.

[Cannon: 95+10(sighted in)+20(cumulative damage)=125]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 79+10(sighted in)=89]

The walls begin to fall to provide a charming complement to your breakfast, and the last of them falls to give you the perfect lead-up to lunch. If there were buildings in the courtyard, they're so buried beneath rubble that they're impossible to see, the walls having fallen inwards rather than outward. The keep of the castle still remains, but you've no doubt that it, too, will fall.

[Enemy Force Reaction: 98]
[Rolling...]
[How much does the collapse of the outer castle bother them? 99, very, very much]
[Enemy Magical Reaction: 18-50=-32]

However, it seems that the bombardment has awoken something. They emerge from the ruins of the courtyard one by one and throw themselves into the air with shrieks that carry to where you're sitting. You shout an unnecessary warning as men and dwarves bustle in a sudden frenzy of activity.

Vargheist. Like most Stirlandians, you knew the legends: deep in the bowels of Castle Drakenhof, there are row after row of countless coffins that the von Carsteins call their beds. But they are far from united, and whenever one falls from grace, their coffin would be chained shut as they slept, and they would remain trapped with nothing but their terrible hunger and the dark magic of Sylvania for company, and both would twist and mutate them until they were finally strong and insane enough to tear themselves free... it was one of a thousand terrible stories about the vampires, each less likely than the last, but it seems that this one was actually true.

Shouts in the distance as men and dwarf and halfling alike ready themselves as the creatures approach. You're incredibly glad that the collapsed walls are slowing their escape so much; the first of them is nearing your lines now, but there's still vargheist tearing themselves free of the piles of rubble and masonry and flapping desperately to catch up. If they had been able to hit your lines all as one... you shudder at the thought.

[Dragonlord Interrupt: 60]

The first is plucked out of the air by Deathfang and torn clean in two, the second pierced neatly by Asarnil's lance, the third disappears in a cloud of flame. But however mighty Deathfang is, he can only be in one place at once, and they start to slip past.

[Halfling Archers: 68]
[Dwarf Quarrelers: 65]
[Empire Crossbowmen: 29]

Arrows rise from the trees and claw one from the air, and the rest of the growing flock veer away, only to run into a wall of crossbow bolts. Shrieks of fury and hunger ring out as still more of them fall, but they keep coming.

[Dwarf Handgunners: 83]
[Dwarf Organ Guns: 11]
[They Keep Coming: 60]

A chorus of blackpowder detonations, and more of them fall. A constant flow of the freshly-awoken beasts are pouring in, but you seem to have reached some awful equilibrium of airborne death. If the legends were true, each was once a von Carstein. How many of them were there? How many lost the internal political intrigues that resulted in the three terrible instigators of the three terrible Vampire Wars? The first of them touch down, and there's a chorus of mixed battlecries to signify the countercharge; the Knightly Orders, by the sound of it. You hate that you can't see it, you can't be there.

[For Sigmar!: 60 vs 8]
[They Keep Coming: 13]

Their numbers seem to be slacking off, as less and less make it past Asarnil and the ground fire, and those that do are circling instead of landing. You're sure that these things are far beyond any sort of thought, but they do have enough instinct to recognize an easy target from a poor one, and they're starting to realize they've picked a hard target.

[Attempted escape: 37 (them) vs 63]

Their escape attempt is foiled; without a constant source of fresh vargheist from the ruins of the castle, Asarnil and Deathfang are able to chase down and pluck each of the would-be escapees from the air, rend them limb from limb, and drop them to fall to their death on the forest floor below. The final one is beheaded and carried all the way back to the castle to fling at the roof, which caves in at the impact, dropping the corpse into the rooms below. Deathfang flies a lap around the castle and bellows once more, announcing their supremacy over this battlefield to all.

The vargheist has just gone extinct.

---

Work begins on the keep that afternoon. To your relief, the mortars and grudge throwers start dropping shots where you could see them instead of falling behind the walls where you had no way to tell what effect they were having. You're truly starting to despise the fog of war.

[Cannon: 51+10(sighted in)=61]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 13+10(sighted in)=23]

It's not much of an improvement, because these mortar bombs and grudge stones are seemingly unable to penetrate the roof of the castle. Luckily, the walls have a similar effect to before: slow, but promising progress.

[Enemy Force Reaction: 65]
[Rolling...]
[How much does the collapse of the outer castle bother them? 10, barely at all]

The call is made by one of the artillerymen checking on a shot his team had made, and you follow his pointing: heavily-armoured skeletons are making their way in a disciplined column down the path from the castle to the ruined remains of the outer walls. The red kite shields that each carries matches another set of horror stories, as does the faint hint of screaming audible even from here: the Drakenhof Guard and their eternally screaming banner.

[Dragonlord Interrupt: 18]

Either guided by some unseen intelligence, or able to intelligently react due to the terrible mastery with which they were created, when Deathfang swoops in he is met by a wall of shields as the Guard move as one into a tortoise formation. His fire claims many, and his claws a few more, but the bulk of the skeletons are out of his reach.

[Cannons: 58+10(sighted in)=68]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 93+10(sighted in)=103]

With the dragon hovering above and roaring in frustration, you nod to Narfi, and that's all the signal he needs. A few barked orders later, and over a hundred guns roar as one, and Deathfang swoops clear as cannonballs batter the formation. Shields are no use against a cannonball, but the distance tells and the cannonballs aren't quite as devastating as you hoped.

But then the bombs and stones, having taken a longer arc, finally begin to arrive. The crews of those machines must have been frustrated, having the fruits of their labour for three days be hidden behind walls, and given a target in clear view they gave it everything they could, and the effect is ruinous.

Skeletons are obliterated as blackpowder bombs fall among them, but it is the grudge throwers that take the day as they strike at the causeway the skeletons march upon until it finally gives way, dropping the skeletons to shatter against the debris far below.

You nod in satisfaction, as does Narfi, as does the crews of thirty grudge throwers. And then the bombardment resumes.

---

Day four, and today is the day, you're sure of it. Today is the fall of Drakenhof.

[Cannons: 99]
[Mortars and grudge throwers: 94]

And you are proven amazingly, satisfyingly right.

The front of the castle is fallen by eight o'clock, by nine new rooms are revealed with each barrage and torn apart by the next. At ten, the roof collapses and the full range of your artillery is brought to bear on the superstructure. And finally, as the sun is reaching its zenith, there's a mighty rumble as the castle's superstructure can take it no more, and it finally crumbles in on itself. You track the fall of the tallest tower as it tears itself free of the castle and tumbles down the mountain until it drops out of sight. It's... over?

[Enemy Force Reaction?: 5]

It's over.

A cheer arises from some thirty-five thousand throats, and you find that yours is not among them.

It's over.

What do you do now?








---

[ ] The campaign is over, but your duty to Stirland remains. Go home to Wurtbad.
[ ] The campaign is over, so your duty to Stirland is fulfilled. Go home to Altdorf.
[ ] The campaign is over, so your duty to Abelhelm is done. What else is there? Leave. Pack your snake-in-a-box, pack your equipment, pack your savings, pack the Liber Mortis, and go somewhere else.


- The mortar and grudge thrower shots were influencing the organization and number of forces available to the enemy; as this was all happening out of line of sight, you didn't get to see what those effects were.
- In an alternate universe, the players of Necromancer Quest are very, very unhappy.
- The first option is to continue as the Spymistress of Stirland; the second is to continue as a member of the Grey Order, and the third is to seek a new purpose for yourself. Not necessarily a second coming of Nagash, but if that's the direction you want to go in, this would best allow for it. The last option isn't necessarily going rogue from the Grey Order - it can be considered part of your 'journeywoman wanderings'.
- Don't let your string-pulling benefactors dictate your decision here - they made you a Spymistress under Abelhelm Van Hal. They may continue to have 'requests' for you if you continue on in the role, but they will not prevent you from leaving it - not now.
- Likewise, your duty would be considered properly fulfilled if you want to leave the position of Spymistress but worry about your reputation in the Empire. It's rather common for people to step down from the council in the transition from one Elector Count to the next.