Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Inspired by some recent discussion. If people like it I might do a continuation sometime.




"Damn. Damn, Damn, Damn."

It should have been nothing. Just a bunch of baby vampires you'd picked up on during a quick journey to check on how the Sylvanian reclamation was going. Wait around a bit, go get them in the day when they should be sleeping and ride on.

Except you'd gotten sloppy, and they'd woken up before you got through beheading them all. Then in the darkness and the press of bodies a couple of them had gotten in hits they really shouldn't have. Nothing the seed couldn't heal of course, but it had left you tired and grumpy and sloppy.

Unforgivably sloppy.

You'd forgotten to count the coffins. You'd checked them all, no bodies, but you'd forgotten to count them. To match them to the bodies.

Then you'd rode on. Tired and grumpy and aching, until it was full dark and you collapsed into a roadside inn nearly two hundred miles later.

You'd woken to the taste of blood in your mouth and fangs on your neck.

Moonlit wit had sung as you proved the use of the lessons the Shroud of Morr had provided, stabbing them through the heart in an instant. An instant too late.

You could feel it already. Your upper jaw had begun to itch. Little twitches in your soul.

The colleges had quite firm views about Vampires and their relation to the people they were before they turned. So did the dwarves. What you should do was hand yourself in and be granted a quick ending. Be remembered as a hero who simply vanished.

But you wanted to live, and there was one chance that still remained to you. At least, one palatable choice.

You have studied vampires. Read the colleges treatises on them. You have read the Liber Mortis, written by possibly the greatest living necromancer the Empire has ever produced, annotated by the founder of one of the most infamous vampiric bloodlines. You have witnessed their regeneration attempts again and again in your windsight as the shelf of skulls attempt to grow flesh once more.

You understand them, at least enough. They are immortal, sustained by magic. Some part of them transforms to attract magic, but they lose something in the process. Some say it is the soul that transforms, but that feels wrong to you. Seeing souls, or what might be souls, such as seen in BOK, is something that only became possible for you as your windsight developed to the point it could be said to be of the same calibre as Volans. The Dhar vortex inside a vampire is much more easy to view.

Whatever the case, the thing that vampires lose that can only be regained in one of two ways: by drinking the blood of intelligent races on a regular basis or by subsisting off of dhar. If a vampire goes too long without blood, then the attractive force inside them grows stronger, pulling in dhar to subsist on.

Yet this overinflux of dark magic from lack of blood has corruptive properties, even on vampires who so deny its effect on them. It forces physical changes. Most vampires, even their most learned, would deny the dhar has mental effects on them. It's hard to tell if that's true, since most of those vampires who use or interact with dark magic heavily were egomaniacs to begin with, or have ample reason to go mad through normal means. Still, the physical changes cannot be denied:

For the Strigoi, who creep in crypts and graves and tombs, drinking the fetid blood of the dead and of vermin and other beasts, their bodies transform into bestial, inhuman forms.

For Necrarchs such as Alkharad, who were more inclined to the study of Dark Magic and willingly took it into themselves, dhar corrupted their forms, giving them claws on the ends of their fingers and turning their bodies skeletal and corpselike rather than the pleasant seeming of most bloodlines.

But it was in another bloodline that you found your one hope of salvation. The Blood Dragons and their founder, Abhorash. Abhorash, alone of all vampires was said to have overcome the thirst that plagued his kindred. He had fought a dragon, and in his victory, drunk it dry. In that moment he was said to not only have cured his thirst, but the other common weakness of Vampires.

This was your only hope.

Not Cython of course. For one thing, it was a… well if not a friend then a respected acquaintance. On the more practical side, you wouldn't want to fight an Emperor Dragon even totally fresh, never mind while trying to hold back the physical and mental changes you were facing. Not to mention the consequences that would fall upon the Karak afterward.

No, you would not be attempting to butcher a dragon. Instead, you contemplate what Dragon's blood is. A terrifically powerful magical substance, dripping with the power of the winds. What else did you, you of all people, know that might fit that description?

Aethyric Vitae. You still retained a large supply of it, even after your experiments and donations to the descendants of Thungi. Perhaps this might allow you to remain yourself.

Of course, based on historic experiments, the more likely option is that you'll explode. That was still a better fate than simply fading away and becoming a vampire.

So even as you ride desperately towards your gyrocarriage and home, you begin to plan what to say, what to write to your friends and companions in the likely event you fail.

==

The wind is deafening up here, even through your earmuffs. It's hard to know if it's just the normal level of sound or if your sense of hearing is getting better.

The shaking isn't helping your handwriting either. Not that it was the best to begin with.

To Thorek Ironbrow, I leave the contents of room 2B. It will produce approximately 1 gallon of Aethyric Vitae every six months. Please continue to use it well.

You are so tired. Your body wants desperately to sleep. Sleep and allow the changes to ravage your body and soul. Sleep, and wake as some undead thing. You had never more wished that you had been able to secure Alkharad's notes on his kin. To fully understand the process of what was happening to you.

Instead, you force yourself to continue composing the set of sealed orders, requests, bequests and messages to be opened in the event that you… do not return. It is important to calm yourself as much as possible before you arrive. If nothing else, the vitae reacts to strong emotions. If you cannot remain calm, the chances it will simply degenerate increase.

To Kragg the Grimm, I leave the reminder that the world can still be changed for the better. The regret that I did not have time to attempt to create a seviroscope, so that he could see the works of the ancestors through my eyes. I also leave him three observations: 1)that it is still possible that such a seviroscope could be created, 2)That worthiness is hard to see when head down over an anvil and 3) that visiting Laurelorn while the Waystone project is happening might provide him a chance to see or recover more works of his ancestors (from the unfortunate partnership with Uluthan or the War), while his very presence might tweak some too upraised noses with his effects on the winds.

Goodbye, and Thank you.

Your mind still wanders despite yourself. As well as necromancy and Dhar, Vampire Lords are said to be able to wield each of the winds individually, barring Ghyran. What would happen to a magister who was turned? Would the arcane marks on their soul still forever drag their first wind to them when they reached for the winds, or was the change into a vampire such a change to the soul that even the marks effects would be wiped away?

To the Dwarves of Karak Vlag.

I know that the debts that cannot be paid lie heavy on the hearts of Dawi. So I request this: I cannot imagine what you have suffered in the warp, but even in great terror and suffering knowledge may be gained that could help us fight the great foe. I request that each Dawi write of their experiences and, when they feel comfortable with relating these experiences to others or have gone to the ancestors, that these accounts are placed within the archives of Karak Eight peaks that select persons might learn from them, unless such accounts prove to have dangerous effects to the reader, in which case they should be appropriately disposed of.

Recover well.

==

By the time you arrive back at Karak Eight Peaks and commandeer a few sturdy dawi to transport the barrels of Vitae up to the White tower, parts of you are occasionally flickering with flames as your belt burns away traces of dhar.

Now, which room to choose. The room of utter neutrality might allow you to best see what was happening to you, but that would only be useful if you survived to document the process.

The room of Serenity might help keep you calm as things proceeded, but could you truly relax even there?

The room of calamity could flush all magic from the room in a matter of heartbeats. Yet, was that truly useful in this situation?

You look at the box for a long time as you contemplate your choice, and the last two letters you will write.

One, to Belegar Ironhammer, and the other to Panoramia.

The words don't come, and you have little time. All you can do is write something and hope. Hope it isn't needed. Hope they understand. Hope they know in their hearts what you cannot say in so little time and so few words.

==

Belegar,

I will never regret helping you retake these peaks. I know you worry about the future. About how few dawi fill these peaks built for thousands more, and the cost we have paid, but Karak Eight peaks is more than just its halls and valleys. It has become a symbol that the Dwarves can still resurge, build back and build new. You are a good king, and in the centuries ahead I know you will become an even better one. Do not stop dreaming of that better world.

Goodbye. Your Friend, Mathilde



Panoramia,

I cannot say in the short time I have how much our relationship has meant to me. So instead I will thank you for your wit, for seeing through to the real me, and for being the one to truly appreciate my jokes. Working with you on our mushroom project has helped me see some of the wonders of the world through another set of eyes.

Though I am gone, I still hope to see you build your grand ecosystem and achieve your dreams from the beyond.

Be happy my love,

Mathilde.

Far too short. Far too short and too trite and it doesn't say a thousandth of what you want to tell them. Yet, time is short. This is all you can do.

Instead, you meticulously lock the envelopes away in your desk, then write a short note telling the reader the locations of each letter and that they are to be opened and read in the event of your death or if you have not returned by a certain date. That you place atop your desk, along with the appropriate desk key. The one that won't trigger a quite nasty set of traps for anyone trying to pick said locks.

Finally, you climb the steps to the room of calamity, and seal the door. You feel your oldest Friend's hand on your shoulder.

One more gamble. Hopefully not your last.

*Dice rattle*

====


Edit: Corrected some typos.