Of the Chalice, Overflowing - A Mordheim Quest

It is the year 2000 by the Imperial Calendar. For 2000 years has the mighty Empire of Man founded by the man-then-God-now Sigmar Heldenhammer, last king of the Unberogen tribe, untied the disparate tribes of men into a nation of (semi)-cooperating provinces, all under Imperial rule.

At the very least, that was the idea. In reality, the Empire has been fractured and at war with itself for centuries now. For almost five centuries, it has been the Age of Three Emperors, as three separate Electors--the particulars of whom have varied--have vied for the throne, while the Empire they lay claim to was ravaged around them. As it stands, the three claimants are backed by a major province each: soldierly Reikland, wealthy Marienburg, and devout Middenland.


However, this is not a tale of the warring armies of the Imperial claimants. This is not a tale of grand battles and sweeping strategies. This is the tale of the most accursed of cities. It is a tale of the City of the Damned and of those who come to scavenge the corpse of that once thriving burg. In short, it is a tale of:


On the border of the provinces of Stirland and Ostermark--and capital of the latter--Mordheim was one of the greatest cities in the Empire. Its position between provinces, on a vital trade river, and near enough to the dwarfs of the Worlds' Edge Mountains for trade, Mordheim's wealth was only exceeded by maritime Marienburg, and its political importance only outdone by proud Altdorf of Reikland. As the Empire burned about it, the city's merchants and nobles grew ever more extravagant in their celebrations. It seemed as if life in the city would only grow more luxuriant, more aggrandized, more debauched. Until the arrival of the comet, that is.


The twin-tailed comet, herald of the birth of Sigmar himself, was spotted again in the skies above Mordheim at the turning of the millennium. Even more folk rushed to crowded Mordheim, proclaiming it heralded the rebirth of Sigmar and the Empire's deliverance from an era of darkness and strife. Others, seeing the decadence of those gathered in celebration, cried out that doom was upon them, that the world was ending and judgment would be rendered for the wickedness which drowned the city. Neither group was precisely correct.

It is said, both by those far enough from or sheltered enough from the blast to survive witnessing it and by those who heard the tale second-or-third-hand, that comet struck the city like the hammer of Sigmar himself, cleaving a furrow deep into earth beneath the city while smashing much of the city and setting it alight. That would have been disaster enough on its own, but things got worse.

That, you will find, is the commonality of tales of this place: things get worse.

As the pall of smoke and dust cleared and the fires began to gutter, those survivors who crawled from the wreckage were beset by madness, mutation, and daemons. Still, within the city's damnation came slivers of opportunity; the great comet had been made of green-black wyrdstone, a rarest and most potent substance. It is said, from experiments of warlocks and alchemists, that a mere fragment of wyrdstone can heal the sick, transform lead to gold, and even raise the dead. For such power, men--and worse--would pay oceans of gold.

Many came to the city afterward, be they men and women or monsters and worse. Some came for wyrdstone, some for the gold others would pay for it, and yet others came simply for the thrill or danger of the fighting that broke out over it. You are the would-be leader of one such warband. Whatever your motive, you have set yourself the task of assembling a band, maintaining their health, sanity, and morale (or failing that, their numbers), and delving into the City of the Damned.

Soon we must come to that first, all-important question: Who are you?

First, however, some clarifications are due.

What is this?

In this quest you play the leader of a warband in the city of Mordheim, Ostermark in the Empire of Man. Your goals, allies, foes, and other aspects will in large part depend upon choices made early in the quest (especially including what type of warband you lead). Whatever choices made, however, one thing will remain constant: You are to manage your warband and hunt within Mordheim, battling foes as you compete for resources and Wyrdstone.

How is this quest structured? What will we actually be doing?

Structure-wise, I'm taking inspiration both from Mordheim itself (in its tabletop and video game incarnations) and from the bevy of CK-style WHFB quests. Each turn will typically consist of a single day, divided out into a number of phases. After the first turn or so, those phases will consist of 1: warband management, 2: downtime, 3: Missions (aka combat / scavenging runs).

Warband Management phase will include seeing to your warband's finances, making purchases of gear and equipment, paying your hirelings and heroes, training, recruiting, seeing to medical treatment, and otherwise dealing with the fallout of your last mission.
Downtime phase will involve RP segments in which you or your warband spend their time between missions when such is available. It is when you get a chance to interact with other factions or settlements around the City of the Damned, current injuries and morale permitting. It is also when your warband's scouts get a chance to explore the city to search for new hauls and missions. Want to know what the rumor mill has to say? Downtime. Want to try and broker an alliance with another warband? Downtime. Want to get drunk off your ass and bet money on a pit fight between an ork and a halfling? Also downtime.
Missions are the most straightforward phase. Having identified a potential haul of warpstone and/or salvage within the city (or some other grander strategic objective you wish to pursue) members of your warband will be set into the area in question to secure resources, kill enemies, or the like.

Is there a dice system or set of rules in use?

Yes but also no. I'm roughly kludging something together that mixes the common d100 efforts in CKII-style WHFB quests with the Mordheim: City of the Damned and Mordheim (tabletop) games, admittedly with a leaning more towards the tabletop than CotD, if only due to greater familiarity. As far as target numbers and such go, the breakdown follows:

Pass/Fail threshold is 50%. On a raw percentile roll, you have a 50/50 chance of failure vs success.
Critical thresholds are the top and bottom 15%. 1-15 is a critical failure. 85-100 is a critical success. Anything above or below the ends of the 0-100 scale merely intensify the scale of the success or failure, respectively.
Likewise, the middle 10 in either direction is the threshold for bare ____. 40-49 is a bare failure, 50-60 is a bare success. These are, respectively, neither as bad or as good as a full standard failure or success and far better or worse than a critical.

Leader: 1

Petra von Kelch
Von Carstein Vampire

Stats
Equipment

Special Rules

Skills

Traits


Heroes

Necromancer: 0-1
35gc hiring cost

Stats

Equipment

Special Rules

Skills

Spells

Traits


Dregs: 0-3


Kaspar, the Crowned Manticore; aka: Kaspar the Accursed
Stats
Equipment

Special Rules
Skills

Traits
Stats

Equipment

Special Rules
Skills

Traits

Henchmen

Zombies:
15 gc per corpse to reanimate; requires necromancer or ability to raise dead

Summary: Zombies are slow, being unable to run, but terrifying creatures. They are mindless undead, so they feel no pain or fear, nor can they be poisoned or affected by disease, but they are also brainless: they never get any better. They don't level up or gain experience like living minions do. They are extremely slow, but eminently expendable. Cheap, tough enough, unskilled, good for a walking shield of rotting meat between you and your (usually horrified) enemies.


Ghouls: hired in groups of 1-5
40gc to hire

Ghouls are living, but debased, creatures. Some say they're distant relatives of the Strigany caravans that wander the eastern Empire. All say they're mad and debased cannibals...because they are. They congregate to food and power and tend to travel in familial pack or clan groups. In combat they fight as a pack-unit or alone. They're not sufficiently sophisticated for weaponry anymore. Like zombies, they tear their foes apart with hands and teeth. Unlike zombies, they have claws and fangs.

Quick attackers, capable of improvement and learning, incapable of weapon use. Tougher than normal men, but not by much, and unskilled to boot. Zombies hold a line, ghouls swarm to flank, and eventually numbers will tell despite that.

Dire Wolves: 0-5
50gc to draw in / reanimate

Expensive, but intimidating. These reanimated giant wolves are the fastest fighters at your disposal though slower than they were in life, they still walk faster than horses, and they can charge down a running horse with ease. As with zombies, they're undead, so they feel no pain, can't be diseased or poisoned, and they can't learn anything new. They're just as good later as when you get them, no worse, but also no better.

------------------------------------


Warband Composition:







Warband Armoury:

2 spears: Attacks first; +1 Str on mounted charge; Str as user otherwise; can only use shield or buckler in offhand; 10gc
5 daggers; Str: user, +1 to enemy armour; 1st free, others 2 gc
1 shield; +1 to armour; 5 gc
1 sword; User, Permits parries: roll vs to-hit-roll, if your roll is higher, you're unhit.; 10 gc
2 helmet; downgrades stunned injuries to knocked down; 10 gc
1 Axe
1 Mace; S as user, stuns on 2-4 instead of 3-4
2 Bows
1 Light Armour


Misc equipment: (Hero only)
2x Rope and grapnel; reroll failed climbing checks; 5gc
2x Nets


-----------------------------------------------------


So! Time to discuss the next steps!

Your Current Warchest is 65 gc.

The City

There we are. Now, as we were: Who--and what--are you?

[ ] An Imperial Mercenary Captain

In centuries to come, it will be said that, "Three things make The Empire great – faith, steel, and gunpowder!" As a Captain of a small unit of mercenaries, you cannot necessarily attest to an overabundance of faith, but you can provide steel and shot aplenty. You are at Mordheim because it is, quite literally, your job. Wyrdstone is worth more than its weight in gold, and you value gold quite highly. You also value the happiness of your primary patrons, the Elector of the Province from which your company hails, highly as well. A happy patron is a coin just waiting to be paid to you, and yours made it clear in no uncertain terms that regular shipments of wyrdstone would make them quite happy indeed. Thus, your presence.
You are not here on some crusade. You are not here on the whims of the Gods. Pragmatic and workaday, you are simply here to do your job and make a truly ludicrous amount of gold. Ideals are great things. Coin is far more reliable.

[ ] A Magister of the Cult of the Possessed

Harried, hated, or hidden, you never belonged amongst your supposed peers in the place from whence you came. Others would say you were born wrong or that you were attainted by corruption. They would call you a witch and a heretic. Many would try to have you burned at the stake for your accursed state. More fools them. You know well that the difference between a curse and a blessing is often a matter of perspective, and you know that your magic is most definitely a boon. After the comet struck, you knew within your very bones that something of great power had arrived in Mordheim, and so you set out to gather those who, like you, revere Chaos in order to serve it and thereby be elevated. The Shadowlord saw your enthusiasm and set you to gathering wyrdstone to return it to the Pit. Already you have seen the blessings granted for those who are faithful as well as the costs of failure upon those who fail or fall afoul of the so-called "righteous."

[ ] A Witch Hunter Captain

You are a Captain of the Templars of the Order of Sigmar, and you know that heresy may grow from even the smallest seed of corruption. The seed of corruption which struck, nay, smashed Mordheim was anything but small. Such a font of corruption must be opposed, lest the wicked and the weak-willed again bring ruin to Holy Sigmar's lands. To that end, you have been ordered and empowered by the Grand Theogonist himself, granted a sacred edict giving you divine right of judgment over any heretics who would think to oppose you or bar your way as you gather wyrdstone to be taken to Sigmar's temple, no doubt to be kept safely away from those fools who would seek to use it for wicked ends. None, not even the prognosticating witches of the so-called Sisters of Sigmar, may oppose you and live. You will fulfill your holy calling and reap a wrathful vengeance upon the heretic, the mutant, the cultist, and the witch as you do so, for Sigmar wills it.

[ ] A Vampire of the Von Carstein Dynasty

On the day your life as a mortal ended, you found yourself elevated to a very select peerage. A member of Sylvania's Midnight Aristocracy, you immediately saw the sense in your instructions from your Lord and Lady to collect this wyrdstone, so powerful in aiding necromancy, for the Count's ends. Even if you hadn't, well, some things are just not done, such as saying no to Vlad or to Isabella. You may be a Von Carstein, but they are the Von Carsteins, and besides, to do otherwise would be a truly churlish way to thank them for the gift of power and immortality you were given, would it not? So it is you find yourself in the supposed City of the Damned. An amusing title, to be sure. It is...squalid, not to put too fine a point on it. A ruin filled with men that think themselves brave and the mad who think themselves monsters. An adorable pretension, certainly. Well, and the poor dregs and dispossessed mortals left ruined by the comet. So desperate and eager to please. Really, all it takes is a soupcon of kindness--or the nearest facsimile thereof--and they are clay in your hands to be moulded as you wish.
You may not know what Vlad wants with the warpstone, but you know who will deliver it to him. None shall steal the status and rewards that shall be owed to you. You will make certain of it.

[ ] A (Dispossessed) Noble Dwarf

You are a proud noble of the Karaz Ankor. You have simply fallen upon harder times than is usual. Whether to disgrace or foe, ruination or woe, you have lost your home and your hold. Whatever the cause, your misfortune was not something that required the drengi oath, and so, hair unshaven and beard undyed, you gathered your friends and kin and set out to find one of the three things the dawi prize above all others: wealth. So be it things have been challenging, a bit of skrat and hardscrabble. Your latest plan to restore your fortunes is as certain as things could be without proof of ages, downright dawr. That umgi city Mordheim was hit by a great ruddy comet, and dawi worked and traded there. Where there are dawi, there is wealth, it stands to reason. To make matters worse, there's a great teeming horde of kruti scavengers gathered around the place. Better that wealth go to the Karaz Ankor than into umgi hands or, worse, the theiving thaggoraki's, and it's a given the ratmen will be there: the place is covered in warpstone! The umgi even pay good gorl for it, mad things that they are. As with the treasure, if they want to throw away good gold for evil warp-rocks...well, better it go to a dwarf than some mad manling.
Just a bit of hard work, a proper bit of skrund as it were, and you and yours will be on your way back where you belong.