The Old World: Dark Age of the Empire

Baroness Molly Toppenheimer
The matrons advise you that a child of Eldred's age cannot travel, and a mother shouldn't travel so soon after pregnancy. At the very least only short journeys with lavish luxury from Castle Liebwitz to Nuln or back. And so you have invited the Baroness of Geschburg to summer with you at Castle Liebwitz.

Molly Toppenheimer has come into favour within the Sudenland, the Cult of Soll backing her as leader of the Auld Sollanders despite her cousin's position as Chief Mourner. You've noted that the iconography of the Cult has found its way into her belongings and clothes but the Inquisitors of Verena generally report that the Geschburg part of the Cult doesn't seem especially prone to sorcerer sympathy so you leave the shift in local politics to one side.

Before the fall of Solland, Geschburg was in fact a large town in the old Province ruled by the Metternich family. During the Last Stand of Solland, the Baron Metternich fled the battle with his forces and left a breach in the line through which the Waagh rolled around the rest of the Sollander and Wissenlander army. After that act of treasonous cowardice it took months for the City of Nuln to rally sufficient forces to stopper the enemy advance at the City Walls. By that point Solland was lost and the Wissenland ablaze.

And as consequence, the Metternichs were stripped of land, title and many of them of their very heads. And the Toppenheimers, who were credited with saving Pfeildorf's Alderhorst; the palatial uppermost district, were rewarded with Geschburg in turn. And later with Pfeildorf itself when the Sudenland was folded into Wissenland.

The Metternichs were weakened, certainly, and attainted. But it turns out excution of key family members and seizure of lands doesn't necessarily make them submissive and worse doesn't necessarily make them impotent. Several breweries in the baronies were owned by members of the Metternich family directly rather than by the Barony and the Metternich's have built up their wealth in the past two centuries. And their influence in the town has begun to wax once more.

Your Chamberlain of the Province, naturally, doesn't want a Metternich resurgence. She has requested that you issue a decree expropriating the Metternich Brewery Company, seizing all the assets and breweries owned by the Metternichs through their company and making them the property of the Barony.

[ ] The Metternich Matter
Issue the decree forcing the Metternich Brewery Company to cede all assets and breweries to the Barony of Geschburg.
[ ] The Free Market
If the Baroness of Geschburg doesn't want Metternich ales to make so much money or earn so much popularity then she should simply brew a better ale on her own.




Family Matters
Castle Liebwitz is no place for a baby during Winter, the matrons tell you. Nuln is no place for a baby during Summer, the matrons tell you. Journeys between Castle Liebwitz and Nuln are no place for a baby, the matrons tell you. The warmth of Nuln, the clean air of the Electoral Estate and the shelter of a fortified palace. It seems that babies are about as needy as Emperors. The Electoral family has been travelling by the Electoral Barge up and down the Reik to summer in Castle Liebwitz and winter in the Imperial Palace as a compromise that the elderly Shallyan matron seems to have accepted.

Little Eldred has been quietly hailed as the Prince of Solland on account of the Auld Sollander name and his mother's title of Princess. There's no actual Principality, though the idea briefly crosses your mind before you remember that the Sollander Independence Movement will either have you assassinated or immortalised for it.

When he's two years old, able to babble a few meaningful words and toddle, he'll be officially presented as the living heir apparent. There'll be a ceremony on his birthday where the nobility and certain City worthies will swear to uphold his inheritance and where ceremonial regents will take on further oaths ready to protect the Wissenland in Eldred's name should the worst happen. You suppose you'll need to consider who to invite to be those regents. Then when Eldred is sixteen he'll be officially presented as the crowned heir, ready to take on his father's duties directly should it be necessary, usually this includes a grand tour of the Province for him where he befriends the next generation of the nobility who will form his future government.

As a half-year old baby meanwhile, Eldred is a loud, hungry and ill-tempered creature. You're fortunate enough that he's mostly in the care of nannies and nurses, brought out on occassion to lay in a basket near his parents in the evening. Fiorella has begun her recovery, by the end of the year she's even ready to go back to her much missed horse riding. The Shallyans say that its good for a baby to drink his own mother's milk where possible however so Eldred's never too far from Fiorella while you await him developing the ability to eat real food.

For all that you might complain, Eldred is your son, your firstborn child and heir. There's an intelligence behind his eyes that you're sure means he recognises you whenever he has your finger or hair in an iron grip and when his basket is set up beside you in the family room on an evening you've got a hand in the basket essentially the whole evening.

Fiorella has commissioned a master painter from Tilea to lay the stars across the ceiling of Eldred's nursery and unwilling to be outmatched you've given him his first gun. Or you had, before Fiorella found you sneaking into the nursery with a pistol you swore wouldn't actually fire and she made you replace it with a cloth lion instead. You suppose it is the banner-animal of the Wissenland. Fiorella smiles and shakes her head when you hang the Colours of the Wissenland along one wall of the nursery, Eldred gumming away at his little lion as he watches his parents kiss and leave to go disobey the Shallyan strictures on abstinence.



Expand the Hammers
A thunderous roar, the booming of the guns. There are three places in Nuln, seventeen in the Wissenland and six in the Sudenland which are authorised to host gun salutes. They are chosen largely for clean firing lines, but with consideration for historic significance as well. Seven guns, thrice each running down the line, for moments of importance such as your wedding or the birth of Eldred. Eight guns, once in co-ordinated volley, for the funeral of the Elector.

The Hammers have taken part in almost all of the gun salutes of the past two hundred years, supplemented by engineers from the Imperial Gunnery School to make up numbers. It's a matter of great prestige meanwhile for the nobility of the Province or for the various worthies of the City to be able to sponsor or present a gun salute and you understand the School makes quite some money on such occassions by loaning out guns and crews to those nobles who have authorised sites but no cannons.

The new cannons for the Hammers and their crews have been practicing salutes in the Militarstutz ahead of their final presentation. You've been kept up to date with the training of the crews, you've even overseen some of the training yourself. But the trainers have kept you back for the final few weeks as they practice so that the men will get the full experience of the final presentation.

The two guns perform a full salute between them, the Great Cannon firing first and last. And in turn you salute them before they are presented with a replica of the Company Colours, the true Company Colours of the Hammers of Nuln flying over the Mondider pass. The new crews are approved for service duty and are placed on barges to sail to Kreutzhofen.



Expand the Garrison
The Imperial Gunnery School subjects applicants to join the Ironsides to rigorous testing and trials before allowing them to actually attempt to join the Company which is one part of the reason the Ironsides are such a small Company and have such renown as an elite Company. The Imperial Palace Greatswords generally hail from very old legacy families of the Wissenland or Nuln who have passed down the position father to son for hundreds of years.

At the moment there are two dozen squiring boys from legacy families with the Company who seem promising enough that they'll be put onto a reserve roster once they're adults and awaiting the death or retirement of a serving member. The Palace pays significant pensions to these families, and pay for the training of their squiring boys provided they are capable of meeting the standards of their trainers. The legacy families aren't actually members of the nobility, even the lesser nobility that makes up a significant portion of Nuln's Altestadt district, but they've an odd pseudo noble station within the City where even the Provincial upper nobility are willing to treat with them as equals.

Such a set up ensures that the Greatswords remain a formidable fighting force held to elite standards. And now the Garrison has begun to shift into a Company held to similar elite standards. The surge of lesser nobles seeking to join the Garrison under the guidance of Lady Schwarz
has given you the opportunity to codify a series of requirements for new recruits that has substantially thinned out the herd and which will be kept in place when recruiting to replace the losses taken at Mondider.

Such requirements shall surely bring the Garrison up to scratch. And in the meanwhile the process of founding a new cohort has been continuing onwards. The men of the Militarstutz responsible for processing applications have been hard at work, the trainers have been harsh and the new cohort is very nearly ready to make its own final presentation.



Expand the Great Company
A standing army mandates a standing bureacracy. Indeed for all that the Militartsutz is home to barracks and ammunition stores and training yards, it is also home to vast wings of offices that oversee everything from logistics to pay to recruitment to complaints. The tail end of the Summer saw several reports cross your desk concerning the expansion of the Iron Companies.

Nothing unexpected, you'd decided to devote significant resource over the back end of this decade to expansion. The unstable state of the Empire was a warning all of its own that the Iron Companies would need more men. And then you realised that many of the reports and forms were discussing the Iron Foot, the performance of new squads of recruits and the design of new recruitment posters.

At first you wondered if they were spinning up to refill the ranks after the battle at Mondider until the paperwork began discuss the promotion of officers to form the structure of new cohorts. You spent a long week down on the Militarstutz tracking down the problematic paperwork and discovered that some fool scribe had mistakenly attributed the expansion efforts for the Great Company of Iron to the Iron Foot of the Wissenland and having gone unchecked the wrong company's name had flooded paperwork on the matter.

Training staff had simply brushed the paperwork aside and continued to train handgunners rather than swordsmen without raising any alarm. And the paperwork had then gone on to the Industrielplatz and the half plate armour of the Iron Foot, which is not at all standard for the Great Company or indeed particularly useful given the very different training, had begun to leave steelworks. The issue was caught soon enough that the new cohorts aren't too drastically behind, but there has been a delay all the same.



Expand the Elector's Own
The recruitment process for the Elector's Own has drawn in several riders from the Sudenland, owing to the need for skilled horsemanship and the preference for candidates who can bring their own horses, the Elector's Own is made up of a certain class of merchant sons unwilling to take on their fathers' businesses. Or women from the gentry running away from politics, but in fairness much of Nuln's lesser nobility is made up of young men and women fleeing provincial responsibilities and realities.

The new flight of riders has crossed the Soll and arrived in Nuln ready to be reshaped simply from skilled individual riders into an Iron Company flight of cavalrymen. Hard training in such subjects as controlling their horses amidst fire, smoke and the detonation of blackpowder, and learning how to ride in formation are important for the Elector's Own. Any man of the Iron Companies knows that the roar of blackpowder is as much a weapon as the bullets and cannonballs that the blackpowder throws out.

Fiorella has taken to visiting the riding yards where the Elector's Own are trained. She doesn't ride with the recruits, she's still recovering back into riding form, but after the recuits are sent away for some other part of their training she'll put her own horse through its paces. The trainers remark that if they had a flight of the Princess they imagine it'd outride any full flight within the Company.

The training isn't finished but there's no doubt that the Elector's Own will see its eleventh flight battle-ready in the coming year.



Restore the Ironsides
The Militarstutz has old contracts with the Gazette that wake up after significant battles. Printers deploy recruitment posters throughout Nuln, leaflets are waiting in the entranceways of major institutions and the Gazette's stands in the many marketplaces are required to keep leaflets advertising the Iron Companies. The daily newsheet has a single line at the bottom stating the time of day that hopeful recruits should arrive at the Militartstutz and the monthly Gazette has a full page copy of the posters the Gazette puts up around Nuln.

Meanwhile the Imperial Gunnery School is expected to fulfil the manpower requirements of the Nuln Ironsides since the personnel are entirely made up of School guards and engineers. As such the in-house publishers of the School have been hard at work mimicing the Gazette's work with a few tailorings to bring the target audience of engineers to the Militartstutz.

You've devoted a not inconsiderable amount of resources specifically to the Ironside campaign. The Ironsides need far more resources for their full-body armour and the more complex custom-built rifles and it costs more to recruit and pay an Ironside as well. Infact by the time Hexennacht has rolled around there's only been six successful candidates to make it through to being fully fledged Ironsides as part of your expanded recruitment campaign.



Jengen Quarry
Just to the south of the village of Jengen lies the lesser Dwarf Kingdom of Karak Angazar which is something alike a barony within the Kingdom of Karak Hirn. It is a right enshrined in the laws of Angazar, and upheld as a diplomatic policy by the Hornhold therefore, that the village may harvest for any purpose the stone of valley defined by the ridge lines between three peaks of the Black Mountains.

At the moment the village has a quarry, that while it has certainly developed somewhat and begun to employ several young men from the surrounding area it has not yet expanded beyond its historic limits. The small pit quarry in the lower valley was founded hundreds of years ago on a location that a Master Prospector from Karak Angazar had identified for its quality. And it is that quality which has made the Jengen Quarry the go-to source of stonework for your projects.

The Chamberlain has been on-site in Jengen working with the quarriers and their foremen to assess how best to expand operations. The remainder of the year was then spent on that effort, workcrews have built additional housing near the quarry for the men and women that the expansion is hoping to attract and a mass of blackpowder was used to blast open one wall of the pit towards a potential second site.

The second, smaller pit in the lower valley has begun to steadily contribute to the supply of stone flowing out of Jengen.



Wusterburg Grainport
While the Grand Marshal is away in the Mondidier Pass you decide to dedicate some effort to expanding the huge grainport at Wusterburg. The Wusterburg Flat is the breadbasket of the Wissenland and has much of the same fertility of the central Sudenland that Steingart enjoys though historically to a slightly lesser extent.

Most harvests from the Flat are brought to Wusterburg where they are processed and stored and prepared for travel. Some of the crop will go on south to Bugman's Brewery, the town has very little in the way of its own agriculture since the Dwarfs seem to frown upon it as a trade. A matter of religion you are told. But the majority is used to support the rest of the Province and Nuln in particular. Should something happen to the grainport at Wusterburg then Nuln would starve within the week. Well... you suppose Nuln would be a burning, rioting nightmare within a few days first.

Baronness Toppenheimer goes to Wusterburg with workcrews and the resources to build new wharfs on the Soll and sets to work. The riverfront is redeveloped with care, there's no real reason to touch much of the existing grainport since its all working well and work on the site would delay or disturb shipments into the City, but opening up access to more of the length of the river is a key objective.

It takes some time to shore up the riverside as well, build solid walls and dockfront, there were reasons this part of the riverside was not yet part of the grainport itself after all. But commendation should be given to the Baronness for her work. The expansion has been finished very quickly indeed.



The Trantine Canal Project
The surveyors have mapped out the path they want the new canal to take but its a fact of all projects, especially large ones, that the original plan rarely aligns with the final reality. Once the workcrews begin to actually carve out the corridor, the engineers warn, they'll likely hit hardpoints that they'll need to redesign the route around.

The Ambassador-At-Large has been camped on the south bank of the Bellagio where they have begun to break ground. The future confluence is likely to develop a proper town one day but for now it is a sea of camp tents, simple cabin buildings and large pavilions and it is the home base of the Wissenland side of the endeavour.

Work has been progressing steadily on both sides of the canal led largely by Nulner engineers, the petty cities and towns subservient to Trantio in the local area have been supplying the majority of the manual labourers. The work now will be mining out the canal until the very end when the waterworks will be built to facilitate the best flow through the structure.

When it comes to reinforcing the banks, building up surrounding infrastructure or anything else related to the future usage and exploitation of the canal, those are projects for the Trantine Prince-Presidents of the future to handle.



The year comes to a close, Hexennacht rolls around. And you're going to ban the Imperial Gunnery School from loaning cannons to the Master of the Tower. You'd heard he was eccentric, but the sheer awe and respect his legend seemed to inspire in the Witchhunters of the Iron Tower made you think it was more on the side of odd but genius rather than totally mad.

It would appear that the dossier you received in the summer from the Master of the Tower wasn't the entirety of his plan. Surgical strikes by master Witchhunters on safe houses, the arrest of assests of the Slaaneshi Cult and the interception of a wagon owned by a merchant known to be working with, for or as part of the Wurtbad Cult. And, apparently, firing a Heavy Gun that he had smuggled into a warehouse, through the wall and into the adjacent warehouse where that same merchant has been delivering his shipments.

The Heavy Gun fired three shots, scared a whole host of dockhands, killed four men and triggered the detonation of something that blew off half the roof. When you demanded an explanation you receive a visit from a Witchhunter who states that the Master of the Tower actually left the Province again shortly before the incident and the plan was carried out based on notes he'd left with lieutenants. Apparently there was a concern that something in that warehouse was too dangerous to storm the building without a little bit of pre-emptive assistance.

Further afield, the Waagh! Zurgad has met with its first real challenge. Having overrun the outer fortifications of the Kingdom of Barak Varr, and slaughtered the humans that didn't have royal permission to shelter behind the great gates of the city, the Greenskins have as predicted bounced off of the sealed great gate and been redirected northwards.

Akendorf is half a ruin, again, and the Averlanders have mustered in full force. Knightly Orders and the cavalry detachments that the Averland is famed for riding to join the formidable Grenzstadt Garrison which holds the Black Fire Pass. Reports from all sources indicate that the losses Waagh! Zurgad suffered at the great gates means they won't be a problem for the Averlanders.

The War on the Reik has settled down into a quieter state. The Reiklanders hold Carroburg and the Reik, and the Middenlanders hold the rest of the Middenland with a siege around Carroburg only broken by Reiklander barges shipping in supplies. The northern front seems to have been abandoned, a simple garrison of Middenlander State Troop at Beeckerhoven to hold the border but otherwise nothing else.

And of course, you pay attention to news on the matter of Wood Elves. The Bretonnians have begun the countdown towards their next coronation. The Royarch crossed the threshold of Athel Loren just at the start of the autumn and has not returned. Should they remain missing for a full 18 months then the Fae Enchantress will select the next Royarch. There has been an increase in Beastmen activity across the Old World, but the Wood Elves appear to have vanished entirely.



Meanwhile the Wissenland Gazette has news concerning the wider Empire.

The Empress of Marienburg has been shoring up her arrangements with the coastal Dukedoms, reaching out to Lyonesse and even Bordeleaux, just in case the Fae Enchantress selects one of them for Royarch.
The Emperor of Sigmar's Holy Empire has been maintaining their defence of Carroburg although reports indicate that the absence of the State Troop has resulted in a resurgence of minor Cults in the Reikland, some of whom are protecting their local shrines and holy places with force believing that the Grand Theogonist will struggle to fight back while focused on Carroburg.
The Ottillian Empress has discovered that her grand efforts to rebuild Mordheim have sputtered amidst struggles with lawlessness, explosions, and suspected Sylvanian sabotage within the cursed city ruins. Rather than a monument to her imperial ambitions, the project has turned into a sinkhole of resources and escalating danger.
The Wolf Emperor has reaffirmed his aim to seize back Carroburg by the end of 2009, a difficult prospect without Sylvanian reinforcements. For now, he can only besiege the city alongside the Middenlanders while keeping a watchful eye on the northern border still garrisoned at Beeckerhoven.



Intelligence Report:
The Confidante of the Seat has been overseeing efforts to watch over the underworld of Wissenland.
- Ranaldian pamphlets have circulated again, they decry the loss of life in the Mondidier Pass claiming that Nulners are being sent to die by a man who cannot hear their voices.



You have 10 Action Dice. You must apply at least one Action Die to the Province. 1 Action Die is locked into Secure the Pass until you choose to Return to Nuln or the current campaign finishes.