The Old World: Dark Age of the Empire

Remain at Westfort
Your forces were split into two parts when you departed for Dunstigfurt. The greater part of the Iron Companies have marched west with you, but the Steel Guard remains at Bechafen lest the Sylvanians return. And lest the Ostermarkers forget in the coming days exactly who was responsible for the saving. The nature of the Election is such that you can't always be sure who voted for whom but there were four votes cast for the Iron Emperor in the end and you can account for them all in your own negotiations which includes the Ostermark.

The Sylvanian State Troop does not return and word from the rest of the Mark suggests that the losses suffered by the Veldt tribes at Bechafen has given them pause in crossing again into the western part of the Province. Of course you know now what has become of the Sylvanians. Word came to Dunstigfurt in the week between the two votes and has set the Electors reeling. Prince Lutz is of a mind to depart the Election altogether.



The Wusterburg Ring
The Chamberlain of the Province has gone to Wusterburg to build up the Wusterburg Flat's prodigious agricultural estates. While the Flat is famed for feeding the City of Nuln throughout its history, much of it is actually wild grasses especially its western reaches which are more frequently troubled by Greenskins or Beastmen or other things of the Grey Mountains that cause the villages of the Flat to grow more sparse and distant from one another as one rises away from the Soll.

She has begun a westward campaign to claim the old Flat. The Inner Plains are ringed by hills just a quiet quarter of the way out from the river to the mountains and here are the majority of the farms and villages of the Wusterburg estates. But to the west of these hills the Chamberlain has been, with the written permission of the Baron, allotting land to any wed couple who pledges to develop it.

The conditions are simple enough, they must pay some small fee, must be of Nuln, Wissenland or Sudenland, must be married and must dwell in their allotted land for 5 years without meaningful departure. If they do so, then they shall be granted ownership under oath to Wusterburg of the allotment they have been appointed to. Several small villages have cropped up on the western banks of the ring hills and even have begun to spread out into the wild grasses.



The Dunstigfurt Election
The Grand Baron of Hochland has counted the vote. Two talismans for the Talabecland, three talismans for the Reikland, four talismans for the Wissenland and five talismans for the Midden. Eight talismans are needed for an Emperor to be crowned by a majority of votes, and so the Election has proven undecided this first week of the vote. You can guess, based on your dealings that the Wissenland's talismans are your own, the Grand Theogonist, the Ostermark and the Stirland; and the three of the Reikland are like to be their own, the Westerland and the Mootland. You're unsure who the Ottilian's have for their second vote, it could be Hergig or Wolfenburg. But the rest must have gone to Middenheim.

The Electors are then called upon to either assent or dissent to a second week followed by a second vote. The Grand Prince of Ostand, Grand Count of Stirland and Grand Elder of Mootland declare that they are contented to depart without naming a new emperor, all others call for the Election to continue.

As soon as the chamber is unsealed, urgent word comes into the chamber from the outside. The Armies of Sylvania have cross the Stir and seized Wurtbad. The Stirlander State Troop is supposedly slaughtered to the man and the City of Wurtbad has been raised anew into unlife. The Electors fall into murmured discussion as advisors pour into the room. Initial reports suggest that the attack was a single savage wave of barbarism, not the careful strategy of Vlad von Carstein but that it was by and large the amassed undead who swarmed the City which had been so weakened by your own capture of it.

Van Hal supposes that this may mean that Konrad von Carstein is the one who has rallied his 'father's' forces and taken up the Grand County of Sylvania. The few accounts of Konrad that are available describe him as a mighty fighter but a brute of little cunning, and Wurtbad has by all reports suffered brutish acts indeed. The City may forever be marked by the wound to its people that it has suffered. Grand Count Lutz has called for the amassed might of the Electors to depart for Wurtbad immediately, though in truth no-one knows where the armies of the undead will be by the time the armies have broken camp and set off. Ceratinly news from Wurtbad has taken more than a week to reach you. The majority of the Electors are unchanged in their vote to remain at Dunstigfurt and continue the Election. They argue that a singular Emperor would be the single greatest aid to Wurtbad now.



The Read-In
Speaking of Van Hal, you've instructed him to begin the work of reading you in on the various matters of the Iron Tower. On penalty of being ousted from that Tower should he continue to keep secrets from you. There are several secrets, that the Tower is aware of, that he has agreed to read you in on. The foremost on his mind is naturally a vast roster of information surrounding vampires. The Iron Tower has been seizing and destroying vampires in Nuln and the Provinces for a number of years before his first Conference in 2012, indeed much of his wanderings at that time were to seek out Vampiric lore. Van Hal was in Sylvania shortly after the turn of the millennium and did know at that time that the Province had fallen into the sway of Vampiric powers. The reason you were not made aware for a full decade was because he then spent that time journeying from Province to Province to ascertain exactly how many Provinces had fallen or been otherwise subverted.

He confirms that Sylvania alone has fallen but that their hooks are deep in Reikland, Talabecland, Middenland, Nordland and Westerland through marriages or the falling of lesser knightly orders or through businesses with Sylvanian ties and patronage. Indeed fair Sylvanian brides can even be found in the higher nobility in some of the Provinces, the Middenland most particularly where Van Hal suspects even Ulrican clergy of falling. The Tower, and the Cult of Sigmar, has been preparing for the possibility of a huge internal schism between Ulrican loyalists and fallen Ulricans. There were concerns about the Grafmund in Middenheim itself. And there were concerns about the Imperial Palace as well. When Sylvanian assets were acquiring weapons from the Imperial Gunnery School it had triggered Van Hal to instruct loyal lieutenants to begin a campaign alongside the Ranaldians to undermine your rule in case Van Hal ever needed oust you. An admission that raises your brows quite high but that Van Hal seems very straightfaced reading from the dossier in his hands.

Van Hal, if it should even be possible, only treads into less stable ground. The knight in Bretonnia he was seeking out these past few years was not a Grail Knight, but was in fact a Vampire himself. Abhorash, the father of the Blood Dragons, had three hundred years ago ridden to the aid of Magritta in Estalia during the last vampire wars and had slain the leader of their foe and rescued the city. And perhaps much of the Old World as well for the foe had sought a secret in the vaults of the High Temple of Myrmidia there that might have greatly empowered them. Van Hal had thought to recruit this elder Vampire lord to your side in the coming conflict and to disguise him as a Grail Knight of the west. You ask about D'Aquitaine and he shakes his head no. D'Aquitaine is a genuine Grail Knight, Van Hal failed to find Abhorash in the time he had available to him for that Vampire lord wandered far and wide even if he did prefer to settle in Bretonnia to rest when he was in the Old World.

And then he mentions the secret war, the War in the Sewers. It is the official policy of the Empire entire, and a number of its pan-imperial institutions such as the Silver Hammers or the Cult of Sigmar, to keep the War in the Sewers entirely secret even from the Electors. He dithers as to whether you are actually the only Elector to currently know about it, the Ar-Ulric may have told the Wolf Emperor for example. But under the surface, beneath the Empire, there is another second Empire inhabited by ratmen. The Dwarfs call them the Thaggaroki, most Imperial reports simply call them Ratmen or more often Beastmen of a rat-like disposition. After all most of those who come across the Ratmen are not read-in on the wider War in the Sewers.

Largely, he says, the Empire of the Ratmen lines up with the Empire of Men within the boundaries of the Empire but it spreads far beyond those borders as well and the Empire of the Ratmen has cities in Kislev and Bretonnia and the Classical World and throughout the mountain kingdoms of the Dwarfs. But the cities of the Ratmen can be found swollen underneath the cities of the Empire, and the border lies within the sewers of the Empire's cities. Under-Nuln, he tells you, is larger than Nuln in population manifold and the only things keeping the War in the Sewers from spilling out into Nuln and overrunning it are three. The Ratmen are incessantly prone to internal strife and warring; the Sewer Jacks of Nuln who fight the War in the Sewers in secret funded by a pooled secret budget from the Imperial Palace and the Iron Tower and a number of Cults and the City Watch; and that the Ratmen do not believe the Empire is a present and urgent threat.

And therein lies the cause for this secrecy. If an Elector were to attempt to descend into their local Under-City and lay waste to the Ratmen, then the internal strife and warring will end and the Empire of the Ratmen will amass its vast numbers and pour forth onto the surface throughout the Empire. He stresses, in no uncertain terms, that Nuln cannot assault Under-Nuln or the secret war will come into the open and the War in the Sewers will become the War in the Streets.



Meanwhile the Wissenland Gazette has news concerning the wider Empire.
The Emperor of Sigmar's Holy Empire has secured three votes in the first round of voting. What promises he has made to get these votes are not public knowledge but for a young and fresh Grand Prince of Reikland to have secured them, the Gazette writes, may mean fresh hope for the Sigmarite Claim to the Throne.
The Ottilian Empress has secured two votes in the first round of voting despite coming into the Election with the largest official Faction. The Gazette goes into some depth with its speculation about all the reasons why each of the three Ottilian loyalist factions might have jumped ship.
The Wolf Emperor has secured five votes in the first round of voting, which while three short of the necessary majority is still the most votes of any candidate. As the Iron Emperor is in second place the Gazette has a number of opinion pieces on the possibility of the two Factions combining in some manner.



Intelligence Report:
The Confidante of the Seat has been overseeing efforts to watch over the underworld of Wissenland.
- The Confidante has written to Dunstigfurt to warn you that the Imperialist Faction has been motivated by your proven viability and are publically marching in Nuln to call on you to accept only an Election result that names you Emperor.
- The Whittlers have survived the fall of Wurtbad to Konrad von Carstein, the brutal sacking and re-raising of the already wounded city has naturally devastated the Stirland and refugees fleeing Stirland have begun to swamp the borders of Averland, Wissenland and Mootland. The Whittlers warn however that there are still Slanneshi Cultists in these masses.



You have 8 Action Dice to spend in Week 2 of the Dunstigfurt Election. These Action Dice will not come out of your budget for next turn and have already been paid for.
You have 10 Action Dice. You must apply at least one Action Die to the Province. One Action Die is locked into Direct the Iron Companies. This action requires a write-in to provide orders, if no orders are given the Iron Companies will steadily fortify their current position.



A/N: There is a 24 hour moratorium on voting, any votes made in the first 24 hours after posting will not be counted in order to encourage discussion and allow all time zones to have a chance to consider and create plans.