Warhammer Fantasy: A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism

Commissioned By Massgamer

The second that the boat scraped against the sands, her father commended to Manann and Morr and behind her, the world shifted underneath her feet like the waves might while at sea. Except that wasn't quite right either. Salt spray of the oceans, stink of humanity and more besides, mixed together with ash and misery and worry, all of it clung to her nose no matter the perfumes and scents that the nobility around her wore. All of these things she'd smelled before. By all rights, everything she'd known had been quite violently upended in a shockingly short amount of time. The warning that had spurred everything, evacuations from across the coast to spare the peasantry and lesser nobles and merchants besides, to the complete devastation of the docks and yards and warehouses that had been painstakingly built across her lifetime. The violence, the bodies that had been hauled away for burial or more unsavory purposes by their quasi-allies in the Eonir, the devastating loss of the Steel Bull himself along with his wife…and of course, the death of her own father.

Not in battle, blade in hand, surrounded by the dead as befitting a stalwart warrior as he had been. Not in bed, surrounded by family and passing beyond the Stone Portal with kind words and gentleness as befitting a father who had raised his family happy and well as he had done.

No.

Instead this illustrious personage, surviving a great many tours as a Greatsword to the Elector Count himself…was killed with a rock.

A very large one, yes, but…a damned rock?

A broken boulder of the very walls meant to protect the city that the sleepy small village of Salkalten had become, broken off with inhuman strength and propelled further with dark magical forces, thrown into the heavens and fallen back down squarely upon his person. There had not been a single bone left unshattered, his armor flattened and wrapped around the bottom of the stone like a metallic layer of a pastry, the meat of him squished into so very much jelly and splattered outwards for more than a dozen feet in every direction. The blade that he'd wielded for so long, with which he'd won honors and slain many enemies, that he had been granted leave of once departing the Greatswords, that might well have eventually become hers, had been shattered so badly that only a quarter of the hilt had been found. Nothing more.

It had been many days since then.

Out of mercy, pity, duty, or whatever else, Prince Arthur von Hohenzollern had managed to perfectly balance his duties and position as a High Priest of Morr while handling the aftermath. He had seen to the dead, to the clean-up, to the processing and temporary housing of the freed slaves, as well as the damned Druchii who had cost her family, city, and people so much. Not just now, but for the last two thousand and some odd years. For many, it hardly mattered who precisely it was that arrived in the dead of night or middle of the day to sack and reave. Whether they were the wolf or dragonships of the Norscans, the ramshackle amalgamations of wood and metal that were the creations of greenskins, or the raven ships of the Druchii. For most, all that mattered was that there was burning and killing. But for their family, their duty was greater, to track and do their best to deal with such matters with the aid of the Cults, that of Manann first and foremost.

She had learned at her father's side, about such things. About how the populations of the coastline shifted like the tides themselves. Wealth and prosperity were good, but not when they made of your home a target. Too many rumors, too much good fortune, and inevitably, at some time or another, from the Sea of Claws would someone come to claim it for themselves. It had to move, had to shift, slide from place to place. Too many stalwart warriors, retiring from campaigns elsewhere, could be just as great a problem. To tear down such individuals was sometimes as sweet a prize for such raids as gold and goods. A good fight could draw greenskins anywhere. Misery and terror spreading as a result of a few especially brave men who's presence could inspire being flayed and butchered like pigs was a jape that Druchii would always enjoy. To sacrifice the souls of especially worthy prey would always draw Norscans. So it went. Only a handful of times had a Black Ark come to the Sea of Claws, as far as her family knew, based on the records of the Cult of Manann and those texts held by the Cult of Verena, and each had been heralds of great and terrible destruction.

So by those accounts, this had been a glorious victory.

There was a ransacked carcass of a Black Ark, right over there!

They'd won!

…hadn't they?

The thought plagued her as she leapt down from the boat into the battered mixture of sand, dirt, gravel, and more that was the result of two Black Arks ramming the coast, but stopped as a voice called out to her.

"Princess."

Anneliese von Sterneck did not flinch when she heard those words, but it was a near thing. She had heard the title of her position before thousands of times. From her own family, from servants, visiting nobles, merchants, peasants, and priests. For the whole of her life she had heard it said to her.

But it had never been spoken with such weight.

The speaker was a wizened old man, deep lines the scars of decades' passage marking his face, his clothing fine of make but dour of color. For he, just like her, and so many others, were in mourning for the dead. A long but well-trimmed white beard fell down to his chest, while a single polished and flawless glass monocle sat in front of his left eye. One hand was tucked behind the small of his back, the other over his heart, as he bowed to her, and in doing so a number of other lesser functionaries did the same, the women amongst them curtseying. Anneliese held back a grimace at the sight of them, at seeing their bows go all the lower than they had up until now in respect to the position she now held. Though she dearly wished that she could draw the mourning cloak up from her shoulders and about her head to guard her from the world once more. She wished she could retreat to her home, and to her bed, or more, to embrace her father one last time. Yet she could do none of those things.

"Steward Reuter," she greeted roughly, inhaling sharply on purpose to keep herself from presenting anything as weak as a sniffle. "There is much to do."

"Indeed, Princess," Reuter inclined his head while Annelise turned towards the rest of the ship's passengers.

His duty done, the tall and imposing Prince Arthur von Hohenzollern nodded to her a single time more before departing onwards, off to deal with the rest of Ostland. His time and aid were done here, meaning that it was time that she truly took up the mantle as the Princess of Salkalaten, head of the Von Sterneck family. Old Werner, the seniormost representative of the Cult of Manann left with the horrific loss of the High Matriarch and so many others, bobbled off towards the temple without another word. Some might think it disrespectful, but Anneleise knew that there was just as much grief and horror in the man as there was in her, for she had lost a father, while he had lost the greatest representative of the God of the Seas alongside her fleet. Priests and templars both, lost in the act of fighting the Druchii. Her family huddled together, her mother's grief so powerful out of them all that the outspoken woman was struck silent since the battle proper, hair struck anew through with streaks of grey. Her siblings were practically driftwood, cast out at sea with no shore or anchor, the sudden loss of their father, the swiftness of the fight and drawn-out aftermath, was too much for many of them to handle.

Which meant it was up to her, then, to shoulder it all.

Manann and Ulric save her.

"Mother, please, take the others home," Anneleise said gently, clearing her throat as she turned back to Reuter. "Walk with me, Steward."

"Of course, Princess," he said before turning and doing just that as she headed for the gates back into Salkalten.

"What is the status of the building materials Prince Magnus promised us?" She asked, fighting the urge for her hand to wrap around the hilt of her axe as they walked.

"There is much stone and timber for our use, Princess," Reuter began. "The Hohenzollerns – and your father – foresaw well the need we would have for it in the aftermath. However…," he trailed off as they entered the gates proper.

On the other side waited the people of not just Salkalten itself, but of the whole of the northern coast of Ostland and those folk who had traveled there for safety. Men, halflings, ogres, and even a few Imperial dwarfs awaited her. There was little cheering, little celebration, as such things had been done in the immediate aftermath of the Black Arks. In that moment, the people spared death and desecration by the Druchii had happily feasted at their continued survival. Afterwards they had shown great hospitality as organized under a Prince and Princess of the Hohenzollerns towards those freed of bondage. But it had drawn out, as the aftermath of such truly massive battles apparently always did. Few had been happy to be conscripted into dealing with the corpses, shoving rubble aside, and even fewer had been granted leave to perhaps find some great hidden treasure in the depths of the Ark. That was something that Annelise had heartily agreed with, the whole thing was no doubt tainted, and it would not do to have some halfwit stealing away with a totem of the dread gods of the Druchii to do who knew what.

"Bear witness!" Reuter called out loudly, straightening like the soldier he had once upon a time been.

Metal clanged and leather rasped as the remaining Greatswords of her family, who's great prowess and endless training had amounted to absolutely nothing in protecting her father from Morr's Realm, presented arms behind her.

"For you now stand before Princess Annelise von Sterneck, Warden of the Northern March and Shield of the Sea!"

There was some murmuring from the crowd, though it was definitively neutral. Nothing for it then.

"We have been wounded," was the first thing she said as she stepped forward, looking across the crowd. "Our city is scarred, the coast as well. They tell me that the very depths of the land beneath the waters has been carved away and shattered utterly. What were shallows are now great depths. But," she raised her right hand to eyelevel, hopefully to help them focus upon that hand and not the deep scars marring that half of her face and ear besides. "We are not dead. We are not destroyed. Through the stalwart acts of my father, and Count Hohenzollern, Salkalten stands!" Her voice rose up into a shout, and she saw the burgeoning embers there in the gazes of the crowd.

She took another step forward and spun on her heel so that she could point back out through the gate. There, the sea lapped against the new shore. There, the Black Ark rested as a vast city-sized tomb. There, the humongous ships of the dwarfs, mountains of steel and rivets and black powder and steam, overtook the horizon with great ease. There, huge tents had been placed to house the dwarfs of Norsca, an existence that still surprised her. Where once there had been wide and expanding docks, fishmongers and traders, berths and warehouses, and layer upon layer of wall and defenses, these things had replaced them. But they were, all of them, temporary. None of them as eternal as the sea, not even the working of the dwarfs. Salkalten was a port city, but not one who's course was eased with a river flowing through it out to sea. The shores of Ostland were rocky, full of cliffs, sheer drops, and more, while the land behind them was only modestly arable. There were no major sources of mineral wealth that had been found over two thousand years and the command of different Princely Houses of Salkalten across generations. In the end, the sea, trade and fishing and hunting upon it, was what the city needed.

"The docks, the warehouses, yes, are destroyed – for now," she added harshly. "But they are not gone forever, no. I swear to you, all of you, that they will be rebuilt. Greater even than they were before!"

Fine words.

But these were people of the sea, just like her. Proof would be the true test.

"Prince Magnus von Hohenzollern has already set aside materials for rebuilding efforts, stone and timber and more besides, and we have been given leave to make use of them as we can. In the meantime, look to each other for aid. The Druchii thought to kill us, raze the city, and salt the earth, but in the end, it is we who ruined them!"

That got a lot more cheers.

"So praise the Gods, praise Manann, Salkalten stands! Now please, my people, return to your lives. We shall no doubt be calling upon some of you in time, but for now…let us to work!" She finished, hands on her hips, nodding firmly as the crowd began to break apart before her.

There was not much cheer to be had still, but she took it as a victory to see the tension fading, to see her people with heads held high while they began to return to their duties and lives. Uncertainty was an inevitable result, especially for a Manann-fearing people after the loss of a High Matriarch and temple-ships beside, not even including the staggering loss of the Steel Bull himself alongside his wife. There were rumors of them still living, but these were things delivered by elves, whispers of magic and rituals that she did not have the understanding or time for. For all intents and purposes, Frederick von Hohenzollern was dead, as was his wife, and they would simply have to keep moving on without them. If he truly did live, which, Annelise had to admit, the stories did imply was possible, then there was nothing she could do about it. Her responsibilities were for her city and her family, now, as well as for all those across the coast.

"A fine speech, my lady," Reuter said as he returned to her side while she walked forward through the streets. "The people have been most concerned about the matter of their livelihoods."

"Eventually those huge ships that the dwarfs brought are going to have to leave," she grunted, running a hand across her short, cropped hair. "Not away entirely, just…enough. There's plenty of coast for them to anchor against, after all."

It wasn't like they had anything to fear from rust or the like, assuredly from masterful dwarf metalcraft and powerful runes besides. When Anneliese imagined an Imperial ship made wholly of metal, all she could see was it decaying swiftly into the depths. The expense of getting it fully enchanted, perhaps by the Gold College, would be surely absurd. Did she want it regardless? Of course! The holiest ships of the Cult of Manann had been blown into splinters! It was blasphemy and insulting all at once. But from the tales of the dwarfs of Barak Varr, boasted over frothing pints of ale as they hosted the Norse dwarfs in their tents, their mighty dreadnoughts had faced Black Arks in the past before. Driven off some, and credited with destroying two others, albeit over the course of many centuries. That was another thing – that the ships of the dwarfs were so doughty as to be generational affairs, lasting far longer than near any ship of human make that Annelise had heard of. Save, perhaps, the temple ships – the temple ships that had been destroyed and who's holy remains even now rested at the bottom of the Sea of Claws.

They would have to be dredged and reclaimed at some point, but that was a matter for another time.

"Very good, my lady. Shall I set up a meeting with them soon?"

"Tomorrow, preferably," she nodded to the man as they walked.

She bade her mother and siblings goodbye as they took the most direct path towards Castle Sterneck, while she and the steward took a more circuitous route through the city. She needed to see it with her own eyes, now that she was no longer upon the shore hauling bodies or moving stone. Now that she wasn't doing that or being holed up in the castle with her grief, that is. Prince Arthur was an intimidating sort on the face of it, being a servant of the God of Death and Dreams, tall and lanky and with that curious supposedly Morr-blessed grey skin, but for all of that he had been…kind. Kinder than his sister, that was for damned sure. After the battle's end, she had been the one to inform the rest of their family as to her father's fate, black and red as if she'd pulled herself from a fresh mass grave. A horror, a walking breathing corpse of a woman. Burning the bodies, unfeeling treatment of the living and the dead, it was a wonder that she was related at all to Prince Arthur. The one who had shouldered the burden for as long as he could before his departure. A boon she didn't deserve, but had made full use of.

"The rebuilding goes well," she murmured to herself as she looked out upon the people, some of them turning to greet her and her small party as they moved, others too focused to do so.

"The people of Salkalten are strong, my lady," Reuter spoke up. "New and old, this is their home."

"New and old," she echoed.

So many more of the former than the latter, and yet you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell on the face of it. Before the Steel Bull had decided to throw funds and materials at the city in such ludicrous amounts over the years, Salkalten was practically nothing. A miniscule fishing town that was barely above subsistence levels. The noble families that ruled it did so from a single somewhat fortified tower, rebuilding it on the occasions that the town was sacked and razed by raiders of one source or another. But as she had grown up, so too had her home. A castle, a true castle, in Castle Sterneck. Ever expanding docks, expansions to the temple, and housing for all of the workers and fishermen and traders besides. The more ships that came, the more the city grew. The more money that built it up, the more the city grew. Walls and new temples and shrines. Apartments and barracks and taverns and smithies. By now, the old families that had lived here were incredibly outnumbered, and yet those who came to the city and stayed swore their oaths and had fulfilled them time and again. First had been halflings, then ogres, and now one of the wandering clans of Imperial dwarfs had begun to carve out a home here as well, offering their expertise as smiths and masons and more. It was nothing compared to the bastion of dwarf life in Wulfenburg to the south, but it was more than had been there for centuries.

Now, after the battle, you could hardly tell who was newly settled and who had roots long set in.

The local watch and guard worked hand in hand with the people to rebuild the scant amount of damage to their homes that they had suffered. Most all of it was shrapnel from the walls beyond the city proper, protecting the docks, that had been so utterly shattered by the Black Arks. None of it crippling. None of it terribly damaging. In fact, ignoring the mercenaries and state troops and others proper, of the regular citizenry of Salkalten and the coastline that had evacuated to the city, there were scarcely any casualties at all. A mere handful of deaths all things considered, from trips and falls, or from stone chunks falling. Nothing like being enslaved, clapped in irons, poked full of crossbow bolts, throats slit, spears driven into their bodies, bones broken, or worse.

If one did not count those who had suffered so terribly in defending the city.

Instead of passing back across a ravaged battlefield that had once been Salkalten, hearing the weeping of men and women as they tried to find loved ones and friends, with only ash and blood in her nose, Anneliese von Sterneck beheld…a city. Worried, certainly. Quietly frantic, most definitely. There were concerns about food supplies, perfectly understandable given they were hosting the evacuated citizenry of the coast plus the dwarfs and others, and their docks were completely gone. But their ships were not, not yet, as the fishing vessels had wisely been sent to the easternmost waters that Ostland could claim for itself before butting up against the potential jealous jurisdiction of Kislev through Erengrad. They could be recalled. No one in Salkalten would go hungry.

Not now.

Not in the city her family had rebuilt after the Great War Against Chaos.

"Old Werner was talking about doing a service at the temple," she ruminated, glancing at Reuter. "A big one. Honoring the sacrifices and extoling the living and all that."

"Is he…capable of such a service?" Reuter raised an eyebrow in question. "He is…,"

"Old," she said bluntly, rubbing at her facial scars with one hand. "I think the last time he raised his voice was about five years ago, and even then he nearly blew a lung like a forge's bellows. He asked me to be there."

"Ah," Reuter said understanding. "I see. Understandable."

"Shouldn't have let Young Werner go out, he died with the High Matriarch," she added, "Now we've got to wait until who knows how long for a replacement to take up the mantle of leading the temple, and I don't see Werner springing a new son out of his loins at his age."

Snorting, she put that ridiculous thought aside to once more observe the city that her family had built. While her father often had to venture out on campaign with the Count Hohenzollern, he had always returned to Salkalten to ensure that it was developing apace. The fruits of that hard work was all around her. Ogres were hefting large barrels and crates in their hands that would have required two men to carry. Halflings hawked their wares and also advertised the services of the local Great Kitchen of Esmeralda to provide food for the hungry. Distant as the city was from the heart of Sigmarite worship in Ostland, and being a coastal city as it was, Manann stood greatest here with Ulric and Morr close behind. At least that had been the truth in the past, with Esmeralda now taking up a great deal more attention and worship. In the past there had been plenty of arguments and even brawls between the various Cults, that was a natural part of life in the Empire, but here, for now at least, there was none of it to be found.

A few Ulrican lay-people were helping an older Sigmarite veteran towards the Temple of Shallya, a heavy two-headed hammer amulet dangling from his chest while one bloody leg was tied carefully to a splint. Elsewhere, she witnessed as one of the minor priests of the admittedly smaller Salkalten Temple of Sigmar murmur a prayer to his God to cast a mote of golden light upon a mystified child with a scratch on his arm and a stone carved symbol to Taal wrapped around his wrist. She saw dwarfs and men working hand in hand to move supplies, help grocers set up their wares, and traders move their goods. Regardless of race and creed, after the blow they had suffered, the near total eradication that everyone knew in their hearts they had been threatened with, one truth had arisen in the aftermath.

Salkalten still stood.

"I'll need the families of the other settlements of the coastal march to meet with me," she said to Reuter, who's head tilted at just the right moment so that sunlight struck his monocle and rendered it opaque.

"Yes, my lady," he said officiously, looking ahead. "I shall see to it at once.

"We need to organize their return to their homes, as well as that of their people, to relieve the pressure on our own supplies whilst immediately returning to regular fishing voyages," she continued, altering their course so that the Temple of Manann became their new destination.

It had grown, steadily, over the years, in tandem with Salkalten. Though that latest massive barnacle attached to it, supposedly one day an enormous lighthouse, was certainly the newest growth. Already it was visible from most places in the city, and even then it was apparently less than halfway done. Something for her to investigate once she took full ownership of her father's quarters and office in Castle Sterneck.

"In the meantime, the immediate creation of temporary docks for our ships needs to be done as well," she decided swiftly. "A poor excuse for what we lost, but it will have to do. Full reconstruction will take years and greater expertise. Though we might lean upon the King of Barak Varr, now that he's outright here and all."

"Very good, my lady," Reuter nodded.

On it went as she walked towards the temple. She made her orders, and Reuter prepared to carry them out, occasionally chipping in with his own advice or drawing upon the other adjutants and secretaries that had served her family who trailed along with her. Ironically, for all that she had worried over the burden she now carried, the sheer weight of it seemed to lessen as she spoke and as they walked. She felt it as her spine straightened up fully, her shoulders started to become more and more set rather than hunched, her chin lifting upwards with a confidence that she no longer had to feign. By the time that she reached the steps of the Temple of Manann, there was a calm in her heart that she had not felt before once in her life save the once.

From that single time in her youth, when she had stolen out upon a fishing ship without her father's knowledge or permission, too eager and desirous of the sea to wait. A ship that had been broken by a storm, and herself cast out to nearly die and drown upon the floating wooden remnants. When the first bump against her legs had come as Stromfel's get had come looking after the damned God had obliterated the boat, she should have been terrified. She'd been a mere child. But instead, she had felt the same calm then as she did not, as if Manann himself was reaching down to tell her that the world would be as it would. The sea would come, the tides would go in and out, and all one could do was venture out and do the best they could while they could. Back then, she had drawn her knife, and taken her first life, and then her second and third, and carried the scars upon her face and head to mark it.

Now, she stepped forward into the temple alone, leaving Reuter and the others behind, to approach the altar.

None of the laymen of the temple barred her way, and Old Werner was likely ever so slowly making his way to the temple himself and would be yet to reach it for at least an hour or more.

For all intents and purposes she was alone as she knelt before the altar.

"Manann," she began quietly, feeling as the tides of her blood within her body rushing back and forth with the beats of her heart, drowning out all other sound in her ears. "They have wounded your city. We are not so great as Marienburg, but our devotion to you is no lesser. They have destroyed our docks, and killed your faithful, but we remain unbowed and unbroken."

Her hands clenched; her own skin audible as it rubbed against itself from the tightening of it.

"Our people, at least. Our spirit," she clarified, not sure if she was doing so for herself or to her God. "But the docks…the dock walls…they're gone. But not forever. Salkalten was nothing before, but now it has become a true target. But I vow to you, Manann, on my name, on my father's name, on my family's name, that we shall rebuild. We shall make of ourselves a true Shield of the Sea, this I vow," she whispered through grinding teeth.

Ah.

She was crying.

She had managed to keep herself from doing so since that horrid Princess had spoken to her, but she couldn't hold it back anymore.

"We shall build this place so mighty that none will dare strike it, for to do so will mean certain death and abject failure," she ground on, swearing it down to her soul, uncaring of how her fingernails drew her own blood, droplets of it mingling with her own tears. "Salkalten will stand forever. In defiance of all the dread Gods of the Druchii, the brutish whims of greenskins, or the Dark Gods themselves, or anyone else! Salkalten will stand," she finished in a rasp, a strange exhaustion and weariness seeming to slam into her all at once.

Anneliese swayed where she knelt, blinking blearily, feeling like she'd swum the length of the Sea of Claws twice over.

"I swear it, Manann, I swear it," she whispered again.

High, high above her, though the clouds were long clear, there was a distant rumble of thunder.