Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest

Of Maps and Territories

In a forest late at night at the edges of the empire, humans travel in groups and do not linger, for there are bestial things upon the prowl, this is known. Leagues of cliff-faced peaks and valleys where armies can not march, then dark and fey touched Athel Loren, then even further two-faced Brettonians.

But the boots that crunch cross the borderstones and branches this night are no shuffling mass of hoof and horn, nor the soft leather of elfish scouts, though they come by a path that has known the tread of both.

Instead ironshod feet fall in tandem and the trees around them echo like the low throb of a single giant heart. Or chewing jaw.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

No torches, for their eyes see well enough in the moon's light. No bellowed warcrys, for though they carry waaagh in their hearts, they move with disciplined purpose. They have weapons and armor of blackened iron, but worse, clever commanders with maps of the province and surprise on their side.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.


----------

The desk was different. The room too, for that matter, and it's occupants. The feeling was the same though, she reflected, so perhaps that is why it put her the mind of when she first pulled on ulgu in frustration at the limits of charcoal and paper.

Back then it was dwarves- young ones, mostly- bustling in and out carrying messages, and dwarves huddled round a slab of stone deep in the chiselwards. Now it was bright eyed young humans in robes (and one elf!) running in and out with the latest updates, polished wood with brass fittings rather than rough stone. And the map table. She was proud of the MAAP table.

Eight feet of polished hardwood, circular, it took up most of the space in the room, it's value underlined more by how much space was at a premium on the airship than by the runes inlaid in gold and silver. There was space for drinks and snacks. Above it floated the refined and perfected version of what she had done almost as fingerprinting back in the karak, now showing tens of square miles below and around them in crisp detail.

But the feeling was similar. Frustration, feeling like you had everything to do and could do nothing but stay in one place and shuffle messages. As the tool grew, so did the challenges.

The truth was that they had fucked up. The iron orcs had been a Brettonian problem, rumors about chaos worshiping orcs in armor, raiding sheep herding villages and sacking small castles, with none able to find their base. Something where help in the matter could have been traded for favors.

But then the attacks on the empire had started, and it became clear very quickly to the more experienced defenders that the orcs had somehow cracked open the beast paths and world roots. And that their numbers were far greater than feared.

An army of disorganized savages that popped up out of near nowhere and ravaged whatever was close by was bad enough. A well-equiped army with drilled tactics and a considered strategy behind them was much worse. All of that, while Kislev struggled at it's northern borders and the call went out for all to match north?

A thing of nightmares.

Already two larger towns had been sacked, their defending forces lured away while orcs reduced the walls and put all inside to the sword and flame. No pursuit was possible, and no defense could be prepared that covered all the directions from which an attack might come.

Enter the Prismatic Wanderer. Her mission: to find the army of the iron orcs and lead the scent remaining forces of the empire in crushing it.

A shout pulled her from her musings.

"MA'AM! We've got something! Chamon teleseveriscope bloom to the south-southeast six miles and change out! And we think it might be an entry point, the bloom was growing!"

She glanced up; the thirty-something in gold robes snapped her a salute and handed off a slate. She glanced to her right. Her arcaneocartographer (the hochlander's grandniece in fact, a not-yet-perpetual named Mariann) bit her tongue as she carefully processed the declension and direction numbers from the slate and adjusted the table- a smear of yellow swirled into being between two low hills. Four miles beyond was a third walled town, much like the first two

"Change course to south-southeast and drop to fifty feet above the trees! Prepare to drop away team and then sprint for Drakfort to assist with the defense!"

Mathilde wanted a closer look at these worldroot things. She had questions.