From a Dead World (Skaven Quest)

[Xantalos]

The world is ending.

It has been foretold by every sage, mystic, and fortune teller from the Southlands to cold Kislev to far Cathay: the Time of Endings is upon the planet. The tides of Chaos wax strong once more, and the Empire of man wearily turns north to face the one known as Archaon. It is a time of greatness, where the stars of the mortal races will shine a brilliant, if brief, light upon the world. Weapons long kept locked away in sacred vaults will be opened for battle once more. Men and women of legend, relegated to the background of history in times of peace, will surge to the forefront. The world will know the sound of dragons again before it dies.

Of course, you don't care about any of that. You'll either wrest this world from the arms of oblivion or flee and start anew. But who are you exactly?

[X] Skaven
Now-now is the time of your ascension! For years your people have scurried underneath the other species, fool-fools that they are, lulling them into a false sense of security, waiting for the perfect time to strike and take-take what is yours. And now is that time! Your clanrats stand strong, their fur sleek and thick. Your rat-ogres are ready to tear weak manthings limb from limb, and your stormvermin eager to pillage the homes of the high and mighty elfthings and dwarfthings. You'll show them what Skaven superiority is! For the Horned Rat himself has decreed that all Skaven must cease their ... opportunistic climbing of the ranks for the time being, instead presenting an endles tide of bared tooth and sharp claw to the surface world! The Under-Empire will stand victorious before any other, whether it be the manthings with a thousand gods, those hungry-hungry ogres in the mountains, the blind-blind people that call themselves an Empire, or, yes-yes, even those scaly ... things in the cursed jungle.

Maybe you'd burn-burn it down with warpfire, see how they feel then. But enough pondering. Go forth, loyal* minions, and conquer! For the Horned Rat!

*For a given definition of loyal

Religion: Horned Rat
Magic: Dark Magic, generally warpstone-powered
Starting Date: ~2522 IC

Benefits:
-Skaven Breeding: A significant reason that the Skaven are the best species in the world (aside from their innate superiority to everything) is their immense numbers. The females breed quickly, and the hordes march forth for the Under-Empire! (Massive population growth if you have the food for it)
-Skaven Intelligence: Skaven don't shrink from radical experimentation like the other fool-fool races! So what if a few underlings die during the process, no one really cares about them anyway. (Greatly incresed avenues of research, higher chances of consequences both hilarious and infuriating)
-Skaven Gods: The Horned Rat would not leave his children without guidance. His servants the Verminlords guide the Skaven along the proper path, and perhaps other manifestations of His will could be called forth? (Daemons and daemon-related effects are summonable. Excersise appropriate caution)
-Warpstone: While this substance is depressingly common in areas touched by Chaos, only the Skaven are insane- ahem, brave - enough to mine and utilize it on a large scale. (You have access to warpstone. This is both beneficial and insane.)

Detriments:
-Skaven Morale: Skaven are confident in their inevitable victory - if numbers are on their side. Once battle starts going against them, their courage drops swiftly. (Sharply increased morale drop if battle goes awry)
-Skaven Loyalty: The loyalty of a Skaven's underlings is legendary! Well, legendarily lacking. (Expect backstabbing)
-Skaven Lifespan: The Skaven live life like a furry rocket: quick and bright! Emphasis must be placed on the quick part. (Named characters, barring some exceptions, have short lifespans and will have to be replaced often)

Unique:
-Council: Barring things going exceptionally wrong, you will play as the Council of Thirteen, and thus will not 'die' if Council members are assassinated. However, disorder penalties will be applied to appropriate rolls if too many happen. Similarly, stability bonuses will be applied if you manage to keep the same council members for a while.

Spoiler: Some other fool-fools

[ ] Lizardmen
The eldest race. You were here when your makers and masters the Old Ones shaped this world, and you are present at its end. There is a good reason for this, as your people are among, if not the, mightiest in the world. Your Saurus are the betters of warriors from Ulthuan to Cathay, your Kroxigor build cities that could make a dwarf green with envy, and your Slaan leaders make even the dread greater daemons of Chaos tremble in dread when they take to the field.

Yet you remain sequestered in Lustria, and slowly, inevitably, with oceans of blood drawn for each inch, you are being pushed back. The geomantic web holding back the realm of the dark gods is in disrepair, and with each passing century it it fails further. The foul forces of the ratmen, so recently appeared as to have been an eyeblink to your senses, still linger in the far east, and you know they will strike at you again. And with each passing day, the Great Plan that your masters so long ago decreed for this world becomes a little more impossible.

But you are still the mightiest force on the planet, far off course as you are. You yourself may not know the course the future will take, but you will ensure it is a one paved with the corpses of your enemies.

Religion: Old Ones worship (and Sotek)
Magic: Yes
Starting Year: ~2520 IC

Benefits:
-Untouched by Time: Your people were made immortal by your masters the Old Ones, even moreso than the vaunted elves claim. You will not die of old age or ever suffer the degredations of time; indeed, you will only grow stronger with age. (Units won't die of old age and get stronger at certain age intervals.)
-Untouched by Corruption: Unlike the malleable humans, brutish ogres, and stalwart dwarves (though they'd never admit it), your race will never succumb to the degredations of Chaos or dark magic. The purpose of the Old Ones is engraved into your very souls, and none shall sway you from that path. (No chance of chaos corruption in your population)
-Untouched by Fear: Listen, and understand. Those lizardmen are out there. They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. (Greatly decreased/nullified morale loss)
-Touched by Magic: The followers of Tzneetch boast of their prowess in sorcery, but have they ever shattered an intercontinental empire via copious amounts of earthquakes and volcanoes as a side effect of what they were trying to do? Didn't think so. (Increased chances of pretty much anything related to magic, including researching new schools of magic entirely)
-Obsinite: This stone has all the sharpness of obsidian and the strength of steel. It is fortuitous indeed that the Old Ones taught your kind the process that creates it. (Unique material)

Detriments:
-Pillar of Order: You're about the greatest threat to the forces of destruction there is, and they recognize that. (Chaos will go hard on you. Skaven will go hard on you. Any Destruction-oriented factions will tend to focus on you)
-Ordained Births: Your people do not breed, instead being spawned from the sacred Spawning Pools under your temple cities. Now if only you knew how to build more... (Your population growth comes from spawning pools; if they're destroyed you're stuck with what you've got. Very slim possibility of building more in the far future)
-Tech? Wozzat?: Your people have never needed to depend on much other than your own natural abilities, and thus your advancement with conventional technology is somewhat lacking. (Start with a low techbase, slower rate in researching nonmagical technology)

[ ] Dwarves
To be a dwarf is to endure. To never compromise the traditions your Ancestor-Gods set down for you in the distant past, and to make any who have recieved a grudge be repaid in full for their crime against the dwarven people. Regardless of whatever foe sought to claim your holds, be it the brutal greenskins, the cowardly Skaven, or the shabby manlings from the north, you would never retreat. Never surrender even an inch of your ground to them without an ocean of bodies and a note to take it back as toll.

Until now.

You are High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer, and now is the time that Thungni foretold to you all those years ago, when even the mountains your people have made their homes in would be despoiled by the touch of foul magic and all your legacy would be trampled underfoot and forgotten, but for one hope of salvation. Fierce Grimnir long ago paved a path to the Chaos Wastes with the skulls of his enemies, and even now the Warp itself recoils in fear from the path the Slayer-God's wrath took. If enough dwarves could be sent along that path to the Migration the gods spoke of, perhaps the race of dwarves might still live. Of course you will not live to see it; you are High King, bound by oath to your people and allies, sworn to avenge every last Grudge in the Book of Grudges. You will see every last one crossed off those sacred pages before you die, and even if you fail your son has memorized every last one of them - should you not complete your mission, he will.

Religion: Ancestor-Gods Worship
Magic: Runes
Starting Date: ~2520 IC

Benefits:
-Runes: Even the mighty lizardmen rely on (mostly) impermanent spells for their spellwork. No other people have a system with such surety, permanence, and widespread useability as the craft of the Runepriests. No, those shoddy Chaos runes don't count. (You have runes)
-Honor: It seems only your people understand the meaning of the word. When empires of lesser races have turned to dust from time, when man and elf have forgotten their old promises, you will never forget. (Various effects - alliances are harder to break, you will be regarded as more trustworthy than other factions, etc.)
-Children of Stone: Much like the mountains you live in, your people are sturdy and hard for the winds of magic to warp - particularly the touch of Chaos. (Increased endurance, toughness for all units. Unless you gain powerful enemies in the warp or settle in a contaminated area for a very long time, you won't be corrupted/mutated. It is not impossible, however)
-Discipline: There is no one in all the world who can hold a battle line like a throng of dwarves. The word 'rout' only came into Khazalid at the approximate time the Empire of Man rose, and it's only ever used with dwarves as the subject when discussing things that would never happen. (Decreased rate of morale loss in combat, bonuses to defensive actions and general coordination)
-Technology: Unlike some others you could name, dwarven engineering is stable, reliable, and practical. And it still stands above the ridiculous dark-magic powered bullshit those others "design". (Research projects are safer, resulting tech is more easily applied. Starting high tech base)

Detriments:
-Grudges: Along with your memory of alliances and old boons comes with an unforgiving recollection of every wrong ever perpetuated on your people. You can neither forget nor forgive until recompense is paid - in lives if need be. (Very difficult to make peace with factions you're at war with, internal conflicts can become very damaging, etc. Fun times)
-Dwarven Fertility: Of all the gifts your people were given, fecundity is not one. (Low population growth)
-Conservatism: Dwarves could be called cautious resarchers if you were being generous. (Slower research rate, small number of projects to start with)


[ ] Chaos Dwarves
Glory to Hashut! For millennia, your people have built up in the Dark Lands, further fortifying the great tower of Zhar Naggrund, and raiding the lands outside of your home for slaves to fuel your slowly expanding war machine. One day the entire world will lay subservient beneath your feet, and you will turn your gaze elsewhere for the glory of your dread god. One day you will finally have vengance upon your bretheren in the Karaks for the wrongs they inflicted upon you all those centuries ago...

Or so your dark dreams go. Recently, events have happened that make you doubt that sweet dream will ever come to pass. The entrails of sacrifices have lately been foretelling only doom and disaster, the orc slaves seem more riled up than ever, and to top it all off, one of your attendants recently mutated into a hellish visage of the Lord of Domination himself, which spoke to you of horrible events that will come to pass in the future, events that cannot be stopped and will eradicate your people.

Hashut will not have that. The Pact he made with your people all the long years ago has not been fulfilled, so in his beneficence he will once again grant you the means to your salvation. All that remains is to grasp it, and there are none more worthy than you, for you are Dawi Zharr, and your destiny is to conquer!

Religion: Hashut
Magic: Hashut magic, as well as volcano/magma/fire/earth stuff
Starting Date: ~2500 IC

Benefits:
-Daemonic Engineering: Your people know well the art of binding daemons into both war machines and other machinery, and have more success with it than others. (Safer and easier - relatively - to bind daemons into stuff, future research can unlock more possibilities)
-CHAFF: Each Chaos Dwarf is precious because of your relatively low numbers. Fortunately you own literal tons of greenskins to do your fighting for you. (You have greenskin auxiliaries, including hobgoblins, orcs, and goblins, in huge numbers)
-Unbound by Tradition: Your dwarf cousins claim themselves superior, yet they pale in comparison to your engineering marvels! They are hidebound by superstition and cowardice, while you stride ahead into the future!
Of course you don't do things unwisely fast. You're not ratmen. (Faster research rate, increased array of projects, starting high tech base)
-Mages: Oh, just another thing your idiot bretheren don't have – MAGIC! Spells! Who needs inefficient runes when you can spew magma out of your hands?! (You have mages – also various beneficial mutations like the Bull Centaurs)
-Bio-Engineering: Whether it be twisting regular cattle into the hellish Bull Centaurs or making the Black Orks (the dawi zharr responsible for that was thrown headfirst into Hashut's throne), your people seem to have a talent for making living things more … dangerous. (Options to biologically enhance creatures will be available. Chance of backfiring)

Detriments:
-Low Birthrate: About the only shared problem you and your cousins have is that you just don't breed very fast. The hostile and suspicious culture of your people doesn't help matters. (Low birthrate, for both biological and cultural reasons)
-Sorceror's Curse: Dwarves, even examples as far-flung as you, were never meant to wield magic, and attempts to do that end badly – often the ultimate fate of a master mage is to be a statue in the waiting room of his/her former apprentice. (Mages will gradually turn to stone as they use magic)
-Downright Un-Orky: Apparently your extensive efforts at enslaving the greenskins has garnered you a bit of a reputation among them. Unfortunately it's that of a hated tyrant what needs a good krumping. (Outside factions of greenskins hate you)
-Grudge-borne: You despise your conservative cousins with a seething hate hotter than the magma you use in your forges. The feeling is mutual. (Dwarves hate you forever)

Unique:
-Arms Dealers: You are known to the forces of Chaos as a good source of high-quality, reliable gear. They are often repeat customers, which is good for you. On the other hand, having the attention of Chaos is always a risky proposition… (Chaos factions will come looking for you … to do business! Yep. Just business.)
-Slave Economy: Your people are inundated in wealth to the extent that it doesn't really measure the way your society functions – instead your wealth is better estimated by how many slaves you have to ferret out the wealth from the earth. (You literally run on slaves – options have costs in slave lives instead of gold/currency)

 

[Xantalos]

Deep in the twisting tunnels of the greatest empire ever to scurry across the surface of the planet there is a city unlike any other. In the center of the marshes just north of the manthing place called Tilea stands the birthplace of that most magnificent of species, sleek-furred, sharp-fanged, voracious and ambitious – the Skaven! And what a city it is, wondrous Skavenblight. It is a warren of nightmarish proportions, labyrinthine in construction and filled with so many unexpected ups and downs and hidden pockets filled with beady-eyed rats that any other race would be unable to even comprehend it! But the Skaven are not befuddled by its streets packed to the brim with other ratmen. Instead they thrive in the choked air and warpstone miasma that pervades the place. And in thriving they scheme and plot to rise higher in their intricate social hierarchy, for no Skaven is ever satisfied with their current spot in the pecking order.

Indeed ambition is the byword for the Skaven mindset, and no other position is looked upon with more awe, envy, and fear than the dreaded Council of Thirteen. This foreboding organization is the head of Skaven civilization, comprised of the twelve mightiest warlords and packleaders in all of the Under-Empire. And though none of the teeming throng within the horrific confines of Skavenblight know, the Council convenes this day, and it will be the last time in the world that was.

Their meeting place is not in a place one would expect for the ratmen. Their behaviour calls to mind images of a black obsidian chamber filled with scuttling obsequious servants and spikes of warpstone everywhere, living furniture from the stocks of clan Moulder, buzzing machinery from clan Skyre, the dread plague cauldrons of Pestilens, and the unseen vigilance of Eshin. Instead it is deceptively simple – a large chamber made plainly out of stone, a round table made out of some black material in the dead center. Around it sit thirteen ornate chairs – thrones is more of an accurate description of some of them – with one left empty.

The room is dimly lit, illuminated by the malevolent green glow of a colossal pillar of warpstone at the back of the chamber, casting strange exaggerated shadows across the room as its glow fluctuates and flickers across the etchings stretching all across its surface. Various servants and assistants stand at the very edges, scuttling into the shadows whenever the light glances onto them. Only the figures at the center stay illuminated, the warpstone giving their furred snouts a menacing glare.

"Speak your cause for calling Council so suddenly, Kritislik," snarled Lord Morskittar, the Lord-Warlock of Clan Skyre. "I have many-many projects that cannot be delayed for long, so speak-speak your drivel."

His opposite, Seerlord Kritislik of the Grey Seers, bared his teeth in response. "I would rather have you cease your fool-foolishness, Morskittar. We both know that it was you who called Council, and not I."

Morskittar twitched his snout in distaste and snapped his fingers. At the sound, an attendant scurried up, head bowed, and handed a compact paw-sized device with several buttons and a trumpet-shaped extension on it to the Lord-Warlock. Morskittar depressed one such button and a hiss of static rushed out, quickly dissipating to reveal Kritislik's voice speaking. "All Lords of Decay for an emergency meeting of the Council of Thirteen. Code Packrat Run-Run." The Lord-Warlock sniffed in triumph. "Where is your skaven-eradicating threat, oh perceptive Grey Seer?"

Kristslik drew in breath for a reply, but was interrupted by Lord Sneek of clan Eshin. "The Grey Seers sent no such message, Morskittar. Your gutter-runners have deaf-deaf ears. I was called here by Lord Skrisnik to discuss payment of big-big debts clan Mors owes the Warpfang Bank. Forced payment if need be."

Both the lord of clan Mors and the Arch-Economist of the Warpfang Bank, the primary skaven financial organization, squeaked in outrage. "I most certainly did not arrange this meeting, oh quiet-quiet Sneek," cried Skrisnik. "Our own lord Paskrit was the one who called council, to attend to military budgeting."

Close to him, Arch-Despot Gnawdell, the warlord of Clan Mors, puffed up her fur in indignation. "I would not utter such things when your clan is back-back on its payments, Sneek. It was your more warpstone-hungry brothers Moulder who called this council."

This went on for some time. The Warlord-General accused Nurglitch of Pestilens, Verminkin of Moulder named Kratch Doomclaw. Nurglitch blamed both Skyre and Mors, to which a counterblame was laid upon Pestilens and the Warpfang Bank, while Kritislik cast his suspicions upon Eshin. Vrisk Ironscratch, Fleetmaster of the paltry navy the Skaven possessed, claimed that he was the one who had done it, which was soundly rejected as he was both illiterate and insane in favor of blaming one of the two lords who's names are never quite remembered, who in turn cast the spotlight upon Kritislik yet again. Vrisk blamed the pirates.

This bevy of paranoia and blame was abruptly interrupted as a resounding creaking echoed through the chamber. All the Council turned in unison to look at the source of the noise, which had come from beyond the head of the table where a single seat was left empty.

Filthy claws the size of forearms clacked against the stone as their bearer walked forward. A noxious aura preceded its passing, and whatever servants that had not had the foresight to vacate the room dropped dead from the sheer malevolence emanating from the creature. There was a collective intake of breath as it came into the light of the warpstone pillar to reveal a furred snout, with ash-grey fur and blazing green eyes. Great horns curled magnificently on top of its head, and it clutched a dreadful sword that stung the eye to gaze upon. Tall, lanky, and sinewy, it stood a good five times higher than any skaven in the room.

Skreech Verminking, instrument and architect of the Horned Rat's will.

The daemon spoke softly, but its words burned themselves into the mind of all those present. "I am almost disappointed in how easy it was to drive the mighty Council of Thirteen to backbiting and snoutgnawing. It was I who arranged this council, yes-yes."

Leaning over – but not quite touching – the Horned Rat's chair and planting its massive forearms on the table, Skreech continued: "I have been brought into this den of inequity by the will of our lord the Horned Rat to deliver an irrevocable task to you fool-fools. Soon a storm will come to the world, a storm of big-big-big proportions, brought on by manthings and elfthings and dwarfthings and spikethings all at once! It will surely topple the weakling empires above the ground. But our lord is not content with that, no-no,", Verminking exhorted, slowly walking behind each council member in turn before arriving back at the head of the table.

"Only once-once before have the Skaven master race been truly united in purpose, and the instant that happened the doom of one of the greatest threats to the world was assured. Now our lord and master wills-wills this to happen again! You shall unify, and sweep aside the blind-blind twolegs which walk the surface above. Raze their fortresses! Enslave their spawn! Steal-steal their riches! The Under-Empire shall become the only empire to walk the face of the world! And then…" , the Verminlord's eyes glittered like vile emeralds, "Beyond."

In the labyrinthine archives of all Skaven librarians it is written that upon the beginning of the crusade to wipe the lesser races off the face of the world, Skreech Verminking, mightiest of all Verminlords, chose an agent to more fully channel the will of the Horned Rat. This overlord would command all skaven forces until the crusade's completion, and doubtless enjoy the favor of the Horned Rat if they served well.

Who did he choose?

[ ] Skyre

Seated directly to the left of the Horned Rat's chair, Skyre is one of the, if not the, most powerful clans of the skaven. Rich in warpstone and making extensive use of exotic and powerful war machines, is it any surprise that they were chosen to lead their race to victory?

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-Skyre is a clan focused on the mechanical. Not only is the manufacture and production of guns, war machines, and other nefarious devices easier for them, research into better ways to construct these and other, more exotic, devices, goes quicker and with less casualties. Whether warpstone jezzails or gigantic doom lasers, Skyre is the best at providing.
-Skyre is very good at obtaining the warpstone to power its guns. It is very rich. (Income ++)
-Skyre is also proficient at obtaining good ideas from their foes – the looting of enemy war machines is common, and may even lead to reverse engineering.
-The Arch-Warlock of Skyre, Lord Morskittar shall lead this faction. Possessed of an unlikely amount of guns on his person, an astonishingly brilliant mind, and the competence you would expect of a skaven warlord in all other areas, he is truly the best option to lead his race! The rumors that he worships himself and not the Horned Rat are of course vile slander, false in every way.
-Overall, Clan Skyre is the clan most focused on the advancement of science and technology among the Skaven, and their approach to life reflects that. (Big bonus to all Learning rolls)

Downsides:
-The sacred cabal of the Grey Seers are fearful of your possible heresy contemptuous of your arrogance jealous of the great wealth of knowledge you possess. It will be difficult to proceed as naturally in brainwashing the masses utilizing the faith of the Horned Rat as it would be otherwise – research into the daemons of your god will be slower and more prone to failure, and worse, the Seers may meddle in your affairs without prior permission.
-Your fellow Great Clan Moulder is envious of you elevated position – they will doubtless withhold vital information about the finer arts of breeding their warbeasts, and may refuse your orders entirely if irked too much.
-Pestilens has always been wary of your prospective studies into hygiene. No doubt your research into weaponized diseases will go slower, and without your infallible eye on their secretive projects they may create something they cannot control. But the chances of another Black Plague are infinitesimally low, right?
-Clan Eshin, the enforcers of the quiet peace, may take issue with your star rising above their own. Certainly your own intelligence officers are not as subtle as theirs, and it would be wise not to anger them, just in case they decide they would better be in charge. Many a leader has met his end on the edge of an Eshin blade.
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] Grey Seers

Seated directly to the left of the Horned Rat's throne, the 169 Grey Seers have long been the most loyal enforcers of the Horned Rat's will. Now at long last, their faith has been rewarded, and they shall accomplish their dread lord's will!

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-A Grey Seer is the closest thing to the divine most Skaven will ever see. As a result, it is far easier to utilize the faith of the Horned Rat than others would find. (Big boost to all Piety actions)
-The Grey Seers have long been interested in exploring the possibilities of the daemonic their Lord offers them. They will find discovering and harnessing new types of daemons far easier than otherwise, and developing exotic projects like daemon-possessed common rats as spies, common daemons as troops, and the creative application of Screaming Bells will be accomplished with all swiftness.
-As servants of the god who by one of his tenets legally owns all of the warpstone in the material plane, the Seers have an easy time procuring it. (Income ++)
-Seerlord Kritislik heads the cabal – a skaven with a strength of faith legendary even among his order, a formidable spellcaster, and extreme competence in all other areas, is it any wonder he was the one chosen to lead the Skaven? Perhaps his lord and master might reward him with a touch of the daemonic if he does well…
-While the matter of higher treason is always on the table, smaller plots by the common skaven will be less of an occurrence – who are they to argue with their god, after all?

Disadvantages:
-The arrogant bastards Clan Skyre are envious of your rightful position at the top! You'll be on the lookout for their meddling paw in anything that goes wrong, for without a doubt it will be there behind it all.
-You've always suspected Clan Pestilens to be heretics – the 'other aspect' of the Horned Rat they follow has always rankled you as suspicious. Doubtless you'll have trouble with them down the road.
-There was that one errant grey seer you banished a while back that always seems to niggle at the back of your mind. You recall he swore vengeance upon you or some such. What was his name? Tarquin? Tank? Thanquol?

[ ] Eshin

Seated second at the Council of Thirteen, ever in shadow, but ever feared, Eshin is more than any the clan that keeps the Under-Empire together, with its famed assassins capable of silencing any voice who opposes them. The knives in the dark shall usher the Skaven forth into the light!

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-The Skaven are the species with the greatest intrigue capabilities in the world, and Eshin are the greatest intrigue specialists of the Skaven. All matters of cloak and dagger come easier to them, and this comes with a myriad of benefits – when a rival clan begins stirring up a fuss, instead of going to war against them Eshin may simply dispatch an assassin to get rid of the belligerent. Their agents are extremely adept at covertly instilling fear where it is needed, persuading those who do not agree with their vision, and … taking care of those who do not cooperate. They`re very unlikely to be deposed as a result of this – how can you plot against the people who do your plotting for you? (Huge boost to all intrigue actions, and all that implies)
-The dread Nightlord Sneek heads Clan Eshin. He is an incredibly deadly combatant who could likely sneak into the most austere chambers of the Druuchi if he so wished and he is no slouch in any other area either. Perhaps even the rumors about him wielding shadow magic have some basis in reality…
-Overall, Eshin is a far more stable choice than any other, as their tremendous intrigue capabilities ensure any rebellion is strangled in the crib, and no enemy leader is safe from them.

Disadvantages:
-Though they would not dare voice dissent, Skyre is jealous of you. No doubt utilizing their areas of expertise will be less efficient than otherwise. If they get particularly airheaded they might even try their hand at counterplotting…
-The Grey Seers, despite being by far the greatest employers of Eshin's services, cannot help but wish they would be more pious. They'll be reluctant to share their discoveries about daemons, and if they perceive some great religious crime against them they may even encourage dissent.
-Clan Moulder has always been wary of Eshin, and their exotic warbeasts have always been too unsubtle for the assassins. Should you wish to utilize them, it'll be laden with extra fees, and perhaps they too may try their paw against you.
-The diseases of Pestilens have always been far too unreliable for Eshin's purposes – the two clans mostly ignore the other, resulting in any potential benefits gained from cooperating never coming into being. And of course there's always the risk of one of Pestilens' projects running out of control…
-As a result of being so proficient in the matters of hidden knives, Eshin has little time for finances beyond the payments for their assassinations. They receive no bonuses to their income.
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] Pestilens

The cause of the first and second great Skaven civil wars, Pestlinens has grown strong off the savaging they received at the hands of the lizardmen in times past. In those fell jungles, ravaged by poison and claw and fang, they found true enlightenment into the nature of the Horned Rat, and mastery over the disease that cut away at their bodies. With this acknowledgement of their legitimacy, they shall reign supreme over all matters of the flesh!

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-Pestilens has a frankly ridiculous amount of plagues at its disposal. It has maladies that cause infected to sprout fruit from their bodies, plagues that overproduce sweat to the point where the infected drowns in their own secretions, diseases that fill the infected with relentless hunger for flesh of their own species … almost any effect can be formulated in the dread plague cauldrons of Pestilens. Some examples below:
-Nor are the living the only afflicted. With research, Pestilens will be able to raise the bodies of the dead with the power of microscopic daemons and use them as cannon fodder, labor, or whatever use comes to mind.
-Pestilens' soldiers have become inoculated with so many diseases of natural and unnatural sorts over the years that they have become visibly tougher to put down, their flesh swollen with plague. With some development perhaps this could be spread to the rank and file.
-Plaguelord Nurglitch heads Pestilens, and his mastery of disease is such that he wields their effects in his dread sorcery. Additionally, his mind for learning and piety, while bested in each by the heads of Skyre and the Grey Seers, can compete with them both. Admittedly his talents for organizing most anything else are rather lacking, but who needs such things with what gifts he possesses?
-Overall, Pestilens tends towards a mix of the material sciences and the mysteries of the arcane to create their plagues rather than focusing on one or the other. (Learning/Piety boost, but not as high as Skyre/Seers)

Downsides:
-Clan Skyre has always regarded you with contempt, preferring the inefficient use of machinery over the intricate workings of plague. If you wish to use their war machines no doubt it'll cost more to produce them, and they may forget the inferiority of their fleshy bodies long enough to attempt a coup.
-The Grey Seers still suspect you of heresy, despite you ostensibly being more pious than they are! No doubt they'll be reluctant to share their daemonic research with you, and they may even attempt to depose you if their view of you grows clouded enough.
-Clan Moulder has always been wary of the effects your maladies could have on their precious warbeasts. It shall be more inefficient to attempt to procure them or research more, but the benefits…and of course they may decide they don't want you in charge. They are Skaven, after all.
-Clan Eshin has always rather forcefully ignored your clan, and you have done the same. No doubt actions of intrigue will be more difficult without their support, and they may even attempt an assassination.
-While its mastery of bioweapons is unmatched throughout the Under-Empire, the same cannot be said for Pestilens' mastery of finances. (Income -)
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] Moulder

Residing in the great Hellpit in the north of the Under-Empire, the skaven of clan Moulder have always seen the folly of throwing their own soldiers into the fray heedlessly that the other clans do not. Against some foes such as the hordes of chaos, sheer numbers don't matter. This is why Moulder specializes in breeding massive numbers of vicious warbeasts, because those numbers matter more. Combined with their massive reserves of wealth, is it any wonder that they were chosen for the role of leadership?

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-As the only major clan to really get into the study of breeding monsters, Moulder is able to produce warbeasts far faster, easier, and cheaper than otherwise.
-As masters of breeding monsters, Moulder is not limited to only breeding rat ogres. Whether it be modifying breeders to breed faster, attempting to breed mind control bugs, or interbreeding skaven with orcs, Moulder is capable of doing it.
-Moulder is the richest of the four Great Clans, as the primary fortress of the Hellpit allows them to stockpile and collectively use their wealth far easier. (Income +++)
-Packlord Verminkin heads Moulder, and while he is immensely fat and not as capable in physical combat as some others, he keeps a menagerie of strange beasts about him to compensate. In addition, his head for finances is among the best in the Under-Empire, and his skills are very well-rounded to compensate.
-Overall, due to the logistics of supplying its beasts, Moulder has an easier time with numbers than others. (Big Stewardship boost)

Downsides:
-Clan Skyre is rather contemptuous of Moulder's focus on breeding beasts, preferring to fiddle with cogs and gears. Gaining access to their technologies will be more expensive than it would be otherwise, and they may not always obey your orders.
-Clan Pestilens has always been envious of Moulder's monopoly on the warbeast market, and eager to obtain some samples for experiments. Without paying, of course. Relations are thusly cold between the two clans, and Pestilens may not always respect Moulder's newfound leadership.
-Warbeasts are anything but stealthy, and clan Eshin has always been wary of Moulder's economic prowess, despite happily accepting their money for jobs. They may attempt an assassination if they feel sufficiently threatened.
-The Grey Seers dislike Moulder being put in charge more on principle than any grudge against them; they will be reluctant to share their research on daemons, and may act without their explicit consent on issues they consider their discretion.
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] Mors

A self-proclaimed rising star among the Council, Mors has recently ascended to the level of a Great Clan with the taking of Karak Eight-Peaks. However, due to their relative newness and perceived arrogance, the other Great Clans tend to look down their noses at them. They are enormous idiots for doing so, of course – for unlike the other Great Clans, who focus into one area of expertise and run down it to the exception of anything else, Mors keeps its options open and acts in all areas, as well as keeping the benefits from being a former Warlord clan. With this diversity in tactics, Mors shall triumph!

Mors

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-Mors commits itself to being a Renaissance clan of sorts, focusing on an omnidisciplinary approach rather than being all guns or all assassins. As a result they make reasonable progress in all areas rather than focusing on one to the detriment of the others. (Middling bonuses in Learning, Stewardship, Intrigue, Piety, and Martial)(Able to access advanced research in all categories)
-Mors also keeps its finances responsibly tallied up, though it lacks some of the higher tricks and techniques of the bankers. (Income +)
-Mors retains the benefits of being a Warlord clan as well – a percentage of its forces are elite stormvermin, and with research this will be able to be broadly applied. Additionally, a force of actually loyal (for Skaven) bodyguards will accompany the Warlord at all times, increasing her personal safety.
-The Arch-Despot Gnawdell commands Mors, and it is thanks to her keen mind that the clan has rocketed to the heights it has. She is very skilled in all disciplines, though not to the extent of some specialists, and is deadly in personal combat, particularly with her elite stormvermin bodyguard.

Disadvantages:
-All four Great Clans, as well as the Grey Seers, see Mors as a childlike upstart infringing on their territories. Even this recognition by the closest thing to the Horned Rat himself is not enough to stave their indignation; they will balk at any command given to them and will doubtless all seek to undermine you. They may even cooperate with each other if pushed hard enough.
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] The Unified Skaven Army
Formed on a past order of the Council and headed by Warlord-General Paskrit, the USA is a force of Skaven from all clans and all walks of life, dedicated to one thing and one thing only: the smashing of the enemies of the Council. With this promotion from the Horned Rat, the USA will balloon to encompass more than just an elite force at the Council's beck and call – it shall be a thing for all skaven, regardless of age or rank or cunning, a unified force ready to sweep over the surface world – a crusade like no other ever seen!

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-The USA has weapons from all corners of the Under-Empire in its ranks, from the famed Doomwheels to rat ogre phalanxes to entire battalions of stormvermin. If it's a weapon, they have it – and they're incredibly good at directing research to get more weapons.
-As the closest thing to a pure army the Skaven possess, the USA's fighting instincts have been honed incredibly sharp. (Huge bonus to all Martial actions, better tactics acquired, etc)
-The comradely structure of the USA seems to perforate outwards whenever they're on campaign, and with the expansion it will start to have big benefits. Whenever the USA is participating in a war footing, rebellions of all sorts, from big to small, are much less likely to happen and are much less potent if they do.
-Paskrit treats her underlings well, and as a result her personal assistants are among the most loyal of all Skaven to their superior – it would require something very substantial to get them to backstab her.
-Warlord-General Patton Paskrit heads the USA, and she is perhaps the single greatest military mind the Skaven race has ever had. While she can't match the sheer power some of the sorcerers of her race put out, her fighting skills in person leave almost no one who ever meets her blade-to-blade in one piece. Admittedly her peacetime skills are lacking, but who ever said one runs out of enemies?

Disadvantages:
-The USA never really focused on 'peacetime activities' like the art of domestic intrigue, or running trade accounts, or building temples or anything of the sort. (Malus to all other categories when at peace)
-The USA is additionally not very good at handling money. (Income -, increased to -- when at peace)
-Paskrit is a stupendous general. However, a peacetime leader she is not, and the more plot-savvy clans will raise trouble if a peace footing is established.
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] The Navy

As part of a convoluted series of compromises when forming the USA, a navy was also established despite the Skaven not having any ships at the time. This led to it mostly being ignored, which most people figure is how Fleetmaster (he prefers Cap'n) Vrisk Ironscratch got in charge. Now that the Horned Rat has (for some godsdamned reason) given command over the entire skaven race to … him, doubtless great changes will follow, if not necessarily sane ones. One thing has always been certain about the Navy…
'tis a silly place.

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-The Navy gets a bonus to any action involving ships. Since not all operations take place on the sea, this can sometimes go to ludicrous extremes. For instance, all naval battles are more effective, but also having soldiers wear ship costumes makes them more effective in battle, arranging them into boat-shaped formations aids their speed, and on and on to any extreme end that can be thought of. Any end.
-Pirate jokes. All the pirate jokes and shipping jokes and puns the GM can possibly think of. Naval-related puns in thread are fully encouraged and may even give bonuses if clever enough.
-Fleetmaster (Cap'n for the initiated) Vrisk Ironscratch heads the Navy. A salty sea rat, he was born on the back of a whale, they say, and has spent his life honing his naval combat capabilities. In any naval battle he gains an immense boost in competence, and he performs inexplicably well when fighting on ships of any kind. He's also hard to predict in combat due to being insane.

Disadvantages:
-The interests of the Cap'n start and end at ships. Anything not related to them is neglected. (Malus to everything not involving ships)
-Unlike Paskrit, Vrisk's underlings can't trust him very well due to his errant moods. His personal underlings are more likely to backstab him than normal (for skaven) because of his insanity. This does extend to wider rebellions as well, although there's surely a way to fix this. Maybe replace their brains with boats…
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] Rictus

An old clan, lasting through the last great regime change, back when Council members were still called Grey Lords. Rictus found its greatness in Cripple Peak, Nagash's ancient bastion, rich in warpstone and dark knowledge. Admittedly the supplies have gone dry, but no one knows that yet, and with what they have learned from fending off undead attacks for thousands of years, they will surely meet no resistance great enough to hold them back!

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-Rictus is very familiar with the signs and workings of the Corpse Geometries, if only from study of its effects rather than actual implementation. Whether it be the best tactics for fighting a skeleton legion, the efficient usage of undead labor, or perhaps even research into necromancy itself, Rictus specializes. (Bonus to all undead-related actions)
-Rictus still retains the credit of all of the warpstone mined from Cripple Peak. While these are technically no longer valid, as long as they're used no more than once no one should notice. (Start with a large amount of unreplenishable money in another tally)
-By serendipity, the announcement that Rictus would lead the skaven to victory was immediately preceded by great news: the Corpse Geometries are useable by the greatest race! Of course it's only on the smallest of scales, but that will surely change soon. (Start with small amount of basic necromancers)
-Bonelord Kratch Doomclaw heads Rictus – he, as befitting his title, is a burgeoning necromancer, and is eager to advance his capabilities.

Disadvantages:
-Due to being somewhat secluded in Cripple Peak and focusing all their efforts on the pursuit of necromancy, Rictus is not very good at all at financial matters. (Base income --)
-While the skaven will no doubt be better at necromancy than any puny human, the one known as the First Necromancer is still a fearsome figure to the skaven. Should Nagash ever return he may subvert whatever legions you have raised if you're not adequately prepared.
-The Grey Seers are wary of Rictus' newfound necromantic powers. While matters are neutral for now, they will be watching to make sure they stay faithful.
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] Warpfang Bank

The primary financial institution of the Skaven, the Warpfang Bank is a respected organization for the vital work it does to keep the charade of a stable economy from collapsing. No doubt with the Horned Rat's blessing*, the Bank will be able to manage hordes of stormvermin as well as it does ledgers.
*Provided the Seers pay the appropriate dues

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-The Warpfang Bank is bar none the wealthiest organization among all the skaven. They are incredibly good at all things related to money. (Income +++++)
-Due to the unique nature of skaven finances, the Bank controls a surprising amount of background detail in the average skaven life. This can be leveraged to ensure rebellious plots are kept to a minimum.
-The Warpfang Bank is not as xenophobic as some of the other skaven. Provided they're willing to dive into the labyrinthine confines of skaven finances, the Bank accepts all comers. (Diplomacy bonus)
-The head of the Bank is the Arch-Economist Skrisnik Goldfang, named for his golden teeth. They're actually gromril he had made through a convoluted series of false identities, colored gold, but he tells no one this. Not that it'd help him much, he's a horrid fighter, but it pays to have an ace in your gums. His mind is brilliant in terms of finances, and he's used to dealing with other races due to the nature of his job. He's also no slouch in terms of spying. Don't ask him to do much else, though – if it's not paying, he's not praying.

Disadvantages:
-The Warpfang Bank is a bank. While it is very good at paying off other people to fight their battles, it doesn't actually have any experience on a war front. (Big malus to martial)
-The courteous system of credit the Bank uses to influence its clients only goes so far – should a clan be pushed far enough, it will simply claim its debts invalid. Of course a rebellion like this cannot be tolerated, but precedent is best kept.
-The Grey Seers have always been wary of the Warpfang Bank. Their lack of outward (and inward, though they'd never admit it) piety makes them suspicious.
-GM gets to control Thanquol

[ ] If not picked, becomes Skurvy
[ ] If not picked, becomes Skab

These options lead to a custom clan creation screen. All ideas are accepted, though not all may be implemented.

[X] Thanquol

The rat in the back of the room, the one who summoned Skreech Verminking in the first place. Thanquol has long been an object of perverse interest to fate, always having his best-laid plans laid to waste by strokes of chance yet always escaping with his life. Now Grey Seer Thanquol – no, Arch-Rat Thanquol has been appointed leader of his entire race, just as he always knew he deserved. Will his life fall to pieces yet again? Not if he has anything to say about it.

Spoiler: Traits

Advantages:
-Being united under one rat rather than an organization has let the Skaven work more fluidly than otherwise. (Small bonus to all rolls at start)
-The Council are not quite sure what to make of this dark horse – for now, none will act against him until they're sure of his intentions. (Start with all factions being at least neutral toward you)
-Thanquol is truly** as brilliant as he thinks – no subject is beyond his grasp! (Gain access to all research topics normally blocked off from one faction or another)
-Thanquol is perhaps the most formidable sorcerer the skaven have ever seen – if he wished he could blow away Kritislik with little trouble. This has only increased thanks to tangible blessings given by the Horned Rat. He is also a skilled battle commander, has a nose for sniffing out deceit, and is capable of delegating matters he doesn't know much about effectively. He's also very hard to kill and is unnaturally good at avoiding assassination attempts, whether on purpose or not.
-Skreech Verminking, mightiest of all Verminlords, has taken a special interest in Thanquol. He may be asked for advice on any topic once per turn, but beware, for the Shadow Council plays mysterious games and his advice may not always be trustworthy - by skaven measures, no less.
-Overall this option is the most diverse and yet united the Skaven become, with the strengths of all factions and the weaknesses of none. If it doesn't all fall apart on you that is.

Disadvantages:
-The Council members are political animals, and given time they will try to influence you to their favor. Depending on how you respond, this will change their stance towards you.
-Skreech Verminking, mightiest of all Verminlords, has taken a special interest in Thanquol. He may be asked for advice one any topic once per turn, but beware, for the Shadow Council plays mysterious games and his advice may not always be trustworthy - by skaven measures, no less.
Fate's Bitch: ??? May all the gods have mercy on you poor bastards because I sure won't
**kinda

 

[Xantalos]

AN: Booyah bitches, this is back! I've been trying to finish my other obligation for months now, but I've decided fuck it, I'm gonna actually move forward on this - helps that I got myself a chair so I can sit and write on my computer instead of entirely on my phone like I did the last update. I wrote it in around an hour, so if you see any typos or have any questions please notify me.

You are Grey Seer - no, no - Arch-Rat Thanquol, Eternal Emperor of the Under-Empire! Or mayhaps Almighty Sovereign? King of the Skaven? No, far-far too simple for your tastes. Lord of the Furred Ones? God-Emperor of Rat-Kind? That seemed too ostentatious. These and a hundred more flit through your mind at superluminal speeds, as they would with one of your intellect. Surely you'd have no trouble realizing what the common slave would hear you called in their nightmares?

[] (Pick a title for Thanquol - it can be whatever you wish, so long as it seems sufficiently grandiose for a megalomaniac in charge of a whole species of such)

Bah, you'll finalize your title later, you think. That was important business to be sure, but it could wait compared to what was at hand.

Finally. You'd been pushed around, unjustly accused, belittled, and in general treated absolutely horrendously by the Council of Thirteen for years now. They refused to see your talent and genius, instead blaming all the various acts of sabotage, divine aggression, twists of fate, subordinate incompetence and betrayal, and outright reality warping that turned your missions against you as your failures. Well you'd shown them, hadn't you! All the high and mighty lords and ladies of the greatest clans of the under-empire, and not a one of them had been chosen for the privilege of leading the Skaven to victory - instead the Horned Rat had seen his most gifted son and raised him up to his rightful spot atop the ratpile.

You cast your gaze about at the Lords of Decay. It's an empowering viewpoint from the Horned Rat's throne - the table is shaped in such a way that every skaven seated has to crane their necks uncomfortably to look at you properly, even those at the opposite end, accentuating your power over them. A motley bunch, you think to yourself as you enjoy making them wait for you to speak, And not very scary-scary either once you view them from this angle. Look-look at Goldfang, he's so fat! I'd bet a pretty-pretty warptoken that I could be on him before he blinked, chewing out his throat-throa-

You're interrupted by an incredibly awkward clearing of the throat coming from the far end of the table. It seems to have come from ... one of those two lords you don't know the names of. You can't tell which one, even as he, or she, continues speaking in what may be the worst way to interrupt your superior's self-indulgence you've ever witnessed. How did these ingrates get on the council? What are they even saying, it's not like it's important-

"-what title should we address you by, lord Thanquol?"

Fuck

You absolutely don't freeze up at this question and don't fumble for an answer, instead reaching within your mind and grasping your embarrasment indignation, using it to kickstart your formidable well of dark magic. Your eyes light up the room with a terrifying emerald glow that causes some of the attendants in the background to fall to the floor screaming with the inside of their mouth, esophagus, and guts burnt to a crisp as two beams of horrid green death leap from your eyes and zap the two offending lords into splatters of rancid, diseased meat that covers most of the room apart from you and the Council.

For a moment, you let silence reign, enjoying the background noise of Moulder's toothless trunked cleaning rats vacuuming up the mess. Then you speak. "That is the fate of those who dare to question me when I am contemplating important matters - matters that I will share-share with you all now, yes-yes. I trust that replacements will be seen to for the vacant seats?" you ask as you click your talons. A pair of professionally groomed rat-ogres obesquiously slink out of the shadows behind you, bearing on their shoulders a massive rolled-up piece of some kind of leather. With surprising gentleness, they lay the scroll on the table and unroll it, the skin fitting exactly to the contours of the table. Upon it was etched a map of the world, with some areas in more detail than others - the Old World had a multitude of rat-scratch on it, showing the locations of different major rat-holds and tunnels, as did Nippon and the northern Southlands, where Eshin and Pestilens made their burrows. While some areas, such as the Mountains of Mourne and the ork-held Badlands were only sparsely detailed, every continent had had some detail done to it - apart, of course, from the Cursed Continent, Lustria. There was only a stray scribble across the middle where some rat had written 'scaly-things here'.

"This map," you say, recapturing the attention of the Council, "Shows us what we hold, and what our foe-foes foolishly think belongs to them. As you see, we own near-near the entirety of the underground." You ignore the multiple bright red warning labels on certain areas saying 'do not go here ever'. "But the Horned Rat is dissatisfied with this state of things! It is time to go forth and take-take the surface from the fool-fools who call it home!
And this," you say, leaning forward slightly, a feral grin on your face, "Is what you will be doing."

First, roll 2 d100s to determine the replacement Lords of Decay.

AN: You have 13 dice to use, representing the 13 great clans of skaven society, and the fact that the Horned Rat likes the number 13. You can spend them on whatever aim you wish; if you want to lure the forces of Chaos into optimal backstabbing position an alliance like in canon, feel free, if you want to try to manipulate two factions into going to war against each other go for it, etcetera. Your ultimate aim, of course, is to conquer the world in the name of the Horned Rat. To that end, I'll provide a list of targets you can attack, and how difficult they are to conquer - an objective map, essentially. Note that these values only mean the resistance of that country/region to direct conquest - they can and should be modified by sabotage or reinforcement, and will as the game goes on - the Horned Rat spurred his children into action before most of the rest of the world, but the other factions will act on their own initiative to complete their own goals. This does include the skaven if you leave them lying about - you can assign one particular faction more than one dice, but in turn I'll let the clan you leave unattended to do their own thing. This may turn out helpful, or it might not. If you have any questions/clarifications, please ask.
Basically:
-Plan voting please
-Distribute 13 dice to doing whatever you want - attacking, building superweapons, sabotage, whatever
-Tell me which clan is doing what; you can leave clans unattended if you think that's a good idea
-Good luck, you'll need it

Very Easy Targets:
These hardly require any effort at all to overrun; they might even be taken in the process of conquering a nearby territory.
-Border Princes
-Subterritories of various nations (ie an individual Kislev boyar, a moderately-sized ork warband, certain Brettonian duchies)

Easy Targets
These places can easily be overrun with as little as one dice's worth of forces.
-Kislev
-Estalia
-Tilea
-Parts of Norsca
-Some Empire provinces
-Dragon Isles

Moderate Targets
Finally the surface-dwellers present some sport! These vary in the amount of dice they'll need to conquer, but expect at least 3.
-Araby
-Albion
-Norsca
-Brettonia
-Kurgan tribal lands
-Hung tribal lands
-Nippon
-Hinterlands of Khuresh
-Southlands (not including Nekehara)
-Some Empire provinces

Hard Targets
Could it be that these are a challenge? They vary from target to target, but expect 5 dice at the least.
-Empire of Man
-Grand Cathay
-Ogre Kingdoms
-Kingdoms of Ind
-Karaz Ankor
-The Badlands
-Laurelon + other subsidiary wood elf forests

Very Hard Targets
These are almost a match for the least of the Under-Empire! Imagine, surface-dwellers that put up a fight. At least 8 dice required for these targets.
-The Dark Lands
-Old Nekehara
-Naagaroth
-Athel Loren

Impossible Targets
This is the finest the surface can offer? Impressive, for non-skaven. At least 10 dice will be needed to take those in this category.
-Ulthuan
-The Southernmost Continent

Are You Fuckers Insane
Why the hell are you even risking awakening these giants? Surely it's a waste of forces to conquer here. Go somewhere else.
-Lustria
-The Chaos Wastes

Keep in mind that the required forces are the amount needed to conquer them in one turn; lesser forces may be committed and take multiple turns to take the territory.
My advice, as limited as it is? Strike while the iron is hot. The Horned Rat's scheming has bought you some time of relative freedom to act, but that will change quickly when the big boys come out to play, and the nations won't stay in their starting brackets - this is them in a state of unawares.

 

[Xantalos]

Spoiler: Let the Dark Lands erupt in slaughter, for the glory of the Horned Rat!

The world had only witnessed the skaven race truly united once before, when dread Nagash threatened to stand at the head of an army of undead made up of all that had ever died in Nekehara. When the Grey Lords of the time perceived the tremendous preparations the Great Necromancer enacted to perform his Great Ritual, they threw the finest weaponsmiths and spellbinders their race possessed into the grinder, working them until their bodies dissolved to create the deadliest weapon ever forged by mortal hands. The Fellblade, as it was named, was a sword of such pure and concentrated warpstone that it killed whoever wielded it, and condemned Nagash to an eternity of diminishment as it continued to weaken him further even after he was resurrected, the killing blow dragging him back into the grave though he clawed his way out of it.

The Council had been united thus for less than a year, and still guaranteed the defeat of one of the greatest mages ever to exist. Now by divine decree they stood side by side once more, with their hidden knives pointed out toward the world instead of each other's backs. The Great Ascendancy had begun at last!

But the first signs of the Vermintide were not a horde of screaming rats rushing out from the tunnels beneath the world, or a massive green-tinted explosion or anything of the sort. Instead it came from the race perhaps most appropriate to kick start the End Times. The ones that above all would be overjoyed by the news of the final, largest conflict to rock the planet.
The Orks.

----​

Gorktoof Warpchoppa gazed around triumphantly at the rival ork encampment. The gathered boyz were silent, gazing at the bisected head of their former boss as what could be called shock in more advanced beings passed through their minds. Their collective gaze followed the arcing paths of Boss Gitclubba's cranium as Warpchoppa dismissively flicked the remains off of his cruel green axe before it snapped back to the victorious challenger. It was unheard of for any right-thinking ork - Warpchoppa had been shorter than Gitclubba by a head, and da bigga one was always the better fighter. Yet the smaller ork had beaten their boss like he was a gobbo git, with his fancy choppa slicing through Gitclubba's massive club and the arm behind it with seemingly no effort. Did this mean that his choppa was da boss now, since it was the weapon that had beaten the old boss?

Their musing was interrupted by Gorktoof stepping forward and roaring.

"So! I's came here and said I's da boss. Dis git said no, e's da boss, and look wot happened to 'im. I chopped him up like 'e was nuffin! So if dis was da sorry exkoose fer a boss you boyz had, dat means I'm da boss now!"

Gorktoof looked around dangerously.

"Or is dere any uvver gits wot fink dey's 'ard enuff ta take on da Warpchoppa?"

As the boss brandished his weapon, a heavily muscled ork stomped his way through the crowd. Smasha, the former boss' right-hand ork, famously taciturn and a fan of chopping things - he'd named himself such so as to confuse his foes - walked up to Gorktoof and looked him up and down. Or more accurately, down and further down, since the underboss still had half a head on the upstart challenger. After several minutes of staring, Smasha spoke.

"I fink if you's gonna be da boss, den I-" here he reached for his choppa, which Gorktoof took as a challenge. The aspiring warboss brought his glowing green axe around in a great arc and sliced Smasha's arm off, the odd warping effect given off by the material cauterizing the wound before it was even fully inflicted. Instead of trying to futilely fight the Warpchoppa, Smasha stumbled back, grabbing his severed limb with his remaining arm. Straightening up, the serious-faced Nob resumed speaking. "Like I wuz saying, if you's gonna be da boss, den I's gonna be yer underboss. Ain't no git round dese parts strong enuff ta do nuffin ta me, specially after you went and chopped ol' Gitclubba in two."

The Warpchoppa nodded appreciatively. "I don't know no uvver ork dat could stop ya, so you got da job. Go find a dok and get dat arm put back on."

The underboss nodded affirmation and trodded off in the direction of the dok tents. Gorktoof looked around at all the boyz still gathered around the outskirts of the ork camp. "And wot are you gits doing standin about? Get movin! I wants all da boyz and all da gobbos and snotlings and squigs in dis 'ere place on da move sharpish! We'z 'eading back to me Waaagh!!!"

The gathered boyz clamored in excitement, then swiftly broke up and ran back into the rest of the camp, bringing the joyous news that Boss Warpchoppa was bringing them all to his Waaagh!!!

--​

Some months later, Gorktoof gazed down upon his nascent crusade and felt the closest thing to contentment an ork could feel. A teeming sea of green flesh stretched out to the horizon and beyond, hundreds of thousands of battle-hungry greenskins eager for bloodshed. And he was the boss of all of them. It filled his green heart with pride, and he fancied for a moment that he could feel himself grow a little just from observing his Waaagh!!! And he had indeed grown, and so had his ambitions. As an ork he cared little for the past, but even he could still recall his humble origins...

Bigtoof Grotchoppa sniffed in disdain as he limped away from the ork hamlet. Who was Boss Deffclobba to kick him out? Sure he'd stolen the boss' favorite helmet and pretended he didn't know it wasn't his when confronted. What ork wouldn't? That was a shiny helmet, it was calling to him! Da boss was stupid anyway, 'e didn't deserve it. The beating he'd been given for it was clearly unethical.

He shook his head and continued limping away. Deffclobba had given him a day to be a day away, and he didn't intend on getting krumped just yet. Bigtoof could feel that his career as an ork had more ahead of it than that.

That night, while Bigtoof was slumbering in a crevice midway up a mountain, Eshin came for him. He tried struggling, but for all his aspirations of grandeur he was little more than a yoof and he couldn't resist the assassins. They nailed him to the mountainside with slender knives and shoved spikes of metal blended with warpstone into his gums after knocking his teeth out. They spirited him to the outskirts of his old tribe's territory and vanished into the night, leaving by his prone form a cruel axe forged of an even blend of iron and warpstone.

When Bigtoof awoke the next day, thirsty from the parched air of the Dark Lands, he hardly recognized himself in the polluted pool of water he found. An ork with jagged glowing green teef sticking in all directions out of his mouth wielding a wicked emerald choppa stared back at him, and despite himself Bigtoof was a little startled. Surely the ork he saw in the water wasn't him? That ork wouldn't have let that weedy grot Deffclobba push him out of the kamp. But some slightly painful inspection proved that yes, those were indeed his teef. No one was around to say that the axe was theirs, so it was his too. Clearly Gork or maybe Mork or both of them had seen what a great ork he was and given him a helping hand. Thus emboldened, Bigtoof - well, no, that'd need changing - stomped confidently off to his old camp. He had a score to settle.

--​

"Oi Gittoof! I thought I told ya don't come back 'ere, ya thieving grot!"

The strange ork that seemed to have replaced that one git Bigtoof grinned in response, flashing those spiky green teef that seemed kinda imposing. "Da name's Gorktoof, ya pansee! Gorktoof Warpchoppa. I's got visited by da gods, and dey says I'm da boss now. So you's betta listen to me, ya hear?"

Instead of debating with the upstart further, Deffclobba let out a fearsome bellow and charged the smaller ork. Still midway through his grandstanding, Gorktoof was caught off-guard and bowled off his feet and into one of the tents surrounding the boss' clearing. Dazed by the sheer force of Deffclobba's charge, he lay there for a moment while the boss threw down thunderous blows with his bare fists, neglecting to have retrieved his massive club. Then his orkoid instincts kicked in, and with a bellow that was small compared to Deffclobba's he waved his axe around as frantically as his limbs could manage. By sheer luck it intercepted Deffclobba's left fist and sliced straight through, cutting half of the boss' hand off diagonally. As the boss stared in disbelief at his unlikely wound, Gorktoof charged straight into his gut, swinging wildly with his Warpchoppa. With all his fervor, he still only drove Deffclobba back a step before the boss clued back into the fact that he was fighting. With a grunt, the boss grabbed Gorktoof by the head and picked him up with his remaining hand, then dropkicked him straight into another tent. As he charged toward his challenger, Deffclobba failed to notice the faint, shadowy form slip into the tent. Gorktoof managed to stand upright in time to see Deffclobba incoming like a green boulder, but before he could decide to do one thing or another he was shoved to the side subtly. To the boyz observing the scrap, it seemed as though the Warpchoppa had baited the boss into charging him, then dodged aside as Deffclobba barreled into the unfortunate tent, reducing it to scrap. The commotion was enough to completely drown out the sound of a frankly unnecessary amount of cutting and slicing and stabbing happening among the tangled-up fabric of what had once been a dwelling place for some git.

When Deffclobba stood up, he did so shakily, and when he turned around all present were profoundly confused. The boss was positively festooned with stab wounds, clustered in such numbers that there was hardly any intact skin left upon his chest and arms. Thick ork blood oozed in a solid layer out of nearly every surface on his body, from his legs where nearly every vital artery had been slit with jagged blades to his perforated abdomen to his neck which had been cut so deeply it was only his spinal cord and sheer stupidity keeping his head on his neck. He swayed, and seemed about to fall, but caught himself.

The spell was broken when Gorktoof, not an ork to pass up an opportunity, charged forward. "Waaagh!" he screamed as he leaped towards the savaged boss and took his head off with his axe. As he landed unsteadily, he took a step forward towards the rest of the boyz, who flinched back. Surely he had some sort of magic powers if he did that to the boss? Gorktoof raised his axe. "I'm da boss round dese parts now, ya hear?!"

Things had gone very well for Gorktoof after that. He'd grown massively after the rest of the orks in the tribe had accepted him as the boss - and after the few detractors had been found silently turned to mincemeat in the night. Not so large compared to the other, bigger tribes in the Dark Lands, but more than big enough for his Gork and Mork-given blessings to deal with his competition.

For what else could it be, truly? Wherever he went, whichever warboss he challenged, he always won - his Warpchoppa sliced through their crude armor like lard, and his extra-orky teef sliced through their skin like nothing. And even without his gork-given gifts, he'd likely have triumphed - the bosses he challenged always seemed to have suffered a series of deeply unfortunate mishaps just prior to his challenging him. Flesh-eating acid mysteriously manifesting in one boss' fungus brew he drank by the tankard before a fight, mysterious wounds appearing on another during the fight, the one notable instance where an enormous block of stone shaped roughly like Gorktoof (or Gork, or Mork) fell out of seeming thin air and squished Boss Gutcrusha into paste. His foes found their weapons sabotaged, their armor stuffed with explosives, had their feet cut off, their skin slathered in tar, and were thrown into shallow pits of lava by unseen conspirators. Gorktoof happily cultivated the image that he was a master schemer beyond anything that had been seen in an ork before, while in truth he had no idea who had decided to benefit him to such a great extent. Nor did he care; because of their efforts he had got bigga and had more boyz under him to boss about. If his mysterious benefactors decided to turn on him, he'd merely find them with his infallible intrigue capabilities and krump them with the very choppa they'd given him.

As Gorktoof got bigger, so did his dreams of conquest and dominion. As he gradually grew to be the biggest, and then sole, warboss of the Broken Tooth orks, he got the idea given to him (he heard voices in his sleep) that he should go north, to gather the goblins at Mount Grey Hag under his banner. When his Waaagh!!! arrived there, they found the goblin leaders there freshly dead of having accidentally eaten explosive squigs too big to fit inside their bodies (that was the widely accepted conclusion from looking at the plentiful amount of splattered squigflesh everywhere), and so the gobbos folded into his forces without too much thumping required like the gits they were. He then moved further north, taking heed of the voices, which he'd taken to calling his 'birdies', when they said to stay away from one particular mountain with a crooked back. It must have had one, who named a mountain Crookback?

He swept into the Wolf Lands and gathered the boyz there under him without much difficulty, the expected string of misfortune and death following him wherever challengers objected. He never really got much of a fight, but that dissatisfaction was assuaged by the birdies, who promised that he'd get to krump the biggest source of excitement and hatred for any ork in the Dark Lands, the dark stunties. Every last one of them! This promise excited Gorktoof so much that he did what the birdies said even when their demands started getting close to the border of what one could consider un-orky.

He parked his boyz at Mount Grimfang, a cacaphony of green flesh and soot and crude metal being banged into place, and sat there for weeks at a time, quelling rising discontent with well-placed swings of his choppa. And his patience was well-rewarded! At irregular intervals, tribes of orks or goblins would arrive at his stronghold, from the Red Eye clans in the north to Gnashrak's boys to tribes from the foothills of the Mountains of Mourne, across the River Ruin. All bearing the same message, that most of their leaders had accidentally died in highly unlikely ways and their replacements were given instructions to seek out Da Warpchoppa at Mount Grimfang. Oftentimes Gorktoof's more astute nobs, including Smasha, were skeptical of the fact that they had managed to make it all the way across the Dark Lands without being snapped up by the dark stunties, and suspicious of reports of mysterious possibly furry figures in the night murderously removing any obstacles in between the tribes and Gorktoof. He brushed aside their concerns, clearly the figures they were seeing were secret agents of his they all knew nothing about. It was all part of his master plan (that he couldn't tell anyone), you see.

Soon word had reached the ears of the Uzkul-Dhrazh-Zharr about a nascent Waaagh!!! forming on the borders of their territory, albeit one strangely less aggressive than usual. When the mounted hordes of the hobgoblin khanates descended upon his fastness, Gorktoof forbade his mob of boyz from going forth to battle, to much uproar. After many removed limbs in the name of riot control, the Warpchoppa explained that he had a kunnin plan, which he refused to elaborate on. He travelled out alone to meet the khans, and was unsurprised to find that they had been bribed midway to him to serve him instead by a group of hooded figures, who had left a series of strangely-written notes for him specifically. His boyz were disappointed to find that they wouldn't get to have a proper scrap with the untrustworthy gits they now called their allies, but were soothed by the news that the boss had a plan for action at last: they were going to get the last of their boyz for Da Dark Waaagh (the eventual end goal to overthrow the Dark City) by stealing them from the dark stunties.

Only the warboss and his most trusted nobs traveled to the Plain of Zharr where the birdies had said there were slaves to be freed. More would attract attention, so said the birdies, and none of Gorktoof's underlings bothered questioning him on the efficacy of the voices anymore.

As they grew closer to the Plain of Zharr and crossed over into it from the Blasted Wastes, the number of chaos dwarf holdings and operations grew greater and greater. While the Wolf Lands could go years without an overseer passing through, the outskirts of the plain of Zharr saw weekly inspections, and rigirous inspections to ensure no hint of rebellion manifested amongst their orkoid slaves. Of course these overseers were strangely absent as Gorktoof made his way through the slave pens. His nobs Smasha, Crasha, Basha, and Blitzen were suspicious of this, Basha in particular, who had at one point been a slave of a minor sorceror. "Dere wuz more guardie stunties 'ere last," he was heard muttering often. But regardless of where exactly all the whip-wielding slavedrivers had gone too, they couldn't have stopped the uprisings that followed the breaking of the ork's shackles. By now Gorktoof was a terrifying specimen, towering over 3 meters tall, his grim countenance accentuated by the jagged mass of glowing green spikes erupting from his mouth. Whether he was rousing up a mob of boyz to go slaughter the strangely undermanned garrison or exhorting on the greatness of his upcoming campaign, the enslaved orks hung on his every word. As Gorktoof traveled from oil well to lava pump complex to food pit, a growing trail of green grew behind the ork until it was a Waaagh!!! in miniature, a rendition of the Warpchoppa's hard labor. It grew and grew until the birdies warned Gorktoof that the stunties, despite their best efforts, had taken notice of him. The warboss, knowing the value of a strategic attack in the opposite direction, retreated with his bounty of new followers. He sent his nobs ahead to alert the rest of the boyz to meet him midway. Once he linked his forces, the war to overturn the hated oppressor of the orks would finally begin in earnest.

Which brought him back to the present. Gorktoof shook his head to dispel the last remnants of his reminiscence, and began walking to a nearby outcropping of obsidian from which he could speak to his horde below. It was time for his waaaghspeech.

Only, when he arrived at the outcropping (which he'd thumped enough heads to make clear that no one was to be at), there was another ork there. Framed against the backdrop of bustling and brawling green flesh he was a dark figure, a deep near-black green compared to the emerald of Gorktoof's skin. He was almost uncomfortably large, Gorktoof noted. The strange ork had at least half a meter in height on him, and his wrists were the width of Gorktoof's legs. He was holding a bundle of something in the hand that wasn't clutching an enormous menacing axe, something in a sack that was soaked through with blood.

Still, he had plenty of experience krumping bigger orks. His grip tightened on the Warpchoppa when he noted out of the corner of his eyes that there was a gaggle of similarly-colored orks hanging back. He'd never seen any of them before, which wasn't unusual, but they were on his boss-spot. That wouldn't do.

"Oi, you lot! Didn't ya hear? Dis is my boss spot. Get back to where da uvver nobs are or I'll snip ya ears off."

The ork turned at that, an enigmatic expression on his enormously tusked face. "So you's da one who gavvered up dis lot, eh? You's got da choppa for it."

Gorktoof was not used to this type of reaction. Usually other orks either quailed before him or tried to prove their dominance by bashing his face in. This ork just seemed to be ... unimpressed. "Yeah, I's da boss uv all da boyz 'ere. Which since you's 'ere, makes me your boss. So scram off, ya gits! Dis is my boss spot, and since you ain't da boss, you gotsa go."

The other ork turned toward Gorktoof fully, revealing an obscenely muscled and scarred chest, with some cuts still raw and glistening. He snorted in contempt. "Nah, you ain't 'ard enuff ta be da boss of me. No ork is. And you don't 'ave yer squeakies 'elpin ya no more."

He threw the massive sack he carried dismissively at Gorktoof. It landed at his feet, spilling out a pile of slimy guts and various hacked-up body parts, furry snouts and mangy tails, stinking guts and terror-filled eyes. "Dey tried ta krump me when I got to dis place, but no ratty's a match fer Grimgor Ironhide. And dey told me fings before dey kroaked. Wivvout dem gits, ya ain't got da bossness ta hold dese boyz tugevver on a proppa Waaagh!!! So I's da boss now."

Gorktoof bulged in outrage. This Gitgor Irontoe came into his kamp and insulted his bossitude? Who did this git think he was, the chosen of Gork or something? "I fink you need ta get down wif da rest of da boyz afore I krump ya, Grimgor Irongit!"

Grimgor chuffed in amusement. "Is dat so." Then he moved, freakishly quick for something his size. Before Gorktoof could blink, Grimgor's massive fist had impacted his face, shattering a good portion of his teef. Green slivers of metal had embedded themselves in his knuckles but he didn't seem to care too much. Gorktoof, having being knocked clean off his feet by the blow, scrambled back upright and readied the Warpchoppa. "You fink you can beat me? I's da boss of da Dark Lands!"

Grimgor hefted Gitsnik in response. "No. Da squeakies were yer bosses, and dey ain't 'elping you no more. You wasn't even an ork, just a big green puppet. And I's cut yer strings.' And then he was upon Gorktoof, Gitsnik swinging around in a powerful overhead blow. Gorktoof moved inside the arc of the massive axe and made to cut its head off at the handle, like he had with so many other weapons.

The Warpchoppa shattered on Gitsnik's handle, the orkish charms and blessings upon Grimgor's monstrous weapon dispelling what integrity the warpstone weapon had. Thusly disarmed, Gorktoof was helpless to prevent Grimgor's thunderous head-butt that shattered the front of his skull into paste. He dropped like a sapling before the storm that was the black ork.
Conscious, if only just barely, Gorktoof felt and saw Grimgor pick him up by the throat and carry him to the edge of the outcropping. There he dropped him, and as Gorktoof's head flopped upon the ground he saw his boyz. They weren't even paying attention to him, instead looking with adoration at the 'ardboy Grimgor and his Immortulz forming up behind him. It was like he didn't even exist. Like he was just Bigtoof again.

His air was cut off as Grimgor stepped on his throat. Bereft of even the energy to flop around, the last thing Bigtoof saw was Grimgor raising Gitsnik up triumphantly. He was saying something, what was he saying?

"Enuff mucking about, ya gits! To waaagh!"

The roar of his boyz cheering for someone else carried Bigtoof into death.

----​

Meanwhile, in the Mountains of Mourne...

Slikk Oilfur rubbed the bridge of his snout in consternation. Were these simpletons too daft to even grasp-grasp the concept of currency? He gazed with contempt at the massive figure of the ogre sitting across from him, who was staring with an obvious expression of confusion at the sheet laid out before him. And this was the one ogre in the tribe who could read! How dull-dull must the others be?

Said ogre, one Grobdug Bookmuncher, spoke up, his thick voice driving into Slikk's forehead like a ball of mud. "So the numbers mean the ... the how many food you have?"

Slikk sighed. "No. It is a numerical representation of how much gold we are willing to give to you."

Grobdug's eyes glazed over, both at the large words the strange rat thingy was using and the large number on the paper. "Uh ... so that means that you'd give the tribe that many gold if we go do what you said?"

"Yes-yes."

"But why? You can't eat gold." The ogre scratched his fatty neck. "Well, ya can, just don't taste very good. Or fill ya up very much. Better ta eat meaty things."

"Is that all you brutes think of? Just eating and eating with no other goal in mind?"

"Well ... yeah. S'the best part of life is, eating. And we's always hungry." As if to prove his point, the ogre absentmindedly reached out and grabbed a haunch of some indistinct type of animal and began stripping the flesh off of the bone nearly as efficiently as Slikk frisked his debtors. The banker, seeing that the tyrant would likely be even less comprehensible than he was usually, stood up and walked away from the cooking fire they had been seated at. As his heavily armed guards fell in behind him, Slikk clasped his arms behind him. There had to be a secret to getting these ogres to cooperate with the Warpfang Bank's goal. They were too dimwitted to understand the concept of debt, and barely grasped the understanding of an exchange of goods.

He paused at the edge of the hill the tyrant's personal camp was made on. From here he could see the entire tribal camp, a grand mess of rocks painted with crude symbols in various types of gore. There were numerous deep pits with wooden stakes shoved into the rim at a downwards angle, flat rocks that particularly obese specimens used to dice up the monstrous creatures found in these mountains. Everything he could see revolved around food to some extent; the ritual combat that took place in the pits universally ended in cannibalism, the only semblance of property the ogres seemed to grasp was what food one possessed and what weapons one had to make more food. Even what seemed to be their priests were merely butchers that cut meat in mildly creative ways and pretended that that gave the food some form of sacredness. Single-minded primitives. Could probably throw food at them and they'd do whatever you wanted them to do.
...That was it.

I've overestimated these brutes. With the right food they will dance-dance upon my strings. And here I thought they might be anything other than animals to be lured about by meat on a stick.

He turned from the gorging mass of ogres and briskly walked back to where Grobdug was munching on a still-wriggling debtor of his. "Tyrant!" he called out, watching the corpulent creature raise his head from the steaming guts of his tribute.

"Eh?"

"How do you feel about delicacies?"

--​

Hans wasn't quite aware of where exactly he was. He knew they'd emerged into open air from how the increased light stung his eyes. He hadn't seen the surface in years, ever since the ratmen had snatched him off the streets of Nuln. In retrospect, following that pipe music had been a bad idea.

Well, maybe not such a bad idea. Sure, he'd never seen his parents again, and his little brother had been eaten in front of him, and he lived in a cage, but the food the rat people gave him was really good! It made his thinking worser, though. And also fatter.

He slowly looked about. He was dimly aware of being in the midst of a crowd of other children like him, all unnaturally plump and placid. They were being herded by the rat people over to somewhere rocky. He didn't really notice, instead wallowing in the narcotic sensations granted by the succulent mystery meat the ratmen had given him.

Oh, who was that? He was like a really big fat man. He must have been ten feet tall and ten feet wide. He seemed happy to see him! Hans waved hi. He saw a shiny ratman that gestured to him and said something. Hans didn't really hear, as most of his senses aside from taste had atrophied badly in his time underground.

The big man thingy was approaching him, arms outstretched. Was he going to give him a hug? Hans spread his chubby arms wide, and giggled sluggishly as he was lifted up. He didn't really feel it all that much when the ogre bit through half of his skull; even if his nerve receptors hadn't withered to nothing long ago, he was killed instantly anyway.

--​

The representatives the Warpfang Bank sent into the Mountains of Mourne travelled in small groups, consisting mainly of one or two bankers, several dozen heavily armed collections officers decked out with prototype warpstone chain guns, high-quality steel armor, and disquietingly large collections of melee instruments of pain, and a few hundred unfortunate debtors, who served as chaff for when one of the many monstrous creatures of the Mourne decided to pick a fight, or when the party arrived at their target ogre tribe, opening gifts. Negotiations at first proceeded slowly, as while the ogres understood that attempting to munch upon the heavily armed rats or their bosses was a bad idea, the idea of payment in conventional currency for their services in the coming conflict failed to gain much traction with the tyrants they talked down to. The Uzkul-Dhrazh-Zharr had a fell reputation, even in the pitiless Mountains of Mourne, and the prospect of maybe making it out of that dread plain unchained to spend gold coins to get food eventually was unappealing to any odd ogre, much less the meanest, hungriest ones of the species.

Used to dealing with more manipulative clients with motives numbering beyond finding the greatest and tastiest available source of food, it was a while before the Bank cued into the (in hindsight) obvious idea of bribing the ogres with the most delightfully twisted culinary delights the Under-Empire could devise. Unnaturally fat human children abducted from big cities and isolated farming villages that had been fed incredibly fattening (and mutagen-laced) food until they looked like corpulent eggs, skaven infested with massive colonies of eyeless finger-sized maggot-like creatures, a collection of clanrats that had fallen behind on their payments seeded with a rare fungus from the Southland jungles that caused their flesh to mold together like grotesque clay sculptures, rat-ogres with blood-filled fruit growing from their flesh in place of fur, and more flowed from the uncaring laboratories of the skaven, delighting the ogres who had never even dreamed of such inventive things being done with meat. Their appetites whetted and eager for the promised bounty they would receive upon conclusion of their extermination of the slavelords of the Dark Lands, tribe after tribe barreled eagerly toward that foul plain, their gnoblar auxiliaries stumbling along behind their masters. To their surprise, some months into the recruitment drive, the paymasters in charge of the operation found themselves being approached by tribes entirely of their own volition, claiming they had heard of the rewards they were offering through the proverbial grapevine.

--​

Tradelord Greasus Tribestealer Drakecrush Hoardmaster Goldtooth the Shockingly Obese sat upon a pile of his riches, enjoying the sensation of his favored gnoblars squirming through the folds of his flab to clean in between his crevices. From here he could see nearly the entirety of his kingdom, the enormous mass of ogres that all acknowledged that he was the best of all of them. He gazed out upon his riches and was content for a moment before hunger for more seeped into his mind and gut, as it always did. Sure, he had nominal control over the Silk Road, the longest and most valuable trade route in the world, he had lordship over what must be hundreds of thousands of ogres, he had the Scepter of the Titans which gave him the strength to rend to bits anything that would try to cross him, but could he have more?

The answer was, of course, yes. And he knew exactly how, too. He'd heard about the ratfolk scurrying through his mountains, bribing tribes left and right to go into the Dark Lands for whatever reason. The wealth they were throwing about was pretty extravagant, and it might have tempted him to take up their offer in the past, when his gut and ambition were smaller. Now, though, he saw opportunity in these skaven emissaries. There were many tribes in his territory that had recently been ... uncooperative. Their tyrants had begun to chafe under his taxes, saying that it was difficult to come up with the amount needed, yet their guts weren't getting any smaller. They were planning something, Greasus could smell it. But fortune had turned his way, and he'd use it to the fullest extent. These skaven would benefit from the recruitment of his soon-to-be rebellious vassals, and he would take the opportunity to further strengthen his hold upon his kingdom. He'd developed a good nose for change a long time ago, and he could smell it in the air. All that remained was to reach out and grab it.

--​

In the mountains to the west of the Dark Lands, Slikk Oilfur was finally done. Reunited with his fellow financial officers, he stood upon a ridge overlooking a horde of monstrous walking gullets with legs, all roped in by the shrewd minds of the Warpfang Bank. Every tribe that could be persuaded within the time limit imposed upon them by the Council had been brought here to this valley, a force numbering at least two hundred and twenty thousand. An impressive force, one sure to crush the weakened chaos dwarves should Eshin's pet waaagh not have the strength to. He admired the results of his sublime bribery skills for a little while longer, than decided to address them and set his part of the Arch-Rat's plan moving. With a series of short hand gestures, his bodyguards and those of the other bankers spread out to acoustically advantageous positions around him and signaled to the other gatherings of stormvermin scattered around the valley while pulling out speaking trumpets.

Slikk stepped forward to the edge of the ridge, and his stormvermin blew a shrill note that drew the attention of all the ogres to him. "Ogres of the many-many tribes!" he called, his words repeated and passed down the line by the bodyguards so that the entire gathering heard him. "You have been called here for a great-great purpose! Our master, Thanquol," here he took in a deep breath, "Grand Underlord of the Underempire, Commander of the Engineers of Skyre, Leader of the Assassins of Eshin, Director of the Beastmasters of Moulder, Chief of the Plaguedoctors of Pestilens, Chosen of the Grey Seers, Prophet of the Horned Rat and Leader of the Council of Thirteen, General of the Army and Admiral of the Navy, Master of Magic and the Arcane Arts, Conqueror of Nuln, Unraveller of Dwarven Mysteries, Vanquisher of the Daemonclaw's Host, The Wise One, Arch-Rat of All Skavendom, The Humble, desires the dark dwarfthings to be crush-crushed!"

He took a minute to regain his breath while his heralds relayed his words. The primitives respected those with many titles, he'd learned, so it was necessary to state all of the Arch-Rat's many titles at once. Once his lungs recovered, he continued.

"It is known that ogres are the most formidable creatures for hire in the world! Therefore our lord has but one command for you: go forth and crush-crush the dark dwarves! The all-powerful Under-Empire has made arrangements to weaken the slavers, and you shall be the bite-bite to the throat!"

The ogres let forth a great bellowing cry at his words that he could feel - and smell - from his ridge.

"At the bottom of this valley, where it spill-spills out into the Dark Lands proper, there is a citadel, the Daemon's Stump! It is undermanned thanks to the ... diversion we skaven have created. Go forth and take it, and from there head north to Zharr-Naggrund! The pyramid of the puny-puny slavers will surely be no match for your muscle! Do this, and not only will the corpses of the fallen be yours to consume, but we of the Warpfang Bank shall gift you twice as much in meat once this is over and our lord and master strides through the ashes of the Dark City!"

The collected force of ogres bellowed then, a guttural roar of stinking breath that lasted many minutes, each bull trying to outcompete the other. Slikk's fur was blown back by the force of so many brutish lungs exerting themselves at once. And well they should; the ogres had already been impressed by the sheer amount and variety of meat the ratmen seemed willing to give to them, now they were promising to double whatever corpsemeat the crushing of an entire realm would give them? Throughout the crowd, butchers and slaughtermasters salivated eagerly as they envisioned the feast ahead of them, sharpening their cleavers and knives in anticipation. When the commotion finally died down, Slikk grinned and spoke once more.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Go! Crush-crush the dwarfthings!"]

The ogres roared once more, and made to begin moving, but stopped in confusion. Variations on 'which way do we go, ratty?' began floating up from the crowd. Slikk groaned, and pointed to the west, where the rocky ground began to slope downhill. His stormvermin took the hint and began yelling out the necessary direction to the horde, which began to rumble inexorably toward the Daemon's Stump.

Slikk stayed there a while, watching his army move. His eyes idly watched an unusually massive specimen with cleavers in place of hands and an enormous pot hooked into his backflesh move as he contemplated the appropriateness of using an army of ogres to storm the Daemon's Stump, which according to what had been found from their preliminary research had been formed when a tyrant had fought with a great daemon for forty days and nights before the both of them were sealed in stone. Or so the legends went.

Slikk snorted. Look-look at him, starting to believe in the tales of primitives! Next thing he knew he'd be believing all the stories the manthings told about their Sigmar. No, surely it was just a myth. Even if it had some basis in truth, his army of ogres held at least a thousand tyrants. Any daemon would fall before such a force.

Yes, Slikk thought, he had surely done well by the Horned Rat's plan.

----​

Deep under the jagged slopes of Crookback Mountain, in an isolated series of caverns that glowed a nauseating green and gave off a stench that would kill lesser creatures by virtue of the toxicity of its contents, a bespectacled plague priest named Helkic Stain clawed at her head in frustration. Her superiors were clearly setting her up to fail by giving her this impossible task!

She was standing on a rickety ratwalk made of rusted metal, gazing down into the twenty-foot deep pit she kept all her test subjects in. Normally the hole, its sides encrusted in bile and dried blood with toxic lichen growing off the excretions found there, its bottom an indescribable mix of mud, feces, pus, and bones, was packed to the brim with diseased animals and sentient beings, so many in close quarters the unlucky often couldn't move, all the better for the swift transmission of the diseases she was testing. But today the excavation was empty but for one particularly belligerent subject who just didn't seem to wish to cooperate!

Damnable orks. Whatever diabolical entity had crafted them from rotten beer and sheer stupidity had made them near-impossible to tamper with. Their flesh was not wholly meat and bone like every other living thing he'd poked at, but rather some annoyingly dense spongy mixture of an interweaving fungi-like lattice that was irritatingly sticky and difficult to cut through. Their blood was thick and syrupy, an incredibly deep shade of red that sharply contrasted their skin. Even their bones were possessed of an odd flexibility and sponge-like texture, enabling them to withstand greater force than would normally be needed to break them. All in all, an incredibly durable creature more akin to a gigantic walking mushroom than a fleshbag like most others. Helkic honestly couldn't even comprehend how they were alive, much less moving.

All of this, of course, was just an undercurrent to the thing most frustrating the genius plague priest; their blasted immunity to most every disease in her stock! She'd hit the ork in the pit with everything from the weeping fever of the Hung plains to the shitting death found in Ind. None of them stuck, or if they did they didn't affect the blasted thing nearly as much as they should. The worst she'd seen happen to the beast was when she'd infected it with some common human pox, more out of boredom than anything else. Then it'd sported some small blisters for a few days before they flaked off.

Helkic ground the heels of her hands into her eyes in an attempt to relieve the pressure she felt building up behind them. It was merely from stress, as she'd long since endured every disease she knew of that caused headaches. There was no cure for this but solving her ork predicament, and within a reasonable timeframe as well. After all, it was not by her choice that she was endlessly laboring over worthless primitives that were too alien to accept proper vulnerability to her diseases. The command had been passed down from the Council of Thirteen itself, and she had heard from the mutterings of her dullard partners that Arch-Rat Thanquol had plans to turn whatever plague she concocted on all of the orks eventually. While it was gratifying to see her obvious biological mastery recognized, it was also concerning in that all the blame would come down on her should the promised plague fail to perform.

Of course she was blameless, as her endless labors would attest. The fault clearly lay with the orks for being too bloody stupid to actually succumb to her toxins!

Her thoughts were interrupted by a bellow from the ork down in her testing pit. "Oi! Rat fing! Is you gonna throw somefing fer me ta fight down 'ere or wot? I's gonna waste away if ya don't let me krump somefing."

Helkic sighed. Then paused as something clicked in her pus-covered brain. Of course! Orks got stronger from fighting, every simpleton knew that. The more fights they participated in, the bigger and stronger they got. But was the reverse true as well? If deprived of a conflict, would an ork grow small and weak and thus easy to infect with anything that wouldn't result in those upstart Morbag hacks peeling her skin off? Declining to give the ork an answer, she scurried off to the primary plague cauldron, brain already freed from its unending cycle of stress to focus on what disease she could test on the ork once it was weakened enough. They'd captured this specimen but a week ago, there should be a bit of time before its hunger for bloodshed began to weaken it. Now then, that pox had shown a hint of promise. Perhaps if incubated in successive generations of parasitic fungi from the Khuresh hinterlands...

--​

Some months later, Helkic rubbed her claws together in excitement. It was working! Finally, the dull impossibility of the greenskin biology bent to her indomitable will!

She was perched on a platform at the near-top of a greatly expanded testing cavern, with hundreds of testing pits like her old one dotted across the floor. Each held a snarling ork, carefully isolated from any other of their kind to prevent them from gaining strength by fighting the other. The solitary confinement had weakened them - not nearly as much as she had hoped; she'd had to throw out her theory that gretchin and goblins and the like were merely orks that had lost a sufficient number of fights so as to turn into a different subspecies - enough that the disease she had concocted with what she was rather certain was the blessing of the Horned Rat himself had begun to affect them. For who else but the most brilliant plague priest in the entire under-empire assisted by the father of her race could take a formidable race such as the greenskins and turn their greatest strength, their love - and need - of fighting, and make it their weakness?

Ah, her underlings were administering a dose to a healthy ork. Helkic scurried to a more advantageous position where she could see the procedure more clearly. A choking team of slaves hauled a massive rusting iron pot over to the edge of the pit, the contents a foul brownish-blue in color. After pausing to regain the necessary strength to go on and toss their fellows that had died from the fumes into the cauldron, they took hold of the sides of it and with a great collective heave, tipped the cauldron over, letting its noxious liquid pour into the pit and onto its ork occupant, who howled in dismay. "Oi, wassis? You rat gits ferget 'ow to drink squig beer or sumfink?"

When the deluge finally halted and the unlucky ork staggered out, Helkic was both elated and disappointed. Finally something had had a result, sure, but it was not nearly as dramatic as she'd like. Something like the ork keeling over with its flesh dissolving into rats as it did was what her mind had hoped for, while her reality was ... less impressive.

The ork now had pebble-sized red boils popping up all over its skin, more coming to the surface as time passed. The brute hardly seemed perturbed by this, instead preferring to hoot and holler while it tried to claw its way up the sides of the pit to where the remaining slaves were taunting the thing. As she watched with a detached interest, one of them managed to peg the ork with a rock they'd somehow smuggled in. The boil struck by the pebble burst, and began leaking an unusual amount of fluid. This sharpened Helkic's gaze slightly; she'd cut apart more than a few orks trying to figure out how to effect them and she'd always been irritated by how little the things bled; their blood was think and clumpy, and mostly concentrated in the center of the torso where it nourished the organs rather than the muscle of the arms and legs, which seemed more to be that annoyingly dense spongelike lattice rather than conventional muscle. To see what looked to be a viable way to make them actually bleed and thus transmit the disease ... while not as glamorous a result as she'd been hoping for, it would certainly do. Especially as the Council's enforcers had been growing ever more testy as of late...

--​

A hundred or so orks woke up several miles east of Crookback Mountain with fragile red boils all over their bodies and no idea how they got there. Being orks, after some mutual brawling to let out the tension of having been stuck in those nasty no-fighty pits for months they mostly put them out of mind and headed north on a vague feeling that grew stronger with every step they took. There was a Waaagh!!! brewing, and though many of them were pale with blood loss, their step was strengthened by the anticipation of the war ahead.

----​

When the order came down from the Supreme Underlord for Eshin and Pestilens to deploy forces to the Dark Lands in order to conduct his preparatory schemes to bring down the chaos dwarfs, Moulder and Skyre saw opportunity. While they would not dare to commit open sabotage while the Horned Rat still gazed attentively upon the affairs of his spawn, there could certainly be advantages gained from having their fellow Great Clans otherwise occupied.

They continued plotting ways to increase their own fortunes until Thanquol's orders were delivered to them in full.

They - two of the most powerful clans of all the skaven - were being placed under the authority of ... of ... Mors! Yes, Paskrit was mentioned as well, but Morskittar and Verminkin both considered her a witless fool, only kept on the Council by her seeming inability to be defeated in a challenge and her usefulness as a pawn. No, it was surely the conniving upstart Gnawdell that had secured this favor from the 'Wise One'. She had always lusted for more than her fair share of power, having disgracefully manipulated Clan Gritak into taking the brunt of the casualties at Karak Eight-Peaks and claimed credit for the deed of capturing the dwarfhold. She'd never truly deserved her place on the Council of Thirteen, and now she twisted their ...noble... leader into giving her authority over them?!

How had she done it, both of them wondered? What trick had she employed that they hadn't tried to get Great Leader Thanquol's attention? Had she used feminine wiles on his no doubt warpstone-addled mind? The very concept was foreign to the two, who mostly thought of females as new underling generators, but notes were scribbled down to develop ways to exploit this weakness of their overlord nonetheless.

Then the orders were reread and blanched at. Though the two Council members were many miles apart from each other, both of them had the exact same reaction near-simultaneously.

"Collaborate?!"

--​

Ikit Claw and Fleshsculptor Stitch stared warily at each other. Unwilling to undergo the blow to their egos that collaborating with each other in person would've been, Morskittar and Verminkin had instead dispatched their most senior underlings to complete Thanquol's project in their stead. However, at the first glance at each other the two could tell that whatever semblance of cooperation their superiors hoped to see would not pan out, and the extremely short exchange of words they had only confirmed it.

"We will make-make a -"

"Tunneling drill, with fire magics to pierce the fool-fool dawi zharr underbellies!"

"Your drill will explode halfway there! Skyre mechanisms are unreliable. I will make a race of boring bomb worms to detonate the foundations of their cities!"

"Fool-fool! Do you not remember the Council has decreed that we work with Mors? We will have to transport their stormvermin. I will take lead of the project and create mighty-mighty fire drill transports to surprise the enemies of the Under-Empire!"

"Imbecile! If you are trying to get the Mors stormvermin dead - not a bad-bad idea, admittedly - then that is what we do! Instead my race of colossal vole-rats will transport our troops in their guts!"

"Oh, so you intend to feed-feed our forces to your untrained beasts? Bah! You Moulder are all the same, merely gluttons looking for the next easy kibble!"

The two skaven - scientists in their field of craft both, altered in body in their particular way both - were snout to snout, their whiskers angrily flicking against each other. At last Ikit ground words out between his metallic teeth. "Morskittar will eviscerate me if I gut you and rip-rip your heart out like I wish to. So here is what we will do. I will take my warlock-engineers and create a series of glorious flaming drill transports to tunnel Mors' stormvermin into the Dark City. You will go and do whatever idiotic endeavor you believe will have a fraction of a chance to best my genius. When I prove-prove my mastery of science over you, you will acquiesce and devote your resources to my project. Agreed?"

Stitch grinned ferally, the teeth in his mouth all different shapes and sizes, universally sharp and gleaming. "And when your machines crash and burn-burn, you will put the resources given to you to my warbeasts. Very well."

With that, the two turned their backs on one another and marched back to their subordinates, ushering them impatiently to the laboratories that had been provided for them. They'd be damned if they let those scumbag other-clanners take their rightful prize!
A majority of each of the clans' researchers, biologists, mechanics, beastmasters, warlock-engineers, and all manner of unhinged scientists had been dispatched to Clan Mors' headquarters of Karak Eight Peaks, now renamed to the City of Pillars. The two Great Clans quickly sectioned off entire sections of the city for their use, on opposite sides of the labyrinth of dwarven tunnels. Soon enough hellish sounds began to ring out from the twisted depths of those districts, a cacophony of screeching and clanging and the wails of expendable slave fodder used for effectiveness testing.

From the Moulder district came a great assortment of throaty bellows and twisted roars as the Fleshmaster got to work. He started out initially with what amounted to a 'basic' template for the start of a Hellpit Abomination - one or perhaps several unlucky skaven that had been stitched together and exposed to a mutagen developed to fuse them into one mostly whole, vaguely rat-shaped mass. Stitch had had hundreds of these mewling horrors brought with him to the City of Pillars, and now he bent his malign will upon them. Over a span of a few weeks and many injections of nutrient fluid mixed with hefty amounts of warpstone, the formerly vestigial limbs of the rat-shaped things had swelled to many times their original size, bulging with hideous muscle beneath their sheet-white skin. As a side effect of the treatment, whatever fur the subjects possessed had fallen out (and promptly been mixed into their feed - waste not). The Fleshmaster gave it little thought, as the beasts were primarily meant to tunnel underneath the earth. One more hairless abomination crawling around underground wouldn't go out of place.

Next additional limbs were added, as the tubular beasts were found to not move fast enough for Stitch's liking. This was done by taking the limbs of those beasts which had died from competition with their kin, crippling mutations, or autopsy by the Mutation Ministers overseeing the day-to-day aspects of the breeding program to see how the creatures were developing internally, and stitching them to the sides of the healthiest beasts. After being fed a considerable amount of mutagen fluid, the dead flesh molded itself onto the sides of the beasts like they had always been there, effectively granting another limb to the creature. This was done in great amounts, and in the occasional case when no spare limbs could be found, the collossal beast would be chained down and its limbs split in half down the middle before a specially balanced warpstone paste was applied to the open wounds. Soon the creatures operated on this way were sporting a minimum of eight limbs each, which were frequently sawed off and re-attached based on changing orders from the Fleshmaster. A few generations of accelerated breeding later, Stitch had at his disposal a gaggle of hundred foot-long hairless ratlike creatures with 24 legs each, spaced out relatively evenly around their bodies, which stretched long and circular. Further minor modifications were made via similar Lamarckian procedures, removing their ears and replacing them with a network of wiry whiskers along their bodies that sensed vibration as they tunneled through the earth, and shortening the snout by way of chopping a good length of it off in order to shape the maw for efficient troop loading in the future.

Now Stitch sought to solve the dual problem of making the beast be able to actually tunnel in a time-efficient manner and also load skaven into its guts without digesting them (overly much). This was firstly done by removing the stomach and intestines, instead replacing them with a series of podlike organs that were filled with a mildly paralytic yet oxygenated fluid that could safely preserve a stormvermin, or perhaps two or three clanrats, for transport. With those inconvenient organs removed (and as a matter of fact, there didn't need to be those there either. Liver, kidneys, bladder, the thing could easily live without them), an average of 825 stormvermin could be loaded in at maximum capacity. To solve the problem of the beasts dying overly quickly due to the lack of most of their vital organs, something that killed a substantial portion of their breeding stock before it was realized and rectified, the limbs of the creatures were modified so that in the middle of each of their palms their gaped a mouth, more a jagged hole with spiked teeth angling downward, leading down a ways along the arm before the pseudo-esophagus reached a secondary stomach implanted in the end of the limb. While this didn't entirely solve the problem of persistent hunger and malnutrition in the beasts, the ability to consume by moving forward did incentivize the beasts to go in the direction their handlers desired, as well as impart a rabid hunger for flesh and blood as it tasted much better than the dirt and rock it typically ingested, both positive traits in the Fleshmaster's opinion. Still didn't do much for the tunneling speed of the beasts, which while it was formidable, was nowhere near what the upcoming invasion would require. But they'd find a solution for that.

Confident for now in the eventual success of his creation, Stitch allocated some of his resources to spy on Skyre and see what foolish machinery they had devised to compete against the Tunnelfiend of Clan Moulder.
What he saw surprised him about as much as his accomplishments surprised Ikit Claw when the engineer's own spies returned.

Skyre had not been idle while Stitch was carefully introducing desirable traits into his stock. Though their normal train of thought when dealing with a foe such as the dawi zharr would be to construct some monstrous superweapon to obliterate their fell city and all that lay within it, the Supreme Underlord evidently desired to obtain samples of their technology and magical lore as well. Something different would have to be done. Something unconventional. Something daring.
In other words, straight up Skyre's alley.

The mechanically inclined clan had somehow constructed a gargantuan drill of some sort, a thirty foot-long cone of ragged metal with a glowing emerald strip of warpstone-infused steel spiraling its way up the drill. Within the drill itself there was a frantically chugging machine that vaguely resembled the boilers that drove the steam tanks of the hammermanthing's empire. However, this seemed to be only a superficial resemblance, as the machine instead rumbled and roared constantly as though it were continuously exploding, a sentiment not eased by the ominous colors the metal of the construction occasionally glowed.

Outside of this core of the drill there was a cylindrical framework reminiscent of the outer body of the Doomwheels. As the warpstone engine roared and shook, the framework spun at speeds impossible for nearly any machine currently in existence. The spinning of this framework wound up and spun various other gears and whirring cogs that in turn spun a larger framework of steel bars that encompassed all of this, which itself was encompassed by and powered the spin of a larger framework that was bolted into the inner frame of the drill itself. This complex system of spinning cogs and gears allowed the power that the fearsome engine at the machine's heart generated to be amplified as it was turned into kinetic energy, translating into the drill spinning at intimidating speeds, the warpstone edging allowing it to cut through stone like mush.

Of course, as with any great idea made reality, there were some issues. The workings of the drill weren't as fragile as some pieces of skaven engineering, but they were still finicky enough that the drill couldn't go too far before one piece or another broke down, due mainly to vibration buildup from the lack of a stable platform to drill from. This would have been solved by the weight of the passengers the Hellprobe was supposed to transport to battle, but something about the dynamics of how exactly the drill went through rock meant that any excess weight in the form of armored passenger capsules often lead to the thing drilling in a completely different direction than the controls dictated, most times directly into the unfortunate clanrats standing in as test subjects, or in one memorable occasion, itself, as the drill imploded somehow. When it worked correctly it positively zipped through the earth - and presumably enemy flesh - at an incredible rate. It was just getting it to do that for a long period of time that was an issue.

Ah, they'd find a way.

--​

As Moulder and Skyre continued their age-old rivalry, something far more bizarre and intimidating was springing up in the City of Pillars. Something alien, something any normal skaven would (correctly) label as a sign that the end of the world truly had come about. Something terrifying.

Camraderie. Cooperation.

A ... partnership.

In sharp contrast to the old familiar antagonistic relationship the four great clans had with each other, the comparatively newly anointed fifth, Mors, and the organization referred to by most as the Army in casual parlance had found that they were extremely compatible with each other. Before now they hadn't had much opportunity to collaborate - the USA had been formed only fifty years ago, and Paskrit had achieved her membership of the Council but twenty-five years past, contemptuously slaughtering Warlord Blacknose in single combat. This short timespan and the Army's housing being mainly located at Skavenblight itself had hindered any major projects the two council members may have wished to collaborate on.

Not so now, however. With Paskrit herself and one of her most skilled underlings, Sleek Sharpwit - himself the former warlord of Mors who had voluntarily abdicated to Gnawdell to join the fledgling organization that was the USA at the time - the Army had transported a large portion of its forces over to the City of Pillars, moving into the remainder of the city not occupied by Skyre and Moulder with legions of disciplined rat-ogres and stormvermin wielding a wide assortment of weapons and operating a wide variety of war machines. They were fitted easily into the myriad tunnels and caverns in the hold, for the Army was tiny in comparison to Mors' numbers. While each one of its members was elite compared to the common clanrat, the Great Clan outnumbered them by a thousand to one with the clanrats occupying the city alone. Paskrit and Gnawdell wished to change this, for if the assault on Zharr-Naggrund was to succeed, they must combine the Army's discipline with the sheer numbers Mors had by comparison.

The two Council members, along with their most senior underlings Queek Headtaker and Sleek Sharpwit, convened in a small but opulent private cavern as to the best way to accomplish their shared goal. For three days they exhaustively mapped out the optimal route to, if not bring those Mors clanrats chosen for the mission up to the standards of the USA, which would take years of intensive training, enable them to act much more cohesively and coordinately than before, setting up clear chains of command for each strike force with Army members in key positions to prevent opportunistic backstabbers from taking advantage of any momentary confusion. When they emerged from their seclusion and began enacting these reforms, there was some outcry over this as skaven who had bribed and honestly cheated their way up the ranks were ousted in favor of 'sergeants' and 'privates' sporting strange accents and a distinct lack of favoritism. There was talk of rebellion for a time, which was swiftly quashed by the stormvermin of Mors, who were by and large admiring and envious of the discipline and power their Army counterparts showed.

Once the chain of command was secured, the drills began, much to the dismay of the common skaven who had climbed over his fellows to get selected hoping for easy glory and plunder. Endless drilling day in and day out of formation, maneuvers, basic sets of orders etched painstakingly into the heads of the skaven militia. Day by day exhausted skaven dragged themselves back to their burrows, too exhausted even to struggle with their neighbors for food. Some went hungry and starved. The drills continued, the Army officers cleverly encouraging competition by granting minor boons to the units that performed the best, and punishing those who were caught sabotaging their fellow clanrats in a way that significantly impacted the performance of the unit. As one drill instructor explained from under his wide-brimmed hat, "Step-stepping on your brother or sister to get ahead is fine-fine. That is what makes us skaven, makes us great. What I won't allow is you doing so in ways that make all of us do worse! Then we're all thrown back into Father Rat's gullet. So play-play your games of sabotage if you must. But if you impact this unit, I will find out. And you will wish-wish I had not."

By the thirteenth week of the exhaustive training, results were showing. The exhausted recruits now shared food amongst themselves when they returned to their burrows for the eve. Some took to sleeping together in great communal piles, and forcibly claimed food for themselves at mealtimes. Mors' stormvermin were particularly prone to this, and many of them took to the training the Army stormvermin set for them with a relish, going through combat drills late into the night. In practice melees, cohesion notably improved. While the great mobs of skaven were by no means a fully disciplined force, there was a semblance of order in the chaos. When unit leaders called out orders, they were obeyed for the most part, and while they still broke and ran far easier than veteran Army troops, they did not immediately panic at the 'death' (or sometimes actual death) of their leaders - subordinates were able to keep the unit together for the most part, and keep a rout from happening at the drop of a hat. Mors' stormvermin showed even more improvement than the common clanrat, performing at a level that the Army rats referred to as 'nearly as good as a recruit'. While the drill instructors clearly desired to go further, being sadistically overjoyed to have such a massive supply of underlings to torment/train, their commanders decreed that that would have to do - the time for the invasion to commence was nigh, according to their intelligence - though they'd had no reports from Eshin as to the status of their Waaagh!!! for a while now, past reports and common knowledge of how the greenskins operated allowed for an extrapolation that held the green tide would wash over Zharr Naggrund in just under two months, followed closely by whatever the Warpfang Bank had managed to scrounge up from the Hungry Mountains. They needed to begin moving out now if they were to arrive on time - assuming Skyre and Moulder had lived up to their boasting of creating a transportation system that would get them there in record time.

This was, of course, where problems sprang up.

--​

"They don't have anything?!"

The unfortunate skaven quailed before the simultaneous exclamation by both Paskrit and Gnawdell. "N-not exactly, most illustrious and enlightened Warlord-General and Arch-Despot. I spoke to both Lord Ikit and Lord Stitch," - in truth the messenger rat had been rebuffed by both and scrounged his information from bored members of both camps - "and they informed me that they both have designs that would be more than adequate to bring-bring your troops to the dark dwarfthings. It's just that ... they're not quite ready yet."

Gnawdell strode forward and seized the unfortunate rat by the throat and lifted him up into the air, incensed by this blatant shirking of her authority by the arrogant Great Clans. "You will go and inform both Ikit Claw and Fleshmaster Stitch that they will come before me - us," she added with a glance at Paskrit, "and tell-tell us why exactly that the vaunted Skyre and Moulder were unable to live-live up to their boasts. Do this and you'll live in comfort for the rest of your days." She released the messenger, who rapidly nodded while clutching his throat and scurried off, already dreaming of sleeping on a bed of solid gold for the rest of his life.

When his mutilated and savaged corpse showed up in the middle of the Army's camps with a note pinned to it saying 'more time', greater action was taken. Queek Headtaker took command of the legions of Mors that had been trained by the Army and bullrushed his way through Moulder's occupied district, using his knowledge of the back ways and inner workings of the City of Pillars to storm to the Fleshmaster's laboratory with a minimum of casualties from the hordes of giant rats the mutators attempted to unleash. Here the newly instilled discipline of the units showed themselves, as the skaven held firm against the oversized rodents and overwhelmed them with coordinated strikes. Meanwhile, Paskrit gathered up an elite strike team of Army rats and struck like a lightning spear, ending up in Ikit Claw's sanctum almost before he knew they were attacking. There were no explosive lectures from the leader of either strike force, no inquiries of what exactly the supposedly competent clans had been up to in the intervening time. Instead they stepped aside and let the Grey Seers they had brought along with them step forward. Simultaneously, each of the servants of the Horned Rat seized up and cried out in agony before snapping back to look at Ikit and Stitch, their eyes and mouths glowing an eerie green. Out of their mouths came Thanquol's voice, and their bodies withered away as they spoke, the flesh practically evaporating off their bones. The Underlord's message was simple: "Listen. I don't care what you do in particular, but you are late. Get me a way to bring my troops to Zharr-Naggrund within the turning of the moon or I'll reach-reach into your soul and do things you don't want to know." With that, the near-skeletal forms of the unfortunate Grey Seers collapsed into small piles of warpstone dust in the shape of the Horned Rat's symbol, transmuted into the holy substance by the sheer power of the Arch-Rat. The message was obvious.

Cooperation between Skyre and Moulder picked up significantly following Thanquol's message.

The two Great Clans compared each other's designs and quickly identified what was wrong with each of them. Moulder's Tunnelfiend could transport a ridiculous number of troops, but the organic pods had no space for actual equipment or armor, and it made its way through the earth far too slowly for their goal. Skyre's Hellprobe tunneled at ludicrous speeds, but had issues travelling far due to the lack of a stable platform and had no way to transport more than a handful of skaven. It was almost as though their projects had been made to be fused.

The Tunnelfiend's guts were hollowed out, the transport-pod organs replaced by a metallic hangar with harnesses and bolted-down handrails. The number of troops able to be transported was cut down to around seven hundred, but equipment could now be taken along for the trip, and entry and exit was made easier by irising portholes bolted into the sides of the squealing beasts. The inefficient maw and head of the beast was covered and replaced by a smaller version of the Hellprobe's drill, fear of the Underlord's wrath driving the warlock-engineers to make the arduous miniaturization process go much faster. To aid in the speed of the beast crawling through the earth, as well as survivability, enormous lengths of spiked treads were bolted onto the hide of the beast, that whirred and spun and helped drag the beast's enormous bulk through the earth while the miniaturized Hellprobe drilled the way ahead. Armor was added to the relatively vulnerable arms and whatever skin was still left exposed. Lastly, the backside of the beast, normally gone unused, had an an enormous booster engine bolted onto it, which could be activated to powerboost it through a particularly tough patch of stone, or theoretically allow it to leap above the ground as a whale did the sea waves. Most of the remaining dickering was isolated from the actual design of the project, instead devoted to the name of the magnificent semi-mechanical monstrosity. Finally, at the crux of the deadline Thanquol had imposed upon them, the creatures were unveiled with an appropriately grandiose title.

The Skyre/Moulder Drillfiend was complete.

----​

The Dark Lands
Zharr Naggrund
Second-Highest Level

Ghorth the Cruel, the second-oldest yet most powerful sorcerer-prophet of Hashut alive, was troubled. He commanded armies of greater quality than any other on the face of the world. He stood on equal grounds of influence with Astragoth Ironhand himself despite being several centuries younger than the ancient mage. Lesser sorcerers feared even the presence of his heralds, he commanded a clear majority on the Council of the Sorcerers of Hashut, and his forges could scarcely keep up with his warlord Zhatan the Black's demand for weapons and munitions to add to his ever-increasing dominions and slaves. At the rate his personal wealth and power was growing, he would be the unquestioned master of Zharr-Naggrund in a mere 74 years, and with no more of his parts turned to stone than his finger and toenails thus far. By all rights his mood should be grimly content, with his dominion ensured in the long run.

And yet despite his coming prosperity, Ghorth was concerned. His dreams, while universally dark and full of bloody subjugation, had recently taken a more personal turn, showing him his own holdings, Zharr-Naggrund, all of the Dark Lands, utterly ruined and destroyed - not burned to ash or anything like what other races would envision, but stripped bare of all usable resources, heat, and slaves - all gone, leaving a barren wasteland with nothing to exploit or extract, full of crumbled fortresses with scratched walls and even the corpses stolen. It filled him with terror and indignation, that his premonitions would show that he would be so thoroughly swindled. The portents he extracted from the screaming intestines of still-living sacrifices didn't give him any better indications - universally the entrails spelled out patterns relating to 'doom', 'desolation', and 'self', in that order. The one occasion he had a different result was even less reassuring if possible - the tremendous gut of an ogre too old to effectively work anymore toppled out of its body in one solid piece, the muscles contorted in such a way to hold it all together like an organic cauldron. When Ghorth peered inside the vestibule, still filled with stomach acid and froth from the brute's last meal, he clearly discerned the face of an enormous horned beast, grinning maliciously at him. The image was unclear, and he could not tell if it was depicting the Father of Darkness or not before it faded. It troubled him for days afterward, and his mood, already legendarily vile, dove to yet greater depths. Hashut was clearly warning him of something, some cataclysm in the future that would attempt to take the entirety of his property from him. He would have to be stronger than whatever it was, or he would not be worthy to be a scion of Hashut.

He threw himself into his work, feverishly searching for any sign of the impending threat to his holdings. Any grumblings from his slaves was met with harsh and swift inspection, his lesser clan members became wary around their patriarch, and his harem lay abandoned as Ghorth focused on any threat he found. Zhatan the Black was often seen leading elite teams of Infernal Guard into random households, factories, and hidden boltholes all around Zharr-Naggrund, exposing and crushing hidden conspiracies to bring Ghorth down. When at last no more plot showed themselves, the daemonsmith turned his attentions outside of the Black Ziggurat, looking for anything that could have caused such foul omens to be given to him. What he found was nothing quite so severe as what his dreams had shown him ... yet.

A Waaagh!!! was forming at Mount Grimfang, a great gathering of orks lead by a beast with glowing green teeth known as the Warpchoppa. While for now it was a manageable threat, he knew from his studies of the history of his predecessors that the chaotic rampages their primary slaves could embark on often proved to be disastrous affairs to resolve that only became more difficult to deal with the longer they were left unchecked. While this ork's forces were manageable at the moment, that did not guarantee anything if he was left to his own devices.

Of course Ghorth had no intention of letting this greenskin jeopardize his operations. With a sense of grim satisfaction at having finally found the source of his foul omens, he sent a message to the leader of the hobgoblin khanate that he allowed to exist in the Blasted Wastes, Gorduz Backstabber. He commanded the khan to go and challenge the leader of this incipient Waaagh!!! to single combat, then have his followers fill the fool full of arrows. Ever-fearful of the price of failure, Gorduz soon set out with his army for the mountain. Ghorth was once again grimly content, for the moment. He had quashed the coming threat to his city without wasting even a single dawi zharr.

Then the reports came in. The Warpchoppa's Waaagh!!! hadn't been decapitated as he had hoped - in fact, Gorduz had lived up to his name in the worst possible way and joined the growing horde. Ghorth silently vowed to throw the traitorous filth into a pit filled with lust-enflamed bull centaurs and read the rest of the sparse reports his scouts had delivered. The crusade was still strangely static for now, so measures could be taken to counteract it.

Of course, it couldn't be that simple. Ghorth tried to muster his armies, deliver orders for the defense tunnels in the Blasted Wastes and the parts of the Plain of Zharr he personally owned to be manned and double-checked, tried to send more scouts out to determine the state of the Waaagh!!!, sent out orders to have the slavemasters in the greenskin's most likely path riled up against the beast. Nothing seemingly got through, no replies ever came back, and whatever underlings he sent to investigate were never heard from again. For all intents and purposes he could do nothing about the oncoming threat of the Waaagh!!!, nor even know what it was doing. He couldn't even contact Zhatan, for he had sent the lord back to his usual duties (the acquisition of slaves of all races in ludicrous quantities, if it wasn't blindingly obvious) with the completion of his internal investigations. Nor did he know who was obstructing him in such a manner. One of his rivals, no doubt. No other living being would be skilled enough to intercept every effort of his to derail the impending ork crusade. But who? Baalkor Goldentusked? Azag-Nannar the Vengeful? Maruduk of Hashut?

No, he was only fooling himself. There was only one living being that had the means and motivation to do this. The oldest dawi zharr in all of Zharr Naggrund, the second most powerful sorcerer-lord next to Ghorth himself. Astragoth Ironhand.

--​

Some weeks later, Ghorth paced back and forth in his personal chambers. It was an extravagant display of blood money, the skins of great beasts the world over hanging on the walls, valuable talismans and coinage from many different nations set in recesses in the obsidian. A statue of a dawi zharr stood in front of his desk, a perfectly formed sculpture of a sorcerer-prophet standing as if braced against some oncoming force. His face was curdled in disgust and one hand was stretched out, his fingers arranged in the beginnings of some spell or other. His master, Borghuth the Infallible. Past his master did Ghorth tread, past the mounted head of a Rhinox Zhatan had killed for him, past tapestries tallying the countless slaves he had at one point possessed, past his personal forge complex, arcane laboratory, and training room. At last, after hours of trudging through every room he possessed, he passed through an archway and out onto a colossal balcony, overflowing with ominous spikes and bull-like winged statues. He rested his hands on the balustrade and stared out at the view of the southern half of Zharr-Naggrund. Oftentimes seeing the immensity of his city and knowing that he would soon solely control it gave him comfort, but today it only enflamed his temper. His teeth ground together with a sound akin to a rockslide.

The third-highest level of the great ziggurat of Zharr-Naggrund was where most of the sorceror-prophets that headed the dawi zharr made their residence, but the second level had been claimed by only two beings - himself and Astragoth. The more ancient dwarf had claimed the northern side of the level, where he was treated to the view of the River Ruin flowing into the city, clear and cool, to be used to cool the immense forges of the city. Ghorth's side, on the other hand, overlooked the Ruin as it exited Zharr-Naggrund, red and yellow and black with pollutants, so toxic that flesh burned merely from the fumes given off by the water. In times like these the symbolism was not lost on Ghorth, and his anger seethed like a magma pit. Slight snubs like this from the Ironhand were common at the best of times, but the nominal lord of Zharr-Naggrund had been even more distant than usual in the last weeks. Ghorth had attempted to contact him in what must have been a hundred ways, but all had been rebuffed. He'd even tried to directly visit Astragoth in his quarters, something nearly unheard of among the sorcerer-prophets, but had been greeted by the ancient dawi zharr's herald Rhykarth the Unbreakable, who explained that 'Lord Astragoth is occupied with important matters'. As if anything could be more important than the Waaagh!!!heading their way! What could the old fool possibly be accomplishing by bringing in all the statues of former sorcerers stretching out along the roads to the city, or retreating from his own workshop to perform no doubt blasphemous research elsewhere in Zharr-Naggrund?

Ghorth's musings were interrupted by a soft gong sounding as a servant requested permission to join him on the balcony. He waved them forward without looking back, and continued grimly staring ahead as Zhatan thumped forward to join him. "I sent summons," he stated.

"I received none," the dwarf lord replied. "And there is worse to tell. An ork Waaagh!!!-"

"-Is heading towards Zharr-Naggrund, yes I know," Ghorth interrupted. "I've known for months and yet been unable to do anything about it. Any message I send out goes missing, every underling I entrust with the information mysteriously disappears. If I shouted it out in front of a crowd I've no doubt they'd all be found dead in their beds the following day." He reined in the desire to throw a fireball towards the horizon. The cost of his magic had not left his mind ever since he'd overcome his master.

"I apologize, my lord, but that is not the worst of it. The greenskins will reach the city within the week, perhaps two. My expedition ran into them on the return trip, and only I escaped intact."

Ghorth's fingers tightened on the balustrade. "What of the emplacements in the Blasted Waste? The periphery outposts in Zharrduk? Have they been abandoned? They should be manned."

"Reports on the matter are unclear, my lord. Some claim they were overrun by an army of vermin, others that those manning them were swallowed up by the night. In any case, they will not pose an obstacle to the Warpchoppa's horde."

Ghorth ground his teeth. "Place the city under lockdown. Begin full siege preparations. If what you say is true, we do not have much time."

Zhatan, upon hearing the command that had never before in the history of the dawi zharr been given pass his master's lips, was unruffled. "Lord Astragoth will no doubt object-"

"No he won't. While you were out of the city he shut himself away somewhere doing something unproductive. I don't know where he is. If you happen to find him, inform me. But he will not obstruct this."

Zhatan bowed at the waist. "At once, my master." Turning about face, the dawi zharr lord swiftly trotted out of Ghorth's quarters, his voice already ringing off the walls as he called for his subordinates. For his part, Ghorth continued staring at the horizon. So the omens bear themselves out. No matter. I will persevere. Though it was folly, he almost fancied he could hear distant echoes of the greenskin warcry already.

----​

Mingol Zharr-Naggrund had stood for over five thousand years, living up to its name of fire and desolation with every one of them. The product of over 800 years of planning by the vengeful dawi zharr, having freshly pledged themselves to the god who saved them during the Great Chaos Incursion, Hashut, the inital foundation was molded out of a mountain of pure black obsidian by one hundred forty-four of the most powerful sorcerer-prophets living at the time. It had been greatly expanded upon since that time, all the great and foul mineral wealth of the Dark Lands that the chaos dwarfs could delve out of it being channeled all back to the Dark City. The entire ziggurat had been hoisted laboriously out of the earth more than once so that new levels could be built underneath, and a gargantuan complex of forges and workshops and armories had spread out from the central pyramid, stretching to the horizon. Smaller black ziggurats rose out of the cityscape periodically, imitations of the central tower that belonged to the most powerful of the dawi zharr. The entire city resembled nothing so much as a colossal copy of the mountain it had been carved from more than five millennia ago, a black volcano shrouded in the smog of its own making and lit eternally by fires innumerable burning within. It was a complex designed to forge the dominion that would crush the world, guarded by walls over a hundred feet tall and forty feet thick, it was a stronghold fit to withstand any force the world could throw at it and relentlessly grind their remains underfoot.

And now it was under threat.

From atop the many battlements of the city, the Dawi-Zharr watched as a tidal wave of green bowled towards their stronghold. It stretched to the horizon and beyond, an enormous carpet of bellowing green flesh that wore a face of pure aggression and bloodshed. There were easily a million and a half orks present in the oncoming horde, no doubt more. Many of them were possessed of a strangely dark coloration, their faces set in grim determination and moving in units with a strange discipline that was foreign to most orks. Snarling squigs were everywhere, ravening balls of flesh with stumpy legs that snapped and writhed at their chains. Some orks rode them, their squigs great lumpy balls of fungoid tissue that had great collections of serrated tusks sprouting angrily out of their maws. Great collections of goblins strode side-by-side with their ork kin, their normally cowardly kin emboldened and sharpened to a cruel anticipation by the thundering Waaagh! energies roiling in the air. Great packs of them rode emaciated wolves, the red-eyed beasts resembling their greenskin masters more than their normal canine brethren. The horde even possessed crude seige towers built as idols to Gork and Mork, their snarling faces ready to deposit greenskins in their thousands upon the walls. Primitive catapults strained their mechanisms. Great rock and dung piles somehow walked among the horde here and there, glowing a sinister green. The dawi zharr watched all this approach their bastion with arrogant grins on their faces. The resources of the Dark Lands were easily turned to murder, and the road to Mingol Zharr-Naggrund was perilous to the unwary.

As the green tide drew closer to the city, the ground itself rebelled against the ork. Great gouts of magma rocketed up from the ground, incinerating greenskins midstep. Chasms opened up underneath mobs of orks, sending them falling to their impalement on concealed beds of spikes. Goblins in their thousands trod upon explosive devices buried in the earth that sprang up from their concealment and detonated at head height, sending shrapnel clouds whistling through emerald flesh. Gargantuan blades popped up from secret crevices in the ground, bisecting whoever was unfortunate enough to activate the trap. Great clouds of toxic gases hissed out, enveloping vast sections of the oncoming horde.

When they cleared, the Dawi-Zharr's arrogant confidence faded slightly. There had undoubtedly been immense casualties from the emplaced traps leading up to the city, but they were a mere dent compared to the vastness of the horde. Even as they watched, the greenskins walked over the trap pits now filled with dead bodies, spat upon the magma as they trod by in such immense quantities that they doused the substance, dug the hidden traps up from the earth and began carrying them about to use as weapons. The horde was merely bloodied, not blunted.

Still the defenders of the dark city were confident in their inevitable victory. True, it was strange that a Waaagh!!! of this size had made it past all the other citadels their race possessed in the Dark Lands, and all the various emplaced traps in the direction they had come from, and that they hadn't had word of the horde before now, but these were mere pebbles in their path of victory. Their records of the past indicated that their forebears had faced black ork incursions of ... not quite this size, but approaching it. And their defences had only grown since then. These barbarians would be properly subjugated.

The horde tumbled toward Zharr-Naggrund's walls, some orks outright foaming at the mouth to begin the fight. They were rewarded when hidden grilles in the ground began to retract, revealing tunnels out of which rank upon rank of goblins and orks and hobgoblin overseers marched. They were clearly fearful of the oncoming swarm, and doubtless in any other circumstance they would have outright deserted their erstwhile masters and joined with their kin. But their hated hobgoblin 'captains' held aloft great black banners emblazoned with a great ziggurat, and other runes in a dark and smoking red. They emitted enormous clouds of choking smoke that encompassed the whole of the Dhrazh-Zharr's slave armies, and all who breathed in the foul stuff had their will bent away from any possibility of rebellion. They arranged themselves in thin rows, spreading themselves across the whole front that the million-strong horde presented, though they numbered perhaps forty thousand. Even the most amateur armchair general could see that they stood no chance of doing any meaningful damage to the Waaagh!!! Nor did they, as the green tide crashed into their battle line like a cannon ball. Instead, utter confusion broke out among the scrap as the enemy greenskins scattered every which way, throwing smoke bombs and interweaving into Grimgor's army until nobody could tell friend from foe anymore. The entire front collapsed into an orgy of indiscriminate violence, orks stomping on goblins before being swarmed by mobs of the diminutive creatures who took the opportunity to exact vengeance for past cruelties, hobgoblins throwing entire regiments into disarray by pretending to be a part of them and backstabbing their leader, snarling squigs rampaging every which way, scooping helpless gretchin into their cavernous stinking maws. The Waaagh!!! had ground to a halt, which allowed the vast emplacements of artillery the Dawi-Zharr had atop the walls to target the horde effectively.

All across the outer walls of Zharr-Naggrund, enormous war engines turned to aim at the massive brawl. Firing points were checked and rechecked. Ammunition was placed for easy access in reloading. Ogre slaves toiled by the sides of Dreadquake Mortars, heaving the enormous shells into place. Magma Cannons heated up. Skilled Dhrazh-Zharr lined up shots with their Bazukas. Siege engine-sized variants of Inferno Guns clanked into position. Deathshrieker Rocket Launchers were readied in their hundreds. The hundred forty-four gargantuan Hellcannons that had been painstakingly hauled up onto the walls in the days leading up to the assault by Ghorth's order were awakened from their imposed comas with sorcerous incantations, the black words ringing through the air with a harsh radiance. The daemon engines attempted to leap forward into the melee, but were stymied by the obsidian shackles holding them in place. All of this malevolence turned with a cruel eye toward the ork horde that dared to intrude upon their territories. The air grew taut with tension, and at some unseen signal it was all unleashed in a roaring conflagration of hate.

A veritable wall of fire and metal leapt off the walls and plunged into the Waaagh!!! below. Grapeshot flew through greenskin flesh like lard, and evil fire spirits harvested from the shrines of Hashut burst free of their containers and rained down upon the horde, gleefully cackling as their short-lived cavorting set dozens aflame. Dreadquake shots burrowed into the ground and exploded in eerie crimson bursts, red light shooting up from the ground for hundreds of meters in every direction, scorching all it touched to ash. Great gouts of lava vomited out of the barrels of Magma Cannons, blanketing those unfortunate greenskins that approached the walls in a tide of toxic molten rock. The noise was a force in and of itself, blowing out the eardrums of any greenskin even remotely close to the concussive shockwaves that followed each thundering impact. Here and there nobs attempted to restore some form of order, but each of these was swiftly terminated by Bazuka wielders targeting these sole points of order in the all-encompassing chaos. The Hellcannons, enraged beyond belief that they were not able to bathe in the blood of the innumerable foes just beyond their reach, vented their fury through their barrels, eye-searing bolts of foul sorcery boring through the army and forever scarring the landscape beneath them.

The devastation was immense, as if Hashut himself had crushed the assembled host of the greenskins beneath his mighty hoof. The bombardment lasted many hours, the disciplined firing crews of the Dawi-Zharr keeping up a rate of fire unattainable by any other army on the face of the world. So many shells impacted the ground and exploded above the heads of the orks that the chaos dwarf's entire view of the battlefield was obscured by an immense cloud of smoke. Even after firing solutions became all but impossible, Zhatan bade the artillery crews to fire into the smog for nearly half an hour before they ceased to assess the damage they had inflicted upon the horde.

As the smoke gradually cleared, a vast carpet of mulched orkoid corpses became visible to the defenders. The ground had become almost completely blanketed with gibbets of emerald flesh, stained black from the sheer volume of fire the chaos dwarfs had put out. In the spots where the ground itself was exposed it glowed cherry red, and was warped and twisted to such an extent that the entire range they had fired upon had been fused into an expanse of black glass and molten rock. The corpses of at least half a million orks littered the ground.

Of course, that left the other million.

The horde had been reduced by a third, but the remainder was still enough to kill every last Dawi-Zharr at a thousand-to-one kill ratio. The barbaric creatures roared in triumph, believing that the dark stunties had exhausted their ammunition, and began approaching the walls once more. With a snarl, Zhatan ordered the bombardment to resume, if at a less frantic pace than before to ensure that supplies would hold out for the duration of the conflict. The siege engines adopted a denial strategy, forming a line of fire that held the oncoming mob from reaching the walls. Now able to fire back without fear of being annihilated, crude catapults began to launch ragged boulders at the walls, and primitive shamans began their incantations, emerald bursts of light arcing toward the gargantuan defenses. Both were deflected with no issue, the thickness and ingenious construction of the fortifications effortlessly deflecting the former and the black runes emplaced within them rebounding the latter. Still the crude projectiles came on in their thousands, the common orks still throwing themselves happily into the path of shrieking rockets in an effort to get closer to the walls.

The duel went on for the better part of a day, projectiles being hurled back and forth with such frequency the sound was like that of a never-ending avalanche. The oncoming Waaagh!!! clashed again and again against the resolute defenses of the Dawi-Zharr, the dark dwarfs confident in their victory. No matter how stupidly large the numbers of their enemy were, they had no way of breaking through the walls. Their immovable object would wear down the unstoppable force of the greenskins.

Then the dots appeared on the horizon. Whatever they were, they approached with immense speed. At the sight of them, the orks grew excited, and threw themselves at the walls with redoubled ferocity. The guns tore them to shreds, but they died with stupid grins on their faces as the things on the horizon barreled toward the city at ever-increasing speeds. Knowing that whatever they were, allowing them to proceed unhindered would be folly, Zhatan peered at them through his masterfully crafted runic scope. What he saw took his breath for a moment.

It was Iron Daemons, the colossal steam engines the Dawi-Zharr used to transport war material from place to place with great speed. Their snarling faceplates had been defaced by the crude idols of the greenskins, and the holds had been packed to bursting with some sort of grotesquely swollen squig. Anything that vaguely resembled a speed limiter had been torn off, and the things were careening towards the walls as though they hungered to impact with them. Their Skullcracker attachments churned at the air. Zhatan hurriedly counted at least a hundred of the things; the greenskins must have looted the things on their approach to Zharr-Naggrund, and whatever they had planned for them was sure to be catastrophic, a suspicion which was proven correct as an unlucky squig fell off a war engine at the back of the pack and promptly detonated in a disproportionately huge explosion. Cursing, the Overlord began barking orders for the various engines of destruction to be relocated to the inner walls of the city. Based on his mental estimates the detonation would break through the outer walls, but provided the defenders were in place by the time they hit casualties would be minimal.

The relocation went smoothly for the most part. The majority of the war engines were moved with characteristic efficiency, a few low-ranking volunteers staying behind to man the Hellcannons and earn Hashut's favor. Some portions of the defenders were delayed when small bands of ork kommandos inexplicably popped up inside the walls, having evidently somehow swam into the city via the gates of the River Ruin. Few Dawi-Zharr were killed, as the orks were universally crippled by the sheer toxicity of the river, but the delays added up. By the time the Iron Daemons arrived at the walls there were still some chaos dwarfs left on the outer walls. They stared oblivion in the face and snarled, pumping out shell after shell with grim fatalism. The Hellcannons tore free of their bindings here and there and careened off the walls, rampaging through the Waaagh!!! which had approached the walls with the reduction of the barrage. Zhatan grit his teeth as he huddled behind his personal fortification, bracing himself for the impact.

The collection of looted war engines impacted the outer wall of Zharr-Naggrund as a broad spearhead at ridiculous speeds, smashing themselves to bits against the pitiless stone of the corrupted dwarfs. As they did so, their cargoes of specially bred Boomy Squigs detonated, the unstable mix of chemicals contained in their bloated flesh building on each other as they exploded in close proximity to one another. The blast was a searing holocaust of heat and light that set the very world to shaking. In places where the dread Hellcannons were enveloped by the immense shockwave, the bindings on the rapacious daemons imprisoned inside were shattered and the warpspawn exploded in hellish bursts of carmine illumination, amplifying the crude explosion of the orks with hellborne malice. As the Dawi-Zharr who had been unfortunate enough to be facing the fireball attempted to clear the image from their retinas, the ork horde surged forward. The outer walls of Zharr Naggrund, which had stood for several thousand years, had been reduced to naught but slag. The emboldened Waaagh!!! charged again into the fray, brutal warcries on their lips.

----​

A week later

Zhatan the Black, Commander of the Gates of Zharr, Lord of Genocide, Herald of Ghorth the Cruel, wielder of the Black Hammer of Hashut, snarled as he gazed upon the wartorn mess his city had become. Zharr-Naggrund was normally filled with the endless wailing of slaves and the clangor of countless hammers banging inside countless forges, shrouded in the smog of ceaseless industry. Now it was a landscape of strife, rubble scattered everywhere from the constant artillery duels conducted between the two sides. Mobs of orks continually howled through the narrow streets looking for stunties to kill, smashing through buildings in their eagerness for bloodshed. Packs of squighounds sniffed out hidden pockets of resistance, and more than half the city was engulfed in fires that served no purpose. The very sight enraged the Dhrazh-Zharr lord.

After their unexpected gambit with the Iron Daemons that had shattered the invincible bulwark of the outer walls, it had only been a matter of time before the ork horde overcame the inner fortifications. They lost countless greenskins to the insane amount and variety of traps placed in the killing field between the first and second walls, but there were always more. The Dawi-Zharr sent out mobs of giants with armor and weapons bolted into their very flesh out in an attempt to draw out the horde's leader, but the unusually high numbers of Black Orks in the enemy horde put an end to that ploy. Their disciplined units clustered around the heels of the flailing abominations, cutting the tendons that enabled the beasts to stand at a cost of many of their own. The Siege Giants all fell within the day, and the walls fell soon after, the massed shamans of the greenskins eventually punding it down with massive emerald spectral fists and feet, with the assistance of the same type of sneaky gits who had previously snuck into the city by way of the river gates, who placed crude explosives in inconvenient spots, slit the occasional throat, and essentially made life hell for the defenders. Eventually Zhatan ordered a general retreat, those war machines too big to move quicly destroyed to deny them to the enemy, and split up command among his regimental leaders. The Dawi-Zharr fell back into their city and began a grueling campaign of guerilla warfare, their discipline and high-quality equipment enabling them to skillfully ambush the lumbering orks in the narrow confines of Zharr-Naggrund, shredding their bulky bodies with extensive use of their blunderbusses. But regardless of how many greenskins a single warrior could murder, the numbers disparity was too high for them to hold, and the teams of Dawi-Zharr warriors were gradually forced further and further into Zharr-Naggrund, creeping stealthily through massive forge complexes, taking whatever they could to deny it to the greenskins.

While the deadly game of dashing and shooting played out in the narrow corridors below, the skies were equally contested. Now that the massive concentration of artillery was dispersed across the city, the ork warboss had grown confident enough to send his wyverns in. Over a hundred of the ugly beasts coasted above the city, high enough that any cannon or sniper shot from the chaos dwarfs was easily evaded or bounced off their scales. On occasion their riders would bid them descend, and the beasts would frequently embark upon bombing runs, the shamans upon their back casting spells the whole way down. The Dawi-Zharr did not possess numbers sufficient to match the wyverns creature-to-creature, but the beasts they did possess could take on ten wyverns without sustaining more than minor wounds. The Overlords that rode the Bale Taurui were among the elite in chaos dwarf society, for the incandescent beasts would tolerate no rider but one with a spirit to match their own blazing flesh. Frequently duels would play out in midair with more than twenty wyverns attacking a mere two Tauri, yet their riders skillfully exploiting the sheer brute force and firey blasts their mounts could produce to escape nearly unscathed. Wyvern corpses rained upon the avenues of Zharr-Naggrund whenever a Great Taurus took flight. And when their counterparts in the Lammasu took to the air, they took no damage whatsoever, for the gargoyle-like beasts were near as intelligent as the sorcerers that rode them, and magically inclined as well. Fists of Gork fizzled out when met with the magic-draining fog the Lammasu exhaled, and the unfortunate shaman was universally incinerated shortly afterwards.

Yet it was not enough. The cold arithmetic of war ground on, and the sheer numbers of the greenskin horde began to tell. Individual chaos dwarfs fell, victim of bad luck or holding actions or sheer inevitability. The orks, meanwhile, were inexhaustible in number, and high on their battle-fever did not grow weary of fighting like normal beings did. The Uzkul-Dhrazh-Zharr were just as, if not more stubborn than their western kin. They would fight until their last limb ceased working and take a hundred orks with each of them. And the Waaagh!!! they were facing could still consider that a victory. They needed something to turn the tide. Though it had taken Ghorth, who had become essentially the leader of his race in this time of crisis, a long time to admit...
They needed the help of Astragoth Ironhand.

It was obvious that the ancient priest had known that something was going to happen to put the entire race of the Uzkul-Dhrazh-Zharr in peril. Every other time that some catastrophe had threatened his race, the venerable priest had stepped forward and guided them out of danger. But this time he had vanished somewhere inside Zharr-Naggrund, pursuing some secret project or other. More importantly, he had taken all the Immortals with him. Each a veteran of defending and traversing the expanses of the warp rift beneath the Daemon's Stump, clad in stone armor that deflected all but the mightiest of blows, the formidable warriors served as an independent secret police, judging whether a Dawi-Zharr had truly been serving Hashut. Often to invite their attention was to invite death. They had to be found if any chance of decapitating the Waaagh!!! was to be had.

The Warboss had been spotted intermittently in Zharr-Naggrund, a gargantuan edifice of ebonic emerald flesh that outmatched nearly any warrior the Dawi-Zharr had to offer. Zhatan was sure that were he backed by a team of elite Bull Centaurs he could take the beast down, but they had no such warriors at their disposal apart from the sacred ones who guarded the Temple of Hashut who would not abandon their post no matter what. Other than them and the Immortals, no warriors in the city were of high enough caliber to pin down the wily ork and successfully kill it. If their race was to be saved, Rhykarth the Unbreakable and his troops must be found. And if Astragoth had some sorcerous ritual to eradicate the blasted greenskins from his city, Zhatan considered it a nice bonus.

All this contributed to why he, Ghorth, and a handpicked team of lesser sorcerer-prophets and acolytes of the priesthood were currently huddled behind a depot, cautiously looking at a complex ambitious daemonsmiths had hoped to use to fire missiles at their enemies on other continents, which had been abandoned due to lack of success with their experiments. It was a massive construction, still standing over a hundred feet over their heads thanks to its solid construction. The launch tubes themselves numbered twelve, and stretched the highest, formed of black obsidian blended with hellforged steel. They stretched in a great circle, eleven launch tubes spaced evenly apart from one another with one larger one in the center. Around them a great complex stretched outwards, which their party stood on the outskirts of.

"You are certain?"

Zhatan shook himself out of his introspection. "My underlings were clear, my lord. While the High Priest was not seen entering this complex, several of them did note that he undertook frequent visits to this area of the city in the months leading up to the greenskin invasion. Unless he has developed some sort of obsession with an obscure forge in a back alley somewhere, he will be here."

"Then we go forth. I will not let the senile fool doom my empire to the dust."

And with that proclamation, the group set off into the complex, their senses on alert for any hobgoblin wolf riders or other greenskin scouts that could give them away. They scurried past large series of rooms dedicated entirely to accurately cartographing the prospective targets of the weapon, through forges with gigantic molds for the missile components still hanging, ready for use. As they made their way through offices and targeting calculators, certain strange details stood out to the party. Calculations were scribbled down in a secret code known only to the ruling sorcerer-prophets, detailing the necessary fuel requirements to travel distances absurdly far compared to any place in the world they could name. Some forges were still cooling as though they had been used in recent weeks, and the footprints of many thousands of slaves could easily be discerned everywhere, enough to encompass the entirety of what Ghorth estimated Astragoth kept for his private stores. The ancient priest was clearly planning some sort of ritual, but it was unclear what he intended to accomplish.

They descended deeper into the complex, gradually heading underground as the various signs of passage began to point down stairwells and sloping passageways lit by the occasional red rune. Their eyes glowed in the pitch darkness, glowing coals of malevolence trooping through hidden tunnels. They began to hear things as they headed lower, an immense rumbling that they could feel in their bones and through the soles of their feet. The temperature in the tunnels gradually increased, though they all endured the stifling heat without complaint. They were Dawi-Zharr, after all, and their very heritage was rooted in fire and endurance. All of these only got more intense as they navigated the maze of passageways, Ghorth growing more and more certain of his rival's path. It eventually took on the vague perception that they were inside the throat of a colossal dragon, and whether the sheer sound or something else would kill them first was uncertain.

Eventually they encountered the opposition they had been hoping against. The unfortunate Barrzhuk, Junior Acolyte of Hashut, rounded a corner and was startled when the point of his fireglaive clanked against something metallic. As he slowly looked up from his weapon point to ascertain how large this thing was, it slowly began to light up with an incandescent red-orange glow, formerly cool metal beginning to burn with a molten intensity. Barrzhuk finished looking far, far up at the beast which until now had merely been a subject of fearful rumors to him. A twenty-foot tall beast with the body of a dawi-zharr and the head of an bull. Batlike wings flared out behind the thing, and a serpentine tail whipped and cracked, throwing light and shadow about in a dizzying array. It held a cruel sword festooned with evil runes, and the fingers of its other hand were tipped with claws that glowed bright white with heat. The beast chuffed, sending a wave of heat out that scorched the unfortunate acolyte's face, which caused his brain to finally clue into the fact that he was facing a K'daai Destroyer.

He stumbled backwards bellowing in terror, unloading as many shots as his fireglaive possibly could into the advancing daemonic construction, which roared with a harsh clangour and rushed forward with speed belying its size. The rest of the group rushed to Barrzhuk's location, but only found his scorched, dismembered remains scattered across a progidious distance. Zhatan looked immediately to the enormous hoofprints melted into the stone of the tunnel floor and spoke one word: "Master?"

"K'daai,' Ghorth replied, already running down the passageway in the opposite way the footprints led. "Use haste! I don't know that I can bring it down without killing all of us with it down here." The group swiftly heeded the sorcerer-prophet's words, for Ghorth was an old hand in crafting K'daai and knew their capabilities intimately. If he was unsure about his own capability to kill the thing, none of them stood a chance.

The chase was an affair of desperate running and shallow breaths. Ghorth drove his acolytes mercilessly, and the air had begun to shimmer from the heat building up in the tunnels as they delved ever deeper into the earth. The footsteps of the K'daai could be heard as an everpresent pounding in their ears, growing closer and closer as the molten creature searched for them. On occasion its evil radiance could be glimpsed illuminating the end of a tunnel, which they would promptly turn off and make their way away from. Eventually, however, the blazing daemon statue found them. Perhaps the rumors were true and it really could smell the blood beating inside their hearts, but one way or another the group turned a corner and found the bullheaded colossus waiting for them. Zhatan barely had time to bellow an order before it lunged forward, its wings defying all conventional logic as they carried it through the air like a flaming meteor toward their dimunitive forms.

The nineteen remaining acolytes they had rushed forward without hesitation, bellowing the Dirge of Defiance with hate in their hearts. They stood no chance of doing anything but delaying the monster, a fact underscored when in landing the K'daai crushed one of their number beneath its molten hooves. But to serve their lord and aid in the survival of Hashut's servants they would give up anything. Ghorth, Zhatan, and the junior daemonsmiths hurried away as the warriors surrounded the beast, hacking at its ankles with their halberds and dodging its blows to the best of their ability. Even as one of the sorcerers glanced back, the creature swept up a struggling acolyte in its claws and bit him in two.

Ghorth led the group through columned halls and over perilous bridges under which there were bottomless pits that led to the ancient depths of the world. The screams of the dying acolytes echoed behind them, a wordless proclamation of what fate awaited them should they falter. After a dizzying race through a long, flat tunnel shone with a glossy texture, they came upon a large, square chamber with a ceiling much higher than any they'd been in so far. It was well-lit by bright red crystals embedded in the walls at regular intervals, and in the far wall there was a massive door that was barred by an intricate locking mechanism. "This is it," Ghorth said. "I remember being in this chamber four hundred years ago. Beyond that door is where the rocket was to be. It never materialized, of course, and the fools were thrown into the shrine for their folly, but if Astragoth is anywhere he will be beyond that door."

"How will we get past it, my master? My hammer is powerful indeed, but to get through a gate like that would take longer than we have before the K'daai catches up to us." Zhatan drew the Black Hammer and hefted it to emphasize his point.

"You and the others will delay the Destroyer," Ghorth replied. "I recall how to open it still, but I will need time. Most of us contributed to the ward that sealed the door, but I am strong enough to overcome it." With that, he strode forward and placed his hands upon the door. They were soon enveloped in a bloodred flame that slowly began to heat up the metal underneath them.

Seeing his master get to work, Zhatan rounded on the nearest apprentice sorcerer. "What spells has my master instructed you in the use of?" The apprentice unconsciously straightened up at the attention of one of the most powerful Dawi-Zharr alive, and responded, staring straight ahead and barking out the answers as if he were a drill cadet. "Overlord! My compatriots have mastery of all the conventional spells Hashut grants us! Calling forth hatred in our warriors! Spewing torrents of lava at the enemy! Crushing the will of the enemy! Inflicting Hashut's Curse upon the enemy! Calling forth a storm of hot ash! Manifesting Hashut's powers as an enormous black hammer with which to smite the enemy!"

"Can you summon forth the flames of Azgorh?"

The apprentice blanched at the mention of the dread spell, and swallowed nervously before answering, the quaver in his voice nearly imperceptible. "I believe that all of us working together could accomplish the spell, Overlord! It would require a short time to channel the necessary energies!"

"Then you will attempt to distract and delay the K'daai when it finds us," Zhatan ordered. "Blind it with storms of ash, scatter and hit it with your burning wrath, use your firearms to take its attention off me. I will get in close and use the Hammer." The weapon shone greedily in the red light of the chamber. "It is enchanted to kill anything that can be set aflame. We shall see if it works on the Destroyer."

"And if it does not, Overlord?"

"Then I will match it blow for blow while the rest of you call up Azgorh's flames. Bar the door."

The apprentices hurried to obey, and Zhatan set the Black Hammer down, placing both hands on its pommel. Only his eyes were visible through his helmet, red and resolute in contempt.

--​

The air slowly grew taught with tension as they waited for the Destroyer to find them. Ghorth was completely absorbed in his focus, eyes shut and muttering arcane secrets as his hands glowed white-hot, lighting up a slowly-expanding pattern of traceries and runes on the door. From behind it came an ever-increasing rumble that echoed off the walls of the chamber until it began to drown out speech. But the group could still hear the footsteps of the K'daai when it began to thump down the corridor leading to their chamber; a series of crashes followed by a foul sizzle as the molten hoof of the construct burned its imprint into the stone, that grew faster and faster as the K'daai sped up. The tremors began to shake the entry door in its hinges until at last the unfortunate door was burst completely open, the intense heat of the K'daai warping it into uselessness.

The beast stood in the entryway, the directives imprinted into its very construction etching themselves along what might be called its mind. Find Those-Who-Were-Not-Creator-Astragoth. Determine if Those Found were Authorized-By-Creator-Astragoth. Destroy The-Non-Authorized. There stood before it fourteen Not-Authorized. One directly in front of it. Twelve a short distance away. One at the back of the chamber.
Elimination proceeded.

The flaming sword of the K'daai swung down onto Zhatan in a great arc. The Overlord caught it on the haft of his hammer and rolled under the blow, coming to his feet in between the monster's legs, the Black Hammer homing straight for the juncture. The already-molten metal glowed white-hot where the hammerhead impacted, but the beast didn't seem to notice, instead raising up a flaming hoof to stomp Zhatan into paste with a dismissive huff. Again Zhatan nimbly sidestepped, his bulky blackshard armor belying his impressive speed, and brought the Black Hammer down in a two-handed strike at the ankle of the K'daai. The hoof was driven back before the construct had finished bringing its other leg down, causing the beast to topple over. Zhatan sprang back from the earth-quaking impact and darted in again, raining blows down upon the fallen K'daai. Each seemed to irritate it no more than a flea bite would a genuine bull, but the Dawi-Zharr Overlord showed his consumate mastery with a hammer by providing five blows in half as many seconds. Then the construct blurred, its legs seeming to melt and reform so that it was standing above Zhatan in an instant, its blade the size of his body stabbing out towards him. Zhatan let his knees buckle, voluntarily falling on his back to avoid the burning point of the sword, his pitch-black hammer swinging up to impact the blade and bat it out of the way as he did so.

Before the K'daai could take advantage of Zhatan's downed position, an enormous spectral bull's head impacted into the side of the metallic golem, sending it tumbling down and sending an enormous clang through the chamber as though a gigantic gong had been struck. The K'daai shook its head and turned to the junior sorcerers who had until then been left unnoticed, just in time to meet twelve streams of lava centered on its face. It stood there unfazed, the molten rock streaming down its body and in some cases flowing into it. Zhatan scrambled to his feet and rushed towards it, but before he had taken two steps, the K'daai moved forward in a wingbeat-assisted leap that blurred it to the eye. Before Zhatan had taken his third step, the construct was among the apprentices and had torn two of them into bloody smoking shreds. By Zhatan's fifth step all but two of the apprentices were dead. The remainder then managed a spell, a thick burning ash cloud swirling out from their hands, completely obscuring them and the K'daai. Zhatan could hear the construct bellowing in brassy tones as he rushed toward the cloud, and the top half of an apprentice sailed out of it as he approached. Without hesitation he plunged in, shutting his eyes against the glowing embers and letting his dwarven smell and hearing guide him to the molten monstrosity. Opening his eyes the barest fragment, he could see it, a glowing red collossus looking all about for the remaining intruders to kill against a background of hot ash filling the air. Embers stuck to its skin and were burned to nothing by its radiance.

Zhatan moved in for the kill before the K'daai could swing its head his way, landing several punishing hits to its ankles. Something about the magical composition of the ash amplified the effect of the hammer, incandescent red cracks spreading out from each blow. But it was still not enough. The giant bullheaded creature merely looked down and backhanded Zhatan out of the ash cloud, leaping after him and hitting him in midair with a fist the size of his whole body. He hit the far wall hard enough to make a sizeable indent in the black stone, cracks spreading out from the point of impact. Falling out of his crater and onto the floor, Zhatan struggled onto all fours, vomiting a worrying amount of blood out. He looked up as the K'daai thudded down in front of him, looming over his form like Hashut before his prostrating subjects. It huffed and raised its flaming sword high, and in that moment Zhatan saw the last remaining apprentice - the same one he had spoken with earlier - stumble out of the ash cloud, sputtering and hacking as he attempted to wipe his face clean. Summoning all the energy left in his body, Zhatan grabbed the Black Hammer and tumbled forward, avoiding the descending guillotine that was the K'daai's sword by mere inches. "AZGORH!" he cried as he started a desperate assault on the towering avatar of molten metal, frantically dodging blows and dealing them in return with a pain-fueled mania. "AZGORH! AZGORH! AZGORH!"

Gharlund Blackfist, Most Senior of The Most Honored and Revered Sorcerer-Prophet Ghorth the Cruel's Junior Apprentices in The Dark Art of Hashut-Gifted Sorcery, was frankly shaking with terror. He had heard hushed rumors of the terrible potency of the K'daai, but seeing it in the flesh was almost too much to bear. His hands and feet had been transmuted wholly to black obsidian from the concerted effort he and his fellows had put forward. He was disoriented, woozy, and burnt all over from the ash storm he had summoned. It had gotten into his robes and rubbed his skin raw whenever he moved. He was tired and frightened, and wanted nothing more than to return to his apprentice quarters where everything was neatly organized and predictable, not this horrifying mess of undignified running and death. But when he heard The Lord Ghorth's Overlord Zhatan the Black desperately yelling the one word that had haunted his dreams ever since he had been unfortunate enough to see what it meant, he knew his duty and did not falter.

Summoning up all the magical energy he could possibly tear out of the ground, he fed it through his body in the pattern he had been taught. He could feel it surging within his chest, a rushing torrent of magma pumping through his heart and setting his lungs afire. His arms and legs rapidly began to darken and turn to stone as he cast, his imperfect mastery of the spell dooming him to succumb to the Sorcerer's Curse. But he would have one last impact on the world before he was doomed to eternity as a statue. Glowing from the inside, his eyes completely dissolving and leaving behind flames that shot out of the empty sockets and his mouth as he screamed, he mustered the willpower to shout one last sentence. His voice was suffused with Hashut's power, ringing off the walls with a harsh clanging that demanded those who heard it to listen.

K'DAAI! BEHOLD THE FIRES OF YOUR UNDOING! BEHOLD THE FLAME OF AZGORH!

Gharlund unleashed his spell, the very last of him turning to obsidian with the effort, freezing him forever in a pose of defiant courage. Underneath the K'daai, the ground utterly exploded, the ancient self-destructive eruption of the volcano Azgorh rendered in miniature, a torrent of white-hot magma exploding up from beneath the beast's feet, enveloping it whole with a sound like that of tearing metal. It lasted on and on, the explosion lingering with a potency granted to it by the entirety of Gharlund's life force, blanketing near the entire chamber in a flood of fire and smoke. The nearby walls began to glow red from the intensity of the eruption. Finally, after more than a minute, it ceased as abruptly as it started, the smoke slowly clearing as it revealed the K'daai slumped in a pile on the ground, having taken the brunt of the titanic spell. Incredibly, it was still alive, though barely holding together. It began to slowly reform itself from the slag heap it currently resembled, only to be met once more by a thunderous impact by the Black Hammer of Hashut. At last the enchantments upon its molten flesh could not endure any more abuse, and shattered utterly, the K'daai melting down upon itself until it was naught more than a pile of melted bronze and steel. Zhatan fell to his knees beside it, scorched, battered, and bleeding, but still barely alive. The black amulet he wore around his neck to deflect hostile magic had absorbed what part of the Flames of Azgorh had reached him, leaving him only with his skin nearly burned off inside his nigh-destroyed blackshard armor rather than being wholly burned to ash. Seeing that the threat to his master was at last eliminated, the desperate energy that had filled him earlier fled his body and he crumpled into a heap.

At the back of the chamber, the far door was finally wholly covered in burning red sigils and creaked open. Without looking back, Ghorth rushed through, utterly intent on finding his rival and making him pay for such costly expenditures.

The Sorcerer-Prophet rushed down the long corridor presented to him, uncaring of whatever obstacles presented themselves. When he reached the seeming end wall, he merely blasted through the obstructing barrier and continued on his path. At last he reached what seemed to be an anterior chamber, the omnipresent rumble that had accompanied them this whole time grown to skull-shaking levels. There was a door to where the rockets had previously been held, but it was the glowing runes carved into the wall next to it that caught his attention.

So you made it past the K'daai. I congratulate you on that at least, my inferior. If you have reached this chamber when I anticipated you would, I am currently in the chamber beyond, but I would not attempt to pursue if I were you. Potent as you are, even you cannot withstand the force of the rockets I have designed. And soon I will be leaving this world behind, to spread the dominion of Hashut amongst the very stars themselves, as our god commanded me to centuries ago. You wish to usurp my titles and position, I know. You are welcome to them. Proclaim yourself High Priest of Hashut to all the world, and if you survive the cataclysms that would end the mortal realm, you have my sincere admiration.

Knowing you, though, I doubt it. This will no doubt be our last communication. Zharr-Naggrund is yours, Ghorth. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Astragoth Ironhand, True Prophet of Hashut's Will, Continuation of His Dominion

Still Better Than You

Ghorth was fuming as he reached the end of the message. How dare that old doddering fool, call him inferior and arrogantly claim his doom and say that Hashut intended him to survive above Ghorth, his most powerful servant, and add in that last juvenile snipe?! "AAAAARRRGH!" Ghorth screamed, fire spewing out of his mouth and obliterating the meticulously carved runes. Before he could do anything else, the room shook as though the world had imploded, a sound like a continent detonating filling his ears. He could see the door glowing red-hot from whatever was going on outside it, and he knew that this was undoubtedly the method that old fucker was using to run away from his homeland.

"ASTRAGOOOOOOOOTH!"

--​

Zharr-Naggrund was witness to a bizzare spectacle - just as the twin-tailed comet that had heralded Sigmar's birth had crashed to earth thousands of years ago, now it seemed to some that the event was being reversed. A black tower carved in Hashut's resemblance rose into the air on twin towers of fire, blanketing the city for miles around in choking smoke. It ascended quickly, clearing the cloud layer in under a minute and soaring yet higher as the slaves packed into its holds were burned to ash and converted to magical power. Across the world, people looked to the line of fire being drawn into the heavens and wondered as to its significance. Some claimed it was the gods abandoning the world, and called it a sign of the end of the world.

As the rocket reached the edge of the atmosphere, Astragoth activated the stasis spells he had arduously prepared all those years ago. Inside the elaborate pods they lay unconscious in, Rhykarth, his Immortals, and all those of Astragoth's clan were subsumed in magma that turned to stone as it touched them, sealing the passengers in stasis. For his part, Astragoth sank into meditation. He would be required to remain conscious for the duration of the voyage to a new home for his kind, but his will was strong enough to prevent his insanity. The ravages of time would not reach him here inside this, his greatest work and the continuation of his kind.

He would endure.

--​

As he made his way out of the smoking ruin Astragoth's departure had left, Ghorth fumed. He said nothing as he smashed the statue of his apprentice in order to heal Zhatan, and merely motioned for the lord to follow him as he quickly strode out of the ruin, not noticing the devastation the K'daai had left. His anger only grew as he made his way back to the Temple of Hashut, obliterating a few mobs of greenskins that were unfortunate enough to encounter him, and recieved the news that while he had been down in the launch complex, an additional army of ogres had barreled in from the horizon and entered the city like a flabby boulder, driving those greenskins who were still outside Zharr-Naggrund in ahead of them. Seeing the assortment of brutish monsters that were in the process of invading and despoiling his city, Ghorth delegated everything to Zhatan and barred the top level of the Temple of Hashut to everyone but him and the Tau'ruk that guarded it. As he sank into a stupor of distilled rage through which he searched for answers to his predicament, he privately wondered if anything else could go wrong.

----​

Mignol Zharr-Naggrund
Thirteen Hours Later

Five hundred thousand orks, hobgoblins, and other assorted greenskins rampaged through the streets of the Chaos Dwarf capital. Two hundred thousand ogres crashed through alongside them, the two forces frequently clashing in the rubble that comprised most of the Dark City like the fists of two gods. Those Dawi-Zharr who remained in the city were drawn back to the foundation of it, the original collossal black ziggurat carved out of a mountain in ages past. Here their stand would be made, and their enemies would falter on the wall of hate they found there. Zhatan the Black commanded the defense, and it was whispered that his master Ghorth the Cruel was divining a great spell from Hashut himself to cleanse their city of the invaders. They had taken an immense beating, but their spirits were high still. If this was all the enemy had to offer, then their victory was inevitable. Their foe would be bled dry on their walls.

Of course it was at this particular moment that the Skaven arrived.

All across Zharr-Naggrund, though concentrated vaguely toward the center, five hundred Drillfiends surfaced from the earth like collossal metallic whales, skaven platoons pouring out of portholes on the sides of the beasts. As soon as the last rat leaped out of the beasts, they took off in the direction of the nearest non-skaven living thing, distorted roars constantly pouring out of the spiked maws on its hands, the treads bolted onto its flesh whirring and dragging it along as it ravenously scrabbled towards food. In some cases, the enormous engines on the back of the monsters lit up in explosions of emerald flame, causing the Drillfiend to be propelled several hundred feet, boring straight through buildings and walls in search of its prey. Orks and ogres alike were swallowed by the dozens, and weapon strikes bounced off the armor affixed to their hides.

As their monsters roared through the streets, stuffing their proto-stomachs to bursting, the skaven army brought along surged forward in unified purpose. They numbered three hundred fifty thousand, bereft of the massive numerical advantage they normally enjoyed in battle, but that did not matter to them. They were trained more thoroughly than the average stormvermin, and they were filled with a vicious sense of triumph, for they were the embodiment of the Vermintide that would swallow the world. They rushed toward their goal in near-unison, overwhelming the scattered ork mobs they came across, leaving naught but gnawed carcasses. From all around they came, from tunnels underlying the city, erupting from inside the pyramid itself, from all around the ziggurat, all across the city, an army appearing out of nowhere. Battle was joined near-immediately, the shield walls of the Dawi-Zharr locking into place with iron discipline. But unlike most other clashes with the foul race, the skaven did not try to drown the dark dwarfs under a tide of flesh, instead clashing against the garrisons with disciplined fury, often bypassing the battle lines entirely, coming up behind the embattled defenders and cutting them down with strikes to the back. Higher and higher they ascended, gradually overrunning the ground level and forcing the Dawi-Zharr up into the higher reaches of the ziggurat. Fuming with surpressed fury, Zhatan wrested control from his panicking subordinates, drawing his armies towards the higher reaches of the pyramid, leaving the lower levels trapped and burning behind them. He lacked the numbers to defend the whole of the ziggurat, so he would form his forces into an iron core that would be impossible to dislodge. And hopefully Ghorth would find something in the time he was buying.

Of course, this was not all he had to contend with. Spurred on by the sudden appearance of the skaven, the leaders of ork and ogre gathered what forces they could in the swirling chaos of the dark city and made for the central pyramid. From the east approached Skrag the Slaughterer, who some called the prophet of the Great Maw. Dozens of Butchers and Slaughtermasters accompanied him, hundreds of Tyrants and their retinues trailing after him in hopes of taking part in the glory. Twisted monstrosities known to the ogres as Gorgers, their mutated kin with an even greater hunger than them ran freely alongside Skrag, the sole ogre to earn their trust. Suffused with the energies of the Maw, they thundered toward the ziggurat. From the west came Grimgor Ironhide, his two thousand-strong force of Immortulz marching next to him, the corpse of Gorduz Backstabber impaled on his bosspole after the hobgoblin had attempted to betray the black ork. Waaagh! energy crackled over them like a thunderstorm, and they fell upon the black pyramid like a black spearhead.

It was universal pandemonium as ork, ogre, and skaven scrabbled for the death of the Dawi-Zharr and each other. The assembled monsters clashed against each other with the crushing blows of ogre clubs and the sheer momentum of orkish choppas, interspersed with vollies of warpstone bullets and coordinated rushes by the skaven troops. As they ascended the pyramid, they began to encounter dispersed Bull Centaurs, who had refused to abandon their sacred posts. These beasts wielded immense lances and two-handed axes, or gargantuan swords and shields which they wielded with great skill, cutting down hundreds before they were overwhelmed. Some held chokepoints in the layout of the pyramid, mowing down ludicrous amounts of enemies with contraptions that had whirling blades at the end, which they pushed forward into the packed crowds of the enemy to literally mow down their foes. Their flesh had the consistency of living metal, and their already hardy physique required far more blows to put down than might be expected. But the combined force of the monsters was too much, and eventually the Dawi-Zharr were pushed back all the way to the top two levels of Zharr-Naggrund. There were a small amount of combatants present compared to the storm of carnage still going on in the city at large, perhaps twelve thousand if every side were totaled up, but whoever triumphed here would win the city. Destiny could be felt in the air, writing and rewriting skeins of fate to determine the outcome.

The orks hit the lines of the Dawi-Zharr from the west. The ogres hit them from the east. The skaven came from below. It was carnage at its most primal, the massed blunderbusses of the Dawi-Zharr reaping immense tolls each time they fired and the defending Bull Centaur Tau'ruks keeping the foe at bay with great scything blows of their greatweapons. The orks and ogres were not to be deterred, however, and crashed through the lines of battle like cannon balls, each infused with the power of their gods. The skaven tripped up their foes, taking advantage of the chaos their unwitting pawns had caused to slip through the gaps the Dawi-Zharr had in their shieldwalls. It was an unending meatgrinder, and out of it fought the most elite of each force present. At the very entrance to the Temple of Hashut where Ghorth was performing some sorcerous ritual within, the leaders of each respective army found themselves. Skrag the Slaughterer and fifteen Tyrants following him, with a stray pack of Gorgers hanging by their master's heels. Grimgor Ironhide was accompanied by thirty Immortulz, and Queek Headtaker had with him a force of twenty Mors and twenty USA stormvermin. Facing all of them, standing in front of the great doors that barred the entrance to the Temple which presently held all of Zharr-Naggrund's noncombatant population, was Zhatan the Black and the eight most senior Bull Centaurs that guarded the Temple. The Chaos Dwarf Lord was outfitted in the ancient armor of the sorcerer Bazherak, and he wore the gauntlets forged by the daemonsmith Gazrakh, which granted monstrous strength to who wore them. His face was concealed by a brass mask that seemed to reflect endless torment to whoever looked into it. For a moment, a strange peace held sway over the assembled groups, an unspoken tension that would snap at the slightest wrong motion.

Queek eyed his opponents and the chamber as his stormvermin fanned out behind him. It was a fairly large place, the walls adorned with gargantuan snarling faces and immense plaques exhorting the glory of the darkdwarfthings' bull god. The door into the temple was ringed by runes that burned a black red, and the doors looked thick and heavy. He'd need warpfire throwers to break through those.

His foes were many and varied, and he eagerly anticipated taking their heads for his collection. Some ogre with cleavers instead of hands and a gigantic pot strapped onto its back, with a collection of muscled brutes around him. One was munching on a book with an idiotic expression on its face. The greenskins far surpassed any he'd seen, each a hulking mountain of dark green muscle holding massive axes and wearing crude plates of armor. Eshin had really gone overboard in building up those things. The dwarfthings ... well, those bull centaurs looked more like metallic statues than living beings, and the hammer held by that one ordinary one unnerved him. He could feel the heat radiating off it from where he stood.

The spell was broken as Zhatan took a step forward, his armor clanking heavily. "Turn back, inferior races," he proclaimed. "So speaks Zhatan the Black, Commander of Zharr-Naggrund and the Gates of Zharr, K'daai-Breaker, Lord of Genocide. Retreat now and you will be granted lives of eternal servitude in Hashut's mines and forges. Refuse and your bones will feed our god."

The first to respond to the Dawi-Zharr's grand announcement was Grimgor. "Sod off, stuntie! Da Dark Landz is mine! WAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!" With that, he charged forward, his Immortulz taking up his warcry. There was no more time for talk as the room erupted into violence, the ogres and orks charging forward into each other with a thunderous crash. Strength clashed against strength, crude choppas embedding themselves into thick muscle and massive clubs crushing skulls. Grimgor and Skrag crashed into each other like two avalanches of muscle, the Slaughtermaster's cleaver-arms clashing with deceptive speed against Gitsnik. They snarled at each other and grappled, each attempting to bring the other down with sheer brute force. As they fought, so did their underlings, Grimgor's Immortulz moving as a group against the mostly individualistic Tyrants. Each ogre was a match for two or three of the enormous black orks, but the Immortulz supported each other while the Tyrants at best fought on their own, and on occasion shoved each other out of the way in order to get a swing in. In the midst of this earthquake of muscle, the skaven moved in, quick and merciless. When Skrag's Gorgers charged the tasty-looking morsels, the Army rats laid down a field of fire that tore the beasts to shreds. For his part, Queek charged the dwarfthing commander. Eager for battle he may be, but he wasn't going anywhere near that pair of ork and ogre until they'd severely wounded each other. But if he could take this stumpy thing's head and throw it into the melee below him, he would break the morale of the Dawi-Zharr. He vaguely recognized his clanrats baiting the Bull Centaurs into charging them as his vision narrowed. The dwarfthing was just about to kill a stray ogre, there was a perfect opportunity to cut his hamstrings -

Queek leaped at Zhatan from behind, but the Dawi-Zharr reversed his grip on the Black Hammer from where it lay in the ruin of Grobdug Bookmuncher's skull and hit him square in the gut with the pommel of the runed weapon. Toppling to the ground with the breath knocked out of him, Queek barely rolled out of the way as Zhatan embedded the Black Hammer in the stone where his head was. The Drazh-Zharr Overlord looked to the Headtaker and said but three words: "You end now." Then he pulled the Black Hammer out of the miniature crater he had formed and pressed the attack, his gauntlets letting him swing the hammer with even more ferocious speed than he had previously. Queek was positively thrilled - he hadn't had a foe give him this much of a challenge since the traitor Ikit Skratch! Hefting Dwarf Mauler and Gouger, his ancient mace-blade and cruel-edged sword respectively, Queek engaged in a flurry of blows with Zhatan, the skaven's dual wielding and unnerving speed letting him keep up - barely - with the titanic strength Zhatan exercised. Several times the Black Hammer came close to splitting Queek's skull open, but each time he frantically threw himself out of the way - he could smell the strength of the enchantments on the thing and knew that if he was hit even once it would be his doom. In an attempt to stop the avalanche of swings the Overlord was putting out, Queek hooked Gouger around the handle of the Black Hammer and yanked it close to him, pinning the weapon to him. Zhatan shifted his feet in order to yank it out of his arms, which was all Queek needed. His tail, which until now had mostly been used to maintain balance in the fight, coiled with whip-like quickness behind his back and grabbed the poisoned dagger sheathed there, darting out and toward the slim gap beneath the bottom of Zhatan's war-mask and his armor, Queek pulling himself up using Zhatan's own strength as energy for an improvised leap. One of Zhatan's gauntlets was there before the dagger connected, batting it aside contemptuously before cracking his elbow into Queek's incoming gut, but the dawi-zharr's unstoppable advance was stopped for a moment, which was all the Headtaker needed. He began a flurry of his own, his mace, sword, and dagger flashing out in asymmetric, unpredictable patterns, leaping and darting around Zhatan's flanks, forcing the dawi-zharr lord to use the haft of the Black Hammer to deflect the blows where they stood a chance of slipping in between the gaps in his plate. His thunderous attacks still swept out frequently, forcing Queek to duck out of the way, but nowhere nearly as fast as that first thunderous assault. Queek was confident in his victory even as he watched an unfortunate ork that had blundered in between the two combatants have its skull broken and burnt from a single blow; the dwarfthing's movements were slowing. Surely it must be growing tured from the weight of all that armor, and soon his head would go on Queek's wall. A worthy trophy, the Headtaker reflected as he rushed back at the dawi-zharr, Dwarf Mauler flashing overhead in a savage arc. Zhatan would deflect it, Queek knew, but he would not expect the dagger in his tail to slip into his armpit in the vulnerable moment he would leave as he blocked. His superlative skill in combat allowed him to analyze the dwarfthing's fighting style, and while its strength was monstrous it was actually rather predictable when you got down to it. But not all could be as enlightened as the skaven.

Queek brought Dwarf Mauler down in an overhead arc. Zhatan batted the mace aside with the Black Hammer, but when Queek abruptly whipped his tail in a line straight toward his armpit the dawi-zharr stepped aside with blinding speed, bringing his other arm down and pinning Queek's tail to his side. Shocked, Queek registered Zhatan dropping the Black Hammer, but was unable to react until Zhatan had already reached down to grasp the base of his tail and ripped it off. Queek's vision was consumed by blinding white as he was overwhelmed by horrific pain. He vaguely saw Zhatan casting aside his limp appendage with a rumble of 'pathetic', but was more focused on the tree of fire growing up from the base of his back. His body twitched and spasmed as it attempted to process the loss of a good third of its spinal cord, voiding all his various glands in an attempt to signal for help that in all likelihood was not coming.

Zhatan again hefted the Black Hammer, taking the opportunity crippling the skaven had given him to assess the rest of the chamber. The majority of the ogre tyrants and gorgers lay dead, interspersed with the bodies of skaven and ork, which continued to clash against each other in a savage brawl. More seemed to have come from the lower level, the conflict spilling into Hashut's very entrance hall. They would not come any further, Zhatan vowed. Even as he walked over to the twitching skaven, the ogre slaughtermaster with cleavers instead of hands desperately fended off the assault of what must be the Warboss, the massive dark-skinned ork's axe flashing wickedly. Six of the Bull Centaurs lay dead, several with glowing green holes between their eyes. The ratmen would pay for their impertinence. All of them would. He kicked the skaven so it lay on its back, focusing on him with bleary eyes. "You lack the mettle needed to become great," he informed the crippled thing. "May Hashut gnaw eternally on your soul." He raised the Black Hammer.

The room shook. Skrag mistepped, allowing Gitsnik to take his arm. The Immortulz and skaven troops fell all over each other. Only the two remaining Bull Centaurs remained unshaken, taking up positions on either side of the great door to Hashut's temple proper, which was glowing red hot. A fearsome bellow rang out from behind the door, seeming to ring not through the air, but the minds of everyone who heard it. Zhatan turned and motioned for the Bull Centaurs to enter into the Temple. Whatever his master had unleashed within Hashut's altar, the Tau'ruk would serve better within rather than guarding the door. They obeyed, taking hold of the door and wrenching it open, making their way in quickly before it shut with a resounding clang. Satisfied, Zhatan turned back to his skaven triumph, only to see a wall of dark green muscle coming toward him at high speed as Grimgor Ironhide barreled toward the Chaos Dwarf Overlord.

--​

Ghrathor and Jzhad, Bull Centaur Tau'ruk both, had seen many bizzare and terrifying things in their time guarding their Father's temple. They had witnessed sorcerers turning to obsidian from the slightest misstep in a ritual, slaves melting to puddles of boiling flesh as they were tossed into the Altar of Hashut, devoured dawi and manlings and ogres and even the strange lizardfolk on rare occasions. They were thouroughly used to flesh distorting as they ripped it apart in their metallic maws, and felt only bloodlust at the sight of most distortions of the body. Even so, they were taken aback at what they saw when they entered the Temple proper.

Hashut's temple was small by the standards of the rest of Zharr-Naggrund, but it was still ludicriously grand and opulent. Plated near-entirely in gold and other precious metals, it was the city in miniature, a grand ziggurat with each level devoted to a different way of appeasing Hashut. Around the sides of the massive room ran streams of magma, lending the room a hellish glow. But now the Temple was absent of its usual screams of the damned and the bubbling of the sacrificial pits. There was nowhere in there apart from one solitary figure at the very top, dwarfed by an incandescent pillar of red hate crowned with two bull's horns. A Bloodthirster of Khorne stood towering over the distant figure of Ghorth the Cruel, clenched in hatred but not attacking for some reason. Ghrathor and Jzhad immediately began sprinting up the stairs that led to the top of the ziggurat, disregarding as they did the fact that the streams of magma were running up the sides of the pyramid. They must safeguard Ghorth!

They were at the top of the pyramid in moments, and were only stopped from throwing themselves at the daemon with feckless abandon by Ghorth raising his hand. They instantly halted, standing at attention while the sorcerer-prophet spoke and the Bloodthirster attempted to stare holes in all of them, still not moving as if trapped.

An admirable form, would you not agree? You do not possess the sorcerer's sight, but can still almost feel the violence it is capable of. I can see more, so much more. That axe in its hand has slain countless mortals. It is an engine of destruction, an avatar of hatred. And yet were I to let it loose it would fall. It would slay many, but eventually sheer numbers would prove too much for it and it would be banished back to the Realm of Souls. That enrages you, does it not? Not that you possess the capacity to do anything but hate, but it fills you with anger that you cannot contribute all the skulls in this city to your greater self's throne.

Ghorth turned to Ghrathor and Jzhad. His skin had turned dark red, and his eyes lit up like blazing red coals. The tusks jutting out of his face were more pronounced than usual, and his form was bulging with muscle absent previously.

Do you know what I have learned about things like the Bloodthirster? They claim to be an unstoppable force of their god's will, that each of them is an independent entity. They lie, every one of them, knowing or not. They are merely an extension of their parent's will. And if they can be slaved to a conglomerate in the spirit world, they can be slaved to something here. He chuckled, the tone reverbating oddly in the air. That is the basis by which we Dawi-Zharr make many of our more powerful weaponry. Hellcannons, K'daai, even you two are the result of Hashut blessing our feeble flesh with his power. But no one ever thought of binding daemons into themselves. Why is that? All one requires is a will of steel and the proper knowledge. I possess both, and this beast's lesser kin were crushed by my mind like the inferior beasts they were. But I admit, this one is proving more troublesome than I had anticipated. Which is why I must thank you for coming when you did. Zhatan did his duty well, and I will reward him after I reach the realm of the gods.

Ghorth reached out and clasped Ghrathor and Jzhad by their shoulders, and his hands immediately began melting their metallic flesh. It almost seemed to be sucked into his form. To their horror, they could not move, not even to scream. Hashut forsook me, Ghorth explained. He chose to place his trust in that decrepit statue Astragoth and leave me to die. I will repay him in kind, when I consume the souls of all my enemies. I will consume our Father in Darkness and bring about the dominion of the world he was too weak to conduct.

The forms of the Bull Centaurs collapsed into molten pools that Ghorth inhaled, the patterns on them seeming to form screaming faces as the sorcerer-prophet swallowed their essence. The fires within him seemed to flare higher as he ingested their souls, and he turned back to the Bloodthirster. Now, Baaltor, you will know true death within my gullet. Be grateful that you get to be part of my ascension. The bloodthirster glared mutely at Ghorth, facing oblivion with a stubborn anger.

--​

Hammer and axe clashed together in a contest of strength not seen since the ogre Tyrant Argut Skullcrusher and the Bloodthirster Baaltor battled for forty days and nights in the southern Dark Lands. Grimgor Ironhide put the full force of his warborne body behind each of his swings and found his strength matched by the dark sorcery present in Zhatan the Black. The two titans hit each other with force that would shatter the bones of any other creature but merely glanced off their armor. The thunderous claps of their strikes echoed off the walls and back, drawing the attention of the few still left alive in the charnelhouse of gore that the chamber had become. Even as they cut each other down and bled out from wounds earlier sustained, the two fought on, a whirlwind of violence against an unbreakable rock. More than once their stray blows shattered the walls when they strayed too close, sending shards of rock splintering into their blurring forms. Even their warcries were a force unto their own, Grimgor's shout of "WAAAGH!" competing against Zhatan's litany of hatred he ground out with each blow, accentuated by the screams of the tormented coming from within his mask. "Your bones to dust! Your flesh to ashes! Your organs consumed! Your soul to Hashut!" Zhatan repeated this mantra of domination with each blow he struck against the Black Ork.

[Grimgor Ironhide, Right Fist of Gork vs Zhatan the Black, Lord of Genocide: 44 vs 64]

Their conflict eventually ended as quickly as it had begun. Though breathing with difficulty from having half his ribcage shattered, his armor battered and scratched, Zhatan dropped to one knee, ducking a horizontal slash by Grimgor that nevertheless took his helm off and pivoting to strike the black ork's ankle. Finally its dark emerald flesh succumbed to the burning force contained within the Black Hammer and burst asunder, Grimgor toppling over with a howl of dismay. Zhatan seized the moment, shattering the Warboss' collarbone with an uppercutting strike before clambering onto the ork's chest and swinging down, down, down with the Black Hammer until Grimgor's upper chest and shoulders were composed of little more than singed mush. He paused for just a second, spitting blood out through his shattered teeth, then raised the Hammer for the killing blow.

He never lowered it, as with a sickening crunch Queek Headtaker buried the dagger still bound in his severed tail into the back of his neck. The Lord of Genocide collapsed, twitching as Queek twisted the knife, cutting his spinal cord. The Headtaker pried the Black Hammer out of his unresisting hands and buried it in Grimgor's skull, falling to one knee as he looked about. Somehow, he was the sole survivor of the melee that had occurred. Taking some time to regain his breath, he gingerly pulled the Black Hammer out of the ork's face, wincing as the motion aggravated his still-open wound. He slowly limped to the entrance of the chamber, pausing to extract one of the cleavers in the arm-stumps of the ogre slaughtermaster that had been beheaded by Grimgor. Trophies in hand, he made his way down to the lower level, pale from bloodloss and forever crippled, but alive.

--​

The morale of the orks was broken with the death of their leader. Whatever sense of insane courage had filled them in the rest of their campaign fled them, and many parties of greenskins could be seen leaving the city, heading somewhere else. Many of them still ran screaming around the ruins of Zharr-Naggrund, but fought each other as often as they did the many other foes. The ogres, for their part, saw their job as done and began eating the corpses of the fallen, delighting in the insane plenty they found. The dawi-zharr were mostly dead by this point, the few that lived sedated heavily by the skaven.

Queek reformed the skaven under his command. They had suffered casualties - only a hundred thousand or so remained alive, and while many of the Drillfiends remained alive, only fifty could be corralled, the rest running wild through the city or indiscriminately eating everything they came across, crazed by the taste of foreign blood and flesh. Queek set the majority of his forces to pacifying the city in preperation for the Arch-Rat's arrival, taking three thousand to storm that final room of the temple. They made their way up the forbidding ziggurat without any resistance, avoiding what traps had been unsprung. With the assistance of a Drillfiend, they broke through the titanic doors and made their way inside.

Ghorth was waiting for them.

--​

The Drillfiend broke through the door and began eagerly scrabbling through the hole, only to stop and spasm before going still. The scent of burnt flesh drifted through to the skaven troops. Queek at their head, they made their way in and were paused by the sight presented to them.

The Drillfiend lay halfway into the Temple, missing its top half. Facing them was one solitary dawi-zharr, or what had once been a dawi zharr. It towered over the skaven, and even as they watched it grew taller, flickering upwards like a hungry flame. It had bright red skin and burning black eyes, and the monstrous tusks that jutted out from its mouth were large and serrated. Multiple rows of horns sprouted from its skull, interweaving to form what looked like a gargantuan hat of bone. It had a beard composed of fire, the many strands of flame pouring out from its face interweaving in complex patterns. The being exuded an aura of power that singed the fur of the skaven merely by standing near it. They were unanimously quieted when it spoke, the words setting the very air aflame.

You stand in my temple and deny me proper obeisance? I shall teach you the price for such impertinence, unclean vermin.

It was among them with unholy speed and power, cutting down hundreds with single blows. It consumed the skaven with scorching streams of fire, arms of stone reached up from the earth to squeeze their guts out, their very bodies burst into flame with no apparent provocation. It was no battle, merely rats running and hiding against a nascent god.

Queek was the last standing, spared by some cruel sense of mercy Ghorth still possessed. He loomed over Queek, taking Zhatan's head off his belt. A pity, the titanic avatar of flame boomed. I never had a servant such as him. Still, he is gone. I suppose you think yourself powerful for defeating him? Bah. True power is this, feeble thing. The power to reshape the world as I see fit.

Burning an immense handprint into Queek's fur as he carried him, Ghorth strode to the top of the stairs leading to the top of the Temple. He raised Queek high in his fist, letting him see the destruction wrecked upon Zharr-Naggrund. You have done much damage to my rightful domain, ratman. But it was all for naught; I proved the stronger. I will eat your heart here and restore it all, ten times what it once was. Then the world will not be able to stand before us.

Ghorth's form flickered momentarily. What?

--​

Thanquol relaxed in joy at the sheer opulence of his palanquin. The massive room was stuffed nearly to the brim with the softest skins and various sweetmeats, as well as the Arch-Rat's personal belongings, which necessitated a second palanquin in order to transport the fraction he had decided to bring to the Dark Lands. Noticing an odd twinge in his gut, he clambered to the entrance and poked his head out. "How much longer before we go-go into the Dark Lands?"

"We should enter into them soon-soon, oh exalted Thanqol," came the reply from one of the servants outside. Content with the answer, Thanquol dove back into the mountain of sheets. caring little for the sudden rumble that permeated the tunnel.

--​

[Ghorth's Containment Roll: FATE'S BITCH]

Ghorth the Cruel had a mere instant to comprehend what was about to happen before he blew apart. His very soul exploded, freeing the mulched essence of the thousands of Bloodletters, nine Bloodthirsters, and seas of raw warpstuff the mad sorcerer had ingested. Combined with each other and given flame by Ghorth's soul, they exploded outward in an apocalyptic inferno that quickly grew to swallow all of Zharr-Naggrund. Everything within it was turned to ash, the eruption of Azgorh come again in a titanic detonation that sent shockwaves of heat and ash flying for miles around. Anyone in the Dark Lands could see it, a newborn sun that shone for only a minute, blinding many who were unfortunate enough to be looking in its direction. In the nearby Mountains of Mourne, the vibrations set off many rockslides and avalanches. When the light finally faded, there was nothing left of what had once been Zharr-Naggrund, merely an immense streak of glass across the ground. Not even the complex tunnel network underneath the city had been spared, tongues of white-hot fire jetting through them incinerating anything and everything unfortunate enough to be within the former city. The beds of the River Ruin were exposed for miles around, the waters evaporated by the sheer heat given off by the explosion. Great clouds of toxic fumes wafted their way up to the sky, forming a multicolored pillar miles high. Zharr-Naggrund was gone.

----​

The subjugation of the Dark Lands went quickly after the destruction of their capital. The Daemon's Stump had been overwhelmed by the ogres the Warpfang Bank had hired, and the Tower of Gorgoth and Gates of Zharr were sorely undermanned by Zhatan's recalling the majority of their troops to defend the capital. They fell quickly to the skaven armies that surged through the polluted landscape. Nor did Uzkulak, Place of the Skull, last long. The Arch-Despot Gnawdell led a merciless strike force around its primary gates and slaughtered all within, in no mood to give quarter after all of her forces dedicated to the assault on the Dark City were destroyed. She left the dark labyrinth under the place alone, and turned her attention back to her domain. To the south, Paskrit and Sleek Sharpwit extracted surrender out of the Legion of Azgorh at the Black Fortress, drawing their commander Drazhoath into a cunning ambush and chaining his Bale Taurus Cinderbreath to the ground. With their Legionmaster's life at risk and armies endless beseiging them, the masked warriors of the Legion eventually stood down after having three-fourths their number cut down.

Clan Morbag was relatively untouched by the devastation affecting the rest of the campaign, instead prosecuting a relatively subdued campaign to dominate the Dragon Isles with the assistance of the Navy. The two Council members mostly ignored one another, and though their combined forces were able to seize nominal control of the isles, there were still holdouts, the sparse lizardmen fighting with an unusual ferocity to hold their ground, and voluntarily destroying their spawning pools rather than letting the skaven get their paws on them. It would be a while before the dinosaurs inhabiting the island could be tamed for skaven use without being cut down by a hail of blowdarts first.

Thanquol and the Grey Seers were displeased that Zharr-Naggrund had been wiped off the map. They had been hoping to access the stores of sorcerous lore stored there, which were no doubt bigger than any other of the dwarfthing's strongholds. They were still able to busy themselves fruitfully with what they could glean from Uzkulak and the Black Fortress. Details on binding spirits into objects of the material, a few perserved K'daai that were left deactivated for the moment, Hellcannons, and all the lore that Drazhoath had accumulated in his exile from Dawi-Zharr politics. Cackling was frequently heard echoing out from the Arch-Rat's chambers as he dissected the spells the Drazh-Zharr had left behind.

In the same regard, Skyre and Moulder were delighted to find the prolific samples present in the Dawi-Zharr's work. Warlock-engineers pored over the Magma Cannons in rapturous dazes, and the fleshmasters had unnervingly wide grins at the sight of the Great Tauri and Lammasu that had been captured.

Eshin and Pestilens, meanwhile, did not fare so well. Eshin had lost an embarrassingly large amount of assassins to the very ork Waaagh! they had created, and their protests that some other ork had come in and wrested control from their puppet were brushed aside. Pestilens was the subject of negative scrutiny by the Council, for their promises of an ork-affecting plague had apparently failed to come to fruition. It was only when their stores of captives were inspected and found to contain orks clearly infected with some sort of pox that they were let off the hook, to the confusion of all. One particular plague priest spent many hours staring at her subjects, repeating 'why didn't it work?' over and over.

Mors suffered from the campaign as well, losing a large number of its elites in the assault of Zharr-Naggrund. To Gnawdell's dismay, the USA only ballooned in size, as rumor of their incredible prowess had spread from their time training in the City of Pillars. She often glared resentfully at Paskrit, wondering if the whole debacle was some elaborate scheme to get her discredited.

At long last it was done. A mere four months after Thanquol's proclamation, the Dark Lands had fallen to the Vermintide.

New research topics unlocked: Daemonbinding, Taurus Mutation Tree (Bull Centaur, Great Taurus, Lammasu), Chaos Dwarf War Machines, The Labyrinth Beneath Uzkulak, The Tear Beneath the Daemon's Stump, The Port of Ruin

Territory obtained: Dark Lands, Dragon Isles
-Research will not be available from the Dragon Isles for 1 turn due to guerilla resistance from native lizardmen. Requires no additional dice to resolve.

Hero Unit Lost: Queek Headtaker

Captives gained: Drazhoath the Ashen & Legion of Azgorh. What is to be done with them?

[] Dispose of them - You have no need for such pitiful specimens. Let them die, you care not how.
-[] write-in specific method of disposal, ie given to Moulder, Grey Seers, etc. If no write-in is provided, they will merely be killed and eaten.

[] Torture information out of them - They surely have some secrets they are holding back, and they cannot hold out forever no matter how stubborn they are. (Gain bonuses to researching 2 areas of Chaos Dwarf assets. Kills subjects.)

[] Something else? (Write-in. Use your brains!)

Standby for Interludes

Spoiler: Handy Summary

Eshin assassins gather a Waaagh!!! under an Ork named Gorktoof they manipulate. He gathers most of the Orks in the Dark Lands before he and a large number of Eshin operatives supervising him are killed by Grimgor Ironhide, who takes command of the horde.
--
A Warpfang Bank operative named Slikk Oilfur, among others, gather a large number of ogre tribes to attack the Dark Lands by bribing them with a massive amount of exotic food. Greasus Goldtooth covertly ensures that vassals of his he knows to be plotting rebellion join the attack.
--
Ghorth the Cruel, the second most influential Dawi-Zharr, receives ominous portents. After securing Zharr-Naggrund from any potential threats, he looks outward. Discovering Gorktoof's Waaagh!!!, he attempts to deal with it but is stymied by the efforts of Eshin assassins.
--
Under Crookback Mountain, a Pestilens Plague Priest named Helkic Stain attempts to create a plague that specifically targets Orks. While she does succeed in creating a minor pox that increases their rate of blood loss, her attempt to infect Grimgor's horde with it is deflected by what is presumed to be the intense Waaagh! energy surrounding the crusade.
--
Mors and the Army respond well to the orders to work together, ending up spreading the basics of the USA's training regimen to a large number of Mors clanrats. However, when they are set to head out for the Dark Lands, they find that Skyre and Moulder have been constructing competing projects, each of which fail the assigned objective of quickly reaching the Dark Lands with troops, instead of working together. After chastising by the Underlord, the two clans combine their inventions to create the Drillfiend, a fearsome armoured tubular beast with a drill for a head and metallic transport pods in place of guts to transport hundreds of skaven within.
--
Grimgor and his horde assault Zharr Naggrund, losing five hundred thousand troops in the initial bombardment by the chaos dwarf defenders. They trade fire for a while longer before their trump card arrives, over a hundred looted dawi-zharr trains packed to the brim with explosive squigs. These collectively detonate, destroying the outer wall of Zharr Naggrund entirely. The dawi-zharr fall back before this happens, withdrawing to the second wall and into the city. The secondary wall is soon breached despite an entire legion of armoured slave giants being unleashed upon the orks, and the fighting spills into the city proper.
--
The dawi-zharr conduct ambush warfare on the greenskins, utilizing the complex layout of the city to their advantage. Despite having the defender's advantage and a qualitatively superior force, they are pushed back by weight of numbers. Ghorth and his herald Zhatan the Black, the effective commanders of their people in this time of crisis, admit that they cannot win without a situation changer, which they suspect Astragoth Ironhand, the eldest living dawi-zharr and Ghorth's rival, may be working on, as he vanished just before the Waaagh!!! came to Zharr Naggrund. To that end, they set out to his last known location, a long-abandoned silo in a corner of the city.
--
They go deep underground in the complex that Ghorth recalls was once planned to be used for the design of missiles, searching for Astragoth, and end up unwittingly awakening a fearsome K'daii Destroyer that Ironhand left to guard the complex. It pursues them to an anterior chamber that Ghorth alone can open. Zhatan and twelve of Ghorth's apprentices that have survived thus far fight an epic battle with the creature, eleven of the apprentices killed with ease. Just as it seems Zhatan will be overcome, the last remaining apprentice, Gharlund Blackfist, sacrifices himself to cast the spell Flames of Azgorh, turning into an obsidian statue as a volcanic eruption centred on the K'daai erupts from the ground. Shielded from the blast by a magic amulet, Zhatan takes the opportunity to kill the beast. Ghorth finishes unlocking the door, and hurries to the room just outside of the launch chamber, where Astragoth has written a mocking message explaining that he intends to evacuate the planet and restart their race elsewhere. As Ghorth screams in rage, Astragoth's rocket ascends past the atmosphere and into the eternal night.
--
Reassessing the situation upon returning from their disastrous outing, Ghorth and Zhatan are dismayed. The ogres that Slikk Oilfur hired earlier have arrived at the dark city, and initiating yet further carnage in the streets. Ghorth sequesters himself in the Temple of Hashut and delves into any tome of lore he can find, hoping to find a way to preserve his domain.
--
Just as the various factions are being worn down, the Skaven force of three hundred thousand Mors and Army troopers arrive via Drillfiend, which promptly start running around drilling through buildings looking to eat anything they can find. The Skaven forces initiate a lightning strike on the central pyramid of Zharr Naggrund, hoping to decapitate the dawi zharr and let the orks and ogres fight each other long enough for the greater armies of Skavendom to arrive. Sensing an opportunity, both Grimgor and the unofficial leader of the ogre forces, the Great Maw prophet Skrag the Slaughterer, both make an assault on the pyramid as well, dragging as much of their own forces as they can muster behind them. The clash is fierce, a meat grinder with massive casualties on all sides. The leaders of the respective sides, Queek Headtaker, Grimgor Ironhide, Skrag, and Zhatan end up clashing just outside of the Temple of Hashut with their various retinues. As Grimgor and Skrag battle with the force of titans, Queek assaults Zhatan, who has been kitted out with the most potent artifacts the dawi-zharr could bring to bear. Queek initially holds the upper hand in their duel, which is quickly revealed to be a fakery by Zhatan, who rips off Queek's tail, leaving him helpless. Before he can finish the skaven off, he is assaulted by Grimgor, who has killed Skrag. The two have a battle that shakes the room, culminating with Zhatan barely defeating the fearsome ork before being stabbed in the neck from behind by Queek, the only survivor of the melee.
--
The morale of the orks, dawi-zharr, and ogres is broken by the death of their leaders, and the skaven begin mopping up. Their fortunes take a turn for the worse when they break into the temple of Hashut and discover that Ghorth has somehow transformed himself into a nascent god (by consuming a colossal number of daemons). He casually kills all the skaven present save for Queek, who he gloats to as he looks out at his shattered city, stating his plans to rebuild it ten times greater.
--
Thanquol crosses the border into the Dark Lands.
--
Ghorth abruptly loses control of his accumulated power and explodes, annihilating the entire city and the various tunnels beneath it in an apocalyptic fireball. All that remains is a gigantic glass streak.
--
The skaven annex the remainder of the Dark Lands with ease. Mors captures the northern stronghold of Uzkulak, and the Army manages to capture the sorceror Drazhoath the Ashen and his army of Infernal Guard at the Black Fortress. Clan Horripila, assisted by Vrisk Ironscratch and the Navy, capture the Dragon Isles, though the feral lizardmen fight with troublesome tenaciousness, delaying the acquisition of dinosaurs to tame.
--
Four months after Thanquol initially proclaimed them the target of Skaven aggression, the Dark Lands are completely taken over.

 

[Xantalos]

AN: Never mind, I apparently write faster and more consistently when injured than not.

--

Three months after Thanquol is elected Underlord

A man once known as Diedrick Kastner came to the base of a mountain and knew his trial was at last complete. He sighed as he felt the weight of decades, or perhaps centuries or even millennia slide off his shoulders. Here, at the peak of this one insignificant mountain in the World's Edge Mountains, he would at last shed the inner turmoil that had driven him all this way. The gods would lift his humanity from him and grant him freedom.

All that they required was the world. A small price.

Diederick's colossal figure vaulted off his steed, an equine shadow of fire and hate that stood taller than any mortal horse. His black armor burned imprints of his boots into the stone as he landed. He laid a gauntlet on the daemonic beast's flank as it chuffed. "I must ascend alone, Dorghar. Find me once I have attained the Crown." In response the hellfiend merely huffed dismissively and stamped its foot, disappearing in a blaze of warpfire. Diederick's eyes narrowed through the jet-black eyeslits of his helmet. He had broken the Steed of the Apocalypse to his will many decades before, yet the beast always seemed contemptuous of him, as if obeying his commands was only a passing fancy. It did not matter so long as the thing obeyed him, however. Shaking his head, Diederick turned on his heel and began trudging up the rocky slope of the nameless mountain, the heavy thudding of his footsteps the only sound in the lonely valley it sat in at the end of the world.

--

An imposing figure encased wholly in black armor ascended a mountain. His footfalls were like earthquakes in miniature, the plate itself weighing more than most men. Yet the figure's breath was no more labored than if he were slumbering in a downy bed. A baleful eye hung from a metallic cord around his neck, the iris darting around and changing colors with a blurring malevolence. Slung on his back in a sheath filled with blood was a screaming sword that burned with the rage of one of Khorne's greatest champions trapped within. Upon his brow was seared the eight-pointed star of Chaos, the mark of the gods visible even from within his helm. His was a figure made to end the world, and he walked up the slope of a nameless mountain forgotten by everyone.

From the base it did not look like an imposing obstacle - it was not a high mountain, its peak was clearly visible far below the clouds, and it lacked any steep cliffs or rocky falls that could potentially pose an inconvenience to one such as Diederick. Were it any ordinary mountain, the black-armored warrior would have ascended the peak in a matter of hours.

He walked for four days and nights up the slope, the peak growing no closer. He looked back just once, and saw nothing but the slope of the mountain stretching downwards into infinity. He quickly snapped his gaze back to the peak, away from such an impossible sight. He walked onward, even as the air grew thicker and more foul as he progressed upward in contrary to all physical laws. Diederick was unflinching even as the air took on a pungent odor that burned his nasal passages. Eventually the unchanging slope took on new form quickly enough that the warrior was slightly startled. Instead of the everpresent peak above him he stood on the edge of an endless mire of rot that gave off a stench foul enough to kill any mortal man. Diederick was forced back a step by the sheer force of the smell, but no more. He steeled himself against it, and took comfort in that Be'lakor had not steered him wrong. Make your way up the nameless mountain, the ancient daemon prince had told him, And the gods will test you. You will pass their tests, and reach the peak of the mountain. Your goal lies therein.

Diederick strode into the mire of Nurgle without hesitation, the congealed muck clinging to his armor, trying to sink him down into the murk. The smell was omnipresent here, a scent that burned the flesh hidden beneath the armor of Morkar. He wrenched one leg out of the sucking grip the bog exerted upon him and took a step forward, only for the mire to sink his leg knee-deep as soon as he planted his foot. Eyes set in grim fatalism, he pulled his other leg out of the sludge and sunk it into the murk ahead of his other foot. In this manner he slowly, inoxerably made his way into the mire that stretched out endlessly before him.

--

Wrench. Step. Sink. Wrench. Step. Sink. This was the rythmn that defined Diederick's journey through Nurgle's realm. He made no attempt to find out where he was going, for the mire spread out endlessly in all directions. The air grew yet more foul as he went further in, enough to lend the air itself a foul greenish cast. All around him was squelching, bubbling, and the release of yet more stench, the process of decay bloated to a trillion times what it was in the mortal realm. He could dimly see the outlines of monstrous cities in the distance, their skeletons eternally rotting yet not toppling over. They never grew any closer, nor did there seem to be any other inhabitants of this place. There was only him, the muck, and the stench.

He tried to keep passage of time by counting the seconds, though they seemed to grow longer as he progressed deeper into the fetid swamp. Minutes stretched into years, days passed by in seconds, and hours took centuries to elapse. He could not be sure whether he had been treading through the place for seven seconds or seven eons. He kept walking forward.

His progress became more and more difficult as he continued. The air grew more foul, the murk clung to him ever more, and at times the atmosphere was so hostile Diederick could feel his eyes being eroded in their sockets from the sheer toxicity. He was assailed seven times by what could only be described as plagues; it was impossible to tell if they came all at once or centuries apart. First he was afflicted by a fever so intense his skin began to slacken as if it were going to fall off his bones and his eyes shriveled up in their sockets as the heat in his body began drying them out. He continued walking with a bloody-minded determination, and it was joined by a roiling from within his body as his gut rebelled against him. Meals he had eaten centuries before frothed up from within his stomach as the foulest acid, dissolving his lips and teeth and tongue. The whole of his digestive tract was filled with horrible cramps as the reflux ate slowly away at him from within. Still he walked. Next he was afflicted by a gruesome pox, a layer of boils the size of eyes carpeting his skin, bursting, and regrowing painfully, leaving him festering in pus inside his armor. Still he walked, the endless rhythm continuing. Wrench. Sink. Step.

Diederick's lungs filled up with blood, mucus, and other unnameable substances. A swarm of flies enveloped him and laid their eggs in his flesh, the larvae eating their way through him to freedom, laying yet more eggs in the crevices they left behind. He could feel them crawling through his muscles as he forced himself onward. Some sort of fungus began to sprout within his skin, spore caps poking out of every orifice, clogging what little breath he had left and draining his vitality with supernatural force. Still he drove himself on, more with his will than his body. Yet all this was merely a prelude to the Rot.

His diseased flesh began to bloat within his armor, pus seeping out of every crevice. Diederick could feel it as his flesh began to eat itself alive, rotting inside his armor. His body began to decay though he was still living, slow enough that he could feel every muscle fibre turn to muck. It began in his extremities, his fingers and toes, and spread up his limbs as he walked, the plague taking its time. It made its way to his torso and slowly spread upward, infecting all his organs and turning them into unstable mush that rotted infintisemally slowly. It seeped upward, into his heart and up through his spinal cord into his head, his brain slowly decaying inside his softening skull.

As his body rotted, so did his spirit, for the twisted genius of Nurgle's Rot was that it was not wholly a physical ailment, but also mental and spiritual, a philosophical affliction. His iron will wasset upon by acidic tides of self-doubt and despair. Hungry thoughts swirled around inside his head, whispering incessantly to him.

You're not going to succeed​

aren't you tired

It's useless​

just give up

nurgle loves you even if you fail​

no use trying​

what am I doing

lay down and rest​

​

​

Diederick's inoxerable steps forward faltered, then halted. His head was spinning and he did not see the muck in front of him. His gaze was fixed upon the past, upon all of the things he had done to get to this point. He saw for the first time how meaningless it all was. What was his anger and spite in the face of the end of everything?

His knees buckled and he fell onto all fours, head bowed down. Unmentionable fluids dripped out of his eyeslits.

There was no use in continuing on. No use in anything at all.

He wrenched his hands out of the decaying muck and raised himself to one knee. His bones cracked inside his armor from the effort.

He was going to die and anything he did would be forgotten.

He pulled his other knee out of the bog and struggled to stand. His heart ceased beating, clogged up with pus.

He was doomed to meaninglesness. His body was all but dead.

He stood up and continued walking on nontheless. He gave himself no choice.

--

It may have been seven steps later, or seven eternities. But between one step and the next he was no longer in the unending mire and back upon the slope of the mountain. His armor was free of filth, and no contagion touched his flesh.

The man who had been Diederick Kastner continued upward.

--

Three Days Upward

The man in black armor stood at the entrance to a labyrinth of crystal. Its infinite facets shone in every color there was and some that were not. The walls stretched out as far as he could see to his left and right, twenty feet high and twisting on themselves even as he watched, shifting their composition. His sword stirred briefly in its bloody sheath, faintly sensing the presence of its bitter foe.

Seeing no other recourse, Diederick stepped forth into Tzneetch's labyrinth.

Instantly he regretted this decision, as he found himself hopelessly lost from the first step. Somehow the labyrinth looked completely different than it had just a few seconds ago, and space warped oddly inside its multifaceted structure, allowing the pathway to split off in impossible directions - curving upward while remaining level, staircases that led him upward while he walked down them, pathways that had geometry that shifted erratically from second to second. There were sections where he had to jump from platform to platform suspended above a swirling vortex that led to the reverse side of the platforms, make his way through intricate networks of pipes that curled in upon themselves to infinity, and other noneuclidean impossibilities.

He learned quickly not to look too closely at the walls, for upon closer inspection of their shimmering facets each one showed a vision - some of the past where only one inconsequential event was changed in some way, and others where almost everything was a distorted rendition of itself, where Sigmar was a crippled ape with three eyes and the dwarves were fifty feet tall and made entirely of fingernails. Some showed bloodshot, insane eyes looking desperately back at him, others revealed glimpses of immense sleeping horrors deeper in the labyrinth, and still others showed things entirely disconnected to the world at all, strange visions of tiny sprites made of shadow that spirited those near sleep off to a realm of eternal darkness and pigs that did nothing but be eternally consumed by their own body parts, which were upon closer inspection, more pigs. None showed the future.

He met many in the eternally twisting passageways of the labyrinth - those who, like him, had entered into the labyrinth and were now trapped with no way out. All, unlike him, had been driven insane from the impossibilities contained within the maze. Many were reduced to incoherency, while others had spent subjective millennia attempting to deivse the secrets of the maze. They had created elaborate systems for keeping track of how the maze's passageways shifted, all of which were meaningless in their complexity, for the labyrinth was impossible to predict by mortal minds.

Diederick wandered in Tzeentch's labyrinth for an indeterminable amount of time before he determined that it was pointless trying to make sense of it. He closed his eyes and instead wandered wherever his feet took him, for relying on his senses would accomplish nothing. He had about as good an idea of where he was going with his eyes closed as open, after all.

He wandered for a short time like this. Whenever he came upon a split in the path he took whichever one he felt inclined toward without thought. Two upward turns, two down. A left turn, followed by a right, followed by a left, followed by a right. He opened his eyes on an urge from his gut and found himself once more at the entrance to the maze. Stepping through, he found himself back on the slope of the mountain, heading upward to the everpresent peak. He merely shrugged and continued on his path. His steps quickened slightly in anticipation.

--

Two days later, the next test of the gods began.

It manifested initially as a slight scent drifting on the air, a faint aroma reminiscent of what a great feast smells like to a starving man. It slowly intensified, taking on other aspects, becoming infinitely more complex as it grew stronger. A woman's perfume, the scent of burning flesh, of the air after a rainstorm, the venom of a Khuresh python, the aroma of a happy home, and an infinitely larger variety of scents blended together, clashing together yet cooperating in some chaotic harmony. Diederick's skin prickled as it washed over him.

It was soon joined by a chorus of heavenly sounds, slowly rising from the background of his mind and swelling to overcome his thoughts. It was the distilled essence of every singer who had ever lived, what perfection would sound could it speak. It tugged at his body, driving his thoughts out together with the scent of perfection. Sibilant voices appeared in his mind, encouraging him to stop, to stay and enjoy them. He felt ghostly hands running over his skin inside his armor, leaving lines of subtle fire across his skin as they roamed. He flushed as though he had a fever, his body induced to be hypersensitive by Slaanesh's influence. His movements became strained, his willpower tested by the sibilant song of the god of joy. He kept walking up the mountain.

Soon She Who Thirst's next temptation revealed itself. Beginning as mere flickers of smoke in the corners of his vision, six capering daemonettes appeared, dancing all around him, laying their hands and other appendages upon him, attempting to look into his eyes. Diederick steadfastly kept his gaze off them, never seeing more than a stray arm. They spoke in siren tones, promising him unending ecstasy if he only stayed with them. Any mortal man would have been unable to resist their dulcet promises, for they were six of Slaanesh's 666,666 chosen handmaidens. But bodily pleasures had lost their appeal for Diederick lifetimes ago, and when one of the daemonettes grew impatient and took his head in its hands, shoving its tongue down his throat in a grotesque parody of a kiss, he bit the tentacular appendage off at the base and spat it in the daemonette's face. He continued up the mountain, heedless of their joyous cries of rage behind him.

The Prince of Excess was not done with him yet, however. There appeared a figure on the path ahead of him, indistinct at first but rapidly gaining definition. An incredibly tall and muscular barbarian, an emperor's crown upon his brow and a golden warhammer in his fist. He was fair-haired and blue-eyed, and his bearded features shone with an ethereal clarity.

"Hello, Diederick," spoke Sigmar of the Reik.

Diederick stared, stopped in his tracks by the presence of the Ur-Emperor. This was the god of his birthplace, the defier of darkness, he who's name he had served for many years as a Templar -

"No," he uttered, and continued walking toward the peak. "I renounced you."

Sigmar impassively watched him approach, and halted him once more by placing a gigantic hand upon his shoulder. "It doesn't have to be this way. Fate does not bind you as tightly as you believe."

The god's words stung Diederick, and he angrily shrugged the emperor's hand off of him. "You lie! You lie by your very being here, you lie by denying your followers the truth of the world, you lie by your very existence! You're nothing more than a lie made up by weak men in order to hide from reality!" He furiously strode away, the honeyed tune of Slaanesh intensifying as he marched up the mountain, the sound only aggravating him more. He was stopped yet again by Sigmar, the Unberogen god overtaking him in but two strides.

"You always have the choice to turn back," he explained, his expression seemingly saddened by Diederick's refusal to see reason. "Your choices are always and forever your own, no matter what any who belong to the Dark Gods may say. You say you have renounced me, renounced your name and everything that you once were, but I can see that you have not. They are merely hiding in a dark corner in your heart. All you have to do is see that and you can still be forgiven. You bear the arms and armaments of monsters, but you still possess the heart and soul of a man."

The god-king approached Diederick once more, clasping both of his shoulders and looking deep into his eyes. "You could have been the greatest of all the scions of the Empire if you had stayed. You could be that still if you turn back now. Let the world endure, see this oncoming storm of Chaos beaten back like all those before it, and you will know peace, Diederick. Continuing on your path will only bring you pain."

There was silence for a long time afterward, as man and god looked each other in the eye.

"How dare you."

Sigmar took his hands off of Diederick's shoulders and stepped back, staring solemnly at him.

"Where were your words of forgiveness when I got my squire killed by beastmen? When I read the prophecies of Necrodomo and burned down the church I grew up in? Where were you when I kneeled before your golden statue in Altdorf and begged for a sign? No," he ranted as he again began walking forward, "You don't exist. The fact that you only try to dissuade me now is proof enough of that. Your empire is built off a falsehood, and I will end the charade that this world is anything more than the plaything of the gods."

Sigmar sighed and stood aside, disappointment written upon his face. "If that is the path you choose. We will meet each other again soon, Diederick. Do not expect me to be so forgiving then." The Ur-Emperor began walking down the mountain's endless slope, but paused momentarily. "You will soon recieve an opportunity that I would murder an entire people to get, Diederick. Don't waste it." And with that the god was gone, striding off into the mists of infinity.

Diederick strode onward, his mind blazing with righteous fury from the sheer hypocrisy of the thing's words. He knew rationally that it couldn't have been Sigmar, that what the people of the Empire worshiped as Sigmar was merely an echo chamber of their own bleated thoughts, that Slaanesh had no doubt sent a phantom to strike at his will. It still didn't stop him from churning in cold anger.

Many other figures from his past life appeared to him, people had once been happy to know. The priest that had raised him, Heironymous Dagobert, Sieur Kastner, his knightly mentor and namesake, Nils, his fellow squire while in Kastner's service, Emil, his own short-lived squire. All of them begged him to reconsider and turn back while he still could. Their pleas incensed Diederick, and with the music of Slaanesh playing in his ears he unsheathed his sword and cut through them until he could not smell the scent of She Who Thirsts over all the blood. He decapitated people he had only known for a day and those he had walked beside for years, his blade swimming through them, an evergrowing crowd of people, the faces of everyone he had ever known begging him to turn back. In a blinding rage, he murdered them all until only one remained.

She was a slender woman, who had fair skin and brown hair; plain to some, but marvelously detailed to him. Her features were delicate and slim, more befitting a goddess than a mortal. She was still clad in the clothes she had worn the last time he'd seen her, a relatively simple dress with a flour-stained apron overtop of it. She'd been getting their maid Helga to teach her how to bake, he recalled.

"Selma," he breathed to the face of his dead wife.

"Diederick," she replied, face solemn.

Time passed, the two staring at each other unwavering. They had met each other in one of his investigations into corruption in Nuln; she, as the last known person in contact with Diederick's target, a suspected cultist of Tzeentch, was likely to be in danger from the cult's agents. Several dizzying escapades and one burned-down cult headquarters later, they were romantically involved, and kept in contact over the next several years even when Diederick's duties drew him away. He eventually asked her father, a wealthy merchant, permission to marry her and obtained his blessing with a minimum of trouble. The two of them had lived a happy life together, until he killed her and burned their house to the ground in a fit of nihilistic insanity after having the truth of the world revealed to him.

"Why, Dieder? What possessed you to destroy our life?"

she's not real she's not real she's not real he repeated to himself frantically, but words slipped out of his mouth nontheless. "Selma, understand, please. The world was revealed to me, in all its truth and all its horrific inevitability. My entire life was revealed as a lie. It was ... I was irrevocably fated to become what I am now. I saw it in the books written by Necrodomo the insane. The gods are a lie, a mere echo chamber composed of the worship of their followers. Do you understand what that means? We were slaves to ourselves, our own slavish whims manifested in what we thought was our god. Everyone in the world, from the elves in Ulthuan to the mutants we cast out of our homes as babes, are slaves to the gods we ourselves make by merely existing. Living, loving, birthing children and teaching them to be good followers of Sigmar like we planned ... it all feeds into the same cycle. Even the afterlife is a lie, the gardens of Morr a sham. When this was revealed to me ... I couldn't stand it. If the world was composed of a lie, and I was fated to end it, who am I to deny it? It will be a mercy."

Diederick looked up from his manic pacing at the apparition with the face of his wife. "I don't know why I'm talking to you. You're not my wife, my wife died long ago by my hand. It ... it was necessary." Be'lakor had convinced him of the necessity of it all those years ago. If he was to purge the false Empire from the face of the earth he could not afford to have people he cared about still living in it. He could no longer recall the words the ancient daemon prince had used, but the message behind them was still there. It must be, for if he failed then he was merely a weak man who had succumbed to the temptation of madness. He must be right.

Selma's face was a rictus of confused terror. "Diederick, I don't know what you're saying. I ... I remember ... screaming, and fire and blood, but that doesn't mean I'm dead. I'm here, Dieder! Please, I know that if you stop what you're doing now, everything can go back to the way things were, before all this. We, we can go back to Reikland, my father has properties far from the city we can live in, we can forget everything that happened, forget Sigmar and the gods of chaos and all the gods if that's what you want. We'll still have each other, Diederick." Her face was streaked with tears.

The man gripped the Slayer of Kings hard enough that the metal hilt creaked. "Don't call me that."

"Don't call you what? Diederick? I am your wife, what else am I supposed to call you?"

"You are not my wife and that is not my name."

Selma's eyes flashed in an achingly familiar way that she'd had when angry. "Dieder, you're being foolish. This is your chance to turn back! If it's your destiny to end the world like you say, then your future will only hold misery for you, won't it? There's no reason you have to do this, Diederick."

"Stop calling me that."

"Stop calling you by your name? You are still the man I married, are you not? Diederick Kastner, a pious brave man ashamed of the rape of his mother that led to his birth? Templar of Sigmar, faked his last name in order to get his knight's wife to sponsor him? Loves his god, his empire and his wife? That Diede-"

She was cut off as with a choking roar, the man plunged his sword through her gut, the blade greedily drinking of her blood. She looked in disbelief down at the entry point of the sword, then up into his crazed eyes. She managed one more word, reaching with a shaking hand towards his helm. "Dieder..."

The name incesed him, and he drew his blade from her gut and struck her head from her shoulders, bellowing, "THAT IS NOT MY NAME! I AM ARCHAON AND I AM THE HERALD OF THE WORLD'S END!" He fell upon her corpse with a savagery unmatched by most Khornate reavers, hacking his wife's body into meaningless bits. He looked up from the spattered gore to behold her head looking at him with an empty expression. The sight of her eyes staring soullesly at him drained his rage from him in a sudden burst, and he felt himself numb as he processed what he had done. Regardless of whether she had just been an apparition fabricated by the prince of pleasure or not, he had killed his wife in cold blood. There was no going back for him.

Archaon strode up the mountain, oblivious to any other temptations Slaanesh threw his way.

--

Archaon strode up the mountain for a day before he came at last to the peak. There stood there a grand stone temple, hundreds of feet high and adorned with images of daemons tormenting helpless mortals without end. The building itself had a malavolence to it that lent it a sense of supreme self-assurance; it had stood for several thousand years and could last for eternity. It stood on the other side of a smooth plateau, and as Archaon stepped onto the glassy surface the skies turned red. With a thunderous bellow reminiscent of a colossal wolf's howl, a flaming meteor of blood rocketed down from the sky and crashed into the ground fifty feet from Archaon. The crimson figure stood up, towering over the black-armored champion, grasping a massive double-bladed axe in one hand and a gargantuan bullwhip in the other. Molten eyes flared under black bull's horns as the Bloodthirster of Khorne spoke in a voice like murder.

KHORNE SEES NO POINT IN FOOLISH TRIALS OF THE WILL, HE WHO WOULD BE NAMED EVERCHOSEN! BEST I, KA'BANDHA, IN THE FORGE OF BATTLE OR BE CAST INTO OBLIVION LIKE SO MANY BEFORE YOU! PREPARE YOURSELF, HUMAN!

The beast threw back its head and roared to the skies, sparks exuding from its mouth. The earth shook from the volume and the stink of blood filled the air. Any other man would have been driven into a frenzy, but for the man who had been Diederick Kastner it was like he had ice in his veins. He dispassionately unsheathed the Slayer of Kings and took up a ready stance, awaiting the daemon's charge.

He did not have to wait long as Khorne's chosen dashed forward quicker than thought, axe coming down with a crushing blow. Archaon ducked under the strike, hewing as Ka'Bandha's ankle, only to have his sword snatched away by the clutches of the Bloodthirster's whip. Before he could move any further, the daemon's knee rocketed forward and struck him in the face, sending him flying back a great distance. It was only by chance that he managed to grap hold of the edge of the plateau to keep from falling back down the mountain. As he arduously lifted himself back up, head ringing from the thunderous blow, the Slayer of Kings clattered to the ground in front of him. He heard Ka'Bandha's voice echo out once more, twisted with contempt.

THIS IS ALL THAT YOU ARE, SO-CALLED CHAMPION? YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF MY AXE OR THE SKULL THRONE. TURN BACK AND FIND A MENIAL EXISTENCE WITH THE MORTALS YOU ABANDONED.

Archaon rose to his feet, one hand gripping the eye on a chain around his throat until it began glowing in multifaceted colors. "I think not, daemon," he replied in an even tone. "Turning back is not an option for me anymore."

Ka'Bandha snorted in disgust. THEN DIE UNDER MY HOOVES, WEAKLING! The daemon blurred forward, axe raised high.

But the Eye of Sheerian showed Archaon the truth; the axe was a decoy strike. The bloodthirster intended to tear his legs off with his whip and spear him through the heart with his left horn. He preempted this, ducking and rolling toward and under the incoming axe, Slayer of Kings whirring downward to cut through the retaliatory whip strike. A shard of magically supercool ice manifested in his off hand, which he plunged into the small of Ka'Bandha's back. The daemon roared in pain and hatred, and whirled around with blinding speed, ebony hoof raised high to crush the upstart into the ground. Archaon interrupted his strike once again, sidestepping and stabbing upward into Ka'Bandha's thigh as his hoof impacted the ground hard enough to splinter the stone. The Bloodthirster, now bleeding black ichor from two wounds, ground his teeth in rage and threw himself into the fight with tripled vigor.

Their battle was like that of two gods striving against each other. Each of Ka'Bandha's blows split the stone which it struck and left the very air hissing in their passage. The bloodthirster fought with a fury beyond the wildest beasts and a skill surpassing the greatest mortal warriors. No man could have stood against it and lived. But Archaon had the blessing of all four Chaos Gods, granting him unnatural speed and strength, and the Eye of Sheerian's powers, even incomplete as they were, let him forsee all of Ka'Bandha's strikes before they were made. He slipped around them by mere inches, the Slayer of Kings tracing cruel arcs through daemonic flesh in the fleeting instants between Ka'Bandha's sweeping blows. In stark contrast to the daemon, who bellowed with incomprehensible rage as the battle went on, not a sound escaped the black helm of the prospective Everchosen.

The struggle between the two went on for what must have been eternities. A blood-red sun rose and set eight times, with Ka'Bandha growing more and more frenzied with each repetition, but time was meaningless in the realm of chaos. Ultimately the signs of their struggle faded, the gouges in the ground sealing up and the scorch marks caused by Archaon's magic disappearing. They fought on an endless plain of glass, with four gargantuan figures looking on from the horizons.

Eventually the battle ended as quickly as it had begun. For all his unholy vitality, Ka'Bandha grew weary from the numerous wounds inflicted upon him. His motions slowed by a mere fraction, which was all Archaon needed. He unleashed the power of the daemon trapped within his sword for a fraction of a second, a terrifying howl of insane desperation echoing out across the endless battleground as the Slayer of Kings glowed with a blinding red light and split Ka'Bandha's axe in two. Effortlessly sidestepping the daemon's lunge, he grasped the writhing end of the bloodthirster's own whip and wrapped it tight around the daemon's throat, leaping upon his back and pulling with all his unnatural strength until the daemon at last succumbed and collapsed.

He strode off the decaying corpse of Ka'Bandha and walked across the suddenly small plateau to the small shrine that had been the first statue erected in worship to chaos in the world. It was a simple thing, comprised of plain stone with the eight-pointed star crudely etched into the foundations. It was barely large enough to accomodate Archaon's armored bulk, and looked fragile enough that it was a surprise it had lasted a day, to say nothing of millenia. Upon a crude stone throne sat the shrine's sole inhabitant, a dusty skeleton with a simple iron circlet upon its brow.

"At last," Archaon ground out, and strode forward to claim what was his.

Of course it wasn't that simple. The shadows in the corners of the room pulsed, and before Archaon had taken a step forward the shrine was plunged into utter darkness deeper even than that within the temple in which he had recieved his Mark. He felt nothing, but heard claws settling down on his pauldrons, and he looked upward to where he knew Be'lakor would be.

"You have no idea how long I have waited for this, my seed," the daemon prince hissed, his voice seeming to seep out of everywhere in the shadow. "The gods denied this prize to me in ages long past, but I found a way around them. Now we together will fulfil our ambition, and end this world to move on."

The darkness coleasced into multiple streams of perfect shadow that flowed into the skeleton on the throne. It stood up, the shadows giving it the likeness of a man; the face was unclear but his eyes shone through, piercing and ancient. "Take the crown from my brow," it urged with the voice of a million orators throughout the ages. "Let me into your soul, my son. With my knowledge of the ages and your god-given gifts we will cast the world back into the abyss, and damn the gods if they attempt to stop us from doing as we please. It is everything you could wish for - an end to the lie of the world, an end to the pain of betraying everything you were, an end to your humanity. Just let me take control."

Archaon stared at the ebony figure standing in front of him for but a few seconds before smashing it to bits with one crushing punch. "This is my destiny alone, and my soul is my own. Father or not, I'll turn you to dust should you oppose me, Be'lakor."

The shadows screamed at his retort, rushing at him, gushing through the holes in his plate, through his eyeslits and darting into his body through his eyesockets and the pores of his skin. They flowed into his spirit, attempting to overwhelm him and possess his body and mind, and Archaon could hear his daemonic sire screaming into his mind as he did so.

UNGRATEFUL WRETCH! ALL THAT YOU ARE, YOU OWE TO ME! YOUR MOTHER WOULD HAVE ABORTED YOU A THOUSAND TIMES OVER HAD I NOT STOPPED HER! YOU THINK YOU'D HAVE SURVIVED YOUR FIRST DAY OF SQUIREDOM WITHOUT MY HELP?! A FUCKING HORSE BIT YOUR THROAT OUT! EVERY PART OF YOUR LIFE I ARDUOUSLY SHAPED TO GET YOU THIS FAR! AND NOW, AFTER UNTOLD EONS AND AGES WHERE THE GODS MOCK ME, YOU'RE GOING TO DENY ME? I THINK NOT! YOUR BODY WILL WITHSTAND MY PRESENCE LONG ENOUGH TO CRUSH THE MORTAL PLANE OF EXISTENCE, AND YOUR SOUL SHALL BE CAST INTO OBLIVION!

Archaon struggled against the Master of Darkness with every fibre of his being, his iron will being put to its greatest test as the first daemon prince attempted to overthrow his soul. It was a battle of wills, the primodial selfishness of Be'lakor contending against Archaon's loathing and hatred. It was a credit to Archaon's strength of conviction that he was not obliterated instantly, but he could not hold out forever against the daemon prince. His mental battle lines were slowly ground back until eventually he was on the cusp of being overwhelmed. Be'lakor swelled in triumph, and it was in that moment that the gods snatched victory from his jaws as they had countless times before.

There was a single instant for the daemon prince to utter "No-" before he was wrenched out of Archaon's body by unseen forces, unwillingly kneeling before the Everchosen. His face was twisted in a rictus of hatred, and his shaking arms slowly scooped up the Crown of Domination from where it had toppled on the floor. "Three-Eyed Archaon,", he intoned in a voice that was not his own, "You have proven yourself worthy of the choosing of the gods. Take now this crown, and with it dominate your allies and strike fear into your foes. Be known as Everchosen, and end the world of mortals as was decreed at the beginning." He bent his head downward and offered up the circlet to Archaon, who wasted no time in plucking it from the daemon's hands and placing it upon his brow.

His body was immediately wracked with an immense surge of chaos energy, swelling his frame with power as he threw back his head and reveled in it. He could ... feel the presence of every creature of chaos near the mountain. With a mere thought their wills were enslaved to his, and they came. This was true power!

Archaon made his way out of the shrine to find the mountain vanished; instead the formless expanse of the chaos wastes stretched out before him. And standing in the wastes was an army. A force which seemed almost beyond number, a sea of chaos armored warriors stretching out to the horizon, Khornates standing side by side with followers of Tchar and Slaanesh and Nurgle with no complaint. An army fit to end the earth, he thought.

There was one last thing to do before he addressed his army as Everchosen, however. The Eye of Sheerian had prophetic powers that rivaled the greatest sages, but its full potential could only be unlocked when placed within the Crown of Domination. He plucked the artifact from its chain, the metal snapping without any effort on his part, and set it into the indentation in the circlet. This triggered a transformation - the Crown and his helm fused, and Archaon stumbled as the crown stretched into a bone-white helm with two immense horns arcing upward. The Eye was set into the helm, at a point just above his other two, and it shone with baleful light, illuminating countless possible futures to the Everchosen. The gods spoke to him then, and Archaon straightened up, enlightened as to the true scope of his task. Men, dwarfs, elves, lizardmen, ogres, orks, even those such as the fimir and the godspawn of Ind ... he could see all their destinies converging into one apocalyptic confrontation. He must emerge victorious.

"Be'lakor," he spoke, for he knew the master of shadows was still nearby, "There is a task that only you can accomplish. Take what daemons the gods will gift to you and go to the southernmost continent. Of all the enemies of the gods present in the mortal realms, only the lizardmen pose a significant threat if not quashed early. My own destiny lies in crushing the mortal realms, and you only failed in your task to bring the lizardfolk to heel by mere happenstance. They are weak enough now that you will prevail. Now go," he bade, and the Crown forced the daemon prince to obey. Archaon turned to his armies, his mantle of power swelling but discontent still in his heart. He was still not free of his internal turmoil, no matter how far he had come. An impossibly small part of him still felt guilt for all he had done. Despite all his accomplishments, he was still human.

He dispersed orders to men and daemons alike with a dismissive air while in the recesses of his mind a voice spoke to him, quietly whispering sweet sentiments of betrayal and mutual obliteration.

--

Across the world, the winds of chaos were felt blowing like they never had before. The Chaos Wastes swelled with power and expanded, hungrily consuming ground as they inched forward. Beastmen population worldwide exploded as the call of the gods was felt, and warherds eagerly mustered. Vast thunderstorms cropped up across the mountain ranges of the world, and showers of lightning illuminated roaring dragon ogres awakening from their slumber of eons. Every creature even slightly attuned to the warp could feel it in their soul.

The End Times had come, and it rode in on a storm of chaos.

 

[Xantalos]

Year 7040 by Dwarf Reckoning

The Everpeak was the heart of the dwarfen realm of Karaz Ankor. The most ancient and well-established hold in the entire Everlasting Realm, it was carved out of the heart of a mountain and extended far underneath it, halls burrowing outward for miles down and outward. It held more wealth in its vaults alone than some continents, and it was home to more ancient treasures and archives of lore than all the other dwarfen realms combined. It was home to the fearsome High King of the dwarfs, Thorgrim Grudgebearer, when he was not on one of his frequent campaigns to wrest the empire of the dwarfs from its slow decline. Now was one of those rare times, and Thorgrim was secluded in his opulent chambers hollowed out just under the peak of the mountain.

He was not happy, as was often the case when he came to Karaz-a-Karak and saw what awaited him there.

--​

The High King brooded in chambers that eclipsed the wealth of most cities. He stared angrily at priceless treasures recovered from long-fallen holds, grumbled at the meticulously preserved heads of some of the greatest enemies of dwarfkind, and attempted to bore a hole through the Phoinex Crown of the elgi with his eyes alone. He was a dwarf facing the inevitable, refusing to bow aside from the pressure that fate had set upon him, though he knew that without some unseen solution he was doomed to break.

I am bound by oath! he thought as he thunderously stacked hundreds of gold coins into a small pyramid, the motion more a gesture to calm himself than a deliberate action. I swore before the entire Karaz Ankor upon my ascension to the Throne of Power, I shall restore our people out of the decline they've been trapped in since the Time of Woes, avenge every last grudge in the Dammaz Kron, see my people prosper once more! Yet what stood in what would be the bedchamber of a lesser king was burned into his mind as thoroughly as it had been over two centuries ago when he first found it. The words shone in his mind's eye still.

THE HIGH KING SHALL LEAD THE DAWI TO GRIMNIR'S SALVATION
AND MARK A GRUDGE DOWN TO BE AVENGED​

He knew exactly what it meant; prophecy might be ephemeral and unclear for other races but if a dawi were to see the future they would see it as stone, carved in reality and immoveable.
Unchangeable.

But therein lay Thorgrim's quandary - he could not fulfil the destined role the High King would play in the only sure way for the dawi to survive what was to come without violating the oath that had defined his entire reign. And he refused utterly to burden his line with a Slayer oath like Ungrim Ironfist's forefather had done so long ago; to do as such would be to throw his species into a fatalistic death march, and he would face the apocalypse head-on alone rather than subject his people to such a fate. So every time he came back to Karaz-a-Karak he isolated himself in his chambers whenever he was not occupied with some function or other and butted heads with fate, trying to eke out some solution that let him walk away with his word upheld and his people saved. He had been trying for over two hundred years and knew time was running short, but kept trying. He was dawi, he would break before he bent willingly.

Finally breaking his gaze from the emblazoned image of one of his forefathers on a platinum coin, he strode away, rubbing his eyes. He would find something, he refused to believe otherwise, but he had little time to waste on this foolish diversion nontheless. Walking into the chamber where the Throne of Power was stored when not on campaign or holding court, he nodded curtly to the Thronebearer standing guard by the door and sat heavily in the unyielding seat, knuckling his brow in frustration.

The Thronebearer saluted, his fist over his heart, and bowed. "Shall I retrive a cask of ale, my king?"

Thorgrim waved him off. "Don't bother, Harek. Much as the idea appeals to me, being drunk will do me no good as I am. I'm brooding enough already. No, what I need is ... tell me of some small trouble that's cropped up inside the hold, one that we ususally allow the clan heads or guild leaders to deal with. I need to fix a situation, even an inconsequential one."

While the Thronebearers were not dedicated to collecting information like the multiple accountants and various other spies the High King employed, they made it their business to know a good amount about the goings-on wherever they were in order to better ascertain possible threats to their liege. So Harek Darronsson thought for a few moments, and then straightened up as an idea came to his mind.

"There is something, my king. It would normally not warrant your personal attention, but given the nature of it no one would think anything of it."

"Tell me."

"Your son, Rorek, my king. He has been getting on Loremaster Magrumm's nerves lately, barraging him with question after question about various facets of history, though mostly your own campaigning. It's not the first time something like this has occurred; normally he'll attach himself to a longbeard for a few years or so, incessantly pestering them about their profession until they get tired of it. Magrumm's just about at that point, and if you wished I believe you could intercede on either side's behalf."

Thorgrim heard all this and considered. Something else beside the immediate situation in Harek's explanation had caught his attention. "You say he's done this before? Margrumm is a historical archivist, what other professionals has he attached himself to?"

Harek shrugged. "Many, my king. Everything from thanes to ironbreakers to engineers to brewers - he has a wide variety of interests, and his status as your son ensures most everyone humors him for at least a while."

Thorgrim considered this, the gears of his mind beginning to churn. "Does he actually learn anything, or does he just enjoy being in the presence of experts?"

"By all accounts, my king, he's of a keen mind in any subject that captures his attention. A large volume of the complaints he generates are that he learns too much to be taught more without being taken on as an apprentice, which none of the longbeards he pesters have the time and inclination to do even if they were permitted."

Thorgrim's mind raced. This described pattern of behaviour could simply be a sign of boredom caused by youth; his son was only thirty-four. But it could also be a sign of genuine ingenuity - not that he would know which, having spent virtually no time with the beardling due to the demands of his position. True, he could arbitrate a decision toward Rorek or Magrumm's side as he chose, but the more Thorgrim thought about it, the more a third line of choice appealed to him. It was a long shot, but if his son truly had inherited as much of his ancestor's wisdom as it seemed, he may just be the key to solving a formerly inescapable dilemma.

"Find the boy, wherever he is, and bring him to me," he said at length. "I think it is due time for me to have a talk with my heir."

--​

Rorek Thorgrimsson was sitting in his unofficial corner in the Archive of the Everpeak when the Thronebearer found him. The young prince was reading from a tome called A Rebuttal To The Outlandish And Thoroughly Undwarflike Proposal By The Junior Engineer Burrlok Grambnisson Involving Designing A Weapon That Utilizes A Substance Known Widely To Be Far Too Unreliable For Use In Real Combat, That Being Explosive Powder Of The Sort Usually Used In Mining Charges And The Like And A Thorough Dissertation On Why Pursuing This Idea Is Entirely Valid Grounds For Permanent Expulsion From The Engineer's Guild Of The Karaz Ankor, Authored By Senior Engineer Lunn Burntbrow. It was part of the labyrinthine arguments between engineers in the guild as they dickered endlessly, noted down into runes for posterity. This particular argument spanned over six hundred pages and thoroughly dissected every possible angle on why it would be a foolish idea to ever even think of incorporating gunpowder into a weapon.

It was dated to the beginning of the Goblin Wars, when the extent of the threat the grobi posed was only just being realised.

Not wanting to startle the prince, Harek made his footsteps loud as he approached through the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Rorek looked up at the sound, his bluegrey eyes blinking as he glanced at the Thronebearer. His silvery blonde beard shone in the light of the runic lamp he was reading by. His expression brightened as he recognized the burnished gromril armor of Harek's station.

"Ah! Honored Thronebearer," he exclaimed, carefully setting the book aside and standing. "I am honored to finally meet one of you in person. My father sent you to arbitrate between myself and Loremaster Magrumm, I presume?"

Harek shifted his weight from foot to foot. "While that matter has been brought to your sire's attention, my prince, it is not that dispute that brings me here now. The ..." He trailed off as he noticed Rorek staring intensely at his helmed face, one hand absentmindedly stroking his relatively short beard.

"My prince?"

Rorek shook his head abruptly, clearing whatever daze had come over him. "My sincerest apologies, I was just attempting to recall your name. Forgive me if I am incorrect, I should have this memorized by now, but you are Harek Darronsson?"

Harek raised his eyebrows in mild surprise. "Yes I am, my prince. How did you recognize me? To my knowledge we've never been introduced."

Rorek chuckled. "I asked your names from Archivist Krull a few years back and had him point out to me which one of you was which in some engravings of my father's campaigns. Of course the images weren't as clear as I would have liked, so I went looking and found an archive of all past and present Thronebearers. That helped somewhat with sorting out your individual distinguishing features I could discern, and after some time carrying around that book wherever I went and comparing the images of your fellows and you in the book to the genuine thing whenever you were in Karaz-a-Karak, I was able to memorize which one of you was which based on various things. The sound of your voice, the way you shift your weight from foot to foot when you're not doing anything," - Harek abruptly paused this selfsame movement as he was made aware of it - "And a few other things you do that no other Thronebearer does."

Harek blinked. "An impressive effort, my prince. But why go to such lengths? You are not High King yet, you've no need to recognize his bodyguards on sight."

"While my father will hopefully live for many more centuries before passing into the halls of the ancestors, I see that as no reason to not prepare for my eventual responsibilities now. A good king presumably knows the names of his own Thronebearers, after all. It's for much the same reason that I've petitioned many times to accompany father or one of the other kings on campaign sometime, though I can understand the reasons for his refusal, the royal line must be preserved after all." Rorek broke his gaze from Harek's face momentarily.

Harek, as one of the dwarfs who had delivered a few of the young prince's requests to his father over the years, privately wondered how deeply Thorgrim's refusal to endanger his son was rooted in pragmatism and how much was simple refusal to remarry should the boy be killed. The High Queen and King had been quite close in his memory. "I can't tell you why or why not the High King refuses your requests," he admitted, "But this does bring me back to the reason I came here. Your father wished to see you, though he did not say what for. I am to bring you to him should you have no pressing business at present."

Rorek's face lifted in mild shock. "My father wishes to see me? In person?"

"Yes."

"... well. I assume he would not wish to be kept waiting. We should go?"

"Indeed, my prince." Harek bowed at the waist and turned about-face, waiting until he heard the sounds of Rorek clearing his space before proceeding with the prince in tow.

They were halfway up the hold to Thorgrim's chambers when Rorek spoke again. "Harek?" He puffed, slightly out of breath.

"Yes, my prince?" Harek answered, not even breathing hard.

"If I call you by your name, could you call me by mine? I understand the requirements of rank and everything else, but the title gets a tad unwieldy, don't you find? Rorek will do, if you aren't uncomfortable with it."

"...very well, my prin- Rorek."

"My thanks," Rorek said, flashing a grin.

--​

Harek bowed to Rorek once they reached the outer entrance to Thorgrim's chambers.

"I will leave you here and return to my regular duties, m- Rorek. The High King wished to meet with you in private," he explained.

Rorek nodded. "Of course, of course." He paused and furrowed his brow. "You have other duties? It was my understanding that the Thronebearers guard the High King when he goes into battle and bear the Throne of Power on their shoulders. What else do you do?"

Harek grinned. "We guard the High King, yes. However, we take a very broad view of that phrase. My sworn trommbaraz* and I keep a few information networks running, coordinate guard shifts on the first few levels of the hold below this one, review defences, and other things of that nature. To better ensure the High King's safety and such, you understand."

"I think I do," replied Rorek, smiling. "I won't delay you, then." He stuck his hand out. "Glad to have met you, Harek Darronsson."

"Likewise, Rorek Thorgrimsson," the Thronebearer replied, gripping the outstretched hand firmly. He then bowed and exited, leaving Rorek alone in front of the door to Thorgrim's chambers.

--​

Forty-three minutes later

Rorek stared uneasily at the door before him. It was not particularly imposing like the doors that led to the Throne Room of the Everpeak, forged of gromril and engraved with histories of the dawi's greatest triumphs and strengths, standing thirty feet tall and only openable by specialized systems of gears. It was a solid slab of stone slightly higher than the height of a dwarf, set into the wall so that the untrained eye would not see the seams, for the private quarters of the High King were a place where the sovereign of the dawi could go for reflection and repose without the demands of ceremony.

Nevertheless, it was an imposing entryway. Despite his initial eagerness, Rorek had no idea what Thorgrim could want to see him for. He had hardly seen the high king throughout his short life, the monarch being near-constantly on campaign. Even on the occasions when Thorgrim was at Karaz-a-Karak, his time was wholly occupied by various petitions and oaths and delegations. The closest Rorek had gotten to his father prior to this was through various records of his deeds, vicariously living the avenging of various grudges through the tomes. To recieve such direct attention so suddenly was disconcerting.

After a long while of staring at the door and chewing on his lip, Rorek gathered his resolve and knocked thrice. With a rumbling grind, the slab of stone smoothly slid into an alcove, revealing an antechamber beyond. Rorek hesitantly stepped in, and jumped slightly when the door closed behind him. Unsure what exactly was expected of him, he walked forward slowly until he stood in the center of the room. He waited there for a time, peering down the various hallways leading out of the chamber, and was duly surprised when Thorgrim suddenly appeared from one so cunningly set into the stone that his eyes had passed over it entirely.

His father was an imposing figure; even without his full battle armor on he was taller and broader than most dwarfs, and his beard was long and lush, a cascade of lustrous white that covered his chest and spilled down to his knees. He wore the Dragon Crown upon his head, the snarling figure upon it so lifelike it looked apt to jump off the crown and fly away, and his eyes were a clear, piercing blue.

"...Father," Rorek managed after a few moments of silence. "You wished to see me? If this is about my interactions with Loremaster Magrumm, I can assure you I only meant to -"

Thorgrim raised a hand and Rorek stopped speaking. "No, my son. That is not what I brought you here for, as persistent as you evidently are with pursuing Magrumm. I called you here to ascertain your character and what manner of dawi you are. Follow me." He turned and walked down a hallway, and Rorek quickly fell in behind him, befuddled as to what he could mean.

They eventually came to a chamber that had a door forged purely of gromril, with a hand-shaped indentation in the center. Thorgrim placed his palm in it and runes arrayed around the indent lit up, allowing the door to swing open. Within was the Throne of Power itself and a smaller, ordinary chair set in front of the venerable artifact. While Rorek was gaping at the sheer aura the Throne gave off, being the first time he'd seen it this close, Thorgrim settled himself into it and beckoned to the other chair. "Sit."

Rorek obeyed and sat in the granite seat, hands folded in his lap, feeling slightly contrite though he'd done nothing wrong, such was the weight of Thorgrim's gaze.

At length the High King spoke. "For what purpose do you question professionals of all ages and professions until they tire of you?"

Rorek thought carefully before answering. "I'm the heir to the Karaz Ankor, and the son of one of the best High Kings there have been in over a thousand years. I figure if I don't hold myself to a high standard, I may not be able to build on what you accomplish during your reign properly, and if our empire's going to regain the glory it held in the Golden Age I can't have that happening." He grinned sheepishly. "Also to occupy my mind. Karaz-a-Karak may be the greatest bastion of our people there is, but you run short of things to do if you don't leave for thirty-four years."

Thorgrim brooded on this answer for quite some time, turning it over and over in his head like an apprentice engineer building their first crossbow. "Commendable reasoning," he allowed at last. "Very well then. If you wish to be the best heir of my reign that you can be, I will make you into that. It has been regretfully necessary for me to neglect your education like I have, but no more. Now, let's see what you've learned from all that pestering of your elders you indulge in."

For the next several hours, the two talked in that rune-lit chamber, Thorgrim painstakingly analyzing everything Rorek had learned over the course of his life. He found his son's reserves of knowledge well-stocked, though largely theoretical in most appliable domains such as statecraft and other large-scale management skills. Understandable given the lad had no experience with that sort of thing. More importantly, he had a good knowledge of history, able to accurately name events that had happened more than three thousand years back from memory. By his own admission his combat skills weren't nearly as good as other beardlings his age, but he was young as of yet and would not be seeing pitched combat for quite some time. Overall, he was a bright young dwarf with a wide variety of largely theoretical or book knowledge and a good grasp of history. A good start, more than Thorgrim had expected. Of course this would only let him climb all the higher.

--​

"I had no idea that your personal quarters were so large, father," Rorek confessed as the two entered a chamber that would be fairly spacious if it were not packed near wall to wall with enormous books. "What is this place?"

"You know of the Dammaz Kron?" Thorgrim asked in response.

Rorek furrowed his brow. "Of course, father."

"That tome, enormous as it is, contains only the most momentous and grave offences perpetrated against our people," Thorgrim informed him. "This," he gestured to the veritable library filled with tomes, "Is everything else."

Rorek gaped. Everything? That would mean ... the small grudges, ones settled between individual dwarfs or families, that often were resolved quickly and without fuss. Perhaps the ones that clans tended to nurse for centuries but never really affected day-to-day operations. Those grudges ... if there was a record for every one of those, it would look ... actually rather similar to the sight before him, actually. With a start, he realized something - all the books were identical, enormous texts bound in thick leather with preservation runes engraved into the bindings. The only different thing between volumes was numerals imprinted on the spines. Taking a closer look at one, Rorek saw that it merely said '462'. He was so engrossed with examining the book that he nearly missed what Thorgrim said next.

"You're going to memorize them," he said.

Rorek blanched. Surely he meant something else than that, right? "P-pardon, father?"

"Memorize it. The Dammaz-a-Zagaz** has been accumulating since the days when Grungni still walked the mountains, and each High King since has shouldered the burden his fathers left behind. I do not expect you to accomplish this straight away, you're only a beardling, but think of it as a measure of your progress. When you have imprinted the history of our people fully and truly into your mind and know every grudge by heart, then you will be ready."

"Ready for what?"

"We shall speak of that after you've finished here. It's a good thing you've a solid grasp on history, it'll help you out here. I would know," Thorgrim chuckled, clapping Rorek on the back, pushing him toward the shelves of books. "You'd best get started now, to save time. Follow the numerals until you find the first volume, and work your way up from there."

Blinking in slight shock, Rorek dutifully stepped forth. "Where will I sleep, father? Walking to and from my quarters lower in the hold will be time-consuming."

"I'll have your possessions brought to a room adjacent to this one. You'll live here for the time being, though don't expect your bed to get much use in the next few years. Those who have an abundance should have much demanded of them, and I'll see it so. Get going now, lad," he said, turning about and exiting the archive. Rorek gulped and tentatively made his way into the imposing accumulation of information.

--​

Over the next five years, Rorek's life became drastically busier than he'd formerly been accustomed to. The first few days were simply a struggle in reading the great tomes, for the print in them was so small as to make the pages seem nearly black. For hours each day he would pore over them, wearing special glasses that magnified his vision in order to properly see the text. Then he would meet with Thorgrim later in the day, and his father would then spend several more hours drilling the fundamentals of ruling into his head. Thorgrim was an uncompromising teacher, and would not permit any progression onto the next topic should he make a single mistake. Fortunately, Rorek learned quickly. He absorbed his father's hard-earned lessons on everything from generalship to economics. Thorgrim had him examine maps from mid-campaign to determine the most optimal move and run the treasuries of fictional holds. After several hours of this Rorek would return to the archive and read for a further stretch of time before stumbling to his bed, and repeat the whole cycle the next morning.

As he gradually became accustomed to the task of memorization, he found himself intrigued, for the grudges in the Dammaz-a-Zagaz, though largely resolved in the early volumes he read, lay thick enough that he could grasp the history behind them. A surge in grudges involving manlings indicated a raid against a trade caravan in the north, and more. He felt an unexpected connection to those dwarfs of ages long past, as he experienced their triumphs and tragedies, made no less important by their lack of impact on the wider world.

That was not the end of it, of course. As Rorek progressed through the archive, Thorgrim's time eventually grew more limited, and soon he could no longer spend hours tutoring his son in the art of ruling. Instead, inspired by the event that had brought his son to his attention in the first place, he assigned various tutors to him in order to fully educate him in every field he needed. One of these, in a bit of irony, ended up being Loremaster Magrumm, who kept a wry expression of skepticism on his face for the entirety of his tutelage. Rorek's time was crammed with studying, tutors with even higher standards than Thorgrim and a fraction of his patience all packing their knowledge into his head at the same time. At first Rorek could barely understand what they were saying, for they plunged him into the metaphorical deep end of their fields of study, but with a great effort of will he somehow managed to barely keep up with them while still devoting time to memorizing the Archive.

Rorek's studies progressed further and he committed more and more of the Archive to memory. He read of the great triumphs of his people, and ground his teeth at the indignities suffered during the Time of Woes and the War of Vengance, and even beyond. Soon even more was piled on him, as some days he would be woken up and lead to a training hall where he would train in combat against one of the Thronebearers. He inevitably came out of these all-day training sessions exhausted and bruised, and he made mediocre progress at best, no matter what weapon he used, but he quickly learned all the names of the Thronebearers and befriended them to a dwarf. He soon had at least one escorting him anywhere he went, and he made a point of using them and their information networks to stay informed of the happenings in the rest of the hold.

What they told him piqued his interest, and though he was burdened under a courseload that left him scarcely three hours of sleep per day, he urged them to investigate further, directing them with increasing skill as he learned more of intrigue.

Thorgrim was doing something, though Rorek could scarcely tell what. The Thronebearers reported to him of countless favors called in with kings and thanes across the Karaz Ankor, many of them visiting Karaz-a-Karak itself and leaving with grim faces set in determination. Great amounts of supplies of all sorts were stockpiled in the bowels of the Everpeak, salted meats, seeds for all kinds of plants, breeding stocks of animals, and everything a dwarf would need to found a new hold, but on a far more massive scale. Over the course of a few months the foundations for several great throngs were laid, and many expeditions were lead into lost holds, not to reclaim them, but to recover any and all artifacts they could from them. Runepriests across the kingdom were commissioned to produce particular rune items in great amounts on order of the High King. The Anvils of Doom themselves were carefully transported to the Everpeak, each guarded by a full throng. Strangely, the grumbling and dissent that such sudden changes would normally cause was mostly absent, and the guilds encouraged the enactment of the measures Thorgrim was introducing. Rorek suspected his father had been speaking with the heads. To what end he was doing all this for, however, Rorek could not discern. It was preparing for a disaster of some sort, that was clear, but of what sort was impossible to tell.

He did his best to keep track of what was going on while his studies progressed, and managed to keep up, albiet barely, with his instructors. As he made his way ever closer to the end of the Archive he even made some small improvements to his combat skills. At last, one day he reached the end of the archive and tottered to bed. When he woke up, he found Harek standing over him, almost like how they had met such a short time ago.

"It's time," the Thronebearer said, his expression bearing a gravity it was normally devoid of. "Follow me." Confused, Rorek quickly got up and followed Harek through the still-confusing maze of passageways that made up Thorgrim's chambers until they came to the doorway to the chamber Thorgrim had first talked to him in five years ago. Here Harek paused and placed a gauntlet on Rorek's shoulder. "Good luck, youngster," he murmured, and then removed one gauntlet and placed his hand in the indent. He stepped aside as the runes lit up and the door swung in seemingly of its own accord, to reveal Thorgrim sitting on the Throne of Power.

Rorek stepped forward, concealing his apprehension behind his now controlled demeanour. "Father,' he said, bowing.

Thorgrim nodded in reply. "What was the 43rd grudge recorded on the nineteenth day of the fifth month of the year 3482? If it was resolved, when and how was the matter settled? If not, who still bears it today?"

Rorek thought carefully for many minutes. This was obviously a test to see if he had truly committed the grudges to memory, and he wouldn't get a second chance to prove himself. "That particular grudge was set between two rival brewers, Henna Stonetooth and Borgrod Haskinsson, one of clan Yinlisson, the other of clan Ambereye. Due to an uncannily similar taste in decor, their breweries, which were located directly next to one another, looked nigh-identical save for Henna's having one more barstool than Borgrod's. On that particular day, the two travelled to their respective places of work hungover from the previous night and mistakenly entered each other's breweries. They eventually realized their mistake, but only after making a substantial amount of sales, and adding the gathered income to their own accounts. They quickly made to swap places without either of them seeing the other, but ran into each other and quickly engaged in an argument about who owed whom however much money. Due to the fact that they both had customers who ran tabs, neither could determine how much profit they had unintentionally stolen from one another, and both declared a grudge on the spot that until the matter had been settled and they had been paid back in full, they would prevent each other by making any further profit by drinking all of their liquor themselves. So they went into each other's establishments, carried a great many casks out into the street, and began angrily drinking in front of each other, causing quite the spectacle for passerby. This went on for six hours until the two were so drunk as to be unable to walk without clutching each other's shoulders. They went to a priest of Grungni to attempt to arbitrate the matter, and after a further two hours explaining the situation, the priest sarcastically suggested marriage as a solution, since that way their property would be shared with each other. To his surprise, the two took his suggestion seriously, and the two were wed on the spot, thus rendering the grudge null and void. They later took out the adjoining wall and renamed the resulting establishment the Grudge-Quencher Inn. It's still standing to this way; I've been there myself, in fact. Their light summer ale is quite good."

Thorgrim smiled at that, and Rorek felt himself relax slightly. His father made him recite a few other grudges, and list the text in one particular tome backwards starting from a random page, but the first one was the most important, he sensed.

At last Thorgrim bade him cease, and stood up from the Throne. "I applaud you, my son. You've quite honestly surpassed my expectations, and those of your tutors as well," he said. "Even old Magrumm eventually caved and admitted to being impressed at your progress. I told them all not to treat you as a novice; I expected you to pick up maybe one in ten words they said. Instead you kept up with them! Your fighting skills could use some work, but you're young, you'll pick that up with time. You even managed to pick up track of what I was doing while you were holed up here, so I hear," he chuckled, eyes sparkling with mirth. "Come, I think it's time you finally see it."

"See what, father?"

"The Dammaz Kron, of course."

--​

Father and son spent several hours in the chamber where the Book of Grudges was kept, reading through its blood-scripted pages, sharing quiet conversation over how quite a few of the grudges contained within had been repaid by Thorgrim. Drinks from Thorgrim's private stock were had, a few confessions were made, and apologies given. They emerged from the room with a much better appreciation of each other.

"Rorek," said Thorgrim, hand around his son's shoulder, "You've done everything I could've ever asked for and more. I'm glad you turned out the way you did."

"My thanksh, fatsher," Rorek slurred, unaccustomed to the potency of the High King's alcohol.

"In fact, you're about ready to bear the crown yourself," Thorgrim continued. "I'll transfer it over to you in a month's time. That should be enough time to prepare, am I right?"

Rorek, thinking this a joke, laughed and nodded. But as he looked at his father's face, which was entirely serious, it gradually sunk through into his mind that Thorgrim had meant what he had said. His eyes went comically wide and he gaped. "No! Faszher, I cannae take thhe throne," he slurred frantically. "Iy'm nyot reedy. And yuo're shtill h-alive."

Thorgrim shook his head. "I'm afraid it's not my choice. Come, I'll show you why it must be done." And he strode off, Rorek frantically clinging to his shoulder. He lead his son to the antechamber where they'd first seen each other and tapped a particular patch of stone five times in a peculiar rhythm. A secret passageway silently revealed itself, the stone seemingly fading away to reveal a dark passage. Thorgrim set off down it, Rorek stumbling behind.

As he walked down the hallway, Rorek could feel his drunkenness fading, disconcertingly quickly. Within a minute, the buzz had faded entirely and he could think clearly again. Without any other alternative, he continued to follow Thorgrim and soon began to percieve a white light shining from the end of the tunnel. As he walked, it grew brighter and brighter, until he had to shield his eyes. At last they reached the end of the tunnel and Rorek gasped at what he saw.

In front of him was a gargantuan slab of stone, easily fifty feet tall, with perfectly smoothed edges and not an imperfection in its makeup. Engraved in it were gargantuan runes in Khazalid that glowed with a fierce white light. Almost out of reflex, Rorek began reading them. They read as such:

IN AN AGE WHERE THE MOUNTAIN FOLK ARE A FRACTION OF WHAT THEY ONCE WERE

WHEN THE TWIN COMET FALLS TO THE SKIES AND THE FORSAKEN REALIZES HIS AMBITION BY LOSING EVERYTHING

THERE WILL COME A STORM OF SUCH STRENGTH THAT THE MOUNTAINS WILL CRUMBLE BEFORE IT AND AN END ARISES FOR THE WORLD

WITH PREPARATION, SOMETHING MAY YET BE SAVED

THE HIGH KING SHALL LEAD THE DAWI TO GRIMNIR'S SALVATION, AND MARK A GRUDGE DOWN TO BE AVENGED​

With a gasp, Rorek finally managed to wrench his gaze away from the inscription. "This is why," he managed, looking at his father, who was staring solemnly back at him. "This is why you brought me here in the first place, isn't it. You needed a High King to preserve the people without breaking your own oath of avenging all the grudges in the Dammaz Kron. That's it."

Thorgrim's expression hardened. "No! What I said ... what I said in there was true," he murmured, referring to their discussion in the chamber of the Dammaz Kron. "Regardless of whether or not you were needed for the survival of our people, I would have educated you in the way I did. The time limitations pressed me, as I didn't know when the events ordained in it would occur. I had to hurry. Without them, I would have stretched it out. Let you have a life between lessons on kingship. But don't ever think I would've intentionally neglected my heir. Not only my heir, you are my son. My kin. The only reason I have spent as much time apart from you as I have was due to making preperations for this eventuality."

The two stared at each other for a long time before Rorek broke the silence. "I'm sorry. I should not be so rash in my assumptions."

"You've more than enough reason to be."

"Mayhaps, but we'll put it behind us. The Dammaz-a-Zagaz taught me that much at least," Rorek sighed. He cast his gaze to the slab once more. "When do you need me to take up the Dragon Crown?"

"As soon as it's possible for me to arrange it. A comet ascended into the heavens leaving a pillar or fire behind it not five days ago. I've already spoken to the other kings of the Karaz Ankor and showed them this; the preparations I've been making for two hundred years will come into effect when you announce the evacuation."

Rorek nodded. "I understand, father." He approached and put his hands on Thorgrim's shoulders, with a greater ease than before; he'd grown. "I will lead our people to survival, father, and drag them back into the Golden Age and beyond. Then I will return for you, and for our home. I swear it here and now."

Thorgrim nodded and the two embraced. They broke apart after a brief moment, nodded to one another, and proceeded out of the chamber.

----​

Year 7045 by Dwarf Reckoning

Rorek was crowned High King of the Karaz Ankor in glory and spectacle. His first act as monarch of the Everlasting Realm was to declare a great evacuation, for the gods themselves had spoken to him in the heart of the mountain, foretelling of a great disaster that would destroy their people if they did not leave. He publicly swore that he would one day return and reclaim the dwarfen homelands from the vile depredations of whosoever dared to assault it once the survival of his species was assured.

A great many dawi chose to stay behind, to break the teeth of the forces of Old Night that would come to claim the dawi's fortresses, lead by Rorek's father, Thorgrim Grudgebearer. Amongst them was Ungrim Ironfist of Karak Kadrin, who took advantage of the precedent Thorgrim had set to declare his son Garagrim the Slayer King, and his own intention to finally fulfil his ancestor Baragor's grudge now that he was no longer shackled by the obligations of kingship. Many older dwarfs joined this force, unwilling to abandon the homes they had lived in all their lives. Just as many longbeards, however, joined the Evacuation, citing a desire to 'make certain the beardlings don't go and muck everything up'. Particularly notable amongst them was perhaps the oldest dwarf in the world, Runelord Kragg the Grim, whos expertise would be required to maintain the great runic arrays that would keep the civilian population safe in their destination.

For the Evacuation was to proceed north, up the near-mythical but well-documented path of skulls the god Grimnir had left behind him on his rampage into the Chaos Wastes. They still retained a fragment of the warrior-god's own resilience, and legend had it that Grimnir still stood at the end of the Path of Skulls, killing daemons in such quantities that their skulls formed into the road behind him. If the dawi were to survive the storm that was to come, the legends must be true. They had no other choice, for the dawi would make it so, or carve the world in half trying.

Ten days before the winds of Chaos blew into a storm the likes of which the world had never seen, the Great Evacuation set off from the Everpeak.


*beard-sworn; basically the dwarf word for the concept of battle-brothers, members of a small organization who know each other very well due to the demands of their position. Could be translated as beard-brothers.

**Grudge-Archive, called such to differentiate it from the Book of Grudges

 

[Xantalos]

Empire of Man

In a small village named Lachenbad on the banks of the Reik, a child was born on a night when Morrslieb was absent from the sky entirely. It was a long and difficult birth for the mother, and the child's father, a blacksmith named Jakob, feared both mother, his wife Helena, and child might die. While the midwife worked feverishly to prevent Helena from bleeding out, Jakob knelt at his wife's side and prayed with all his heart for the gods to spare his wife and child.

Many men had done what Jakob did over the years, and had been answered by gods dark and foul, their children twisted into abominations. Jakob was fortunate, however, for on that night the fickle attentions of the Chaos Gods were elsewhere, and a more benevolent entity answered his cry for help.

After several agonizing hours, Helena found within herself a new well of strength and pushed. Lightning split the sky, and with a wail of pain her son came into the world. He was a frail thing, small for the trouble he'd given his mother, but alive and with a healthy set of lungs. As Jakob set eyes upon his child for the first time, he gasped, for he bore upon his thin chest the same insignia that lightning emblazoned across the heavens, irrevocable proof that the blacksmith's prayers had been answered.

The twin-tailed comet of Sigmar stretched across his son's chest.

--​

They named the boy Valten, and did their best to hide his mark, for despite its obvious good fortune they did not wish to attract undue attention to him. Despite their hopes he did not develop into a large child. He remained small and scrawny for his age, and frequently lost tussles with the local boys his age. He had a spirit out of proportion with his body, however, always helping his family out wherever he could and throwing himself into fights if he saw someone being bullied or harassed. Because of the mark on his chest, he was a pious child - he spent long hours in the local Sigmarite chapel, talking with the local priest and reading the holy books of the god that had granted him his life.

Sometime during his childhood, the mark on his chest was inadvertently revealed during a scuffle. Though the mark was Sigmar's and not that of a darker spirit, the initial reaction from the village was fear, for any attention from the gods inevitably brought ruin amongst the smallfolk. A proposal was initially brought up to exile the boy, but it faded swiftly - by now Valten was known as an upstanding and friendly lad, and his father warned that any who tried to throw his son out of the village would receive a right good smacking.

So Valten grew up peaceably, learning his father's trade, though he remained scrawny no matter how much he worked in the forge. Then, as Jakob had feared would happen ever since he saw the mark of the comet on his chest, fate descended upon Valten.

He was sixteen when the warherd descended upon the village. It was a monstrous gathering of beastmen, rabid with hate and had ten times as many monstrous hybrids in its ranks as Lachenbad had people. It was headed by a fearsome Beastlord called Rargarth, an imposing specimen of muscle and fur with a vicious intelligence in his eyes. They descended upon the village with a savage charge, overwhelming what men had managed to retrieve their militia gear. They quickly dispersed throughout the village, looting, raping, and burning as they went. The screams of the innocent soon echoed out into the surrounding woods, a terrifying testament to Rargarth's savagery.

The Beastlord had not anticipated any great challenge from sacking this small hovel, instead intending to let his troops enjoy themselves before marching to a larger settlement upriver. From there, his followers would steal whatever boats the manlings had built before concealing themselves in the stripped skins of their kills and sailing into Nuln itself. Smashing and defiling the hated industry of the humanfilth would surely gain him great joy from the Four Almighty. These plans were halted, however, when Valten intervened.

He had been at the chapel when the attack came, and he immediately sprinted to his home when he heard the horrid warcries of the beastfolk. He arrived in time to find his mother being set upon by three fearsome ungors. Rage burning in his breast, he picked up a nearby hammer and set upon the creatures, killing them in a handful of savage blows. Stopping briefly to ensure his mother was not hurt, he set out into the village, slaying beastmen left and right. Soon what remained of the village militia rallied around him, driving back the mutants from their homes. In the chaos and confusion, none questioned Valten's sudden burst of strength and speed.

Rargarth soon heard of the stubbornness of the humans, and grumpily stomped into Lachenbad to break their newfound resistance. His Bestigor bodyguard quickly tore through the remainder of the militia, their renewed morale no match for the unholy might of the creatures. Jakob managed to bring one of the things down, working in tandem with the local Sigmarite priest, but both were cut down in one stroke of Rargarth's axe.

The Beastlord soon encountered Valten, and let out a foul laugh at the thought that this weak boy clutching his father's hammer could be the human that had given his forces pause. Letting out a fearsome bellow, he spread his arms wide, daring the boy to try to strike him.

Valten obliged, charging the horned beast with a bellow that outsized his body. He swung his hammer mightily, but Rargarth contemptuously avoided his every strike, deflecting them with his axe at every turn. At last, he grew bored and caught Valten's hammer mid-swing, snapping it with one hand. Frenzied, the boy attempted to stab him with what he had left of the handle, but it merely bounced off his thick hide. As Valten looked up at him in despair, Rargarth snorted in derision and kicked the puny human hard enough that the crunch of his collapsing ribcage was audible to all who'd gathered around to watch the fight. He was sent flying and bounced off a nearby house, falling splayed out next to the corpse of the Sigmarite priest he used to read with.

As the Beastlord turned his back and began to walk away, Valten suddenly drew in a shuddering breath, wracked with agony. His bones snapped back into place, his chest reflating like a balloon. With instinctual movements the boy pawed around the earth near him until his hand landed on the hammer of the priest. That seemed to grant him a surge of manic energy, and he leaped to his feet like a man possessed, carrying the heavy maul in one hand like it weighed nothing.

Rargarth turned about at Valten's renewed bellow of challenge. He grunted in confusion; hadn't he just killed this human? No matter, he'd die soon enough. The Beastlord raised his axe in mocking salute, and with a wild yell Valten leaped at him once more.

Immediately Rargarth was perturbed, for a change had come over Valten. He swung the hammer far faster than before, and when he interposed his axe he could feel the impact in his bones. Deciding not to play about with this human anymore, he shoved Valten back with every muscle in his body and swung his axe in a vicious arc, aiming to split him in half at the waist.

The strike never landed, as Valten ducked with frightening speed and hit Rargarth's knee hard enough to shatter the joint irreparably, a cloud of gore and pulped bone exploding outward as the Beastlord toppled with an agonized cry. Those cries rocketed up two octaves when Valten's hammer pulverized Rargarth's groin, leaving the mighty warherd leader squirming in the dirt. Valten clambered atop the beast's chest and looked down at his fallen foe. As he raised the hammer for the killing blow, Rargarth almost thought he could see the boy's figures take on a different cast. A hard-eyed barbarian from ages past gazed down at him, and the howl that burst from Valten's throat as he split his skull was an ancient warrior's scream.

Valten looked up from the ruin of the Beastlord's skull at the shocked faces of the warherd. "No more!" He cried as he leaped forward and shattered the spine of a gor. "You hear me? You're not hurting anybody else anymore! No one!" He slew several more before the beastmen snapped out of their delirium and ran, bleating in terror. Valten watched them go, coated in gore and vomit and urine. He sat down against the corpse of the Beastlord; he was very tired suddenly.

--​

While the damage from the attack was extensive, leaving half the village razed to the ground, actual casualties were not catastrophic. The morale of the beastmen had been broken by the slaying of their leader, and they were repelled from Lachenbad with relative ease afterwards, aided by the timely arrival of a company of soldiers led by the prophet Luthor Huss, who had been pursuing Rargarth for quite some time. Curious to see who in a common village could have felled such a mighty monster, he entered Lachenbad to find a crowd of villagers praising Valten for saving their lives. The boy seemed almost embarrased by the attention, but he stood tall as a hush fell over the crowd and Luthor pushed his way through. He inquired who was the warrior who had felled the Beastlord and was pointed to Valten. Upon seeing his bared chest and the twin-tailed comet there, he fell to his knees in shock. A more obvious sign of the Man-God's favor he had never seen; such a sign could even indicate the boy may be Sigmar's herald.

Huss ended up taking Valten with him, on the condition that he send word to the Church of Sigmar to dispatch templars to guard his village, and his one remaining parent. Luthor eagerly agreed, and the two set off for Altdorf. On the journey there, Valten underwent a drastic transformation. Formerly he'd been a scrawny lad, with short blonde hair, but over the course of two weeks he put on a hundred punds of muscle and more than a foot of height. His hair lengthened until it was long and flowing, and he grew a thick beard overnight. He received many double takes in the towns they passed, for he looked like Sigmar reborn.

He caused quite a stir when he arrived in Altdorf. Word had spread of his miraculous deed, and crowds gathered to see his arrival. There were already fanatics screaming for Valten to take up his destined mantle as ruler of the Empire and crush all the other heathen nations. Valten managed no more than a confused wave before being hustled inside the Grand Temple of Sigmar, where the rabblerousing merely became smaller scale. Many of the priests within sympathized with the views of the fanatics outside, and even an Arch-Lector approached Valten to attempt to convince him to take the throne. It was his divine right and responsibility as the Ur-Emperor's heir to assume the title, he pleaded eloquently, and surely Sigmar had gifted him this power for this purpose. Valte, however, turned all such offers down. "I don't know anything about running a farm, let alone an empire," he explained, "And besides, Sigmar stepped down from the throne after fifty years. Even if I were Sigmar's heir, it wouldn't be mine to take, and I don't think I'm that either. I just don't like seeing people get hurt without doing something to stop it."

With that notion quashed and the Arch-Lector feeling appropriately embarrassed, Valten was taken to meet Karl Franz, the Emperor of the Empire of Man. A consummate statesman, Karl had been forewarned of Valten's arrival, and troubled by the numerous portents of doom on the horizon the wizards of the Celestial College kept forwarding to him, decided Sigmar's hammer was best used in the hands of his apparent reincarnation. Valten was gifted Ghal Maraz in a grand ceremony in front of cheering crowds, and seemed almost to glow when he grasped the colossal maul. Yet his eyes were fixed not on the masses chanting his name, but north, where storms of doom rumbled and roiled. Karl Franz had informed him that he was mustering the Empire's armies in preparation for whatever threat was coming out of the Chaos Wastes, and despite his earlier declaration he knew in his heart that a great many people were about to be hurt or killed very soon.

------​

Great Cathay

To the outside world, Cathay was a strange kingdom. More than twice as big as the Old World entire, it was nevertheless united in one continent-spanning domain in stark contrast to the strife-ridden Old World. A lack of geographic barriers aided this, allowing fertile farmland in the heart of the country to supply the bountiful population of the various provinces. Rich and insular save for its periodic expeditions into the Khuresh Hinterlands, most of its interaction with the expansionist nations of the Old World had come through the mutually profitable yet extremely risky Silk Road. Those explorers and daring merchants who travelled that hazardous route brought back tales of a strictly regimented society, where even the peasants labored under the knowledge that they were doing their part for the country to prosper.

Strangely, although the freely professed ruler of Cathay was the immortal Dragon-Emperor, Overseer of All Under Heaven, there were strange discrepancies in how their monarch was described. He was said to possess an indefinite lifespan, yet there had been multiple dynasties over the millennia, with each individual sovereign living no more than an average human. Stranger yet, in all official records they were ascribed the title of 'Secretary-Emperor'. At first the Tilean diplomats that noticed this assumed it was a translation error, yet upon enquiry all they recieved were strange looks and confusion, as though the answer were obvious. Seeing as it did not affect their business in moneymaking, they ceased to look into it.

--​

The Peak Where Heaven Makes Its Abode

The volcano was still active, one of the few in this region of the world. The intense heat and toxic fumes from the exposed lava ensured that the caldera recieved few visitors at the best of times, but there was still signs of life there. A massive palace was carved out of obsidian and black jade, the intricately detailed statues all around the outside lent a hellish cast by the red glow given off by the molten rock. It extended fully across the crater, a cunning series of vents letting excess heat funnel out of the palace. Its construction was exceedingly stable, as it would have to be to stay here for any length of time without plunging into molten oblivion. However, even the pillars sunk deep into the mountainside shivered when the tremors of the distant eruption of force echoed through them.

The lone inhabitant of the palace stirred in his slumber. The molten glow from outside was joined by one within as his crimson eyes opened. Sulfuric breath hissed out from between serrated teeth as his mind rose from centuries-long slumber. He took in the scent of the world, comforted by the familiar aroma of his collected treasures, the outside lava, and - no, it could not be. None of them would be so foolish as to come here. Another breath was taken.

...It was as he thought. The ancient enemy of his kind had trespassed on his domain! An echoing growl issued out from inside the artifice of black jade, sounding as though it had come from the bones of the earth itself. This could not be tolerated. He would have to have words with his subjects.

--​

Haalokar kept his breath slow and measured as he ascended the volcanic mountain. The dragon ogre clutched his gargantuan sword in his teeth and salivated at the thought of the glory that would be his when he slew the dragon at the peak and claimed its riches for himself. If what the foolish sorceror who had awoken him had said was true, this dragon was the leader of some large group of humans down from the mountains. Haalokar didn't care particularly much about that, but he had been told that the head of this particular dragon would fetch a hefty price among the minions of the gods, not to mention the horde the thing had no doubt amassed over the years. A simple enough task, to enter this dragon's home and kill it while it slept, and with a great profit to be made.

So focused was Haalokar on the riches he would soon aquire that he did not notice the rapidly descending shadow above and behind him until it was too late. He gasped, dropping his sword with a clatter as a winged shadow fell over him, and then his breath was stolen as Shen Huanglong, the Celestial Dragon Emperor, crashed into him with the force of a golden meteorite. There was a brief moment of struggle as the dragon ogre attempted to free his blade, which swiftly subsided as the Dragon Emperor bit his head off entirely. Spitting the vile meat out, he briefly inspected the creature's blade and nodded with approval; he could sense no taint upon it. He would store it away in safety, and then speak with his subjects about the current state of affairs.

He was still a dragon, after all.

--​

The courts of Cathay were quite shaken up at the return of the Dragon Emperor, who had been expected based on previous records to be asleep for at least another century. Still, the current interim Secretary-Emperor yielded power to his liege without a fuss, for Shen Huanglong had been the entity who in ancient times had forged Cathay out of formerly disparate tribes of barbarians, given them fire and civilization. While not technically worshiped as a god, he was placed above every other in precedence - even those who worshiped Chi'an the Changer acknowledged him above the azure god. His word was, quite literally, law.

While not able to discern the source of the tremor that had awoken him - all of the sorcerors that attempted to scry the source of the event were driven blind and could not recall who they were - the Emperor did enact several reforms to streamline the economy and purge whatever corrupt officials had cropped up in his absence. When portents came to his court of an impending catastrophe from north of the Great Bastion, Cathay was ready. The mobilization order went out, and gargantuan armies began the process of mustering. The wards of the Bastion were checked and strengthened. Whatever the dark gods threw at Shen Huanglong's personal domain, he would rebuff.

It was his. Not theirs.

------​

Land of the Dead

Millennia after Nagash had been thrown out of Nekehara, his influence still lingered. The river Mortis ran black and foul, poisoning the land, great sandstorms mercilessly lashed the landscape, and perhaps most significantly, the Great Ritual still proceeded.

It had been the Necromancer's greatest triumph in life; a ritual that would kill all within the borders of the nation he had usurped and ressurect everything that had ever died in Nekehara. An unstoppable army of immortal dead warriors slaved to his will which with to overrun the world. Had it succeeded, he would have been sole ruler of the world millennia ago, master of life and death itself.

But it had been sabotaged. Nagash's traitorous allies of convenience, the Skaven, had seen the threat he posed to their continued existence and conspired to unmake his plans. They had crafted a dread sword of black warpstone called the Fellblade, a weapon so fearsome it would irrevocably kill whoever wielded it, and gifted it to the last king of Khemri, Alcadizzar, prisoner in the bowels of Nagashizzar for the sake of the First Necromancer's pride. Armed with a weapon of appropriately suicidal power, the last living Nekeharan entered the ritual chamber where Nagash was conducting the Great Ritual and gave battle even as his soul shriveled and died.

It was a calamitous fight, for Nagash's magic was fell and terrible. Alcadizzar suffered many dire wounds as he approached the vile entity, but it was not for nothing that he had been considered the second coming of Settra in some circles. Even as Nagash continued the Ritual, he carved a great gouge in the Necromancer's withered chest and lopped off his left hand. Nagash was enraged by this, for it meant the Ritual was even more irrevocably bungled than it had been by the strain of fighting a maddened king and performing it at the same time. His rage continued through his deathless state as Alcadizzar hacked him into countless shreds with the Fellblade, but the Ritual was complete, however half-done it had been.

The effects of the Ritual were obvious when the Tomb Kings began to rise from their sarcophagi. Ancient skeletons with souls forcibly pulled out of the afterlife and bound into their withered forms, their deathless state was a grotesque parody of the glorious afterlife many of them had been promised by the Liche Priests of times past. However, the process had not been perfect. The first of them were near mindless, automatons going through the processes of life without any true meaning behind them. Others were self-aware, but driven mad by the process of being reborn into the mortal world. Still others seemed sane at first glance, but were dangerously prone to outbursts of madness. All possessed a pride overshadowing the average dragon, all of them considered themselves the absolute lord of the domain they had held in life, and all of them expected to be obeyed without question.

The result, of course, was unmitigated chaos. More capable ancestors overthrew their feeble descendents and were backstabbed by their erstwhile allies, mad kings were omnipresent, each of which commanded at least a small battalion of skeleton warriors, to say nothing of the more advanced war machines, and none of them ever died. Whenever a king was smashed to bits and his tomb occupied by his rivals, he would inevitably reassemble, along with his army. Sometimes this took mere hours, other times months or years. It ensured constant warfare as kings struggled to prove their dominance over rivals that could not be subdued.

Worse, it only got more entangled as the centuries went on. The Great Ritual had not raised all the dead at once as had been intended; instead they rose from the grave in fits and starts over the millennia, until the desert was a hodgepodge of kings from all eras of Nekehara battling to reclaim the things they had held in life. And with each passing year, more kings rose from their tombs.

Some were fortunate; the wards on their pyramids had held together over the years, ensuring that while they were brought back from the dead, they remained in a deep slumber, allowing the Liche Priests to raise them in a comparatively gentler fashion than the sudden jolt of Nagash's spells.

As the situation worsened, the withered creatures, preserved by their own cunning magics from Nagash's wave of death, awoke king after king in an attempt to restore some kind of order to the Great Land. None of them, however, had the acumen to subdue their countless ancestors and descendents and begin to rebuild. Eyes occasionally strayed to the gargantuan pyramid outside of the Necropolis, but none seriously considered awakening the dread man within.

Eventually, however, the situation became untenable. There was no room for each tomb king or newly risen ambitious general to carve out their own kingdom, yet they still kept shuddering out of their graves in some unfathomable rhythmn. Nor were the Liche Priests ignorant of the outside world; they knew little of the intricacies of its politics but they were aware of the presense of other - mortal - empires nontheless. They saw the greedy eyes staring upon their land, rich in death jewelry, and knew it was only a matter of time before the disparate raids and treasure-hunting excursions turned into something more. Unity was needed. Grand Heirophant Khatep decided to do what must be done, and awake Settra the Imperishable.

He entered Settra's gargantuan pyramid and awoke the sleeping king, and Settra rode out like a god atop a roiling sandstorm. He seized control of the armies closest to him, and such was his force of will that the mad kings submitted to him. He then crushed the upstart monarchs who continued to squabble against each other, uniting Nekehara in a matter of a few years. He commanded all the Kings but the ones he chose to return to their tombs, and his sheer force of personality drove even the mindless ones to obey. That done, he took stock of his own situation and was, to put it lightly, enraged.

He had words with Khatep and the Liche Priests, and would have thrown them out of Nekehara entirely had Khatep not shared with him certain fell omens he had recieved via his scrying magics. After considering this, Settra agreed not to banish Khatep - instead he bound him to the task that his order had promised the great monarch ages ago, and ordered him to find the secret to immortality, in a youthful, golden body. Should he deviate from this task in any way, he would be banished from Nekehara forevermore.

As Settra pulled his kingdom into shape by the hair, kicking and screaming along the way, his attention turned outward, to other lands. In his mortal life he had not been able to expand his kingdom to cover the world entire for lack of time, but although his new form was grotesque it did suffice with regard to lifespan. Nekehara would thrive and grow once more, he vowed, and nothing would deter his kingdom's destiny from being fulfilled, incursion of Disorder or not.

------​

Across the world, eyes turned north. The coming of Chaos was one that could not be ignored by even the most feeble of hedge witches, for the dark gods had decreed that it was time for the world to end. Kislev called to its allies for aid in the coming conflict, and made ready in any way it could. Even so, those were not the only threats; in the south, Araby looked uneasily toward its eastern border with the land of the dead. The frequent sparse raids by undead had ceased in recent years, and the ruling sheiks and sultan suspected that something was afoot. Nations across the world noticed increased aggression in nearby greenskin populations, and the fickle Border Princes were forced to confederate in the face of increasing raids. Perhaps worse, the beastman population across the world exploded, the vile creatures reproducing like mad in the name of their dark gods. But the heroes of man stood strong, and a common pledge rang out into the ages: one way or another, they would defy the apocalypse and endure.

 

[Xantalos]

A Time Long Past

A man stumbled through dark corridors. He was emaciated and bruised, his hair turned white from malnutrition and abuse. His eyes were maddened things, reflecting the searing emerald hue given off by the blade he carried. It was a vile thing, made of some black stone that gave off a horrible green glow that stung the man's eyes and irradiated his flesh. It bore evil runes upon its surface that the man dared not even glance at, for he knew in the depths of his being that it would be his death.

The man walked unsteadily through the black hallways of what was and yet was not a tomb, mind stretched near to the breaking point but set with the determination of the mad on one singular goal. As he walked, the shadows he cast stretched and flickered ominously, lent a malignant cast by the aura of the sword. Outside of the awful radiance all was dark, for no light came to this place.

Though he knew not the layout of his prison, the man knew his destination and went unerringly toward it, for he could feel it in his bones - the essence of death hung heavy over the entire complex, but it pooled and condensed as he progressed toward the center. The air grew increasingly oppressive and it grew hard to breathe; the man heard malicious whisperings in his head as the sorcery present attempted to corrupt his thoughts. The man pushed onward with a bloody-minded determination until he finally reached his destination.

He entered through the open door, for what did the inhabitant need to fear from anyone? The man quietly strode through a vast pyramidal chamber through which black mist roiled. The vile green glow given off by his sword was everywhere, embedded in the walls and floor in strange eldritch patterns. The air stank of ozone, and lightning danced on his skin as he approached the center.

An unnaturally gaunt figure knelt there, in the center of an unfathomably complex ritual circle, both clawed hands raised above its head as it swayed in a trance. It was shaped like a man, but as if all the flesh had been flensed off the bones. It stood taller than the man, and its figure was shaped strangely, warped, as if it were a giant in a child's nightmare, wiry, stretched out somehow, hands with abnormally long fingers, as if formed out of sinew. Its bones were spiderwebbed with green, and its eye sockets blazed with pale emerald fire.

The man approached from behind and swung his blazing sword, the weapon cutting the very air as it hungrily plunged toward the monster's back. At the last moment the skeletal figure snapped out of its trance, throwing itself away and interposing a clawed hand in the path of the horrid blade. The sword cut through its wrist with a near-exultant shriek, meeting no resistance despite the monster's bones being stronger than steel.

The gaunt thing scrambled away screeching, a high, thin wail not possible with any throat of flesh. It wrapped itself in fell power and sent it at the man, streamers of reversed death snapping hungrily at his thin essence. He held the sword out toward the stream of wrongness, and the impossible horribleness emnating from the blade cut through the magic like string. The gaunt monster sent more spells his way with increasing franticness, hurriedly chanting and directing the greater part of its energies elsewhere while it did so. But the man had once been the greatest warrior in the world, and the power of the sword could not be resisted. Engulfed in a berserk rage, the man gouged through the intervening space and rent the monster to innumerable pieces.

Looking down at the monster that had brought his kingdom low out of spite, Alcadizzar the Conqueror vomited, what little there was in his stomach coming up speckled with blood. He'd heard many a tale akin to this growing up: a hero, kingdom ravaged by a great beast, takes up a powerful sword and casts the monster down, and reigns happily for many years. But there was no kingdom left, and he felt more sick than triumphant.

--​

Alcadizzar stumbled out of Nagash's black pyramid and walked. He didn't get far; he could feel the sword killing him even as he held it, but he didn't let go; he had no desire to live when everyone he had ever known had died at the whims of a selfish monster. He held a tight grip on it, even when he died and his body tumbled into the Mortis River.

The blackened currents carried him far, his body staying cruelly preserved due to the lack of even microbial life in the river's toxic currents. It held two things in its shrivelled hands: the fell blade that had brought death both to all it touched, and the crown of the monster. He had taken it from his foe's corpse, unwilling to leave it to any potential scavengers. As he drifted in the river, the spikes on the crown caught on a rock. It was wrenched out of his dead fingers and sent swirling to the riverbank, where it would go on to cause a great deal of trouble for everyone.

Alcadizzar's body washed down the whole length of the Mortis and out to sea. It drifted north along the coast for a time, before being snagged by a freak current and spun out to sea, where it eventually washed up on a tiny island that would later be called Sartosa. An unfortunate individual would find it and the sword still clutched in the corpse's hand, and use it to carve out a kingdom of petty thievery before dying slightly sooner than their ilk usually did. Those who came after them possessed a stronger instinct for self-preservation and kept it securely locked up in a vault. With the malavolent artifact sufficiently isolated that no one knew where it was, it was effectively kept off the world stage indefinitely. After all, only someone with a unique blend of arrogance, selfishness, bitterness, and a supreme lack of care for anything save their formerly-petty ambitions would dare quest for such a self-destructive weapon.

--​

"You're certain?" Mannfred Von Carstein asked the man across the table from him, expression sceptical.

"Oh aye," the swarthy Tilean replied. "I still hold enough of a reputation that none'll think twice of me lads lugging a coffin up ta the castle. Then once yer inside, ye can do what ye do best, get whatever's yers, and make me king!" He grinned, teeth largely untouched by the rot that afflicted so many mortals.

Mannfred drummed his fingers on the alcohol-soaked wood as he mulled over the plan the ruffian was proposing. His gaze crept absentmindedly to the man sitting next to him, who was looking at his vampiric companion with an expectant expression on his gnarled face. Seeing no alternative route, Mannfred sighed. "Very well," he said. "Have your men ready by sundown. We begin then." He stood up from the table and made his way out of the ship's cabin they were in, to return to his resting place until then.

The man who remained behind stood up as well, chuckling to himself. "You won't regret this in the least, De Soto." Still chuckling, he made his way out of the captain's cabin, ducking to fit his hat through.

"I'd better not, Heinrich!" The legislator-turned-pirate-turned-legislator-pirate Benito de Soto called to the Lichemaster's back.

--​

Things had not gone well for Mannfred ever since his death. He had been cut down by the runefang of Stirland at the culmination of a drawn-out cat and mouse campaign between him and vengeful armies of the Empire. Hacked near to pieces by Orc Hewer, his corpse sunk deep into the treacherous mire of Hel Fenn and would've lain there for thousands of years if not for the ring on his finger.

The very same ring that his sire Vlad von Carstein had once possessed, the artifact was immensely valuable to the vampire, for if he were ever struck down, its power would restore him to unlife upon the next sundown. It had almost ensured Vlad's victory in the first Vampire War, before Mannfred had had it stolen. Now he wore the ring, and died without too much worry, for he would be back up and moving by the next night, able to ressurect his undead army.

The ring revived Mannfred, for sure, but Hel Fenn was a fast-acting mire and his corpse had sunk deep in a day. Mannfred was trapped, entombed for all his vampiric strength, held fast by muck. Worse, he hadn't had an opportunity to feed in many days before the battle of Hel Fenn, and was starving for blood when he awoke. Bereft of access to corpses, he was unable even to cast magic, for drawing upon the inner well of dhar in his body would surely drain his sanity at this point, turning him into a varghiest over time. There was nothing he could do but stay entombed in mud and hope some amateur necromancer happened by and sensed his flickering spirit.

He would not go mad down there, whether he spent days or years down there. A human would, from the isolation, sensory deprivation, inability to move limbs, feeling of compression, acute awareness of the weight of the world pressing down above them, inability to breathe oh gods above he couldnt breathe there was no room to move to get out get out why couldn't he get out he was trapped and couldn't get out

The pressure of the earth drove mud through his mouth, then his nostrils when he closed it. He could not move his limbs to block the openings, and was helpless to do anything but feel the mud slowly pile up in his mouth, then down his esophagus and into his stomach. He could feel it oozing through his digestive tract, and though he hadn't needed to breathe for centuries his throat rebelled against him, his gag reflex triggered by the mud blocking his windpipe. It felt as though he were choking, yet unable to pass out. Agony. The mud pressed down on him. No space for movement no space for thought no space for Mannfred.

As his hellish confinement continued, Mannfred was forced to feed on residual dhar in his surroundings to maintain his mind. He was normally reluctant to do so, for he had seen the results of such a diet in his studies with the Necrarchs, but he had no choice. Starvation was worse. So he fed himself, taking as little as he needed to survive. Over the years the dhar gradually pooled in his being and he began hearing things.

It began as whispers, barely perceptible things in the edges of his awareness, but they grew louder as time went on. Boy, they whispered to him in a voice that seemed familiar yet made his gut roil. Foolish boy. You thought you could outdo me? Overcome my accomplishments? You are a failure, my spawn by proxy. Trapped and doomed here where no one will ever remember you. It whispered awful things in his ear, and it gradually took on the voice of his father by proxy, Vlad von Carstein. It had to be him, the unquiet spirit leaving his rotting bones to haunt his. It had to be. There were things it said only he would know.

It had to be.

The earth pressed down on him. He could feel his ribs creaking under the pressure and it felt as if his gut would burst from the mud piling up in it. He began to see something in the total darkness of his tomb, an indistinct figure that struck dread into his very core. He couldn't make any details out; it was tall, and he could feel eyes on him though he saw none. Its head was cloaked in shadow. It taunted him at the edge of his vision sometimes, and others it hung over him like a shroud for hours, his dead nervous system screaming DANGER all the while. Vlad's voice only intensified as time went on, spoke in anger, shouted at him all the myriad failures he had experienced throughout his life and unlife. The earth pressed down and Mannfred screamed in silence.

He grew desperate. He could not stand the confinement any longer, he had to get out. He took in more dhar, as much as he dared. He pooled it in his being and when he had enough he ignited it, screaming a muffled scream as his spirit burned, but it worked. The magical blaze it caused was spotted by something and Mannfred could soon feel the vibrations of whatever had seen him digging down. He readied himself to pounce upon his unfortunate rescuer, drink their blood and leave this hellish bog.

When a hand burst through the muck and grabbed him by the throat, Mannfred bit down upon it with all the might he had left, only to find his fangs glancing off ... bone? How would a mere skeleton be able to dig him out of Hel Fenn?

Further thoughts on his part were eliminated when his rescuer began moving - the sensation was extremely disorienting after such a long time entombed in one position, and his head was still reeling when he was roughly dumped upon mercifully solid ground. He spent what seemed like several hours before he was turned over onto his back, eliciting more disorientation, and an awful pressure was applied to his stomach. He screamed, feeling the pain as his insides were distorted, and with an awful squelch his screaming became audible as a great stream of muck came cascading out of his mouth, covering his face. Mannfred spluttered as the pressure was abruptly released, scrambled to his hands and knees, and spent the next several minutes vomiting up every bit of mud that had oozed into his insides. That done, he looked up to behold his rescuer. He snorted. Of course.

Heinrich Kemmler looked back at him, grinning smugly next to a titanic wight clad in tarnished chaos armor.

--​

He and the Lichemaster talked once he had recovered adequately from his underground entombment. He learned to his chagrin that he had been under the bog for over three hundred seventy five years. He privately vowed to himself never to drink of dhar again as he listened to Kemmler's proposition.

His will and mind had been shattered by his defeat at the Battle of Ten Thousand Skulls, the old man explained, and he had wandered the Grey Mountains a mad beggar. By chance he had eventually stumbled upon the tomb of Krell, the wight that now accompanied him. Some part of his mind had recognized the warnings inscribed upon it, and he had concocted a ritual to ressurect the ancient warrior without quite knowing what he was doing. The effort left him nearly dead, but Krell rose from his grave as he had during Nagash's invasion of the Empire millennia ago. The wight stood guard over the necromancer as he slowly recovered, and his dark presence allowed Kemmler's mind to restore itself over the years.

After a long period spent in hiding, Kemmler returned to Bretonnia and destroyed the rival necromancers that had laid him low. That done, he found himself rather lost for a purpose. Ever since his childhood when he had realized and denied his mortality, Kemmler had always moved from goal to goal, obtaining the next piece of dark lore that would help him extend his life, plotting to murder a rival, or fighting off the bothersome knights that had heard tell of his foul deeds. With the reprive that the death of his mind had allowed him, Heinrich looked over his existence and found it lacking. He had lacked a greater objective, content to scrabble in the dirt like a mouse, esking out the next morsel that would extend his life that little bit longer. He had been a very successful mouse, but a mouse nontheless. What, then, did he persist for? He had to do something with the power he had accumulated over the centuries, after all.

He found his answer several years later during his aimless wandering around Brettonnia. He was on the coastline near the cursed duchy of Mousillon when he was accosted by a crowd of skeletons. Krell cut through them with ease, and mildly interested as to where such a group of constructs had come about, traced the magical strings leading them back to their master. They lead him to the city Mousillon itself, where to his shocked amusement he encountered the ancient lich Arkhan the Black, who was in Brettonnia assisting some black knight or other with a rebellion he was planning, training cadres of necromancers, coercing vampires, and raising undead hordes in preparation for the war to come.

Seeing little else to do with his time, Kemmler stepped forward and joined the growing horde. There was some surprise at his appearance, having been thought dead, but he swiftly worked his way to near the top of the local heirarchy, meeting regularly with the erstwhile leader of this force, some lout named Mallobaude or somesuch. He talked a lot; Kemmler didn't really listen. Something about ideals and truths and whatever malarkey people with morals were interested in. He spent his time instead inspecting Arkhan. He'd seen the liche before, to be sure, but to see him pop up in Mousillon of all places piqued his curiosity. The class of individuals Arkhan belonged to did not do things for no reason; they had a goal behind every action, unshakeable intent, perhaps the one thing he craved the most - purpose.

He had to find out what it was.

--​

For all his other qualities, Heinrich Kemmler possessed little interest in stepping lightly around an issue. When he wanted something, he reached out and took it. Which is why one night he followed Arkhan back from the main keep of Mousillon to the secluded laboratory he had claimed as his own, opened the door without knocking, and asked "Why're you here, liche?"

Arkhan had no eyes with which to blink, but the witch-fires that burned in his empty sockets dimmed momentarily in a similar gesture. "This is my dwelling place while I am here, Kemmler."

Heinrich sighed. "You know exactly what I mean by what I say. Quit slinking around."

There was silence for a moment. "You know who I serve."

"Served. Past tense. He died a while back. Few thousand years last I checked. Developing dementia, Arkhan? Didn't think you had the parts for it."

"I used the correct grammatical tense to describe my state of servitude towards my master. He persists. He always does."

It was Kemmler's turn to be quieted momentarily. "So why're you here? I'd have thought you'd be by his side killing all the rest of us poor saps if he were ... up and about."

The lich did not respond. Kemmler continued talking, a smug grin growing on his face. "Oh, but that would mean he isn't up to walking around, is he? He's dead, or close as he gets, isn't he? What's here in Brettonnia that'll help revitalize the old bag of bones? Eh? What aren't you telling our serpentine friend Mallybod? Surely you can't have an ulterior motive for helping out an idealist," he crowed, leaning in close.

Arkhan's skeletal hand shot up and grabbed him by the throat with unnatural strength. The Lichemaster shook his head, shit-eating grin still plastered on his face. "Don't make a show, Arkhan. We both know there wouldn't be anything left of this building were we to get into a tussle. I'm not about to try to sabotage you."

"What, then?"

"Whatever your reason for trying to get Nagash back up and walking, it's a more interesting outcome than spending the rest of my days wallowing in this den of horse shit. I want in."

Arkhan was already grinning, though being a skeleton that was to be expected.

--​

They made for the abbey of la Maisontaal, a veritable fortress-monastery of the church of the Lady, constructed in the time of the Uniter and never once fallen to an enemy, despite numerous attempts by many including Kemmler. Mallobaude claimed to wish to persuade those knights residing there to join him before pressing his claim against the 'false king' openly, but the silent legions of skeletal warriors that marched alongside the black knight said otherwise. Kemmler didn't care much one way or the other; once he and Arkhan had claimed what lay within the depths of the abbey they would be leaving the fool. Soon they would be off to bigger, better things. He'd be working to accomplish something rather than squandering his potential!

This was of course where fate intervened.

They had been harried by beastmen herds as they travelled through the outskirts of the forests, taking advantage of the weakness imposed upon its inhabitants by winter to use its concealment. They were mostly weak things, easily crushed, but as they approached the abbey they came in larger and more organized groups. At last they were confronted by an army proper, a baying horde that they would have to give proper battle to, for its sheer size would gut their own army should they try to pass it by.

Arkhan met with Kemmler and Mallobaude when the mass of beastmen was discovered by scouts. "I know the beast that leads this mob," the ancient liche told them. "A winged crowfiend, called the Omen by his own kind. He is sensitive to the will of their gods and is here because they wish us stopped. I will take a portion of our forces and make as if I mean to escape. Malagor knows of me, and will pursue me to see me destroyed. Kemmler, you will take on the other responsibilities in my absence," he said. Kemmler nodded, knowing his meaning.

Mallobaude eventually agreed, though his bretonnian fervor made him desire to take the horde to battle. Though they could no doubt shatter the horde with the proliferation of mages they had in their ranks, the delay would likely see Maisontaal reinforced before they arrived, which would not do. So before the Dark Omen's horde came into view, Arkhan took personal command of a good third of the undead forces that comprised their army and headed on a course away from them with the haste that only the dead can muster. Within the day, scouts reported the beastmen horde turning to pursue the liche, and so Mallobaude's army continued on its course.

When they arrived at Mainsontaal Abbey, Heinrich took one look at the forces arrayed there and shook his head. "That won't do," he muttered as he paced back and forth. "Won't do at all."

Occupying the abbey was what looked like to Heinrich most of the duchy's cavalry, rows upon rows of banners declaring allegiance, proud histories of chivalry and the like, and oh was that oh yes it was old duke Tancred II himself, the same fucker who had a hand in his defeat at Ten Thousand Skulls. Whatever was he doing here? Forewarned by one of those damnable enchantresses wandering all over the place, no doubt.

Heinrich knuckled his forehead and did a rough count of Tancred's forces. ...yes, this wasn't doable as they were. Even if he himself took over from the novice necromancers currently keeping the undead in their army animated and bloated their forces fivefold, they wouldn't be able to punch through to the abbey's interior before the rest of Brettonnia was alerted, he could see those damn pegasi at the edges there. He for one was not eager to get shit on by the bretonni king and the masses of grail knights he'd no doubt bring with him. No, this situation needed something else. Something or someone that could resolve this fight quickly without resorting to a seige. It was a shame none of the old vampires were easily indebted at the moment, it'd be a dream to have one of-

Heinrich Kemmler's wizened face stretched like putty as a cheshire grin split his face. The old necromancer cackled to himself and scurried off to talk to a contingent of petty corpse-raisers that had come from Sylvania itself. Perhaps the key he needed was within his reach after all.

--​

"Bretonnia."

"Bretonnia."

Mannfred sighed. "Fine. Bretonnia. Then where?"

Heinrich's teeth gleamed in the dying light of the forests surrounding Hel Fenn. "Sartosa, if you can believe it. Then it's done."

"I didn't think it would be this easy."

Kemmler turned to him. "Rejuvenating Nagash, easy? Have you forgotten how long you spent searching for his books? You, prospective emperor Mannfred, and you could only find what, two? Then there's the rest of the damn things, his armor, sword, crown, hand, all well guarded. People have a vested interest in stopping him from stepping back onto the world stage for a reason, you know."

Mannfred's face was set. "It matters not. He must rise. With him at my back I will be able to finally overthrow the Empire and reclaim my birthright as Emperor of those lands."

Kemmler cackled, his cloak seeming to swell as night fell. It was a source of darkness even to Mannfred, who could see in pitch black as if it were daylight. "So that's your angle, eh?" His voice echoed out of that growing void. "Use Nagash to your own ends, achieve your dream of long ages and all that?"

"He will be indebted to us. You don't think so?"

"Oh well yes I suppose," the Lichemaster muttered. "You want to achieve your own goals and Nagash is the way to get to them. Makes a certain amount of sense."

Mannfred quirked an eyebrow. "You seem to disagree. What's your angle in this scheme, then? What does an old has-been have to gain in raising his betters?"

He saw eyes glaring out from the darkness of Kemmler's cloak for an instant, and he was suddenly very aware of Krell's presence behind him. "The bloodsucker who got stuck in a swamp for three and a half centuries calls me a has-been? That's a laugh."

The darkness deepened as Kemmler did just that, the sound of his laughter oddly distorted. "What do I get out of Nagash's rejuvenation? Consequence."

He continued when there was no comment forthcoming from the vampire. "Think of a rat living in the walls of a house, bloodsucker. He's lived long off the scraps of the person who lives there and grown large and strong. He's built quite a nice den under the house, and it'd be a right pain in the ass to wrest him out of it. But what's he doing it all for? At the end of the day, no matter how successful a rat he is, he's still a rat living in the walls of a house. Hasn't accomplished anything of significance other than living a lot longer than most other rats do. Impressive for a rat, sure, but for a man it's but a short time."

Kemmler's eyes gleamed from the darkness. "But give the rat purpose, vampire, and he'll accomplish wonders. The person who lives in the house may not have any idea that the rat is even there, but he sure as hell will when the little bastard gnaws the foundations to slivers and brings the whole thing crashing down. That's why I'm in on this venture, von Carstein. Now come, it's time we got a move on. Krell."

Kemmler had given Mannfred some blood, but he was still weak and unable to respond when the wight king swept him up in his arms and plunged into the dark void that had become Heinrich Kemmler. The wight walked through total darkness that Mannfred's vision couldn't pierce with utmost certainty, and the heavy sound of his footsteps was curiously muffled.

As Krell walked, Mannfred began to feel uneasy. Wherever they were, it was a place of near-total sensory deprivation and he couldn't move at all thanks to Krell's unholy strength. He began to feel the darkness pressing down on his chest, like a mountain sitting on his lungs. He was breathing as fast as he could but he couldn't get enough air in and oh gods he was back in Hel Fenn it was his mind his mind was coming loose nothing had changed he couldn't escape trapped couldn't move can't move can't breathe need to breathe need to need to to need to get out get out get out the mud was pressing down on his lips and he clamped his mouth shut against its foul intrustion need to get out can't move need to escape I'm trapped I can't move he flexed against its grip with all his might but it held him in with a grip like a steel coffin HAVE TO GET AWAY OUT MOVE ESCAPE OUT GET OUT GET OUT and Mannfred screamed.

The Lichemaster's voice was saying something in his ear but he couldn't hear it he could only hear Vlad over the earth pressing down upon him FOOLISH BOY YOU THINK YOU CAN SURPASS MY MIGHT YOU LACK THE AMBITION. ALL YOUR STRUGGLING WILL BE FOR NAUGHT AND YOU WILL KNOW YOUR PLACE AS MY LESSER. Somewhere in the midst of it he lost consciousness, but it afforded him no peace. The horrid specter of his imprisonment hung heavy over him, and his form shook with terror as Krell trod through the everpresent darkness.

--​

Three nights afterward

Mannfred von Carstein stood upon a hill and looked down on la Maisontaal. "Can feel it from here, can't you?" His companion piped up. "Yes," he replied without turning to look at Kemmler. "It's a potent thing. I'll have no trouble retrieving it."

"Better not," the Lichemaster snorted. "I don't need you panicking on me again. Nearly drew the attention of the natives last time, and that wouldn't have turned out well for any of us."

"That's not happening again," Mannfred bit out. Unwilling to continue the conversation, he set off like a rocket, running faster than a horse at full gallop toward the abbey, staying within the shadow of the massive building. Heinrich chuckled to himself as he watched the vampire go. "That one can't handle the truth very well, can he?" He commented. Krell did not reply, but the grip on his axe subtly tightened.

They watched as Mannfred, shrunk to a small figure by distance and the size of the abbey, vaulted the curtain wall in a single bound, tackling a luckless sentry to the other side at the apex of his arc. He fell out of sight then, but the screams caused by whatever he was doing soon carried over to them on the night winds.

The necromancer and his wight watched for the next hour or so as screams of increasing variety echoed out from the abbey - the hoarse shouts of military men rousing their troops, the classic wails of the innocent caught in the path of conflict, and the massed shouting of units of men that combined all the voices participating into something greater. Towards the end of the hour, coruscating lights began to billow up from the main courtyard, electric green laced with shadow competing against blue so luminescent it was near white.

Whoever Mannfred was fighting, they didn't last long - the blue bursts first sputtered, then stopped appearing. Soon afterwards, the primary gate of the abbey was burst asunder by a corroding bolt of energy, and out ran the tiny figure of Mannfred von Carstein with a company of knights on Bretonnian chargers hot on his heels.

Kemmler watched as the vampire sprinted away from the abbey, up the nearest hill towards Mallobaude's camp, which wasn't nearly close enough to be conducting a seige, he noted. Had he just fouled up the upstart prick's negotiations? Ah, he'll get over it,, he thought as he watched Mannfred slowly but surely pull further and further away from the pursuing horses, undead vigor proving superior to Bretonnian eugenics. "Well, best get a move on," he mused as he stood up. "Mollybawdy's not going to be happy about this, but he can handle himself, eh? Maybe he'll even win over Bretonnia before I come back and stomp them into the dirt."

The old man and his wight set off in the direction of Mallobaude's camp. An unusual pep was in Heinrich Kemmler's step, his eyes firmly locked upon the tall twisted staff he could discern the distant figure of Mannfred clutching. One down.

--​

They made a swift exit from Bretonnia after that, much to the chagrin of Mallobaude. Heinrich laughed at the look on the black knight's face for weeks afterwards. They headed south through the Grey Mountains, using paths both the necromancer and vampire had frequented before. Such hidden ways were often hazardous to those who took them, but for Mannfred von Carstein and Heinrich Kemmler they stood aside, and the pair experienced no delays on their trek through those hidden places.

After a great deal of trekking tirelessly (or in Kemmler's case, being carried by Krell) through mountainous terrain, they emerged onto the plains of Tilea. Here they headed southwest, heading at Heinrich's insistence to the city of Remas, where he claimed he had a contact that would aid them in entering the pirate stronghold of Sartosa with greater ease.

That contact was Benito de Soto, a Tilean councillor in Remas who's family came from hated Estalia and had emigrated in secret to Luccini, and after meticulously erasing any record of Estalian descent, had prospered in the coastal city before mistakenly backing Leopoldo de Lucci, the leader of the temple guard of the temple of the twin gods Lucan and Luccina, in his bid to assume princedom of the city-state. When Leopoldo was trounced by Lorenzo de Lupo, who then became the ruling prince of the city, the de Sotos were thrown out of Luccini with him. The surviving members of the family, Benito included, made their way to a branch of the family who had set up a trading company in Remas for refuge. Benito eventually entered politics, and through a combination of his quick wit and fiery temper (due to his Estalian name, many who were unfamiliar with him initially greeted him in Estalian. A Tilean by birth if not blood, Benito frequently grew enraged whenever this happened and challenged the bewildered offender to a duel to the death on the spot. After several such incidents, he grew to be known mainly by his last name to avoid any further misunderstandings), he quickly managed to become a councillor of Remas, but always kept his mind on reclaiming his family estates in Luccini. To that end, he took more direct command of his family's trading company and began to convert a portion of the vessels into military transports. However, that venture was stymied when a pirate fleet from Sartosa burned his aspiring assault force to the waterline in drydock.

This only gave Benito another idea for what to do to reclaim his family home, and he took a leave of absence from his councillorship. Taking to the seas, he became a feared pirate over the course of a few years, raiding Estalia extensively. Eventually he made his way to Sartosa and used his accumulated loot to buy himself a place at the Captain's Table, a conclave of some of the more influential pirate captains on the island. He then returned to Remas and retook his councillorship, aiming to be elected a triumvir of the city. Simultaneously he used his now-extensive trading/piracy fleet to maintain his influence on Sartosa, hoping to eventually attain dominion of both city-states. It was during this time when he'd run into Kemmler, who had been interested in hiring some of his fleet for raiding an isolated conclave of necromancers in the north of Brettonnia. The deal was never actually conducted, as Heinrich was soon after defeated at the Battle of Ten Thousand Skulls, but Benito remained mindful of the advantages a powerful necromancer on his side could grant him. When the Lichemaster and Mannfred arrived in Remas and contacted him, he recieved them gladly.

In Benito's private chambers, the three of them concocted a plot that would greatly benefit all three of them. Using his men already present on Sartosa, Benito would smuggle in a great amount of undead to strategic locations on the island over a period of a few weeks. After that was accomplished, he and Heinrich would meet with the Pirate King on the pretense of gifting him a powerful artifact of some sort contained within a coffin, whereupon Mannfred would leap out of it and slaughter everyone present. With their central leadership destroyed, the rest of the pirates present upon the island would be helpless to prevent Benito's men from assuming control of the island, assisted by Kemmler's undead forces. In exchange for assisting the pirate in usurping control of the island, Kemmler and Mannfred would take the artifact that had enabled the formation of a pirate kingdom in the first place - the dread Fellblade, sequestered somewhere on the island. It was a simple but brutally effective plan, nearly guaranteed to not go awry.

It's therefore easy for an outside observer to make a prediction of how well it panned out.

--​

Mannfred climbed into an oak coffin that had been filled with dirt from Sylvania to prevent him from being jostled about as it was moved and closed his eyes as the lid was lowered over him. He tried to ignore the resemblance of being lowered into the grave, eternal confinement and lack of movement forever and ever-

The team of men Benito had assigned to the coffin lifted it off the ship's deck and carried it down the gangplank. Mannfred felt nothing, entombed in soil with no space to move. He could almost feel the space growing tighter around him, pressing down upon his chest as the seconds passed, and his undead lungs began to scream for air they did not need.

The team of swarthy men carried the coffin off the ship and began to weave their way through the dense crowd in the harbour, captains and crew bustling about in a hurried semi-frenzy, scuttling this way and that, some particularly daring individuals even ducking in between and under the coffin bearers to get through faster. The coffin rocked.

Mannfred felt the earth quake around him and could no longer see. His face was covered in soil and his cries of objection were muffled as his distress grew. What had that meant? Had the earth shifting meant something? Was he sinking deeper into the mire? No, no he was not but the pressure was an iron band about his chest and he could not move no matter his struggles, he was powerless to escape and he couldn't breathe and blue-white stars were dancing in his vision

The coffin team made their way out of the harbor and began the trek up to the central fortress of Sartosa. They first passed through the extensive shantytowns laying just inland, stretches of rickety houses packed with families. Many of those who couldn't afford a place on the crew of a pirate ship helped feed their families by fishing, and the stink of it hung heavy in the air. Feral dogs and cats existed in abundance, hiding under houses and in alleyways.

They were taking too long the coffin should have been put down by now they were taking too long something was wrong they were taking too long the earth was pressing down on him like a mountain and he couldn't escape can't breathe can't move they were taking too long

After the initial shanty towns there was a long trail leading up to the fortress. The harbor Benito had docked at was fairly close to the fortress, and the trek wouldn't be more than two hours. Grunting slightly under their burden, the coffin team set off at a measured pace.

how long had it been time was gone in this place it was too long the mud was trying to get inside his mouth can't breathe the earth is pressing down on his chest like a vice and it's been too long he can't move and the shadow is back can't move horrible and awful and vile and hanging over him on his skin in his bones a face shrouded in spite eyes blazing with bile a voice of dust and ages and evil vlad's voice it has to be vlad's voice echoing in his ears can't breathe need to move FOOL BOY YOU EXIST AS A MONUMENT TO YOUR OWN FAILURE YOU WILL DIE TRAPPED HERE FOREVER SINKING INTO THE EARTH ENTOMBED FOREVER IN YOUR OWN HUBRIS screamed screeched bellowed in ears blocked by dirt still heard him can't breathe have to get out

After a few hours, the team made it to the gates of the Pirate King's castle. They were of course challenged by the guards there, who were suspicious of a bunch of men carriyng a coffin expecting entry into the castle. They dickered back and forth for about ten minutes until the coffin team managed to find the communipue Benito had exchanged with the King earlier, plus enough coin to pay the customary bribe. That done, the guards began opening the gate for them.

couldn't escape can't get out have to get out have to move mud getting into my mouth through teeth YOU weight pressing down on his chest like giants standing on his ribcage silt and rocks and dust filling up his lungs i can't breathe NEVER why can't he move his limbs he's trapped in dirt it's seeping into my skin i'm thrashing about GOT but i'm not moving why can't i move he needs to escape OUT how long had he been down here the mire was clinging to my flesh dragging him down deeper OF vlad's mocking face as i'm entombed forever cannot breathe he's being HEL crushed under the weight of the world i can't move i need to FENN get out need to get out have to get out have to get out have to get out have to get out have to get out

Mannfred burst out of the coffin as they were midway through the gate, the force of his exit sending wood slivers everywhere, embedding into nearby flesh. In a blind panic, he fled into the keep, decapitating several soldiers that were unlucky enough to be in his way. The guards were instantly roused at the sight of the vampire, and a great shout went up as the guards turned upon the luckless coffin team and slaughtered them. As Mannfred ran into the keep, a series of cannon shots rang out in an erratic pattern, and a large bell atop the fortress began to ring a sonorous tone.

--​

Back at the harbor, the signal was heard and the bells everywhere began ringing. The Pirate King's men, hard-eyed thugs with identifying armbands, began moving around the harbor, stopping any outgoing ships from leaving. Onboard Benito's ship, Kemmler sighed in frustration, which doubled when he discerned a column of smoke beginning to rise from the Pirate King's fortress. "Well, someone's clearly gone and buggered the pudding," he said to De Soto. "If we wait we'll lose what opportunity we have left. Get your men ready."

As the Tilean began shouting at his men, Kemmler spread his arms. Regardless of whether this was according to plan or not, he had to admit he was looking forward to the sheer ruckus this was going to turn into. With a cackle and a grand flourish, he channeled dark power through his staff and released the ethereal chains holding back the caches of undead stored all over the island. They broke out of basements and abandoned houses all over the island, in some cases bursting straight out of the ground in front of the terrified citizenry.

The screaming started in earnest.

--​

Mannfred fled deeper into the Castle Drakenhof. Was it Castle Drakenhof? It seemed unfamiliar, there was light and the stones lacked damp. But it was familiar and that was what he wanted. Away from that place. He would burn it down, excise it from the world, just as soon as he spent a night in his castle, his stronghold, his rightful inheritance. Vlad was dead! Dead and gone! Sylvania was his this castle was his he was safe here. There were no bogs in castles.

He ran through corridors like a blur, near flying, running on the walls around corners. Occasionally he ran into unfamiliar men who were not his lessers his servants his spawn. He killed them tore their heads off broke their backs. He had to ... had to get to the throne room. Then he would be in control. He sprinted through the castle, leaving a bloody trail behind him.

The doors to the throne room were barred by thick wooden bars taken from the oldest trees on the island. It would take a team of men and a battering ram to force their way in past them.
The men inside the hall shivered when the door was struck the first time. The second blow saw slivers flying off the bars. The third sent cracks racing through them. The blows stopped coming for a few seconds, and the occupants of the room relaxed momentarily. This was quickly torn away by the wood rotting away unnaturally quickly, the decay fed by some fell energy from beyond the door.

The fourth blow tore the bars asunder and blew the doors open, revealing a single figure standing there. He was bald, and his skin was pale as the grave. He stood at an average height, and his build wasn't particularly muscled, but he held an aura of power around his person. His eyes were the worst, though. They were crazed, the eyes of a panicked beast, and they held a terrible desperation in them. The man cast his gaze at the motley band of pirates in the hall. "Intruders!" He shrieked. "How dare you trespass on my hall?!" Then he moved, and any hope they may have had of surviving vanished.

He tore through them like a child swatting insects, outraged that they had intruded upon his apparent domain. He kicked in chests, broke spines over his knee, and sent men flying hard enough into the walls that they splattered where they landed. Soon enough there was no one left there but the vampire and the sound of a closing door, made by someone who'd had the foresight to slip out during the chaos. Mannfred's eyes locked on the door in question, and he rammed through it like it was nonexistent in pursuit of his victim.

He dashed through corridors he couldn't remember being in his castle, following the clacking of shoes on stone that always seemed to be around the corner no matter how fast he ran. He went up and up and up, higher into the keep. At last he rounded a corner and found a door that was just closing as he spotted it. Eager to make an example of his quarry, Mannfred wrested the door open.

He found no sign of whoever he had been pursuing; instead behind the door there was a man in extremely red clothing and an obscenely fancy hat surrounded by five exceedingly muscled bodyguards. With a shout the red-hatted man sent his minions at Mannfred, and ran to the other side of the room while the vampire tore them to pieces.

Mannfred looked up from the ruin of their corpses to see the man opening an extremely ornamental chest on the other side of the room and reaching inside. Curious, he let the man whirl around to reveal his grip on a black sword glowing with a horrible green radiance. "So, you're the one that has been massacring all my underlings," the red-hatted man crowed. "They weren't exactly easy to find, you know. Good help and all that. Still, whatever it is you're trying to do ends here. My predecessors had a countermeasure for beasts like you, you see, and I have inherited it! This blade will spell your doom, for it possesses a power so vicious that even a god couldn't stand against it! Now I, Pirate Commodore-King Barbarossa de Iglesias al-"

Mannfred grew tired of his pontificating and punched a hole up through his stomach and out of the top of his skull, spattering the ceiling with gore. As the evident king's red hat fluttered to the floor, Mannfred looked at the sword he was holding. It looked ... familiar, somehow.

The vampire straightened up as realization flooded over him. "Ah." He reached down and tore off the king's arm, locking his fingers in place. He wasn't going to carry the Fellblade barehanded if he could help it.

--​

Sartosa was engulfed in chaos. Screaming innocents ran this way and that, confused mobs loyal to one pirate or another butchered each other in the streets, seemingly everything was aflame, and the undead legions of Heinrich Kemmler ran rampant everywhere. The Lichemaster stood on the deck of Benito de Soto's ship, face strained from the effort of keeping as many undead animated across the island by himself as he was. His eyes idly fell on the enjoyable sight of Krell bisecting a few luckless thugs vertically. De Soto was yelling something at him, but he wasn't really listening. With luck, that vampire would snap out of whatever fugue he'd no doubt slipped into and retrieve the sword soon.

His patience was soon rewarded, as his old eyes caught sight of a supernaturally fast little figure in the distance clutching a pinprick sword-shaped piece of death running out of the jungle. "Ah," he said as he began directing nearby skeletons to board the vessel. "Seems it's time for us to leave."

Within the hour, Mannfred was on the boat and lying in repose down in the hold, recovering from whatever had gone on up at the Pirate-King's stronghold. With various skeletons taking the place of the crew, Heinrich unmoored the ship from the dock and cast off.

As they gained distance from the dock, Kemmler spotted Benito running towards the edge of the island. "Hey!" The Tilean yelled. "What the fuck are you doing, Heinrich? Come back and help me fix this shit! We had a deal!"

"What?" Kemmler shouted back. "I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of how blatantly obvious it was that we were going to do this! Have a good life, you Estalian fuck!" He turned around, soothed by the fading resonance of the pirate's screams of rage. They had quite a long journey to make, and he'd had to get his jollies in while he had the chance!

--​

In a place between the Badlands, dead Nekehara, and the Dark Lands, just east of the Sour Sea, there is a mountain. In aeons past it was the site of a meteorite impact, cast down from the Chaos Moon and brought to earth. The warpstone present in the meteor burned through stone, coming to rest in the bowels of the mountain. It sat there for thousands of years, its presence slowly twisting the mountain itself into a warped and cruel shape.

Had fate been kind, the mountain would have remained undiscovered until the end of days. But it was a cruel thing, and it was discovered by perhaps the worst person possible - the first true undead Nagash, who had been forced out of his homeland of Nekehara by fearful mortals. He found the mountain, which he christened Cripple Peak, and built a monstrous fortress out of the living rock with a legion of undead servants. This he named Nagashizzar, and here he forged many of his dread artifacts including his Crown of Sorcery. Though he left his stronghold in pursuit of vengance and did not return for a long time, it still stood. It towered over the surrounding landscape, a monstrous edifice of black stone that stretched up into the sky like a gargantuan hand squatting over the desert around it. Hundreds of spires jutted up from the main dagger-like building, slender ebony fingers snaking up hundreds of feet into the air. At night they shone from within with sickly witchlight, the mark of the necromancers that made their home within.

The interior was a maze of endless corridors, silent but for the shuffle of undead feet roaming around the halls. An order of necromancers resided there, drawn by the silent power of the entity residing within. Isolated from the world, they spent their extended existences delving deep into the art of necromancy, spending decades devising estoeric facets of the lore of undeath. The most skilled amongst them, creatures who had lived so long they had shriveled until they were little more than bone and will, spent years attuning themself to the essence of death, meditating upon ancient warpstone amulets and the five books bound in human skin they had accumulated over the centuries. In their moments of deepest serenity, they could hear a voice at the edge of their consciousness, a voice of dust and cobwebs whispering its will into their minds. None dared to confirm their suspicions of where it was coming from.

It was into this dread sanctuary that the Lichemaster and the heir to the Von Carstein bloodline journeyed to from Sartosa, following trails discernible only to their kind. The journey was long and treacherous, but neither possessed the will to turn back. At length they found themselves walking up a precarious trail up to one of four gates that existed to this place, titanic creations of black stone shining like burning obsidian guarded by a plethora of seige engines and instruments of fell sorcery. Their gaze fell heavy on the pair, but as they strode up to the gate it opened soundlessly for them.

They strode through centuries of dust unmarked by the living and entered an entrance hall. Arkhan was waiting for them, staring at the door like he had been standing in that exact spot for five hundred years. "You succeeded," he rasped. On his shoulder was perched something that at first glance looked like a monstrously gaunt spider the size of a cat, but upon closer inspection was in fact a hand, severed at the wrist from whatever arm had held it. It moved in strange tics and was profoundly unsettling to look at.

"Yes," replied Mannfred. "The Fellblade. Alakanash. Two of his books."

"Two books. Zebt-Nafar. Morikhaine. The Crown. A sacrifice," retorted the lich.

"A sacrifice?" Interjected Kemmler. "What's this all about?"

Arkhan's eyes flared. "Long ago my master recovered from his first death and marched north. He met the one known as the Heldenhammer, and weakened by the Fellblade and bereft of many of his artifacts, he was struck down by the barbarian. This death had an additional impact on him, and thus a sacrifice of Sigmar's blood must be given to reverse it."

Mannfred frowned. "Sigmar died with no heirs more than two millennia ago. How can you have his blood?"

Arkhan's eyes gleamed.

--​

The lich had travelled into Sylvania alone after his abandonment of Mallobaude, and sought out what remaining dregs of vampire nobility still skulked in the corners of its society. They were weak cousins of the Von Carstein bloodline, those who possessed the ambition of their sires but lacked the will and strength to fulfil their desires. He came to them and forced them into his service one and all. Some attempted to rebel but they stood no chance against the first servant of Nagash. Under his command they surged out of hiding alongside undead armies of his command and took control of half the townships in the province. They even reclaimed the until-then abandoned Castle Drakenhof, wherein Arkhan recovered two books of Nagash and his master's hand that had been cleaved from his wrist all those thousands of years ago.

There was retaliation, of course. Eager to demonstrate the power of Sigmar's church, the Grand Theogonist Volkmar the Grim lead a crusade into the tainted province, taking with him many artifacts that would protect the crusading forces against the foul magic of the vampires, for it was rumored that they had an ancient master guiding their actions, a being so steeped in foul magic that it had lived for thousands of years. Some even feared that it was the pseudo-legendary Drachenfels who had been killed long ago, returned from the dead once more to take his revenge.

Volkmar's fanatics charged into Sylvania from the Moot, meeting little opposition at first. Knightly orders, sisters of sigmar, witch hunters, and flagellants worked together to scour the land for any trace of taint. It was expected based on all previous military campaigns against the undead to be a gruelling slog, an unending series of raids that would attempt to whittle their forces down, lightning strikes in the night to demoralize and disrupt the army. They came into Sylvania prepared for that. The last thing they expected was pitched battle so early into their efforts.

At the town of Nachthaven a gargantuan horde met them head-on, with entire units of freshly blooded vampires acting as shock forces. It was a brutal shock as opposing lines of soldiers, living and dead, clashed. Seeking to draw out the enemy leader, Volkmar waded deep into the fray atop his war altar, calling down the power of Sigmar upon his foes left and right. From then on, reports became fuzzy. There were accounts of vampires appearing in their own lines, dressed as washerwomen or rescued villagers. Some spoke of witch hunters turning traitor, screaming suddenly about blind vengance. Yet others spun tales about a great shadow falling over the Grand Theogonist and his entire section of the line, devouring all within and leaving only bones behind. Whatever the case, the battle was a victory for the Empire, if a costly one. The vampiric ringleaders of the uprising were all accounted for, slain by brave followers of Sigmar and daggers in their backs from their own treacherous underlings. Of their mysterious master there was no sign, and bereft of their unity the remaining vampiric forces were not strong enough to oppose the crusade's forces in any significant way. Even as reports of the Battle of Nachthaven filtered back to the Empire at large, what amounted to cleanup continued. But one thing stood out. No matter who was telling the story of the battle, no one could say where Volkmar had gone. Nor had the holy man's body ever been found, regardless of how thoroughly the site was combed.

--​

The air itself seemed to know what was coming. Outside of the citadel it howled and seethed, whirling through the multitudinous spires of Nagashizzar to generate an eerie tone that echoed through its hollow halls. Lightning crackled between the tips of the towers as the skies darkened, tainted a pale green. All through the fortress-city tension rose in the air as a storm built in the skies above, the world recoiling in anticipation for what would soon happen.

The throne room of Nagashizzar was an extravagantly big space large enough to fit a village inside. It was dominated by the throne that took up nearly a third of the room. It was designed in a manner reminiscent of pyramids in the Southlands, a series of colossal levels leading up to the end of the room, each higher than the next, with a solitary flight of stairs ascending up the center. At the very back of the hall, high enough that whoever sat in it could see the entirety of the room, was a throne made out of a material so dark it seemed to reflect no light at all. In this throne sat an unnaturally tall and gaunt skeleton, missing its right hand and with a shattered skull plate that was barely holding together. It looked like it had not moved for eternity, yet it possessed an aura of unease that grew stronger as one approached it.

Kneeling at the bottom left of the platform that held the black throne and its corpse king was Mannfred von Carstein, rightful heir of Sylvania and strongest existent vampire of the von Carstein bloodline. His will was strong and set towards his own self-interest. Upon the third figner on his left hand he wore a ring that had once belonged to his sire Vlad.

Keeling at the bottom right of the platform was the Lichemaster Heinrich Kemmler, risen from his Bretonnian peasant heritage to become one of the strongest necromancers in the world. His will was strong and set towards the impact his actions would leave on the world. Behind him and to his right knelt Krell, a Khornate lord raised long ago as a wight king in the service of his undead lord.

In the middle of the platform, just before the black throne was Arkhan the Black, loyal servant since that first moment millennia ago. His will was strong and set towards what he was about to do. In one hand he held Alakanash, the ancient skull-headed staff shivering in anticipation. In the other he bore the khopesh Zebt-Nafar, known to the wider world as Mortis. Upon his right shoulder crouched a gaunt skeletal hand, moving occasionally in the manner of a gargantuan spider.

Kneeling before their corpse-emperor in prostration were the nine strongest leaders of the Conclave of the Undying King. Each of them clutched a Book of Nagash in their pale hands, reverently reading from the pages in a monotonous drone that seemed to twist the air.

In front of Arkhan, starved, beaten, and held on his knees by a pair of wights, was a small bald man faintly recognizeable as Volkmar the Grim. Through his veins coursed the blood of Sigmar Unberogen, inherited through his mother's side and stretching all the way back to the Heldenhammer's second and only survived son. He bore upon his body the armor called Morikhaine, though it was far too large for his mortal frame. Upon his brow, digging into his skin with a malavolent grip, was the Crown of Sorcery. His breath was ragged and his eyelids trembled as he struggled to accept his fate, and his mind was assailed by the voice of Nagash whispering into his core.

The chanting continued from the nine acolytes, and one by one Arkhan, Mannfred, and Heinrich joined in as well. Their voices formed a twisted melody, their different voices lending a disorienting sense of depth to the chant that now reverbated throughout the throne room. Even Krell's voiceless jaw worked along with the black words, the creaks and groans of his bones his own contribution to the ritual.

As the chant rang out and a silent power built around the black throne, undead began to filter into the hall. First it was in ones and twos, a solitary skeleton or a pair of zombies. The trickle of bodies turned into a flow, then a veritable flood, wraiths and undead knights and banshees and mummies and more all filing into the hall in complete silence. They arranged themselves into perfect units, grouping themselves together in synchronicity, all facing the throne, all kneeling. As their numbers grew, a voice rose from their massed ranks, rising from each individual body in such exact unison that there was no differentiation between each voice. The chant rose in volume and tempo, the black words contained in the Books tearing at the air and causing the single wholly mortal man in Nagashizzar to weep as his ears bled.

As the chant approached a crescendo, Arkhan reached down and grabbed Volkmar's right arm. He raised it high in the air, and as the words reached a peak he cut down with Mortis, severing Volkmar's hand cleanly at the wrist. As the man's screams mixed in with the choir of the dead, the Claw of Nagash performed its part. Scuttling down Arkhan's arm, it clambered to Volkmar's weeping wrist and burrowed into the stump, sending the man's squealing up an octave as it attached itself to his arm in place of his hand. Arkhan released his hold on the man and he sprawled forward in an exhausted parody of prostration, grunting in agony as he caught his descent on his hand and the Claw. He retched, and looked up, trembling, as the chanting suddenly stopped altogether. Standing in front of him was a skeleton holding the sickening green radiance of the Fellblade, its bones already starting to bubble from exposure to the artifact.

Volkmar was not ignorant of what it was; in his quest to spread the word of Sigmar he had heard tell of the dread Fellblade that had felled Nagash long before he met the Heldenhammer in battle. He knew that he would not survive holding it, and a part of him cringed away from the sword, desperate to live. But he also knew who sat on the throne in front of him, what the purpose of this ritual was. He knew what the cost to the world and to the Empire would be if he allowed the Undying King to walk the earth again. He could not allow that to occur, even if it meant his soul was flayed forever in the depths of the afterlife.

Volkmar rose on trembling legs and reached out without hesitation to grasp the Fellblade with his human hand. His skin blistered at the contact, but he raised the blade nontheless. Then, as Arkhan moved behind him to perform the next phase of the ritual, he whirled around with all the strength left in his body and cleaved the lich in two, from hip to shoulder. The edges of the cut glowed radioactive green. Both Mannfred and Kemmler started at this, and attempted to rise, but found themselves unable to even move, bound to the floor as if an invisible hand was holding them in place. They watched without recourse as Volkmar approached the corpse-king on his black throne, chanting a prayer to the Man-God.

"Sigmar! You who broke the ork and won your Empire at Black Fire Pass! Defier of the Dark and Defender of Man! You who killed the Everchosen of Chaos, who sent Nagash back to hell! I call upon you, oh Ur-Emperor, in my time of need! Betrayers and evil creatures have conspired to raise their Undying King from his state of stasis, threatening the world once more! I beseech thee, Heldenhammer, hear your servant! Grant me your divine light and hatred, guide my arm with your strength!" The old man began to glow as he stood before the skeleton on the black throne, and he seemed much taller than before. "Before me sits an architect of the world's woes, who would seek to trap all life in unending servitude! Guide my blow, Sigmar, and SPLIT HIS SKULL!"

The Fellblade whistled down in a hungry arc, propelled by god-aided muscles and enveloped in a golden aura. It cut the skeleton on the throne in half in one horrific slice, biting deep into the stone behind, and immediately began to darken in color until it was wholly black. Volkmar let out an exultant scream, not noticing the Fellblade turning to dust in his hand. As he ran out of breath, the skeleton on the throne dissolved into a fine powder before his eyes. Panting, he let out a confused exhalation.

The screaming began immediately after. Starting from the crude transplant of the Claw, his flesh began to boil and turn black, steadily being converted into a mass of dark magic that spread up to his torso and then down to consume his legs. The last thing that was overcome was his face, twisted into a rictus as he experienced agonies unimagined. The mass of dark magic fell to the floor, where it thrashed and twisted for several more moments before growing still.

A hissing sound echoed out of all the undead present as the form unfolded and stood up with a dreadful smoothness of motion. It gazed out at the army kneeling to greet it, taller than all present and horribly elongated. The black armor fit it like a glove, and the Crown of Sorcery was as an extension of its skull.

Nagash looked out at his gathered servants and rasped in a voice like sour thunder. "I AM RESTORED." He cast his gaze down at Arkhan's broken corpse, ignoring the trembling forms of Mannfred and Kemmler. "YOU HAVE SERVED ME WELL," he uttered, and with a gesture the lich's two halves were mended and fire came back into Arkhan's eyes. The ancient skeleton immediately knelt before his master, holding Alakanash and Zebt-Nafar out in reverence.

Nagash took them in hand and settled his gaze upon Kemmler. "YOU HAVE FULFILLED YOUR BARGAIN, LICHEMASTER," he spoke. "I ACCEPT YOUR SUBMISSION." His gaze moved then to Mannfred, boring a hole through the vampire's ego and preconceptions to the core of his self. "YOU WISHED TO USE ME FOR YOUR OWN ENDS," he stated. "YOU CANNOT. YOUR ESSENCE IS MY OWN, AND I HAVE BEEN WITH YOU FOR A LONG TIME, VAMPIRE. YOU SERVE ME." It was not a question. Mannfred cried tears of blood as he prostrated himself before his lord. "I serve you," he repeated, meaning it with all his heart. To defy Nagash was folly. To defy Nagash was to be forever trapped in that hellish place underground where he could never get out.

The world could not defy Nagash. It would bow to his will and love him for it.

It would not have the capacity to do otherwise.

 

[Xantalos]

Thanquol took a deep drag from his pipe, luxuriating in the feel of the warpstone-infused smoke tickling his sinuses. He took a moment to savor the feeling of refined exultation that hit him as the drug soaked into his system, and to reflect upon his accomplishments. He had realized his ambitions and become supreme amongst skaven. No more would he have to bow and scrape before another, awaiting his chance to upstage them. He had, with nothing more than his will, forced the Greater Clans into cooperation. At his command, the Under-Empire had exerted its might like it had not for millennia, and an ancient empire of fire and darkness had fallen within half a year. Even now, the last member of that once-proud race knelt before him, twisted by the Horned God into a proud skaven.

Drazhoath the Ashen and the Infernal Guard transmuted into Drazhoath Ash-Fur and the Infurnal Guard. See Heroes threadmark.

Additional technologies unlocked! See Technology threadmark.

New titles gained: Unmaker of Zharr-Naggrund, Lord of the Dark Lands, Father of Drillfiends.

Yes-yes, it is good-good-good to be Thanquol, the Underlord thought as he put his pipe aside. Leaning forward in his personal throne, which was absolutely festooned with horns of all kinds and hundreds of sigils of the Horned Rat, he spoke to the dark-furred skaven kneeling before him. "Where-where do your loyalties lie?" He asked.

"With the Horned Rat, and by extension yourself, my Underlord," the newly christened Drazhoath Ash-Fur replied without hesitation. Thanquol frowned. He may be a member of the master race now, but he'd retained his former speech patterns. It was slightly disconcerting. "Your past-past life?" He enquired.

"Nothing more than a dream, exalted wise one. I live for the Under-Empire, and I hunger for the day in which I may devour what members of the surface races fall into my grip."

Thanquol nodded in contemplation. His flattery could use some work, but he'd certainly find opportunity to practice. "Go-go, then. Be as good-good a skaven as you can," he proclaimed, waving his paw dismissively. Drazhoath bowed obsequiously and scuttled out of Thanquol's personal chambers.

Taking a quick snort from his warpstone snuff stash, Thanquol leisurely walked over to a table in the center of the antechamber, which he'd had made entirely out of emeralds purely because he could. Upon it was spread out a map of 'the current strategic situation', as Paskrit had put it. It was straight from her headquarters, evidently. Whatever the gesture was intended to mean, it was lost on Thanquol, who didn't care much anyway. It meant he didn't have to make the walk to the next floor down where the Council chambers, and the official map, were. He snapped his fingers, signaling Boneripper to bring his extra-plush chair, which had been specially crafted from the skin and fur from a thousand newborn kittens. Sinking into its sinful softness, he regarded the map before him. Large areas on the map were marked as being owned by the Under-Empire, with the various surface races that inhabited the ground above being marked out in different colors. He'd taken the Dark Lands for sure, and surely that was going to grant a big advantage to his hordes, but he'd need to think of where to move to next, what to do, who to do what, how many resources to assign to each clan...

Thanquol's eyes drooped. This seat was dreadfully comfortable. Perhaps a nap was in order. Those plans and such would resolve themselves...

The Underlord's entire body tensed up as he felt two pinprick points settle lightly on his closed eyelids and gently draw them open. The hand of the Verminking gestured to the map lying in front of him, and Thanquol could feel the daemon's hot breath course across the nape of his neck as the tapestry fluttered into the air. "This behavior is above you, oh Underlord," came the Verminlord's hiss. "Only the Horned Rat may luxuriate so in his riches. Focus-focus."

The map came to life at the touch of the Verminlord's claw, tiny figurines of humans, dwarfs, skaven, and other things running around on its surface. "Things are set-set in motion now that will plunge the surface world into chaos," the Verminking said. "I bought you time-time by making you leader when I did, time you use-used well. Do not rest easy now or you will be drown-drowned by the coming tide, and all the rest of your kind with you."

Thanquol, adrenaline running through his system at the Verminking's unexpected appearance - how-how did he get here there was no summon - looked at the map as the daemon directed. He saw ... yes. There was a great conflict coming in the future. A war for the world, one that his kind had been preparing for ever since they were born. Great calamity, if they were not prepared. But also ... great opportunity.

"Do you see-see now?" Skreech Verminking asked his charge.

"Yes-yes," answered the Underlord, his green-eyed shadow looming large on the wall. "I see."

The Great Ascendancy Proceeds

You may ask one question of Skreech Verminking, greatest daemon of the Horned Rat. It may be about anything, from the psychology, location, or plans of enemy hero units to the actions entire nations will take this turn. Due to his daemonic nature he is guaranteed to be able to answer nearly any query. Ask wisely.

[] (write-in query)

The Surface World: Here is presented a list of enemy nations and groups on the surface, and a short summary of what you know is going on in them this turn. Note that this doesn't account for any unexpected shenanigans or divine intervention that may arise as a result of your actions.

Empire of Man
Authority Cap: None
The Empire is in turmoil. The ur-emperor Sigmar has been reborn as the boy Valten to defend his people, and the Emperor musters what armies he can in preperation for the storm coming from the north. The Colleges of Magic are working on a project tightly guarded enough that your spies can't get even a hint of what it is. A new Grand Theogonist has been elected in the absence of Volkmar the Grim; Tomas Jaeger is a kind man to followers of Sigmar, bolstered with faith after speaking to Valten. Sylvania has been subdued from its latest vampiric rebellion, and the Witch Hunters retain a hefty presence there. Beastmen raids have risen in frequency and ferocity, and cult activity in the major cities has risen, though they have not attempted anything big just yet.

Bretonnia
Authority Cap: None
Bretonnia is embroiled in a civil war. The black knight Mallobaude leads the duchies of Mousillon, Brionne, Bordeleaux, Carcassonne, and Quenelles against the rest of the realm, convincing some with superb charisma and others by winning them over with honorable combat, such as Quenelles, where he killed Duke Tancred in a duel. He claims to be on a crusade to free the land from the Lady's tyranny, but others claim he employs witches and worse in his forces. King Louen musters his armies to defeat this challenger and put down the upstart duchies.

Estalia
Authority Cap: None
Business in Estalia continues as usual. Bilbali and Magritta continue to war against each other and the other petty city-states. The citizenry remain as hot-tempered as ever, and the duelers are as eager as ever. There is one bit of unusual news: A short time ago a ship came in from the west to dock at a coastal town contested between both Bilbali and Magritta, with only a single person on board. A human woman, she vanished soon after getting off the ship, and your spies haven't found her since, not that they bothered. It's only one woman.
Minimum Required Authority to Overrun in 1 Turn (Total Infiltration Bonus): 2

Tilea
Authority Cap: None
Tilea is much the same as ever, broadly speaking. There was an upheaval on Sartosa a short time ago, a seemingly random outbreak of undead that only lasted for a single day. The Pirate King and most of his closer compatriots died in the fighting, swiftly replaced by the Estalian pirate Benito de Soto. A similarly named legislator in Remas was also elected a triarch of the city after his predecessor mistakenly drowned in his estate while drinking.
Minimum Required Authority to Overrun in 1 Turn (Total Infiltration Bonus): 3

Kislev
Authority Cap: None
Kislev sees the signs of the coming Chaos invasion just as well as the Empire. Tzarina Kattarin is marshalling the pulks for war, and has sent envoys to all of Kislev's allies for aid in the coming conflict.

Norsca
Authority Cap: None
Norsca is a hotbed of Chaos activity. All the tribes both north and south are in a frenzy, having received fell omens from their daemonic patrons and dark gods. Raids of the weak southerners have been halted, seemingly in favor of consolidating their forces. Hordes of dragon ogres and other chaos corrupted monsters stalk the countryside, and everywhere the winds of magic blow fiercely.

Mountains of Mourne/Ancient Giant Lands
Authority Cap: Max 4 - Little Tunnel Penetration, Altitude
The ogres are up to something in the mountains; almost every tribe is congregating at some point unknown to you in the mountains in response to an invitation or proclamation that Overtyrant Greasus Goldtooth has sent out. Dragon ogres have awoken in massive numbers thanks to a series of unnaturally potent storms raging over the peaks, and their rampaging is a sight to behold.

Araby
Authority Cap: None
While Araby, like many other cultures in the world, has been somewhat divided amongst itself in the past, all Arabyans know and respect the need to be wary of the land of the dead. Their sultans are keeping a keen eye on Nekehara and ceasing any warring on each other for the moment in the interest of mutual self-preservation.

Southlands
Authority Cap: None
There are really only three significant powers present in the Southlands - Pestilens, the lizardmen of Zlatlan, and the numerous feral ork and goblin tribes that rampage through the jungles. These have been joined by a fourth - in recent months twisted and mutated apes have appeared in great numbers all over the continent, seemingly spawned by the power of chaos. They clash near-constantly against the greenskins, who are showing the same signs of heightened agitation their kin in the Badlands are.

Karaz Ankor
Authority Cap: None
The dwarfs are as tightly boarded up behind their fortifications as ever. There have been rumblings in the deep as of late, as if a great number of boots were marching through them. The various goblin and ork tribes squatting in looted karaks have been abuzz with activity, but of what kind you don't know. Dragon ogres have suddenly appeared in huge numbers all over the mountains, wreaking havoc on anyone foolish enough to cross their path.

The Vaults/Grey/Black Mountains
Authority Cap: None
You are mostly uncontested in this region, though like seemingly every mountainous region in the world, dragon ogres have awoken from their slumber in unprecedented numbers.

Badlands
Authority Cap: None
The Orks in the region seem to be agitated. What reports you've gotten are of tribes clashing against each other with increasing ferocity. The drums of war are beginning to beat.

Border Princes
Authority Cap: Does this really matter? It's the Border Princes.
The various petty kingdoms here are still plagued with infighting, although there are several prominent voices calling for unity in the face of the growing ork threat.

Chaos Steppes
Authority Cap: Max 9 - Great Bastion in the way
The plains north of Cathay are awash with bodies as the Kurgan and Hung tribes mass in preparation for the coming storm of chaos. The Hobgoblin Khan is somewhere in these lands as well, although you can't pin him and his horde down.

Cathay
Authority Cap: None
The Dragon Emperor has returned to lead his nation, and everyone in Cathay is abuzz with the news. Everywhere there are signs of his directives - massive armies being called up to reinforce the Great Bastion and other strategically important locations, stores of food and water being reserved for potential sieges, mass recruitment drives into the various monastic orders, and most irritatingly, a meticulous crackdown on any source of corruption in the nation, including your spies. An inconvenience only magnified by Eshin's recent dearth of assassins.

Nippon
Authority Cap: None
The shoguns of Nippon are nominally divided, but they are united in their anger that the dragon that so long ago evicted their ancestors from their homeland has returned. Secret clades of assassins are mustering in preparation for an assassination attempt, and talks between multiple shoguns are in progress to form a temporary alliance. Eshin has received requests to hire their assassins.
Minimum Required Authority to Overrun in 1 Turn (Total Infiltration Bonus): 4

Khuresh Hinterlands
Authority Cap: None
There isn't much activity from any enemy armies in this jungle - it's just as hostile and parasite-ridden as ever, one of the deadliest jungles in the world besides the deepest parts of the Southlands and evil Lustria.

Ind
Authority Cap: 6 - Little Tunnel Penetration
Ventures into Ind have never been attempted in any great numbers, the clans in that region preferring to focus on the easier spoils available in Cathay. There are still some that make a living in the mountains on the border of the country, however, and they tell of strange things - movements of great troupes of seemingly intelligent and tool-using beastmen with the features of tigers and monkeys and other animals, and strange but potent signatures of energy manifesting in the distant cities of the humans living there.

Naagaroth
Authority Cap: Max 4 - Undersea Tunnel Difficulty
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

Athel Loren
Authority Cap: Max 7 - Dense Forest
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

Nekehara
Authority Cap: None
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

Albion
Authority Cap: Max 2 - Navy Capacity, No Tunnels
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

Northern Wastes
Authority Cap: None
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

Southernmost Continent
Authority Cap: 2 - Navy Capacity
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

Ulthuan
Authority Cap: 2 - Navy Capacity
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

Lustria
Authority Cap: Max 4 - Undersea Tunnel Difficulty
You don't currently know anything about what's going on here.

What actions will the Under-Empire take? You have 13 Authority to throw around however you wish. In the interest of encouraging discussion, voting won't begin until GM notice, which should be in 2 days unless discussion is heavy. I'll ask for the desired Verminking question sooner, as the answer will undoubtedly affect discussion. Use this time to discuss potential courses of action, modify plans, and/or gleefully imagine the looks on your enemy's faces. Best of luck, and use plan voting please.

 

[Xantalos]

[X] How does the mind of Greasus Goldtooth work, and how can we influence him to attack Cathay?

The Verminking stared unblinkingly at Thanquol as the Underlord formed his question. "The ogre," he began, "The large-fat one. I saw-spied him from afar once in my travels. Enough fat on him to feed-feed an entire warren, but I spied-scried him not at Zharr-Naggrund. Too busy-busy playing at being king of the hill, no doubt, but I have-have a use for him. My eyes look-look to the dragonthing's land, and see-see opportunity. Tell me, Verminking, what drives fat-fat Greasus? How does his mind work-operate? How-how can I convince him to drive-push the dragonthing's western lands into anarchy?"

The Verminlord stood utterly still for several seconds as it absorbed the question. "A wise-smart question," he boomed as he incised a wound in reality with his sword. "More, I admit, than I thought-expected from you. Come. I will show-explain." With that, he stepped into the glowing green rift and vanished, leaving Thanquol little choice but to follow. The Underlord momentarily paused to take a hefty hit of warpstone dust before hopping into the vortex, which promptly closed, leaving only an afterimage behind to indicate that it had ever been there.

Thanquol couldn't quite discern where he was. It was dark, nearly too dark for even his skaven eyes to see, and he felt crowded, an alien feeling for any skaven, who spent their lives shoulder-to-shoulder with their kin. "Come," came the voice of Skreech Verminking, and the darkness receded a little, allowing Thanquol to see the daemon, standing tall above the ... by the Horned God, those were rats. Rats that made up the floor and walls and ceiling of this place, rats lurking within the shadows of larger rats and stepping across their smaller kin. Rats everywhere, scurrying around the Verminking's feet but never touching him, crawling up him with greedy green eyes. He could hear their voices whispering gently to him, whispering terrible things. There were other things than the rats here, he could sense them. Things almost like him. But there was no time to ruminate on where he was, for the Verminking was walking away and this place was unfriendly even with his terrible majesty around. Thanquol followed, snatching fleeting glances of the tunnels as they made their way through them.

Everywhere there were eyes, hungry yet fearful, and the chittering of the inhabitants speaking to each other was deafening in its quietness. The Verminking and the Underlord made their way swiftly through the tunnels, and at some point they were outside, in a formless expanse of ... something. Skreech Verminking led the way, his intent shaping reality to the path to ... there he was. Tradelord Greasus Tribestealer Drakecrush Hoardmaster Goldtooth the Shockingly Obese, his slumbering form so large compared to his gnoblar servants that he seemed like a hill of flab. "He appears all fat-gut and small-brain, but do not look at his appearance." With a wave of the Verminking's claw and ... something, they no longer looked at the ogre himself, but gazed upon his memories. The two of them watched the Tradelord's life unfold, from his childhood when he had driven three of his brothers into starvation by extorting their food away from them, to when he killed and ate his father, thus becoming the Tyrant of his tribe. Throughout the memories shown the ogre displayed something greater than the rest of his kin - sheer animal cunning was in abundance in the Mountains of Mourne, but Greasus showed forethought, intelligence, planning. It was these qualities that enabled him to attain dominance over the rest of the tribes, to retrieve the Scepter of the Titans and the crown he wore that sharpened his intellect yet further. As they watched, the young ogre grew bigger and fatter and more successful, and the more he grew, the brighter his eyes shone with ambition.

"He has a predator's heart," explained Skreech Verminking. "Gift-bribing him with currency and riches will do little, for he now looks-gazes beyond the basics of civilization and wants-desires more. You will need to treat-treat with him as you would a nation, for his hunger is the size of one. Lands and power are his currency now, yes-yes, not mere trinkets like gold or food. Not anymore. The tribes you bought-cheated into invading the Dark Lands did so because they could not see-see beyond the expanse of food you gave-bartered to them. This one will require something greater to follow-follow your designs and attack Cathay. An assured way to make a profit, to expand-grow his power, to become not merely the Overtyrant of a few dozen groups of near-close gluttons, but something ... more."

Before the two of them Greasus slumbered atop a pile of his gnoblar servants, his mind set on bigger and better things, and not merely how to acquire them, masses of gold and silver and food, but gather and produce them, to form something better than a mere tribe. Something more advanced, dedicated solely to his own aggrandizement.