Scheduled vote count started by Minyette06 on Dec 2, 2022 at 4:53 AM, finished with 19 posts and 11 votes.
[X] Plan: To the Gate!
-[X] Deploy the Fanatic Militia to the North Gate, where you hoped to draw the undead into a decisive battle.
-[X] You would head out to the North Gate, someone had to put steel in the militia's spine.
A few questions:
What sort of gear are we using? I know we don't have anything notable, but what mudane gear are we using?
Are we an Anointed(=spellcasting) priest? If no, can we become one?
A few questions:
What sort of gear are we using? I know we don't have anything notable, but what mudane gear are we using?
Are we an Anointed(=spellcasting) priest? If no, can we become one?
A few questions:
What sort of gear are we using? I know we don't have anything notable, but what mudane gear are we using?
Are we an Anointed(=spellcasting) priest? If no, can we become one?
You have a pretty crude hand-and-a-half sword, and enough chainmail to be considered fully armored. The sword is not your 'best' weapon, but you tend towards it due to it being Verena's 'sacred' weapon. But you are technically more familiar with both axes, and halberds, which in your opinion are just very long axes.
You are not an anointed priest, but your connection to Verena, and circumstances is enough for you to cheat. Mostly by coaxing Venera's near constant attention on you out into the physical world, and letting it do what it does. As you could see in the fantatics part of the update, while you did use it to heal that person, it was near entirely out of your control and attempted to reach towards the rest of the crowd before you reigned it in. Something you were again only capable of, because of your connection of Verena and her understanding of what you were doing.
You can become an anointed priest, but that would rather difficult, as you have a rather complex relationship with the mortal side of Verena's orthodoxy.
You can become an anointed priest, but that would rather difficult, as you have a rather complex relationship with the mortal side of Verena's orthodoxy
To clarify, when I mentioned "Anointed" I used it in tabletop rpg sense of "being able to use god's divine lore spells" rather then in-universe sense of " hold a certain rank within the cult"
To clarify, when I mentioned "Anointed" I used it in tabletop rpg sense of "being able to use god's divine lore spells" rather then in-universe sense of " hold a certain rank within the cult"
Where do you think people learn how to use those spells? The gods provide power, but the Mortals must know how to provide form to that power, otherwise Sigmar would just Sky Hammer any Chaos worshipper that set foot in his empire.
Let's recap how we are standing with the worshippers of Verena.
The sect of Verena in Marienburg hates us and has a bounty on our head. (Blue haired head of course)
The sect of Verena in margaritte dislikes us and wants their books back but accept that taking them was legal.
Those are the two we directly know of.
Finding a priest in the border princes that would accept us and teach us is going to take time and effort and still might not work because of our reputation.
Let's recap how we are standing with the worshippers of Verena.
The sect of Verena in Marienburg hates us and has a bounty on our head. (Blue haired head of course)
The sect of Verena in margaritte dislikes us and wants their books back but accept that taking them was legal.
Those are the two we directly know of.
Finding a priest in the border princes that would accept us and teach us is going to take time and effort and still might not work because of our reputation.
Corralling fanatics was an art both subtle and ungraceful. Words alone struggled to find purchase in a mind broken down to nothing more than a desperate need for the gods' absolution and reasoning…
If the fanatics had reason left in their body, then you had failed in your task.
Roughhousing and bellowing orders would only go so far; you had taken a hundred men to the brink of sentience and forced them to dangle on the edge. Cracked and shattered their sense of self, and replaced it with an all-consuming feeling of the gods' disgust and bound it all together in an almost communal self-hatred. Each and every fanatic looking for an outlet for the tumult inside them.
So you played to that; even the slightest mistake in constructing the barricades along the wide cobbled streets of Messien's main road was an affront to their god. Every moment of delay was a sign of them rejecting their god's second chance, and they threatened the redemption of all of them.
It took exhausting measures of control over the fanatics to manage, but under the self-flagellation of the existence you wrought for them, the defences rose quickly. Makeshift blockades and stakes stabbed into the ground formed wood stitches through the burnt-out and broken ruins left behind by the last weeks of assaults.
Organising the less faith-mad militia was a far easier task. They had not had the stakes of the matter stripped away for them and replaced with a desperate need for redemption. Even if they were not gripped by the same frenetic energy that drove each fanatic to do the work of four men, they were precise in a way that the Fanatics were not.
And you were mostly sure they were not about to drink the oil in some insane attempt to curry the god's favour through deathly dedication. Or worse, set themselves on fire like some of the old stories of Magnus the Pious.
It was not the most outstanding work; even the Norscan in you scoffed at the workmanship. Ramshackle was too kind a word for what it was. But for hours of work with unskilled hands, it would be enough.
So it became a waiting game, one you were very familiar with. Once upon a time, it was waiting on the deck of a ship, watching some hamlet - or village if your captain was feeling particularly daring - grow closer as your longboat cut through waves. Later it was watching treelines as a cart rattled underneath you, the electric touch of expectation on your tongue even if you could not see the bandits you were hired to cast aside.
Now it was watching the inky black beyond the once ostentatious gate of Meissen, listening to the rattle of bones and the sloughed noises of rotten flesh moving in that impenetrable dark.
Soon they would grow close enough that even the weakly flickering torches would cast them in light, and they would clamber over the ruined remains of the gate. Then the dead would pour into the main streets of Meissen, contained only by the untrained crude iron of its militia.
The dead will outnumber the living, and there was a part of you that was unsure if that would be different even if you repelled this assault.
A single form, with skin like leather and arms twisted by decay, stumbles through the broken remnants of Meissen's gate, grey skin so marred with rot and grave dirt you could almost smell it from where you stood. Glassy eyes half eaten by maggots trail across the assembled militia, waiting in makeshift barricades with weapons clutched in hands, both fearful and faithful.
"Hold." You did not need to yell to hear in that still night, your voice carrying over even the din of horrors shambling towards the gate.
Its eyes snapped to you, followed first by its body, then by its head. For a moment, you stared down the walking dead, seeing in those eyes a swirl of something far fouler than the shamble of undeath.
It surges forward, death-softened feet awkwardly pattering at the cobblestone as it runs through the empty space you left for its ilk to fill. You watch with a vague feeling of contempt as it moves faster than its ungainly shamble would imply, very nearly at the same tilt as a living man.
What a miserable creature.
One of the militiamen by your side stepped forward as he thrust out a crude spear, stabbing the dead through the stomach and running it through. The dead, rather than doing anything so helpful as re-dying from what would be a fatal blow, simply pressed onwards, spearing itself further until it was nearly halfway up the makeshift weapon.
Your own weapon flashed in the torchlight, crude iron cleaving its fully exposed throat and the weakened bone of its neck.
"That's one for us." The spearman mutters as he steps forward and boots the rotter from his spear, sending it sprawling backwards with a moist thud. "Only what? A few hundred to go? If they're all as easy as that, the leftovers will still be warm when I get home."
"It's not one walking dead that men need to worry about." Your voice rumbled out, and as if summoned by your words, more undead clambered through the remains of the gate, first as a slow trickle. Then as a mighty flood, a tangled tide of putrescent limbs climbed over themselves as they surged to fill the ground you left open to them. "Get back behind the barricades, and make them pay for every inch."
The battle began.
The tide of dead crashed upon the makeshift defences of Meissen and found its defenders unready for the unnatural vigour that animated their dead limbs. They were too fast for their shambling gait, too strong for their withered muscles. Even if you struggled against the sudden onslaught, you might be able to cleave the dead in twain, but when they were pressed so tightly together as they squirmed forward, there was just too much flesh.
In another time, where you were just doing what you could to hold onto Meissen's walls with men unsure how to stick the pointy bit into flesh, the crash of dead would have swung the fight immediately. The dead would have ripped them from the walls and torn them apart with weapons as rotten as them.
"HOLD!" Your voice tears across the battlefield, warring with the din of battle and finding it wanting as your blade splits a rattler's skull apart moments before it would have carved out a man's throat. "KEEP YOUR WEAPONS UP; PUT YOUR WEIGHT INTO EVERY STRIKE!"
On a night before tonight, that initial surge of the malignant dead would have sealed Meissen's fate.
"YOUR GODS ARE WATCHING; WILL THEY FIND YOU WANTING? WILL THEY FIND THIS IS ALL YOUR MEASURE?" Your left hand leaves your hilt, lashing out to catch the back of the remnants of a rotter's funeral garb, bodily pulling it off a frothing-mouthed fanatic and dragging it in front of you as a rotten human shield.
"IF THEY'RE FASTER THAN THEY LOOK, THEN STRIKE EARLIER." You pull away from the melee for a moment, half a dozen men stepping forward in your place. Your eye flick across the barricades, a mind cursed for bloodshed, noting where and how the defenders buckled.
"IF YOU CAN NOT OVERPOWER THEM, THEN GIVE THEM NO CHANCE TO USE THEIR STRENGTH BEFORE YOU CUT THEM DOWN." You crash into the next flashpoint with all the force of a sledgehammer, moments before the dead would have burst through the faltering militia, the desperate fanatics following you descending on the dead alongside you with howls of piety.
"IF YOU CAN NOT KILL YOUR FOE, THEN KILL THE FOE OF THE MAN NEXT TO YOU." You took your own advice, a blade slamming through the neck of a rotter, distracted by one of the militiamen. A favour a man next to you repaid, driving his rusted sickle through the foetid eye of a dead moments away from swiping at you.
"DO NOT LET THEM STEP AN INCH THROUGH THE BARRICADES; IF THEY ARE CRAWLING OVER THEMSELVES TO DIE, OBLIGE THEM!" Through sheer physical might, you began slowly forcing the dead back, every swing of your blade reaping scores of dead as you hacked through rotten flesh. A weak, pock-marked skull crushes into splinters under your boot as you begin climbing over the dozens of dead already choking the gap of the barricade.
As you loomed above the battlefield, atop a mound of corpses, you saw your men strike back. Given a moment's heart and the taste of battle, they had begun to thrive, and for one tempting moment, as the gothic pulchritude of bloodshed sung in your heart and blood, you wondered if you even needed Rosmalen's men. Or if you would turn aside the horrors of the night here before his order would come in minutes.
You forced yourself forward, clearing the barricades with all the terrible strength and fury of a Norscan warrior, tempered and aimed by a mind sharpened by Verena's grace. To be within your reach was to return to Morr's grace, and as age-rotten blood dribbled down your face, the undead buckled in your wake.
Behind you, the militia followed, swept up by the hot blood of battle as all true warriors were, and you exulted in the familiarity of your youth before it was confused by reason and morality. A simpler time that you loathed and deeply longed to feel once again.
The dead buckled under the surge of the living. By your side, men driven mad by the toxic promise of redemption screamed as they threw themselves at the irredeemable dark. In the sky, arrows thudded down like rain, and makeshift spears lanced out to reap a splendid toll.
It was a moment of glory and grit and a terrible mistake.
The Meissen militia had staved off the dead through one simple fact. The dead could not truly leverage the insane numbers advantage they had over the living while they were hidden behind their barricades.
No matter if they tried to shamble over those barricades or shove their way through with unnatural strength, they were forced to fight piecemeal against the militia.
You were forced to watch, with your blood hot in your veins, as the militia who had surged out to meet the dead by your own example were taught why they needed those barricades.
With all the desperate strength and hard-bitten skill you held with the blade, it was all you could manage to spare those closest to you from the unstoppable advantage of numbers.
Those distant from you though… they who left behind their most significant advantage, they were descended upon by a hungry swarm. Brutalised screams filled the battlefield as Meissen was taught to fear the rotten grasp of the shambling dead once more, that there was a reason they had spent weeks huddled in their beds, flinching at every noise.
"PULL BACK TO THE BARRICADES; HOLD THE BARRICADES." You howl, feeling in your bones as your lines crumbled around you, and you were left with the terrible knowledge that soon you would be left alone in a tide of dead. "ROSMALEN WILL BE HERE SOON; HOLD THE BARRICADES UNTIL HIS ORDER."
You carve your way back to the barricades yourself, backing up over corpses as you are pressed in on all sides, your back only kept safe by the very fanatics you broke into fearlessness.
Perhaps if it was just that, you could have pulled together Messien's defenders. Stitched the defenders together into a shaken but fighting defence.
Then, a low rumbling growl dripped across the battlefield, and across the field of corpses, you saw something truly horrible. Towering above the dead was a hulking form of leathery hide and bulging musculature. Mutant bone juts out of the creature, jagged and brutal.
Monstrous yellow eyes, meet your own. Its maw opened, offal and drool dripping from thin, rotten teeth as it roared at you.
For a single awful moment, all you could see was the writhing form of twisted limbs and cancerous growth.
You watch, atop that mound of corpses, where you had once felt like you were teetering on the edge of utter victory as that victory was crushed into helpless defeat. The sight of such a terrible beast was the final mark to break the militia of Messien, a hundred and change men almost as one broke and ran.
All that was left behind were men too enamoured by their blood-drenched forgiveness to care that they were surrounded by only the dead, eager and choked by a terrible desire to become one of those corpses in a self-destructive need for the god's favour.
"PULL BACK! TO THE FIRE TRAPS." The bulk of your troops had broken, and what was left was maddened men more concerned with killing as many dead as the gods thought their soul was worth than the defence of their home. "THE GODS DEMAND YOU MAKE THEM PAY FOR YOUR LIVES DEARLY, BACK TO THE FIRE TRAPS!"
You were not sure if it was a miracle your words were heeded or a cruel trick by bitter dark gods. The fanatical that had offered not one step when the others broke and ran pulled away not under the ceaseless tide but by your command. In doing so, they found themselves suffering under the same horror that had broken their once brothers-in-arms. With no man holding the barricades, the dead flowed through it like a foetid tide.
Dozens of men were cut down like vermin, ripped apart by cold bone. The fanatics had already borne the brunt of the battle, and as they retreated in the wake of a force that outnumbered them tenfold, the toll grew heavier.
Where there was once a century of men you had broken and moulded into something already too damaged to break, there were mere dozens. Long past decimation, the fanatics approached annihilation.
And with them dead, the militia broken, Verena only knowing what happened to the men on the walls, and Rosmalen's men still not in position, Meissen would be entirely open to the dead.
The sound of clash shattering rang above the deafening screams of dying fanatics.
Liquid splashed upon the barricades and, between one moment and the next, erupted in a great fire.
You twist around in a panic, caught off guard and unsure, and see the grimly determined countenance of Otfried, the Taalite you had talked to this very afternoon, one of the few dozen hunters still with a bow fit for purpose. That bow was slung over his shoulder next to a quiver that was damningly empty.
But he did not seem to have let the lack of arrows keep him down, taking a proffered glass bottle from someone else and lighting cloth stuffed into its neck.
You, for a moment, had to acknowledge there must be some level of irony in a reformed Norscan raider forgetting entirely that he had archers. To be fair to you, their effect on the battle, with such a terrible glut of flesh to chew through and arrows ineffective at best to put down rattlers, had been more in the abstract than in the important real. Their contributions had been well-placed salvo's of some effect, but little beyond that, until now.
As the father threw the glass filled with clear liquid, and it shattered against the encroaching horde that was teetering moments from claiming a victory that would break Meissen, he and his men became the single most pivotal aspect of the defence of Meissen.
More fire blossomed, the terrible stench of rotten flesh burning like a sweet rose to your nose, and the dead found their momentum ripped from them once more.
Your lips split into a grin, both thankful and full of teeth, and the young father simply nodded at you before gesturing for another bottle.
"KEEP MOVING TO THE FIRE WALLS. DO NOT GIVE THEM TIME TO RECOVER." What few fanatics that had managed to survive thus far limped back to the second and final defensive lines. Stumbling over torn-down houses in a manner so very similar to the very dead they fought.
You, however, stayed behind, backing up only as the hunters moved beyond the wall, imposing yourself between the burning dead as they attempted to rush at Otfried's men. Thinned by fire and the bulk kept at bay for the moment by fire, it was child's play for a man of your skill to hold the dead back for men who so gloriously averted disaster. Clearing away the few rattlers that had survived the conflagration.
As they crossed through to the other side of the 'walls' that would soon be engulfed in a more permanent flame, you yourself began carving your way to that relative safety as you distantly heard Rosmalen ordering his men into position.
They were late. But that was something you would have to deal with later.
Then before you could cross the threshold, joining the thin line of wild-eyed fanatics whose remnants hardly numbered half a dozen, a roar hits the air once more.
The roving beast that tightly muscled horror stepped through the fading fire of the first barricades, the smouldering embers hardly even bothering the yellowed hide that made up its skin. Around it, more dead stumbled through, crawling over the husks of the barriers and shambling forward.
But your eyes were locked with that creature. That terrible spark of not quite intelligence, or worse, a remnant of what was once intelligence in those monstrous yellow eyes.
Then, so very akin to the first of the dead that had charged your barricades alone, it surged forward.
But this time, there was no vague feeling of contempt. Its limbs flexed and moved with a gut-churning similarity to the flesh of man. Unlike the first rotter, which was fast despite its ungainly nature, this creature was all smooth movements and natural strides. Graceful in a way that was both disturbing and deeply uncanny.
Knowing what little you knew of the dead, it was like the difference between an amateur puppeteer and a master.
And perhaps the most terrible of all, unlike the rotter, it was not alone. All around it was the press of rotten dead, numbering in hundreds still.
You widen your feet, your stance lowering as you hold your blade in front of you. The horror was taller than you, towering nearly twofold above the dead, and its hulking musculature promised that it was stronger than you too.
This was going to take a little more than just brute force to deal with.
Luckily, you were far from the boy of ten and three earning the title "The Brute" with knuckles slick with warrior priest blood. You roll your shoulders and glance to your side where the few remnants of fanatics stand, vibrating with all the repressed energy of someone who had fallen in love with their own death.
To your sides, the fire walls Rosmalen had spent so very long were finally lit, leaving what you knew would only be a few entrances the dead could be funnelled through.
Rosmalen had yet to send swordsmen to this entrance. It seemed Izek's warning would only stretch so far. First late, and now leaving you to hold an entire chokepoint near enough on your own.
"If you die, make sure you die well." They stared up at you, and for a moment, you thought that the dehumanisation and battle had torn their comprehension of language from them. "Your gods are watching." You pull upon Verena's attention, feeling divine grace flood your limbs and lick at the few wounds that had torn through your chainmail. Then it spilt out into the world itself, pouring into the fanatics, and for a moment, you could almost swear it was not just Verena's attention pulled to the world. "Give them a good death to watch."
You grin at them, wide and wild, and they grin back.
Six men broken by your actions, and you broken by your own life. In that very moment, all your guilt towards them burnt away, and all you could feel was a brotherhood.
Then the dead arrived, and the seven of you became death. Left alone to hold this, you tore through the dead like the scythe of your goddess's husband. Hateful anger and brutality descended upon you as you lost yourself in the relentless, sick bloodlust.
All the while, your eyes kept on the approaching horror. No… to be more accurate, all the while, you approached it too. How else were you going to drive your sword through its skull? How else but approaching it as it approached you were you going to feel the glorious feeling of its blood painting you red?
The six survivors pressed into the wake of space you formed; the weak had been slaughtered from the fanatics, leaving behind only the mad capable of surviving a night of horrors unturned. They created a bulwark of maddened faith and, in that moment, left bereft of impurities by the crucible of their trial this night, the dead shattered.
You paid no mind to that as the horror crashed into you. In a moment, you were proven right, as the creature's insane strength, matching its disgusting musculature, threatened to batter you aside like paper in a storm. But you had survived a Mōteatall, one of the terrible storms that rocked the sea of claws, your longboat cleaving through the water as it seemed the gods themselves thundered in displeasure.
You knew how to weather what should be unweatherable. You let the force of the blow push you back rather than shove you down, your blade slipping underneath its guard as its powerful blow found nothing to catch upon. Your feet twist as you follow your blade, throwing as much force as you can manage in the distance you had. The crude iron of your chipped sword cuts across thickly muscled abs, from waist to pectoral.
Against a human foe, it would have split them in half. Against the creature's unnaturally stiff hide and thickly wound muscles, all your sword did was split open flesh to let rotten blood dribble forth.
You slide underneath the next blow, tricky feet ceding space and distance with all the reckless abandon of a man sure he knew what he was doing. Your footwork impeccable, even with the way the dead twisted and crunched underneath every step, slipping around the crush of the brute's swings with almost sinuous grace.
The two of you, almost by chance, found yourselves in an almost arena of sorts, as the six fanatics left standing kept the salivating dead at bay with faith and fury. They did not for a moment concern themselves with what you were doing, and in that maddened moment, that feeling of brotherhood and trust lost to you so long ago burnt even brighter.
And you drove that feeling of brotherhood into the crucible of the bloodlust thundering through your veins and forced yourself to greater heights. You skittered around blows so quick that they cracked in the air as your blade lashed out once twice, thrice against the creature, tearing into flesh and muscle.
But they were just cosmetic for a creature like this. Its blood was so thick that it hardly flowed, its skin and muscles so tightly wound that no matter what you cleaved apart it, there would still be strength enough to punch through steel.
You needed something slightly more… definitive to put the creature down. As the two of you meet once more in a flurry of blows, rather than bothering with the preamble, you twist past it as it lashes out at you. Your boot stomped on the back of its knee, just underneath the thickly corded muscle of its thigh.
Thankfully, rather than deciding that undeath and the mockery of animation that suffused its body meant it was immune to the basic biology of a knee bending, it crumbled forward. It was, in truth, little more than an annoyance; in moments, it was back on its feet, whirling around to face you.
But a few moments was more than enough time to make space. Space that the creature quickly threw itself forward in a charge to chew through quickly became a yellowed near blur of terrible undead motion, half a ton or more of charging brutality, a sight more terrible and final than even the charge of the finest of Bretonnian knights.
And just what you had wanted to see.
The timing was as tight as you had ever risked your life to slide under a blow fuelled by a charge that blurred to your eyes rather than step away or desperately throw yourself aside.
Thick hide and tight muscle cleaved apart as you used its own momentum against it, driving crude steel near to the hilt. Then, your battlemad grin widens as you twist your legs underneath you, your entire body turning with the momentum of the creature as you use the blade you had just driven deep into its sternum as a lever. Your muscles strained and screamed as you lifted the horror up, dragging it over yourself.
In moments you felt the crude iron of your blade - give - the terrible sound of iron rending apart underneath insane weight. Your right-hand leaves the hilt, snapping up to slam into a hold on the creature's neck, using both through your pivots to bodily crush the creature to the ground with a terrible crack of bone.
You stomp a boot into its face as its muscles writhe around a shattered skeletal structure. It tries to strike at you with its left arm, struggling to even move. You rip the blade from its sternum and drive into its shoulder. Pinning its last usable limb to the ground.
For a moment, you stand there, staring into monstrous eyes as it failed to keep up with the brutality you had inflicted upon it. It snarled, its muscles twisting and writhing, and all you could see was leathery skin and mutated flesh, and rage took you.
Your fist crashed into its face, over and over, as the burning hatred consumed you. In a moment, you were in two times, and the black hate - once powerless and impotent - boiled over into frothing fury. Your knuckles split upon hardened bone and then split hardened bone in turn. Teeth chipped and cut at your flesh, but you just kept smashing and breaking until the creature's face was shattered and broken.
You drove your left hand into the toothless maw of the creature, gripping its lower jaw, as your right dug through the mush of its eyes.
Then with all the might you could muster, you pull the two apart until bone split from bone and you were left with three-thirds of a monster's skull.
You straighten up, eyes wide, as you hold your trophy up and scream in victory. The display of brutal victory unmistakable.
As you stand there, full of hate and rage, you feel something inside you shift and move. The cool touch of law and justice. Of science and advancement, poured through you, like a gentle drink. It softly, almost tenderly, threaded away your anger, leaving you with nothing but Verena's grace filling you.
Your eyes carefully close as you bask in the calm of being a civilised mind. Of being human as your goddess extricated you from the terrible destruction that was wrought in your blood.
Then you open them as the warm touch of dawn creeps up your face. Before you, where there had once been a teaming mass of endless undead, there were now only corpses. The six fanatics - men - that had followed you and survived until the end basked in their victory, and as they celebrated, you let the full force of that divinity so comfortably in your bones pull out into the world.
This time, there was no mistaking that it was not just Verena's energy that filled the dawnlight, and the men broke down sobbing as they were offered the salvation and attention from their god that you had broken them to need.
It was over.
-
Militia - 62 dead. 55 injured. 65 alive.
Fanatics - 94 dead. 6 wounded.
Swordsmen - 49 alive.
Meissen hunters- 31 alive.
Wall garrison Militia - 10 dead. 140 alive.
Front gate rotters - 985 dead
Front gate rattlers - 553 dead
Flanking rotters - 300 dead
Flanking rattlers - 200 dead
Roving beast - dead.
Meissen lives to see another day.
Asavar first round: 57
Fanatics first round: 68
Militia first Round: 65
Zombies first round: 76
Skeleton first round:74
Hunters first round:35
Militia Wall Garrison: 70
Flanking Zombies:9
Flanking Skeletons:55
Asavar second round:91
Fanatics second round:68
Militia second round: 112
Zombies second round: 68
Skeleton second round:36
Hunters second round: 47
Militia Wall Garrison second round: 113
Flanking Zombies second round:82
Flanking Skeletons second round:-2
Asavar Third round:94
Fanatics Third round:27
Militia Third round: 21
Zombies Third round: 59
Skeleton Third round:77
Hunters Third round: 81
Militia Morale roll #1 (Health threshold 35): 16 (Morale drops to routing)
Militia Morale roll #2 (Health threshold 30): 23 (Morale drops to Broken)
There were 58 rolls for this battle, some of them I cut off because the Zombies had been mauled enough that they could not actually do any more damage, they just had that big beefy health pool. Which might imply I should er refine the system. It did produce some pretty cool ups and downs in the fight, most notables is Herminia failing all attempts to resupply the hunters, yet the hunters for a while just kept rolling higher, until they got the first 100 of the quest.
Maybe it was a slight overreaction for them to invent molotovs, but I thought it was fitting that they improvised.
Another note is the fanatics rolling pretty poorly until there was literally none of them left, and then just rolling like a god with six of them remaining. Also special shout out to the wall militia rolling like gigachads and kicking the flanking undead teeth in by round two.
The next voting post should be sometime later this week. I hope you enjoyed the fight, and that it was as gripping reading as it felt writing.
Next update will definitely have a vote about how you deal with Rosmalen failing to give the order to pull back long past the reasonable time to do so, and consequently only committing long after the fight had lost most of its momentum. As well as your reaction to Herminia completely failing to resupply the hunters with arrows.
Next update will definitely have a vote about how you deal with Rosmalen failing to give the order to pull back long past the reasonable time to do so, and consequently only committing long after the fight had lost most of its momentum. As well as your reaction to Herminia completely failing to resupply the hunters with arrows.
We should really focus on building a powerbase with the people after this. We don't have much in the way of power for when Izek kicks it. I suggest focusing on the Hunters and the farmers. Get a hold of the people feeding the town as to be able threaten the professional troops Egbert has and the economic ties that Herminia has.
You twist around in a panic, caught off guard and unsure, and see the grimly determined countenance of Otfried, the Taalite you had talked to this very afternoon, one of the few dozen hunters still with a bow fit for purpose. That bow was slung over his shoulder next to a quiver that was damningly empty.
But he did not seem to have let the lack of arrows keep him down, taking a proffered glass bottle from someone else and lighting cloth stuffed into its neck.
You, for a moment, had to acknowledge there must be some level of irony in a reformed Norscan raider forgetting entirely that he had archers. To be fair to you, their effect on the battle, with such a terrible glut of flesh to chew through and arrows ineffective at best to put down rattlers, had been more in the abstract than in the important real. Their contributions had been well-placed salvo's of some effect, but little beyond that, until now.
As the father threw the glass filled with clear liquid, and it shattered against the encroaching horde that was teetering moments from claiming a victory that would break Meissen, he and his men became the single most pivotal aspect of the defence of Meissen.
Woohoo! I am very proud of the hunters acquitting themselves like this even in the worst of circumstances. However, I have to ask, what exactly are they putting in those bottles that's so flammable? Molotov Cocktails use gasoline, but as far as I know, Warhammer Fantasy doesn't have any.
Luckily, you were far from the boy of ten and three earning the title "The Brute" with knuckles slick with warrior priest blood. You roll your shoulders and glance to your side where the few remnants of fanatics stand, vibrating with all the repressed energy of someone who had fallen in love with their own death.
To your sides, the fire walls Rosmalen had spent so very long were finally lit, leaving what you knew would only be a few entrances the dead could be funnelled through.
Rosmalen had yet to send swordsmen to this entrance. It seemed Izek's warning would only stretch so far. First late, and now leaving you to hold an entire chokepoint near enough on your own.
"If you die, make sure you die well." They stared up at you, and for a moment, you thought that the dehumanisation and battle had torn their comprehension of language from them. "Your gods are watching." You pull upon Verena's attention, feeling divine grace flood your limbs and lick at the few wounds that had torn through your chainmail. Then it spilt out into the world itself, pouring into the fanatics, and for a moment, you could almost swear it was not just Verena's attention pulled to the world. "Give them a good death to watch."
You grin at them, wide and wild, and they grin back.
Six men broken by your actions, and you broken by your own life. In that very moment, all your guilt towards them burnt away, and all you could feel was a brotherhood.
Then the dead arrived, and the seven of you became death. Left alone to hold this, you tore through the dead like the scythe of your goddess's husband. Hateful anger and brutality descended upon you as you lost yourself in the relentless, sick bloodlust.
You drove your left hand into the toothless maw of the creature, gripping its lower jaw, as your right dug through the mush of its eyes.
Then with all the might you could muster, you pull the two apart until bone split from bone and you were left with three-thirds of a monster's skull.
You straighten up, eyes wide, as you hold your trophy up and scream in victory. The display of brutal victory unmistakable.
As you stand there, full of hate and rage, you feel something inside you shift and move. The cool touch of law and justice. Of science and advancement, poured through you, like a gentle drink. It softly, almost tenderly, threaded away your anger, leaving you with nothing but Verena's grace filling you.
Your eyes carefully close as you bask in the calm of being a civilised mind. Of being human as your goddess extricated you from the terrible destruction that was wrought in your blood.
Then you open them as the warm touch of dawn creeps up your face. Before you, where there had once been a teaming mass of endless undead, there were now only corpses. The six fanatics - men - that had followed you and survived until the end basked in their victory, and as they celebrated, you let the full force of that divinity so comfortably in your bones pull out into the world.
This time, there was no mistaking that it was not just Verena's energy that filled the dawnlight, and the men broke down sobbing as they were offered the salvation and attention from their god that you had broken them to need.
This was a good battle. It shows that you can write, Minyette, not just ironic comedy, but also serious, emotionally resonant stuff. Warhammer is, to me, about man's noblest and darkest sentiments clashing against each other in lovingly-rendered brutal violence, and to have that conflict take place both outside and inside the main character? Genius.
Woohoo! I am very proud of the hunters acquitting themselves like this even in the worst of circumstances. However, I have to ask, what exactly are they putting in those bottles that's so flammable? Molotov Cocktails use gasoline, but as far as I know, Warhammer Fantasy doesn't have any.
One of the many iterations of unfortunate circumstance holding back the borderlands from being a viably prosperous land is the so called "Black Slick" a strangely thick black liquid that exists in large underground aquifers. often when attempting to mine precious metals from the borderlands, miners will accidentally strike through the walls of these aquifers, flooding the mine and often drowning the miners.
Some mine owners give it up as a bad job, throwing up their hands at the loss and the inexploitability of the borderlands riches, while others have the liquid pumped out by the barrel full and dumped elsewhere.
While generally considered worthless, the liquid is rather flammable, and is often used to burn down old ruins around the borderlands to make room for new construction.
This was a good battle. It shows that you can write, Minyette, not just ironic comedy, but also serious, emotionally resonant stuff. Warhammer is, to me, about man's noblest and darkest sentiments clashing against each other in lovingly-rendered brutal violence, and to have that conflict take place both outside and inside the main character? Genius.
I have to admit there's some dissonance to me in being perceived as a humorous writer rather than a writer that occasionally makes jokes. D&S was as humourless as it came, it's relief in fluff rather than humour, and it was only in very specific contexts that aToC was funny, mostly as a stress relief after longer arcs. But I suppose nearly everyone would have no context of those stories.
Nonetheless, I appreciate the words, and glad that you took away such a favourable impression
One of the many iterations of unfortunate circumstance holding back the borderlands from being a viably prosperous land is the so called "Black Slick" a strangely thick black liquid that exists in large underground aquifers. often when attempting to mine precious metals from the borderlands, miners will accidentally strike through the walls of these aquifers, flooding the mine and often drowning the miners.
Some mine owners give it up as a bad job, throwing up their hands at the loss and the inexploitability of the borderlands riches, while others have the liquid pumped out by the barrel full and dumped elsewhere.
While generally considered worthless, the liquid is rather flammable, and is often used to burn down old ruins around the borderlands to make room for new construction.
Okay, I've gotta know, is there actual canon material for oil fields under the Borderlands, or is that just the justification you came up with for the molotovs?
Okay, I've gotta know, is there actual canon material for oil fields under the Borderlands, or is that just the justification you came up with for the molotovs?
I'm not sure actually. Before I started this I would have said yes, definitely; because I distinctly remember reading a story or maybe just a blurb which explicitly mentioned "black slick" in the context of a borderlands mine being flooded. When I started doing the serious research for this, I couldn't find where that was, and now I can't be sure if that was something I came up with, some super deep old lore that exists solely on some nerds cupboard somewhere, a fanwork that became headcannon or just deep delusion from me.
However despite that, it's something I kept in because it fits what I consider the theme of the borderlands, the sort of miserable wildwest of frontiering. Historically oil fields that were found as American's spread west were regarded as less than worthless, because they potentially covered up actually worthwhile resources. Consequentially a lot of land that became insanely valuable was bartered away for a pittance. That same thing happening in the borderlands, where people are locked in a constant self-destructive crabbucket for power and wealth is, I have to admit, insanely funny to me. I can just imagine some bandit lord sitting on what would one day be the Eagleville of the Warhammer world, and giving it all away to take some land that's slightly better grazing for his stolen goats.
Rather than doing so productive as figuring out their worth in what they have, and potentially changing the world, they chase a more immediately gratifying wealth taken from someone else, and in doing so they deny themselves the potential fabulous wealth that could come from Oil.
Then it was a convenient explanation when I was thinking about what the first natural 100 of the quest meant for archers that had like four turns of failure to resupply them.
