Heirs of Sigmar

[Maugan Ra]

Bretonnia!

Land of chivalry and honour, where god-blessed nobles rule with wisdom from their glittering castles and peasants toil loyally in the field. It is a proud land, where every petty knight can recite his lineage back to the very founding of the nation and defend it with steel and blood. Under the leadership of King Louen, called 'Orc-Slayer' by his subjects, Bretonnia stands as one of the mightiest nations in the Old World, rivalled only by cold Kislev and the reclusive Dawi in their mountain holds.

The friendship of such people is a prize beyond merit, the sworn aid of their knights a military asset without peer, and so it is no surprise to find the Royarch's Court all but overrun by foreign dignitaries and prominent figures from across the world. In 2204 by the Imperial Calendar, the alliance of sigman nations known as the Black League became the latest to seek such a prize.

At the invitation of the Duke Charles d'Couronne, Grand Duchess Astrid of Ostland sailed south with a retinue of knights and diplomats drawn from all across the League, the son of her brother Elector among them. A grand tournament had been called at Bastonne, with knights and lords from all across Bretonnia converging to display their skills and petition the Royal Court for aid in various affairs, and there would be no finer time to make a good impression on Bretonnia for many a year.

So it was that as summer reached its height, men and women of the Empire drew steel and braced lances beneath fluttering banners of embroidered silk, participating eagerly in jousts and melees and all manner of other contests of martial skill. Glorious victories were won, tragic defeats suffered, and as the crowd roared their approval the quieter words of negotiation and bargaining between figures of power proceeded apace.

Elsewhere, other diplomatic efforts were already underway. The 'New Moot' of the Westerlands had benefited immensely from the aid and protection of their ogre allies in the Eyebiter tribe, but it was no surprise to find that many of their new neighbours were less than entirely thrilled to discover exactly what it was that they were expected to share their borders with. Tensions were already spiking with the dwarves of the Grey Mountains and the Bretonnian Duchy of Couronne, and as the year rolled on the halflings and their allies sought to mitigate the damage as best they could.

The matter of the Dawi was, perhaps surprisingly, among the easiest to address. Several crates full of gold were delivered to each of the affected holds, accompanied by fine-spoken diplomats from Marienburg and Altdorf apologising unreservedly for any unintended transgressions. The Dawi grumbled, of course, but with the added tribute of several wagons filled with the severed heads of slain orcs consented to at least give the Eyebiter tribe a chance. They would promise nothing, but if these ogres could keep the local orcs culled and their own populations under control, it was at least worth making the attempt.


For his part, Mortok Eyebiter received the news of Dawi tolerance with a delighted laugh, for he had benefited immensely from their craft already and found the idea of further ties with the stunted ones to be intriguing. Certainly the immense rune-marked cleaver he wielded was technically a gift from the halflings, who in turn had received it from the Dawi for some bloody service the Tyrant did not particularly care to learn, but by the Maw could it cut. With a weapon like this in hand an ogre could conquer an empire… and that was precisely what Mortok Eyebiter intended.

There were other ogres in the grey mountains already, of course, and numerous orc tribes as well. The former either bent the knee or were eaten alive over a summer of brutal campaigning, while the latter went straight into the cookpot, and if the halfling chefs he employed were unused to such animated ingredients, they still made the best of it. By the end of the year, the Eyebiters tribe had carved themselves a new kingdom from the unforgiving stone, and were acknowledged as the eternal friends and allies of the New Moot.

Attempts to pacify the Bretonnians, however, were rather more complicated.

In the full finery expected of a noble and sovereign ruler, Yjsbraant of Marienburg paid a visit to the court at Couronne, accompanied by the unusually well dressed forms of Bowman Brandywine and many prominent halflings. Their goal was to negotiate a draw-down of hostilities along the border, and in the process to impress upon the Bretonnians that they too were nobles of fine standing, rather than the money-grubbing merchants that their reputation might have previously implied. With the Duke away at Bastonne their ability to secure a major settlement was somewhat limited, but all agreed that progress was being made.

Certain difficulties were encountered, of course, and aside from Yjsbraant's utter inability to pass by a beautiful maiden without attempting some form of exotic poetry - a tendency which landed him more than one duel and several more competitive public recitals of traditional Bretonnian poetry before the court - the main issue was, perhaps inevitability, the basic nature of the ogres themselves. Mortok Eyebiter had done as promised and ordered his subordinates to refrain from raiding the 'shiny tin-men' on the lowlands, but ogres have never been particularly good at reading maps and several border lords on Bretonnia's side were distinctly unamused by their rough attempts at respecting territorial divisions.

More than that, Ogres were large, rapacious and quite frankly ugly, all the things that made them perfect villains for a Bretonnian ballad and increasingly poor choices of neighbour. Even deprived of outright conflicts to spark a broader war, it seemed likely that sooner or later some intrepid knight would call for a crusade of cleansing against the Eyebiters, and receive considerable support from his peers in the process.

It was Bowman Brandywine that hit upon a potential solution, for he had heard that few things brought people together like shared battle against mutual foes, and the Eyebiters tribe had a proud mercenary tradition of their own. Not that the Bretonnians would hire mercenaries, of course, but if perhaps they knew of some greater threat worth combating - a local orc tribe, perhaps - then the New Moot and its friends would be pleased to bankroll the addition of ogre 'auxiliaries' to the Chivalrous Host. If nothing else they would make for excellent siege troops!

Count Yjsbraant seemed somewhat less sanguine about the prospect, but with word coming in of the conflict in Estalia he knew better than to outright commit one way or another on the proposal... and the Bretonnians were looking increasingly thoughtful.




In Bastonne, the royal tournament came to a crescendo with the full and formal wedding of Duke Charles d'Couronne and Grand Duchess Astrid d'Wolfburg, attended by all knights and ladies of good standing. The Bretonnians have always been keen adherents to the art of Courtly Love, and the tale of the blossoming romance between these two distant monarchs was one to stir the heart of many a troubadour, who filled the air with song and celebration as priestesses of both Sigmar and the Lady blessed the union.

The most prominent guest in attendance was, inevitably, the Royarch himself. Louen blessed the married couple personally, wishing them all health and happiness in the future, and moreover went so far as to proclaim the marriage a sign of great friendship between Bretonnia and the Black League as a whole. Bound by sacred matrimony, neither would dream of raising blade against the other without violating this most honourable of unions.

Moreover, he had heard that the League held among its charter a requirement for all parties to defend the other against any threat posed by the Forces of Evil - a most noble and principled of policies! Perhaps, then, the League might consent to aiding Bretonnia in its own war to the south, for the wicked men of Araby and their foul daemonic servants even now threatened the land of Estalia, and as Royarch he could not simply stand by and let this continue.

All present understood, without the need for crass elaboration, that such would be Bretonnia's price for any future pact between the two. If the League wished for the aid of the Kingdom's knights, then it would first have to demonstrate a willingness to repay that aid in kind. And so as the usual courtesies were exchanged and the diplomatic smalltalk allowed to come to a conclusion, wheels were turning and calculations being made behind many an eye.

As for Astrid and her new spouse, planned ideas of a prolonged honeymoon were tragically dashed with the arrival of the first up-to-date news from the north. The Sigmarite Church had schismed, with the Grand Theogonist assassinated and no clear successor to be found… more than that, one of the breakaway factions had begun openly pushing for her to declare herself Empress! Truly, lingering in Bretonnia for any longer was simply impossible, no matter how sweet the wine and… tolerable the company.

Duke Charles was saddened by his wife's need for departure, but he could hardly object to a sovereign answering the call of duty. It is said that he brooded for several days, before ultimately settling on a solution as straightforwards as it was unconventional. He would leave Couronne to the stewardship of his friends and vassals, and board the ships alongside his wife to head back to Ostland, there to assist his wife as best he was able. With him would go several score veteran knights of Couronne, as was only fitting for their duke, and one of the famously beautiful Damsels of the Lady to provide guidance in matters of faith and duty. It would only be prudent for a newly married man to meet his wife's subjects and family, after all!

There was some concern in the court that Couronne might prove vulnerable with its Duke abroad, but Charles would hear none of it. What kind of villain would his neighbours be, to exploit the absence of a newly married man to victimise his subjects? Surely, the lords of Montfort and Gisoreux were better than that!

 

[Crilltic]

In a nameless field, one of countless dotted along the Salzroad on the way north from Salzenmund, a mud-stained tent sat in amongst the fire-pits and shallow trenches of an encamped army. The only outward sign of its importance was the imposing figures of vigilant greatswords that stood at its entrance, but inside, the fate of Nordland was being decided. Hard-bitten men and women, faces lit by candle-light crowded around the parchment-draped table and the slender figure at its head.

"A siege would be the safe option," said Conrad van Leonding, the Captain of the 2nd State Army. His family had a long history here in Nordland, and had long been staunch supporters of the Elector Count, and his sense of duty had carried him to Jana's side in this war. Not all his family had felt the same, and his cousin had been one of the dead on the killing fields. Civil War made enemies of even brothers, and Jana could see the pain evident on his face as he spoke "They cannot have supplies to last through the winter."

"And when he opens the harbor for Boyar Karelin, and bends the knee to Kislev?" asked Katarin Ternitz, the Captain of the Sea Wolves, visibly sneering at the thought. Unlike the captain of the 2nd Army, she was the daughter of a merchant, whose family had been elevated by providing Jana's Uncle his third wife. Katarin, though, was a tall figure, with dark red hair and zealous streak that had only been inflamed by campaigning with the Viscount from Ostland.

"Do we know that is what the Kislevites wish?" Conrad asked.

"Kislev wants a port that will not freeze at the start of autumn" said Katarin, "and I would not put anything past the old snake in Dietershafen in the hunt to save his skin."

It was then the entrance to the tent flipped open and the final member of the war council had made his return, to the grimace of many of the other assembled members.

"Jana, I have returned!" said Sir Engil von Wallenstein, wearing just a bit more gold than he had when he went out to 'scout' this morning, and flashing a gold-toothed smile.

"I see you have finally decided to grace us with your presence, Wallenstein" Conrad said, "Have you finished looting for today?"

"If you must know, good sir, my scouting efforts did in fact yield fruitful results," the Freebooter turned wyvern-rider said with a flourish, before turning to the silent Dedrick Leinhardt and clapping a hand on his shoulder "Though I must dearly apologize old friend, for my attempts to solicit donations in Sigmar's name met with considerably less success. I coaxed as much as I could, but generosity is a rare virtue in these times."

The Viscount, for his part, ignored Wallenstein entirely except for brushing the hand off his shoulder "Now that we are all assembled, let us put a rest to this debate. A siege will not work, not with the rebels aligning themselves with foreign magic and coin."

"Why not just attack the fleet? Knife a man while he's sitting and he won't have a chance to throw a punch" Sir Engil chimed in with a shrug, "Then we can just get on with taking Gausser's head."

"And then fight a war with Kislev" snorted Katarin, "one that we can ill-afford."

"A Kislev who just lost god's knows how many men and coin to the Sea of Claws you mean," Engil smirked, "Then we can just let the sailors handle things from there."

Katarin turned to Jana, "Baroness, please tell me you're not consider-"

"That's enough" said softly, speaking for the first time since the arguments had started. She leaned forward, placing two hands on the parchment map spread across the table, gazing intently down at the dark outline of Nordland. "Katarin is right, we cannot risk a war with Kislev now."

"However, we cannot stop them from reaching Dietershafen, not without war, and if they gain the city then they dig themselves so deep only the sword will cut them out. The situation is a knot, where every attempt to untangle it leads to war with Kislev and a foreign lord on our soil" Jana paused, and looked up at the assembled officers of her army, "Thus, I propose, we cut the knot. Gausser's rebellion dies here, and it dies not, when we storm Dietershafen."

"It will be a slaughter," said Conrad with a low whistle.

"All victories inevitably come at a cost," Jana said plainly. "We take the city, and any scheme they had there dies in its cradle. "

"Even still…" Katarin looked between the map and her liege lady, "It is an awful risk to try and take a fortress like Dietershafen like this."

"Their god has abandoned them, while ours marches with us" said Viscount Leinhardt, "That alone should carry the day, no matter the cost"

"It is a risk, but we do not need Dietershafen to be taken cleanly, only that it be taken" Jana clasped her hands together and swept her gaze across her subordinates, "Now, the real work begins. Prepare your troops, and gather volunteers to form the vanguard for the assault."

With that four sets of eyes turned to regard Sir Engil von Wallenstein, who was busy working a piece of something out of his teeth with a knife.

He looked up at the rest of them with a confused expression, "What?"

---

Hours later, Jana was alone in her tent as she composed a letter to Admiral von Konneth and Admiral von Tirpitz, when she leaned back and began to fiddle with the singular piece of jewelry around her neck. It was a small bronze anchor, fashioned on a fraying piece of rope, a gift from her father when she was a small child. It was times like these when she wondered what her father would say of the path she now found herself on, and whether he would recognize her as the boisterous young girl he had raised. She clutched the amulet tight, and muttered a soft prayer, to a man long lost beneath the waves.

Then she tucked the necklace back beneath the black cloth she wore, because she realized her path was set. The weight of rule made things hard, the hearts of men most of all, and she could not go back on what she had already done. As she signed orders that would stain Nordland red once more, she knew.

She knew what mattered was what came next.

 

[Maugan Ra]

The alliance of the southern states known as the Pfeildorf Pact was, without contest, the richest and most military powerful of all those states and powers vying for control over the future of Sigmar's Empire. They had a candidate for the throne, the backing of a major faith, and a seemingly endless reserve of coin and manpower to support their grand ambitions. Many thought that the formation of such an alliance all but guaranteed victory, but others - older and perhaps wiser than their peers - saw the potential cracks forming in the Pact's foundation almost as soon as it had been declared.

Such threats were not impossible to repair, nor did they doom the project entirely, but they were present all the same. No partnership of so many proud and powerful men could avoid them entirely.

In Averland, long standing resentment against the halflings that had brought such misfortune upon the land was beginning to boil over to engulf all who had helped and aided them. The White Wolves that had escorted their caravans, the Strigany that had guided them, the Westerlanders who had taken them in… the list of grudges grew with every night and every angry rumour.

Countess Eliana, never one to miss an opportunity, exploited this resentment to push through several of her new initiatives. With the aid of Dwarf engineers from Karag Dromar, she began a grand initiative to construct dams and levees along the length of the Upper Reik, harnessing the strength of the river to power mills and restore the flagging Averlander economy. New farmlands were opened and old floodlands made fit for settlement, all worked and populated by the dispossessed, criminal and 'idle poor' of the nation.

Not content with merely harnessing the natural wonders of the landscape to fuel her economic design, Countess Eliana (with her husband's intrigued consent) also began issuing licenses of enclosure to lords and nobles across Averland, granting them the right to control access and use of the land that they legally owned. In a nation where so much wealth was built on the great cattle herds that grazed the plains, it didn't take long for the keen eyed nobles to spot the immense potential of centralising things under their leadership, and the Countess' proposal soon expanded far beyond her intended trial run.

Whispers suggested that some of the more discontent lords, unwilling to disband their armies with mere praise and flattery alone, were bribed into compliance by thoughts of a captive populace to fill their endless coffers. Some rumours even went so far as to claim that among their number were those that had quietly approached Francis Ludwig with such concessions as their price, alongside the promised medals and public parades. The truth of the matter would, in the end, only ever be known to the royal house of Averland.

Elsewhere, the efforts made by Averland to forcibly modernise their economy with such radical schemes were viewed with a mixture of amusement and disdain by most. The merchant houses of Marienburg in particular viewed the efforts as entertaining, but ultimately irrelevant to their own endeavours; they held no greater fondness of the halflings that such industrialisation was meant to undermine than they did for any other of their liege's pet projects, and were far from shy in voicing such opinions in public if pressed. No, their own investments were far more important than those of a theoretical rival, and on that score they had a great deal to be pleased about.

Word had come from Wissenland that the hateful 'Mercantile Assessment Bureau' was being dissolved, its agents transferred into more traditional rolls and it's assets repurposed for less objectionable ends, a pleasing result that the merchant houses were only too happy to view as a personal triumph on their part. Emperor-Elect Friedrich might dream of being an absolutist ruler who could give and take power from his subjects at a whim, but Marienburg, oh, Marienburg was what gave him his crown… and they could take it away just as easily.

Perhaps they should.

In neighbouring Reikland, those held worthy by blood and coin were considerably less sanguine about the current arrangement, and growing less so every day. Stories of Friedrich's iron handed rule and cruel treatment of the Cults spread from a hundred different sources; his willingness to unleash mercenaries on those he would claim as subjects, his decision to imprison the Shallyans - their supposed transgressions rendered far milder in memory by time and distance - and, above all, his endless attempts to make Nuln the true capital of the south, rather than the far more deserving Altdorf. Surely, all who were willing to speak of such things agreed, it would be better if their new ruler was at the very least a Sigmarite?

Of course, it is far easier to criticise the flaws of one potential ruler than agree on the virtues of another, and so no clear alternative existed for the discontent to hold up as their choice of Emperor across the south. Many thought of Konstantin, of course, but others suggested that Francis-Ludwig had fought a war for the sake of his faith already, and still others toyed with the idea of a weaker but pious Empress in the form of 'that Ostland girl'.

It was such considerations that many assumed drove the careful actions of Arch-Lector Ulrich of Nuln, widely considered to be both deeply pious and in possession of a keen political mind. With Wenzel Kraft dead, few doubted that Ulrich would seek the position of Grand Theogonist for his own, but the legitimacy of such a move from one suspected of having a hand in the murder would ever be in doubt. He would need prestige to counter such doubts, perhaps obtained from arranging Friedrich's conversion or displaying a willingness to stand apart from his secular backers, and in quiet meetings stretched across many months there was no end to the people willing to promise him one thing or another in return for a particular action or lack thereof.

Of course, one would not have to look particularly hard in many of the southern realms to find a subject of the Emperor-Elect positively overjoyed to have a Myrmidian candidate they could support for the throne. The Goddess' own Cult, already a powerful institution in several states, was more than willing to capitalise on the implicit patronage of such a prominent Elector - the ranks of the Blazing Suns swelled with new recruits, as did their less militant sister order known as the Red Lions. Young lords and ladies flocked to their banner in Wissenland, Averland and Stirland… from all nations of the Pact, indeed, save for mighty Reikland, where the newly created Knights Dragon instead drew much of the new recruits instead.

Founded by direct command of Grand Prince Konstantin and enjoying the fervent public support of many of his most loyal supporters, House Meyer among them, the Knights Dragon made their debut with all the pomp and splendour that Reikland was famous for. In gleaming armour and immaculate livery they paraded through the streets of Altdorf to cheers and applause from a thronging crowd, and at their head the dragon Dämmerung (already the size of a horse and growing rapidly) roared triumphantly from atop a custom-made palanquin.

Not all were entirely pleased to see the new knightly order on parade, of course, for rumours had already spread that many among the ranks had been drawn from families surely too poor to afford such splendid armour and magnificent steeds. They whispered that Konstantin sought to centralise his power, to create a private body of armed nobles loyal to him and him alone, that he had ambitions to which such a force might easily be turned… and if such whispers found few willing to repeat them on this glorious day, they lasted long enough to be picked up by Friedrich's own supporters across the southern border.

By and large, the nobles of Wissenland were unphased by such reports. Certainly Konstantin was a powerful lord, and if he wished to make a play for the throne he would not be short of supporters, but Reikland was not the only province with a dragon. Their own Sigismund was an increasingly familiar sight flying over the streets of Nuln, and while this was a constant source of discomfort to those Dawi that had chosen to settle in the city the humans tended to take it as a reassuring sign of their liege's power and authority. Konstantin would never be such a fool as to challenge a province so clearly his peer, not while Middenland still prowled beyond the firelight and the Black League propped up their own candidate for the throne. Surely not.

What Friedrich himself might have thought of such developments is not recorded, though he spent much of the year torn between the twin demands of his throne and his dragon. A grand lair was built for Sigismund adjacent to his own royal palace, and priests of Taal and Myrmidia alike brought in to offer blessings and company, the former seeming to get along somewhat better with a creature of the primal wilds than the more civilised Myrmidians. Careful exercise and practice in riding took up many hours as the Emperor-Elect strove to overcome the wounds he had suffered in the reconquest of Solland, and what time he had left was largely spent dealing with a seemingly never-ending stream of complaining petitioners and foreign entanglements.

Reaching some kind of settlement with Hochland had taken many terse letters, a full week of penitent fasting in the forests and the payment of a substantial weregild, all of which resulted primarily in the creation of an open-air temple and monument to the slain near to the site of the Red Talons' final defeat. Hopes that such actions would resolve the grudges held against him by many in the north were soon dashed, as the Vollstreckers reported an ever-growing litany of grievances held to be the fault of the Emperor-Elect by a surprisingly wide swathe of the population. Stories portraying Friedrich as an iron-handed tyrant with no regard for the gods or his fellow men were growing in popularity in many neighbouring states, as well as in the more discontented portions of the Pact's own subjects, and there seemed little that could be done to identify the source or tamp down on more than the most openly seditious stories without excessive force.

As the year came to a close, the reports presented one phrase to the Emperor-Elect over and over again, an appellation applied by many of his enemies and already in the process of reclamation by his supporters. A title that, unless something was done soon, would be the name he bore ever onwards into the grim eternity of history;

The Dragon of Nuln.

 

[Maugan Ra]

Bear Markets
(Written by @TenfoldShields with my approval)

The Summer and Autumn of 2204 was a rainy one in the North-Eastern reaches of the Empire; iron-colored clouds sealing away the sky from horizon to horizon for weeks at a time. The sun more a wan, distant light, some far-off beacon on the edge of a savage, rocky coast, half-glimpsed through the endless grey, than that fierce and golden thing the South so adore. The downpour was relentless, mindless and, after awhile, seemingly endless. Hard packed roads turned to muddy black mires, deceptively deep pools and hidden stones lurking, eager to send a draft-horse stumbling, to crack a wagon wheel or snare an unwary leg. Cataracts in the miniature sloughing from the peaked roofs and dark stone of great, gothic fortresses. Creeks gorged themselves, burst their banks, and greedily fed again. Water so cold it could still the lungs, so dark it could swallow a man without a trace, brushing the lowest branches of the great oaks as they stood sentinel over their sheltered vales and knife-sloped valleys.

Monsters roused from their dens in the depths of the darkling forest, displaced and disturbed. Lords in their bed chambers, brows creased with a frown as they watched the faintest trickle somehow find a way in, drop by drop, through stone. Priests of Manaan in their oil slickers, standing at their pier-side pulpits and watching the white-capped waves rage far, far, across the river-waters.

It was like all the world was drowning.

The pressure upon Duchess Brigitte II, Elector-Countess of Talabecland in these months was immense. Rare is the liege-lord who lives as an utter slave to their vassals, a veritable prisoner in their own estates; but rarer still is the sovereign who can click their fingers and send their subjects running to and fro as they please. And marcher lords, with vast garrisons and stout fortifications at their disposal, are ever prone to act on their own recognizance. Excluded from the Black League, pricked and pecked by Ostland, provoked by Ostermark with all the South circling so hungrily- no. The imprisonments, the executions, the great insult the so-called "Chancellor" had issued the Grand Duchess could not be lightly ignored. A show of force must be made.

The roads that stitched the cold moors of Ostermark with the deep forests of Talabecland became increasingly militarized things. Talabec state troopers and Talabec toll-men at their heels, cloak wrapped figures in the fog and the gloom, guns and blades gleaming as they ever-so-amiably asked the kind merchants to procure their papers. And wasn't it curious, wasn't it ever so concerning how many merchants from the fortress-towns of the League found themselves turned back after callous, heavy-handed searches of their convoys and their caravans. If not taken into custody outright, subject to the hospitality of their new host as befitting smugglers and spies and other such scum. Welcome to avail themselves of branding irons and slow-creaking gibbets.

Turnabout was fair play after all.

The rivers were no better, flotillas from the Second Talabecland Navy prowling the eponymous water way. Shying away from the patrols of the Black Fleet, falling gleefully upon the Black League's barge-like craft and larger merchant hulks when they appeared undefended and out from the shadow of the Northern alliance's river-forts and hardened ports. Piratical, really, in the best Norsca traditions.

The situation began to decay. First in stops and starts and then with a slow, inevitable agonizingly drawn out scraping, like metal being peeled into two parts. The ragged, half-gutted and retreating caravans met the Second Ostermark State Army on the road from Bechafen, the Bearslayers already tasked by Chancellor Fredereick to secure the large swathe of settlements that edged the largely desolate, eerie Kölsa Hills that comprised much of the border with their ever-untrustworthy neighbor. The League state troopers heavily augmented the garrisons, the watch-towers and far-flung keeps and moved to protect their vulnerable tradesmen, the Talabec officers -many of whom had siblings returned home with skin cold as clay, eyes milk white and staring, if returned at all- elected to interpret this as a clear and present sign of League aggression. The Marshall of the Bearslayers noted the comparative weakness of Talabecland's Second Army, still ravaged and depleted by Aschekönigin's devastating advent in Imperial lands and aggressively entrenched his men, refusing to be dissuaded from his mission.

At which point the still fuming, furious marcher-lords of the Grand Duchess, rallying their forces the whole of the time, struck forth in support of their countrymen and the already oft-unclear, imprecise borders of Ostermark and Talabecland became bloody things and Brigitte II's true intention became manifest.

The Kislevite ambassador, a broad-shouldered military man, arrived in Talabeheim just as the leaves were beginning to turn. The merchant flotilla that had borne him here busily unloading their goods in the port at Talagaad, the first of many to come. What they had gambled so greatly on in Nordland had, in large part, claimed without a struggle further in the continental interior. No blue-water port on the Sea of Claws to be sure, but safe haven and save harbor been offered to them freely, gladly in the lands of Taal, to the mutual enrichment of all...And if war between the Union and the great Southern Pact with all their wealth and men-at-arms and materiel loomed then- well what of it? The Tzarina's relationship with those lords was equally well kept, if not even better.

And with one fell stroke Ostermark found itself cleaved from the rest of the League. The Bearslayers and the Black Fleet arresting much of the depredation after the initial weeks of confusion, but the endless ocean of woods, a great orange-red-yellow gulf of black woods separating the League from Hochland and Ostland even so. And to the North? Kislev that great beast, slowly lumbering to its feet; scenting the air, fat and thick with strength yet greedy still. Winter fell on the Marshall of the Second State Army hurriedly requesting further orders from Bechafen while the Admiral of the Black Fleet anxiously awaited the return of their cousin to Ostland to advise and assent. The harbor of Hergig thick with dark sails, the crater-kept capital of Talabheim lurking somewhere across the waters. Swathed in the fog.

In all this, there was yet one saving grace. Some kind of salvation for Ostermark and its Chancellor, some form of reprieve, from the most unlikely of sources: Karak Kadrin, well-wooed by the merchant families and province-spanning syndicates of this part of Sigmar's realm, had made its decision. Entire companies of Dawi stonemasons and architects, engineers and advisers dispatched into the lowlands in the spirit of warm -well, warmth as such severe stone peaks could ever muster- cooperation and something that could almost be called fondness. And with them an even brighter ray of light:

Dwarven mercenaries in the trade-hubs of Ostermark. Uncontracted, their services ready to be purchased.

 

[Maugan Ra]

(Written by @TenfoldShields with my approval)

Article:

To my dearest cousin and liege:

Grand Duchess, forgive me if I dispense with the suitable ceremonies. The rider has sworn that she will leave within the hour, to be well clear of these woods by sundown and I can hold her no longer. The road from Roezfels is treacherous at the best of times and the rain has rendered even contact with the inner forts and median watch-towers difficult and unreliable. This will likely be my last report before the snows close in. Its contents are of the utmost importance.

The figures and copied ledgers I have included speak not a single word of mistruth yet they are all lies; failing utterly to capture the scope of our disarray or the potential catastrophe we face.

News from Nordland is spreading among the rank and file despite my best attempts to censor the more outrageous Manaanite articles and restrict the privilege of the papers to the officer corps. The soldiers from Middenland are wild with grief and wracked by paroxysms of rage and melancholy by turns, while the Ulrican Templars are worse still (if one imagines that possible, but allow me to assure you, my lady, it is eminently so) and the latter serve to embolden the former in every respect. Many among them are seething with resentment towards our own good, pious men of Sigmar and I have heard tell, days after the fact, that it was only the intercession of Middenland's captains that prevented a genuine mutiny among their serjeants after we received word of the Battle of the Salzroad.

I had an Ulrican man-at-arms lashed after he viciously and coarsely accosted a priest in the middle of the market and such was the hate in his countrymen's eyes that I dared not do it again. I beg of you: bid the White Wolves and their state soldiers to strike their camps and return home before the situation degenerates into naked violence, they do not wish to be here and I do not wish to have them.

Regarding the Cult of Morr: The Knights Raven have been but rarely in attendance in Roezfels and sighted more rarely still alongside our patrols. Of the twenty five lances the Order promised me by mid-Autumn only eight have dutifully made themselves available and even this was a bitter and begrudging act. I have not yet been properly introduced to the Chaptermaster helming the Wolfenburg fortress-abbey and from what I have been told the entirety of her attention is directed towards the Grand County of Stirland, as is that of the whole of her order. I am also assured, by the few who have deigned to attend the muster, that recruitment yet proceeds apace and those who would oppose the wretched Dead flock to their halls. But if it does I would not know, I have seen little enough of the fruit to make my own judgement as to the taste.

Of the three knightly orders seconded to this campaign the most useful has been the Knights of the Black Rose; their Grandmaster, a most gallant man, has arrived at the Forest in force with some several hundred dark-armored warriors at his back and several times that number in armed pages, men-at-arms, and the like. Initially I was gravely concerned: I too have heard the rumors of what occured on Reikland's shores and I too, my lady, was wary as to what their true agenda might be. Having witnessed them first hand I can say, with full confidence and some weariness, that their motives are largely mercenary in nature and, when the main body at last leaves Ostland, it will be doing so several chests of gold richer and with several dozen new squires and second sons in their train. Lords are already clamouring as to who will sponsor their new chapterhouse and, as tiresome as it has all become, I cannot find it in myself to hate them. If Sigmar's Blood had attacked they would have borne the brunt of the blow, died in great numbers and saved us all. Any number of deeply unfortunate Talabecland associations can be forgiven for that.

This brings me to the final and most important facet of my report, something which I dare not commit to official record and will instead include here and only here for you to do with as you will. My cousin: when you appointed me to command of the Roadwardens your instructions were exacting, severe, and crystalline clear. My true purpose and sole objective was to ensure that Ostland was spared the ravages of a new Vampire Count. That our nation should not and would not suffer for Goldwasser's folly and Van Hel's sins. I have taken that duty seriously in every respect and it is why I am here, at the farthest edge of that shadowed sea as Winter comes and the days grow short and it is why I speak frankly now. I have interviewed the villagers that Sigmar's Blood attempted to compel to assistance. I have sourced letters from my contacts abroad. I have retraced the masked Van Hel's steps, from Wolfenburg to the hamlet where she was last seen and my Duchess I have come to a gnawing, queasy, but inescapable conclusion.

I cannot imagine a world in which Van Hel, whatever face and whatever flesh she may wear now, truly cares about Ostland, about us. We did not betray her. We did not usurp her. We did not depose her. We did not abandon her. In whatever clotted black organ sits in her chest, I suspect that her wrath is reserved for the people of Stirland above all others and for the Grand Countess Eliana von Haupt-Anderssen before all. We are, at worst…

Simply in her way.

My hand is cramping. The rider is cursing. I must end my letter here.

May the King of the Gods go with you. My best wishes to you and your husband.

Your faithful servant,
Graf Emeric von Wolfenburg

Oh. My dear. Have you come down at last? Please, have a seat. I brewed you some tea. I made you some cake. With orange marmalade, you told me once it was your favorite? (Did you know, my dear, that oranges originated in Cathay? These did not come from so far afield. They are Estalian. I am told the bitterness serves to offset the sweet.)

Yes. My dear. I will miss these talks of ours too. You have been such fine company (and it has been so long since I had a guest). Such a fine student (your dedication, my dear, is ever-so-slightly terrifying). This half-lit place is your home. You are always welcome here. But I would like to think that you will not need it for some time.

Oh. My dear. I cannot express how proud I am of you. There are still such dungeons in your mind you have yet to plumb. Such reaches as you have yet to explore. And you will have all the time in the world my dear. All the time in the world. (I do think you will look quite striking you know. With skin like cracked brown glass and leather. With translucent flesh and teeth like knitting needles. Like mine. Like mine.)

Let us enjoy these little luxuries then. The company and the contemplation. And strong tea. And good cake. Come. My dear. Tell me once more, of all the people you hate. All the places you hate. All the things that you hate. Tell me how you will make those who deprived you, adore you. Tell me how you will break them and make them kneel. Tell me why this world deserves you. And everything that is to come.

It only seems fair doesn't it? That this world that would demand such sacrifices of you should yield something in return. Now. Here at the end of empire.

(And tell me again. Your plan, for what you will do to Wurtbad. It is my favorite-)

Ohoho! I'm glad you think so too.

I'm glad you think so too.

Article:

A single perfect porcelain mask, inlaid with gold. Graceful curves of lustrous metal framing the milk white stone. The visage; a woman of noble bearing, smiling with the faintest curve of the lips and the gentlest arch of the brow. The eyes are dead black hollows. Empty and shadowed.
The Codex Chiropteran: This Comprising a Full and Accurate Treatise on the Vampire Counts; Section #4-B, the Battle Panoply of Mathilde van Hel.

 

[Maugan Ra]

(Written by @Havocfett with my approval)

The Slow March of Progress​

Article:

-A stark contrast with other polities in the period, Hochland's approach to industrialization was slow and naturalistic. Blacksmiths were incentivized to expand into gunsmiths, and while no analogue to the great cannon foundries of Nuln and Nordland existed, the horrific social strife and civil war that accompanied those foundries was also conspicuously absent.

This same approach was mirrored in the founding of Morgwache University. Largely it was billed as an observatory, a way for the bright young youth of Hochland to watch the stars. The slow growth of teaching, glass blowing, and research facilities to capitalize upon that observation was presented as pleasant coincidence rather than controversial development.

The end result was the modernization of two Hochland armies to long-guns and grenades, the start of that vaunted tradition we now recognize as the Hochland Long Rifles. It was perhaps less dramatic than similar advances of the period, but no less impactful over the long term.

• An Introduction to Hochland History, 3rd Edition. Mandatory reading in the University of Morgwache.

In Talabheim, the Royal University simply gained a new campus on Alkahest and Natural Philosophy. The staff were largely Arabs who had heeded Brigitte's offers of employment the previous year. It was a low key, if quietly magical affair, and likely would have remained so if not for the Knights of Everlasting Light and the new professors.

The Knights, for their part, had decided to help the cause of education in Talabecland by setting up Houses of Light across the land. Stocked with coffee, friendly staff, and examples of foreign culture and new technologies and ideas, what started as rural, evangelical schools started to get rather more elaborate as the staff began to dress in outlandish foreign clothing. Or, at least, their interpretations of outlandish foreign clothing, which were often rather more scandalous than the real thing.

This likely would not have reflected upon the University, save for the sudden influx of wide-eyed rural students who were obsessed with Nehekhara and Southern Culture and could not be dissuaded from enrolling in Talabheim's newest campus.

Much to the aggravation of their professors.

The Unreasonably Dramatic Marching Band of Progress​

Reikland also viewed education as a primary concern, but did not bother with the quiet, sober progress of other states. No, Reikland's vision was one defined by its prince, and its prince was nothing if not a deeply dramatic man.

As such, the Schools of Metal and Life. Two distinct, but neighboring, schools of natural philosophy bordering the Carroburg side of the river. The teaching staff was drawn from across the world, attracted by the generous salaries offered or simply a burning desire not to be at home for a few decades. Thee students were an eclectic mix of would-be intellectuals and poor folk who would be facing a witch hunter's pyre were it not for the colleges. A few pale souls didn't even speak Reikspiel.

The school of Metal was the more traditional of the two, drawn from Arabyan alchemical tradition and surviving Alchemists as a school of natural philosophy. It cared about the inorganic and inanimate. Of chemistry, metallurgy, and stranger things besides.

The school of Life was more novel and, according to rumor and detractors in the school of Metal, existed primarily to cater to the Altdorf Zoo. It was concerned with the living, the monstrous, the mundane, and its manipulation. Officially, it was a school of medicine and zoology, diverging from the school of Metal simply because so much of the pre-existing talent simply...didn't care about either of those things.

Like in Talabecland, neither school publicly admitted to the existence of magic, and violently objected to any intimation that the things being taught could in any way be construed as magical. Like in Talabecland, the security on hand and student body diverged significantly

Unlike Talabecland, the moment the schools were founded they started arguing with each other.

The school of Metal had the benefit of centuries of tradition, even if it was spread across Arabyan, Alchemical, and other influences. Its professors entered with knowledge, theoretical foundations, and safe approaches to the forces, mystical and mundane, that they were aiming to study.

The school of Life had the benefit of being staffed primarily by the level headed and humanistic. They had been surgeons, philanthropists, and local healers before this. Though they did not have the centuries of tradition to guide their minds, they also, very importantly, did not have centuries of tradition to give them absolutely terrible ideas.

Within weeks of opening, vendettas were being declared, duels offered and fought, and a grand tradition of inter-school competition in the process of forming.

 

[Maugan Ra]

Tainted Meat
(Written cooperatively by @Imrix and I)

Fresh meat. Such a simple thing, and yet so sought after. A base commodity, a mere foodstuff, and yet prized by the great mass of Imperial citizens, for where could it be attained? The forests, where wild game was often already dangerous enough to warrant an armed band, even without considering their existing predators, fair and foul? Even if you could spend your whole life never crossing paths with the foul things lurking in the wooded depths, what can a hunter do when their quarry is brought down by a demigryph or other 'noble' creature, but slink home empty handed? No, it's no easy thing to stalk those trails, and Imperial hunters demanded high prices for their catch, but still none could gainsay them.

Livestock then, perhaps? No better, not when every farmer has to live day to day keeping an expert watch the edges of their fields for thieves, predators and worse, and charges accordingly. The forests are always hungry, and the pittance of payment it offers must be made up elsewhere. Meat is always a dear thing to Empire folk, every meagre cutlet and morsel paid for in blood and sweat and terror.

So when parcels of bleeding-fresh meat began spreading throughout Ostermark from uncertain quarters, is it so surprising that people were gripped by a feverish hunger for succulent, gore-slick delights? Who could truly bring themselves to care where these goods came from, or how even the most steel-willed found themselves slavering for a taste, or how the meat never seemed to spoil no matter how far and how long it had travelled, or how the peddlers only ever seemed to sell their wares by dusk…

For quite some time, indeed nobody could bring themselves to care. Despite the horrors of the witch-crops endearing Witch Hunters to the populace, the simple fact was that between the calamity of the Shear and the mundane politics of squabbling with Talabecland, Ostermark had more pressing matters to concern itself with than suspicious goings on surrounding what was, at the end of the day, a base commodity. The Chancellor had ordered an investigation, most certainly, but at the sight of his agents the peddlers had gone to ground and the new product had disappeared from the market, leaving little route for further work.

In the end, it was Sylvania that uncovered a lead worth following. The Malasangre line had been dubiously blessed of late with all manner of informants and advisors, and it was one of those mysterious figures that conveyed the reports from the northern borders. Reports of skulking cowled figures where there should not have been any, word of the delicious meat and its near-addictive properties… word of an intercepted shipment and the dhar that suffused every joint and steak.

Most lords would not have cared, perhaps handing the matter off to the nearest religious authority and considering their duty done, but Bianca Malasangre had not built a home in this grim land just to see some strange witchcraft tear it all down without her approval - either directly, or by serving as pretext for one of Sylvania's neighbours to do a little 'cleansing'. She took over the investigation immediately, sending a detailed copy of the safer reports north to Ostermark and setting out for the border in person in the company of several hundred of her 'bloodhounds'.

Chancellor Frederick, though an old man long past the battlefield, was yet possessed of an appreciation for order that verged on the neurotic. The lingering mystery of this tainted meat and what it might represent aggravated him, so much so that he decided to answer the Malasangre's letter in person, coming south with several dozen hard-eyed veterans from the 'Deathfriends' regiment and multiple wagons filled to the brim with good, hearty grain from the heartlands. He reached out to the Cult of Sigmar for aid in turn, but found little relief; those elements of the Cult not distracted by their internal struggles had precisely no intention of ever working alongside the Sylvanians and their damned masters, no matter how reasonable the Chancellor's pleas.

Reaching their rendezvous on the Ostermark border, the two parties joined forces, scouring the borderlands with systematic efficiency in search of any signs of the mysterious peddlers and their cargo. In this they were remarkably successful, the gift of untainted food from Ostermark enough to console the fears of those who had only wanted nourishment and the steely gaze of Bianca Malasangre eliciting cooperation from even the most stubborn of Sylvanian peasants. Though the distribution had been scattered and hidden in the heartlands, in these backwater villages virtually every market had seen an appearance by the strange merchants, many of whom had packed up and fled mere days before the hunters had arrived.

Heartened by the news of a clear trail, the allied party pressed on, tracking down one village after another and drawing ever closer to its goal. The peddlers had all come and gone from a common point, either unable or unwilling to expend particular effort in concealing their origin, and it soon became clear that their base of operations was well away from any existing settlements. Pausing only to take on additional provisions, the hunters left the roads behind, and here the first signs of real tension began to mount.

Certainly, the Sylvanian scouts were good at their jobs. Certainly the evidence they were able to produce of the routes their quarry was taking looked iron-clad. But the sheer speed at which it was collected, the secrecy in which it was done… there was only so much that the superstitious Ostermarkers were willing to write off as a healthy sense of rural xenophobia. Their Chancellor did what he could to quell the rumours - one evil at a time, after all - but each night the two sides found themselves camping a healthy distance apart, the few friendships made across national lines in previous weeks withering swiftly on the vine.

Eventually the trail lead back to its source - a complex array of caverns and ravines spread along a stretch of scree hills somewhere in the borderlands between the two states, surrounded by bleak forests of black wood and appearing on no map possessed by any present. At first glance the place was peaceful and abandoned, but neither leader was willing to accept such assumptions, and with methodical caution their troops formed up into battle formation and began to advance. Their prudence was rewarded as soon as they reached the second cave.

With a horrible burbling shriek, a pallid worm the size of a tree lurched out of its lair and lurched towards the soldiers. Dozens more followed in its wake, pulling themselves out of holes and chasms in the ground with sinuous motions, while around their slimy bulk skittered strange arachnids with too many limbs and eyes that glinted with balefire. And behind them all, sticking to the shadows and hidden beneath heavy cloaks of soot-stained wool, humanoid figures danced and capered and chittered commands in high-pitched tones.

Their differences forgotten, the men of Ostermark and Sylvania closed ranks, hacking out at their monstrous attackers and all but scrambling back down the slopes to more favourable terrain. The worm-like hulks bled strange pale liquids when struck, a viscous fluid that snagged at blades and pulled spearmen from their feet, while the skittering arachnids bared venomous fangs and hissed angrily as they moved to surround the invaders and cut them off from all retreat. Over a dozen men died in the first minute, brought down and devoured by strange monsters from fireside stories, and the outlook for the others began to look grim.

In the heart of their formation, the elderly Chancellor of Ostermark clasped his hands together and began to pray, commending the souls of his people to the custody of Almighty Sigmar. At his side, Bianca Malasangre surveyed the battle with cold and incisive eyes, and raised something small and silver to her lips.

Then, with a bone-chilling howl, the woods came alive. Lupine forms, dozens or perhaps even hundreds strong, emerged from the treeline and sprinted headlong across the open ground surrounding the scree hills, racing up the treacherous inclines with unwavering grace. The cowled packmasters barely had time to scream before the great wolves were upon them, dragging each one down in turn amid flashing claws and slavering jaws, and bereft of their cruel guidance the monsters broke and fled. Some disappeared back below the ground, others fled for the woods with wolves upon the heels, and a few hesitated and were promptly brought down by the reinvigorated soldiers freshly escaped from certain doom.

It was a miracle, Bianca proclaimed, doubtless sent by the goddess Myrmidia to provide salvation for her faithful. The Ostermarkers were somewhat dubious - what association did Myrmidia have with wolves, after all - so after a few moments of consideration she diplomatically suggested that Sigmar might have also been to thank. Perhaps it was a joint project. Regardless, the day was saved, and now all that was left to do was investigate the caverns and find out what exactly it was they had so fortuitously discovered.

The answer, as it turned out, was madness. A natural cave system had been invaded and taken over, old caves turned into cells and underground rivers redirected to power strange devices that clicked and hissed and groaned. Rat-faced mutants writhed in their chains, their eyes milky white and unseeing, their blood-starved bodies tormented by a desperate desire for blood. Many were missing limbs or organs, and the discovery of what exactly was in the meat that had been sold so widely across the Ostermark sent many hardened veterans back to the surface for fresh air and relief.

And then, in the centre of it all, they found the source. A human noblewoman, with pale skin and a predator's fangs, chained and staked out against the rock at the very heart of the mysterious den. Vials of blood lay everywhere, torn from her ragged arms, and the remnants of strange devices and scribbled notes told of cruel experiments done by unknown figures long since escaped down freshly collapsed passageways.

With a single stroke of a borrowed sword, Bianca removed the woman's head. The body would have to be burned, as would everything else in this tainted place, and a detailed report sent to… well. Someone who could be trusted to stand on watch for any reappearance of similar initiatives, if such a person even truly existed. Then they could go home, and drink away the sights and smells of this twisted abattoir in the company of those they loved.

Today, they had done their duty. Tomorrow… tomorrow would have to look after itself.

 

[Maugan Ra]

(Written cooperatively by @Mina and I)

Article:

I'm not one to deny that the sisters do great work for those afflicted with ahem 'social' diseases, but do they have to do it in the bloody streets?

Wighard Bohm, Wurtbad publican

Before Horst von Wolfbach set out on his ill-fated foray into the Slice he had fires closer to home to stamp out. The guard in Wurtbad expanded rapidly to meet the challenges of increasing unrest and promises of higher pay drew in loyal young men and women by the score. The local cult of Verena and the interested guilds were intended to draft up rules of conduct, but the former soon proved to be far too used to making their own unilateral declarations of legality and the process bogged down.

Without a solid framework for conduct and the execution of duties enforcement was uneven. Approval and collections of the new licensure for operation of printing presses attracted sober, bookish sorts who could generally achieve their aims peacefully, while those tasked with enforcement self selected...differently. The closures of several unlicensed presses resulted in considerable violence and injury to the operators and citizens drawn in to watch the commotion, with one incident ending in the total loss of the building and damage to several neighboring properties.

As if this wasn't enough, foreign merchants from Kemperbad, Ostermark, other provinces and even as far away as Pavona complained of harassment and bribe-seeking by the guard. As part of a general dragnet for subversives, Ranaldian rabble-rousers, and Leveler ingrates there were a plentitude of innocents placed on lists and eventually arrested on thin pretenses as political tensions mounted. This did the province few favors in the eyes of the wider world, but it was nothing next to the Shallyans.

Von Wolfbach wanted to set off with a glorious triumph at home by making a show of opening the Public Baths and Grand Hospital and putting to rest any talk of the iniquities in the Private Baths and their association with his family. His daughter was to take lessons in healing from the sisters, the poor were to have their alms, and peace was to be restored. It was only a slight problem that he had quietly divorced the private baths and their promised funding from the Hospital and directed it into his own treasury while doing nothing to stamp out the practices therein. What complaints could the Shallyans have with that?

Mother Rochelle had seen much in her days. Transplanted to this backwater of the Empire from Couronne as a novice, she had weathered wars, scandal, walked the tightrope between the foolishness of well-intended Joanite reforms and now this. The days before the opening was to take place the first dove settled in the square outside of the Steward's palace. The Mother began offering treatment on the street at von Wolfbach's very doorstep like some common barber. As the day went on more sisters joined her, beds dragged out of houses of healing, street children enlisted to clean and carry, and all treated regardless of class, means, or the nature of their ailment. That said, those closest to the palace were always afflictions of the genitals, the mouth, the membranes of the body where wickedness might take root from unclean deeds. To the guard's credit they did not disperse the sister or do violence to the Shallyans. The message was clear, the grand opening flopped with just a skeleton staff at the hospital, and Horst's daughter brought back to her father's home to being learning humility and the healer's ways in what was becoming a sprawling field hospital.

Article:

The von Raabs have been wine men since before these upstart von Wolfbachs were even ennobled. If the Steward thinks he can just upend centuries of tradition, fine wine making tradition, granted people say it tisn't as fine as what the von Shollachs do down in the Steyr valley, or the von Tennecks higher up in the hills, but what do people know? I'll shoot any damn namby pamby connoisseur from Altdorf that says aught about our vintage--wait that's a zero?

We get all of that?

The von Raabs are proud grain men.

Markolf von Raab, vinter grain man

Across the countryside of Stirland the steward's other plans played out. The agricultural reforms he moved to instate would shore up the damage done by the loss of the Moot's grain and elevate Stirlish wine in the wider markets. The Vinter's Guild of Wurtbad and the town's most prominent wine merchants convened under his warrant to establish standard, judge the current offerings and apply classification based on the purity and quality of the vintages. There were some grumbles the lords who had invested much in their land's vineyards and drew pride from the industry even with mediocre offerings, but those were quickly silenced by the tide of gold sent out to soften the blow as they lost cachet in the wine market and were encouraged to look to grain. More price regulation followed, with a foresight that von Wolfbach would be remembered for, though sometimes with mockery as a man who planned for leaks in his attic while his roof was aflame.

Article:

Did Rhya grant us the bounties of her land, that avaricious men and women might bar her children from those verdant fields and claim all themselves? Did Sigmar forge an empire so that those high and mighty souls might make war among themselves and cast his domains into ruin? The gods act for all, create for all, so that all their blessed children may be fruitful and industrious. We were not meant to starve in lands of plenty.

Anon, Sigmar's Hammer, Rhya's Sickle

The Leveler philosophy had sprouted across the Empire, with a few shoots smothered in their infancy, still more finding poor purchase in harsh soil, but in Stirland and Averland it came in to full bloom. The economic reforms and attention of the nobility bypassed vast swathes of the peasantry, or actively made their meagre existences more difficult. Tales of decadent bath houses, of towering fortifications, of art and culture, or even how all was to blame on the halflings of the Moot did little to placate the masses turned away from common lands and subjected to suppression of meetings, or violent uprooting to become 'productive.'

Ranald's hand was evident in Stirland, with known members of the cult being hunted and arrested for continued distribution of the subversive tract Sigmar's Hammer, Rhya's Sickle. Their past service the steward didn't spare them and executions became a regular entertainment.

As time went on and word trickled back about the state of affairs in the Slice however, greater resistance was mounted to these raids and arrests. Guardsmen were beaten, executions overrun by the mob and prisoners freed to go back and escalate their rhetoric against von Wolfbach, the Countess Eliana, and her husband.

Article:

The Levelers are often spoken of as a single group, one mass movement across the countryside. This fails to grasp the nuance of the differences in practice between those early rebels in the Slice, the later Black Cats of western Stirland, the pacifist Red Doves and the various Hammer factions. It is here that we see the fullest break from the Talabecland origins of the Leveler ideology with Taal entirely absent and Rhy divorced politically if not entirely symbolically.

Hans von Meikdorf, as quoted in Military Conflicts of the Early Twenty Third Century

There was no one singular inciting incident, in the end. No flashpoint where the people went from contended peasants to dangerous revolutionaries. It was, instead, a slow decline, an accelerating tumble down the slope that picked up more and more momentum with every passing day. Here a tax collector was beaten, there a local lord was pelted with manure, over there debates in the village square became forums for the discussion of alternative forms of government.

The majority of the militant efforts came in western Stirland, with revolutionary cells forming around the core of Stirlish partisans enraged by their countess and the stories of decadence associated with Kemperbad and its distant patron. Small villages all across the region struck out for independence, or else were embroiled in internal strife as the more traditional Stirlish clashed with Ranald-citing revolutionaries, but the violence was largely contained to the already-violent region.

Of more concern were the 'Red Doves' that swiftly spread to envelop much of northern Averland, taking for their own the example of Mother Rochelle and her selfless acts of peaceful protest. Invoking the name of Shallya, workers set down their tools and sabotaged roadworks to hinder the mechanisms of the state. The goddess demanded mercy and kindness from all her children; if one suffered, it was the duty of another to step in and help them back to their feet. The wealth of the nobles came from the work of the commons, and if the blue-bloods had come to believe otherwise then it was no wonder that the Empire was in such a sorry state!

In Solland, meanwhile, the rising tide of the movement was perhaps the most fractured and uneven. A great many had invested coin and blood into reclaiming this land from the bestial Orc, and stories of the heroism of the Elector Counts and the sacrifice of the Knights had imbued many with a strong regard for the nobility that lead from the front. Attempts at reconciling this patriotic sentiment with the desire for a better world were many and varied, with many finding a proposed solution in Tilean-style democracy or other less hierarchical forms of self-governance.

And then there was Brother Engels.

Article:

To arms, to arms my brothers and sisters! A most blessed son of Sigmar lies dead, the Heldenhammer's lands bleed beneath the lash, and I have heard your cries. Sigmar give me strength to break these wicked lords and rouse the indolent from their sin of complacency. No man a slave in this land that He united. No wall, no fence, no proclamation shall block the faithful from their toil. We have not fought, we have not bled for their gain, but for Sigmar's glory and the compact we all hold dear.

I will lead you brothers and sisters. For the hammer and the people we fight or die!

Brother Markus Engels, speech on Franzen Hill

The Hammer was a tool of war. The Hammer was a tool of peace. The Hammer was carried into battle by a living god, and used for a day's labour by the common man every day since. The Hammer, then, was the greatest symbol of unity one could ever hope to find, one that bound men and women together as kin with each other and Holy Sigmar above.

Such were the words of Markus Engels, one of the Grand Theogonist's most stalwart and reliable servants prior to his untimely demise. He had fought in the Solland Crusade, had followed the call of his god into battle with the greenskin hordes and stood in defence of his brothers, and now… now he set his eyes on another foe altogether, if one just as mighty.

To fight was righteous, he proclaimed. To labour with one's hands was righteous. To stand together with your fellow man, with your comrades, was righteous. Sigmar would bless those who helped each other, would provide for those who gave to their community and their Empire, but those who took for themselves? Who harvested taxes without fighting in war, who collected rent without honest work, who oppressed their subjects rather than lifting them up? Such people were Sigmar's Foes, and He would smite them as such, through the deeds of Markus Engels if needs be.

Perhaps the most overtly theo-militant of the various leveller movements, Engel's "Kinships of the Hammer" spread rapidly through Averland and Solland, preaching their religiously political ideology to any who would listen. Their aim was conversion, not revolution, but the sight of entire armies of militia drilling in the fields and forests under the eyes of battle-hardened veterans stirred considerable fear in the hearts of many across the land.

The Empire was dead. Long Live the Empire!

 

[Carol]

Surprise​

---

"Ya know, didn't think he could do that."

Adalwolfa said while staring at the humorous scene unfolding before her. It dealt primarily with Lulu and Bem with her being a mere witness to their antics. The multi-ton dragon was hunched over and carefully applying the final bush strokes from his painted nail on a stretched canvas. Adam, the second in command of the operation, howled at his men and women to hold steady; their strength enough to hold the canvas against the occasional gust of wind that came down from the mountains. A few representatives from the many faiths seemed to pray for their continued success.

"Our son," Lulu huffed with pride, "is a very special boy."

The older woman's maternal instincts had flared ever since the parade in which he first blessed her with his presence. Ever since then, much to Adalwolfa's delight, they were as close and as good as sausage and bread. Lulu was his teacher on all things Hochland from culture to language. And he was a much, much better student than Adalwolfa. The benefit of being interested on the subject matter more than the teacher.

"What's this all about anyways?"

"Watch."

The arch of Adalwolfa's eyebrows equaled the mastery of any Tilean masterpiece. Then, Bem sat up and cleared his throat as if to speak. What came out was Reikspiel. Rough around the edges but undoubtedly it was a language of man.

"I am Bem!
And I love and am loved by three mothers!"

Click to shrink...

​

 

[Maugan Ra]

Nordland Civil War, Part Three
(Written by @Wade Garrett with my approval)

Doom had come to Dieterschafen.

Her bravest and brightest sons and daughters lie dead on the battlefield. Her patron god is silent. Every ally, every possible ally in the Empire has turned their back. Even Klaus Gausser himself is laid low, the old warlord crumbling with the news from the Salzroad, confined to his sickbed, wounded in his very soul - by sorrow for his beloved daughter? By rage at the shattering of all his dreams?

It mattered little. The would be Count's affliction was a blow to the defenders, but there was no turning back. Not now. Word had already come from the rest of Nordland, word of massacres and murder to slake the thirst of Khaine Himself, there was no salvation in submission, what else could they do but fight to the finish? And so they rallied, a whole city preparing for siege, spurred on by the Wolf Fathers and Warrior Priests of Dieterschafen, grim faced men and women who had thrown the Ar-Ulric's decree into the temple flame and walked the streets sermonizing, standing as honor guard to the children Ulrike and Xenia Gausser, fortifying souls with tales of Ulric's great hall, where the valiant dead dwelt in honor for all eternity. Cold comfort, perhaps, but the only comfort to be found.

The same could of have been said of the arrival of Katrin Dieterschild and her Stray Dogs, a final forced march ending with exhausted soldiers clad mismatched livery of animal hides and Nuln forged collapsing in exhaustion inside the walls, barely reaching the city before von Moltke's outriders. Some looked askance at the appearance of the Markgraf's bastard child at the head of a body of troops, but such fears were quickly quelled as the disheveled woman knelt before a trembling and palsied Klaus and swore to Ulric to see her sisters come into their rightful inheritance, come what may. And whatever other thoughts lay in her heart, whatever old slights and long nursed bitterness, what did they matter now, at the very Gates of Morr's Garden? Nothing. Less than nothing.

Hope was to be found in one place, and one place only. In the constant assurance of the leathery skinned man with weirdly draped mustaches that the Boyar would come. The Tzarina had commanded it, and she would be obeyed, though all the daemons of the North barred the way. And so they planned, and they prayed, and when the Elector Countess called for parley Klaus himself rode forth from the gates (a shaking, corpse pale wreck of a man, hollowed out but too stubborn and spiteful to lie down and die) to spit at her feet, naming Jana a Hell spawned whelp of darkness tugged hither and yon by her Ostland whore. And after that there was nothing to do but kill and die.

There were three ways to take a fortified city. Batter the walls apart with a heavy siege train, crush the ramparts to rubble with Bretonnian Trebuchet or Dwarf forged Thunderers. By starvation, encircling and enfilading and waiting, waiting and watching until hunger and despair brought the inhabitants to their knees. And by storm. Hurling bodies at the walls, a desperate rush of scaling ladders and forlorn hope charges, paying in blood instead of time or coin. And with the Great Bear's shadow falling across Nordland, with visions of carnage and conflict to make this year of strife pale haunting her dreams, Jana von Moltke would choose the third.

Doom had come to Dieterschafen. Salzemund mase matchlocks and light guns spoke again and again, sweeping the walls clean, leather guns meant to gut Norscans and beastmen raking over the walls of a Nordland city. Assault after assault swarmed the walls, Ostlanders with Sigmar's name on their lips, Nordlanders roaring the name of their beloved Countess. And assault after assault was turned back. Wissenland shields turned aside the work of opportunistic sharpshooters, rubble and earth was piled around the battered gates, and Engil Wallenstein continued to delay and dither, citing first one reason and then the other for not committing to the fray.

The Stray Dogs rained arrows down on their comrades, cast chunks of rubble on their heads and thrust long spears at would be climbers, overturned cauldrons of pitch onto the escalades gathering at base of the walls, Jana's troops screaming as skin melted against leather and steel. Madness took root in the hearts of attackers, hatred for the scurrying figures atop the walls and those who cowered behind them, a smoldering vengeance that would never be quenched except in blood.

They came by land, and by sea, the First Fleet of Nordland bulling its way past wooden obstacles and cunning made jetties meant to foil Norscan war fleets, their guns silencing ballista and stone throwers, warrior priests of Manann scrambling side by side with Nordland marines towards the coastal walls to be turned away with thrusting polearms and the howls of warrior priests of Ulric. Gausser's troops raised a ragged cheer as the first Nordland ship slid beneath the harbor's waves, but jubilation turned to horror as vessel after vessel followed, the Jarl Breakers clogging the port with the sunken hulks of their own warships. The Tzarina would find no victory here. Would find nothing except ruin and ashes, no matter the cost.

So Jana von Moltke swore, as she knelt in the icy sea water that lashed at the shore, her hair unbound. Beseeching. Bargaining. Pleading with the Great Father of Waters, urging mighty Manann to unleash his storms, vowing that this victory would be consecrated in his name. Pleas that would not go unanswered.

Admiral von Tirpitz of the Shark Hunters is not a happy soul. She has been ordered into the Sea of Claws to shadow the Kislevites as they sail towards Dieterschafen. To trail after warships as formidable as her own, sailing with a spellbound Northern wind always in their sails, whose captains took note of her fleet just as she took note of theirs. It was a tense situation, fraught with peril...and that was when the storm roared in. A raging thing of crashing gray waves and a black, thunder crackling sky, howling like the breath of Ulric Himself. Von Tirptiz set up a howl of her own, directing her crew and captains as best she can, clutching an amulet of Manaan to her breast, watching her ships and the Kislevites scatter for any safety they can find, and spitting apalled curses at the flying wedge of Kislevite vessels plowing directly into the squall as confidently as if they were setting off across a tranquil mill pond.

In Dieterschafen, hope dies. The leathery skinned man continues to repeat his reassurances, but no one needs them. Not with their harbor a wrecker's paradise of scuttled ships and a screaming hellstorm lashing all around them. Not with soldiers red eyed with exhaustion, blades dragged down from weary unto death hands by the enemy dead. There is no victory here. There is no survival. There is only selling your life as dear as you can, hoping that Ulric is watching.

Engil Wallenstein delivers the death stroke, a holy symbol of Manann etched onto his breastplate as he takes wing, his mount carrying a serpent's nest of ropes and rigging great stones lashed as a counter weight, defying the slicing wind and raging thunder to cast his "scaling net" over one section of the wall, then another. And if some it them fall from the walls, some of them are blown into the city itself, and one bundle topples onto a gaggle of Ostlanders thinking to make a surprise night assault, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because it works, it works enough times that enemies who are almost dead of exhaustion can't cut the nets or cast them off the walls as fast as shipless marines, Ostland zealots, and raging Nordland loyalists can swarm up them.

And now there's nothing for it but to kill. To kill again and again and again, to vent all the suffering and frustration of this savage siege in one red night. Kill and die.

In Dieterschafen's keep, Klaus Gausser hacks up something red and commands his daughters to make for the harbor. To meet the Boyar, who will come. Katrin Dieterschild wants to gainsay him, to argue for holding within the walls, making a stand here, but she will not. She will not spend her father's last hours, her last hours defying him, and so she gathers up her to half sisters and her most trusted fighters and descends, down from the tower that holds her father's deathbed and out into the courtyard, ready to try and somehow fight their way through a dying city, and then out of the storm a nightmare of slavering fangs and leathery wings descends upon them.

Sir Engil lands his mount with a hearty hallo, brandishing a pistol in each hand and offering to convey the two Gausser girls safely to Coubtess Jana, upon his honor as a Markgraf. Katrin simply tightens the grip on her axe, ready to fight a battle she cannot win as the perhaps soon to be new lord of Dieterschafen scratches his creatures spiked crest and laments the lack of reasonable people in this day and age. And then a shadow falls over him.

Klaus Gausser is a dying man. With his last strength, he has risen from his bed, preferring to die in open air or at least cool the fever ravaging him with rain and wind, to walk the walls of his keep one final time, to look upon the city his family as ruled for so long. And this is the sight that greets him, a jest fit for the Dark Gods themselves. The monster that killed his eldest daughter now menaces his other children, bastard and trueborn alike, and this sick old man can only watch from the wall above. And for a final jest, a truly artistic twist of the knife, a crumbling stone wolfheads, the corpse of one of the keep's gargoyles shattered by a Salzemund shell, snarling helpless defiance at the tableau, a final mockery of the old Markgraf and his god.

Klaus Gausser is a dying man, but he was strong once. And so he wraps his arms around the broken wolf and he lifts.

Ulric, grant me the strength of the wolf.

Muscles tear. Sinew and ligaments snap. But Gauser calls on all his strength, all his hate, all his love, and inch by painful inch, he lifts.

Ulric, grant me the fangs of the wolf.

He lifts the great stone wolf, and then...he lets it fall. As simple as that, his heart bursting inside his chest.

And I will show my foes the mercy of the wolf.

Klauss Gausser is a dead man. But when Jana's personal guard find him, as the Countess herself oversees the seizing of the keep, they will see that he died smiling.

To Katrin and her sisters, to the handful of soldiers who stand with them, it is a deliverance from Ulric himself. One minute Engil's wyvern stalks them, and the next several hundred pounds of snarling stone fangs descend and it is a sack of broken meat and loose skin. Katrin all but drags her sisters forwards, telling Xenia and Ulrike they have to go, NOW! And then a pistol shot splits the night and she falls.

Engil Wallenstein rises from the ruin of his creature in a state of high dudgeon, a smoking pistol in one hand and another menacing soldiers and children alike, vowing to blow open a Gausser girl's head if anyone so much as thinks about moving, spitting curses at every god and daemon who could possibly be blamed for his current plight and a great many who reasonably cannot, and never noticing the figure drawing themselves back to their, feet, Stroheim & Sons crafted breastplate as good as its makers boast, only aware of his peril the second before an axe makes a red smile in his forehead.

This is it. The final stand of the Gaussers. A desperate flight across a city put to the torch despite the rain that lashes it, where soldiers slaughter their way through the storm and flames like devils from Khaine's Hells.

And now this. Their backs to the raging sea, ships masts rising up like dead men's clutching hands behind them, and before them, men of the Ostland army. The infamous riders of the Hamners of the North; rain dripping from their broad brimmed hats as they consider the prizes that have toppled into their hands as they cleansed the iniquitous and the vile. Katrin and her pitiful few are arrayed in front of her sisters, the girls clinging to Dieterschild's legs...and there will be no pyre for them. No torments for these children. Her own axe will see to that, the final gift she can offer. And then the wind changes.

A biting, howling gale against their backs, one somehow ranged against the storm, an icy white fog rolling in with it. And in that fog and ice, something moves.

Accounts of what happens next will vary. The one surviving Ostlander will spin a wild tale of the dead charging on horseback across the stormy sea itself, his babbling linking Klaus Gausser and whatever destroyed his troop with the evil stirring in the Forest of Shadows. More concerning for the Elector Countess are persistent rumors, persistent in spite of liberal application of stake and kindling, that Yvonne Gausser and her knights rode back from Ulricshall for one final charge, bearing her kin to safety over the Lord of Wolves and Winter's own ice.

But these rumors are concerning, in the end they are of little account. At year's end, Jana von Moltke is the Elector of Nordland, with every soul in the province either genuinely loyal or too cowed to even dream of resistance. Against that, what do the fates of two children and a bastard matter, really?

And across the Sea of Claws, a Boyar kneels. She has been called to make an accounting of herself, of ships cast into a storm, of skilled sailors and priceless Ice Witches lost, of her own great flagship constructed at no small expense, reduced to a crippled ruin of itself. And against that, she can offer only three souls, laid on the altar of her cousin's displeasure. A bastard one time Riverwarden and two small girls.

And the Tzarina smiles, and offers the rightful rulers of Nordland sanctuary at her court.

 

[Maugan Ra]

Wealth Beyond Price

Aschekönigin, the draconic queen of the Middle Mountains, had issued a decree. She would not quit these lands while her young yet lived and hunted in their shadow, yet neither would she be content to leave her hoard unguarded beyond the borders. A solution, then, was found - those who brought it to her would be rewarded in kind.

It was an offer that drew considerable interest, and as the year got underway the states of Ostermark and Hochland joined forces to see it done. A convoy of scouts, teamsters and caravan guards boarded the Black Fleet at Hergig and set sail, and at their head was Adalwolfa of Esk, resplendent in her freshly forged Dawi plate and accompanied by the eager form of the dragon Bem.

The journey was long and arduous, leaving the rivers behind near the Ostermark borders and heading far up into the World's Edge Mountains, but the Cult of Taal had agreed to provide scouts and the benefit of a draconic outrider could not be understanded. Bem was not yet large or strong enough to carry his human (for dragons do not deal in terms of 'masters') for great distances, but he seemed to consider the whole affair a grand enough adventure to make the effort regardless.

As the summer neared its height the lair was found, the great boulder covering the entrance rolled aside. Within was wealth to beggar kingdoms, the glittering treasure of a beast that had taken wing long before Sigmar had ever been born, and more than one guard felt the stirrings of avaricious greed at the sight.

Such thoughts were very thoroughly squashed by Adalwolfa, who clearly explained that this was a dragon's treasure, the same dragon that had devastated a state army and tracked her children across a thousand miles of forest. The Aschekönigin would know the quantities of her hoard down to the pfenning, and the vengeance she would take upon any thief and all who knew them would be terrible to behold.

Also Bem could smell gold and was quite willing to eat people in possession of it.

The return journey was, needless to say, a rather tense affair. Wagons creaking beneath the weight of gold and battlefield loot were escorted carefully down from the mountains, loaded back onto ships of the Black Fleet and returned to Hochland, there to begin the arduous climb back into the Middle Mountains. As it turned out, that last stage was unnecessary; Aschekönigin came to meet the convoy just beyond the city walls, and the people of Hochland got their first proper look at the dragon that was to be their neighbour for the foreseeable future.

Most were too terrified of the great monster to do more than cower - save Adalwolfa, who was busy trying not to get crushed in the middle of Bem's family reunion - but in the end it was Siegurd Lindenbrach who mustered the will to speak. The same woman who had survived to make contact with Aschekönigin in the first place, and was subsequently recognised by the matriarch and allowed to speak, eventually returned with the dragon's response - this expedition had been well done, her hoard returned to her in good shape. The reward was this: service.

Hochland, Ostermark, both had done the dragon a service, and were owed the same in turn. For adequate tribute in gold and meat, a single target could be named by each, and Aschekönigin would see it burn. As for the Cult of Taal and Rhya… the priestess Lindenbrach was named 'Dragon-Speaker', an ambassador to the Queen of the Mountains, and permitted to negotiate for further services on her faith's behalf.

Mitterfrul

The mountains were not the only place that the Cult of Taal and Rhya was in operation - while Mannan held the coasts and deepened its hold over the nobility, the King of the Gods had always been more favoured by the heartlands, and it was here that his Cult sought to deepen its influence. Tales of ruggedly handsome longshanks and beautiful priestesses began to circulate, printed in broadsheets and sung by bards the length and breadth of the land, while the Cult prevailed on those patrons it had to promote its festivals and rites.

The Mitterfrul Holy-day, centered around the Spring Equinox, was one of the most successful beneficiaries of this drive for extra publicity and support. Major festivals were thrown across much of Middenland and Talabecland, with further events taking place in those portions of Stirland that tended towards the rural. Perhaps inspired by this display of common faith, the Union of Seasons took the opportunity to sign trade deals with many Stirlish lords and ladies, offering their merchants and craftsmen equal status in the heartlands as they enjoyed in their own homes. That Stirland was benefitting considerably from its status as halfway between the Pact and the Union was clear to all, but what could or should be done about it? Nothing, most decided, for there were most assuredly higher priorities.

Similar celebrations happened in the Drakwald during this period, funded by both Reikland and von Bildhofen's desire to keep his people happy with his rule. And if certain nobles took advantage of the festivities to visit distant relatives on the other side of the border, or invite those relatives to share in their hospitality, then what of it?

Certainly the situation along the border was tense enough without making much of such a common occurrence. Local lords raided their neighbours and fought duels with their less distant kin, while several towns and villages saw investments in their fortifications from the Duke and heavy garrisons from the Reikland Second Army. War was on the horizon, everyone could tell - the only question was when.


Taming the Wild

In many ways, the Demigryph is an ideal steed, especially for one that intends to ride into battle. It is every bit as fast as a horse, can handle far steeper inclines and possesses the stamina to engage in combat for hours at a time without stopping. When one factors in the powerful beak and slashing claws, each more than capable of gutting a man in plate armour, it is no surprise that such beasts rank among the most prestigious and desirable of mounts.

Alas the beasts are few in number and do poorly in captivity, making the only reliable way to secure one as a mount a trip into the darkest depths of the Empire's forest to catch and tame one in person. Such ventures are always horrifically dangerous, for even the successful inevitably obtain several brutal scars at the claws of their would-be-mounts, but this does little to reduce their popularity.

Many attempted the deed this year, with the officers of both Wissenland's Steel Host and Middenand's Guardians of the Flame being among the most prominent, alongside several veteran knights in service to Myrmidia. Priests from the Cult of Taal were on hand to provide guides and professional advice, but steadfastly refused to assist in the actual taming - the bond between knight and rider must be obtained honestly, and none who were truly faithful to the God of the Wild would dream of sullying such a sacred process by direct intervention.

Dozens died, torn to shreds and eaten alive by the monstrous predators they sought to bond with, while many others were crippled for life. A few survived, perhaps a third of those who had set out on the expeditions at the bidding of their liege lords, and the resulting losses to the command staff of several armies had to be rapidly covered up with transfers and fresh recruits. Whether the trade was worth it, in the end… that was something only the lords in question could determine.

In the Drakwald, meanwhile, the forces under Duke Henryk von Bildhofen had opted for a different strategy. Giant wolves had been brought north, escorted from the Blackfire Pass under heavy guard, and allowed to run free in the forests of the Drakwald. Uncomfortably intelligent, it was no surprise when some of the lupines began running scouting missions alongside the humans of their adopted home, though none would yet agree to bear riders or otherwise act as steeds.

Faith and Duty

In Ostermark, the local priests have found themselves faced with the unusual stresses of a large population thinly spread across a substantial area. Many have adapted by becoming semi-nomadic, travelling through the countryside in caravans or as lone pilgrims, ministering to the faithful at each stop for days at a time before moving on once more. The Shallyans seemed to take to this duty particularly well, individual sisters often taking on apprentices and travel companions from towns and villages they passed through en route.

In Middenland, the Cult of Ulric threw its weight behind efforts to secure the services of a Dwarf Reckoner, one of the few people that the Dawi would trust to help resolve a grudge, in hopes of settling the issue of the rune axe of Karak Vlag. The negotiations were gruelling, but eventually a settlement was reached - the axe would stay with its current human wielder until he died or retired, and would then return to the dwarf clan that had forged it. No one was entirely happy with the arrangement, but it was still regarded as an important step forwards, and relations between Middenland and the Karaz Ankor were improved as a result.

Finally, reports from Sylvania took a rather shocking turn, as the Custode de Portale was announced to not be dead after all! And, after the initial hostile reaction, he also wasn't some form of horrible undead either! No, the old man had been found stumbled wounded through the wilderness, bereft of his guard, and was now being cared for by the servants of Luciano Malasangre… as befitted any truly pious soul, when confronted by a servant of the gods in need.

 

[Cavalier]

Article:

Dearest Sister,

I have taken the loss of our father bitterly, as has Elsa. I know despite the difficulties that attended your decision to join the Cult of Shallya that you too will grieve. You are welcome at any time in our House, should you wish to take leave to mourn with us. Our father was a great oak of a man sheltering our family underneath his branches. Now we are bereft, and I the Lord of Wolfbach many many years before my time.

The day after the internment I had a curious dream. I was riding through a fog-shrouded forest road atop my new Arabyan steed Ghalid, with Markus, father's old valet Albert, and a train of others following along. We came across a solid old stone temple, standing tall despite the undergrowth all but swallowing it. I alighted and entered inside, recognizing the layout of a simple Sigmarite temple with stone-carved benches facing a modest lectern and a faded tapestry depicting the Lord Sigmar receiving his crown of divinity from the Wolf God.

I turned to leave when I was interrupted by a priest with long blonde hair wearing brown homespun cloth and a crudely woven cloak of undyed wool. He was well-formed, bearing the hammer of the Sigmarite clergy and looking well-acquainted with its use. He bid me stay, and explained the Church had been built upon the site of Sigmar's departure from Stirlish lands. And yet despite the solidity of the church, and the fame which ought to have attended it, it was in disrepair and neglect. I swore at that moment to rebuild the Church ever finer, and to sheath the interior in gold so that it might reflect the smallest embers of our Lord's lingering presence.

"Fool," he said to me, and he seemed to grow prodigiously large, swelling in mass and wrath as his face turned red. "Sigmar has no need of gold! He is a god, and well beyond your ability to glorify. Gold is for Men, to meet their needs. Sigmar needs steel. The Steel of your faith, and the Steel of your Sword."

I awoke alarmed at his reproach. The cock had not yet crowed at the hour, and I spent time in the library by candlelight to make sense of what I recalled of the dream.There was a legend that Lord Sigmar crossed the River Aver from Wolfbach during his passage to Blackfire Pass, though no one these days agrees on his exact travels. With some satisfaction I did show that the Wolfbachs were descended from Queen Freya and remain proud stock of the Asoborn despite the Reikish and Averish blood from a few generations ago. And yet the tales of the past I read through and looked over made the dream clearer in one regard.

The calamities that have afflicted our poor Stirland, culminating in the dastardly murder of our father, are a result of having neglected our duty to Sigmar. We in the nobility have forgotten our duty to lead the souls of the people to prepare for the day of defiance against the Greenskin, the Mutant, the Beastman, the Undead, and the Ruinous Powers. We have allowed vanity and luxury to corrupt ourselves and have become oppressive to the population. There is no greater example of this than the late Project of which I have written to you before, and of its Grand Patron.

Father had intended to reconcile all factions and quarrels so that we might strengthen our state before the storm. His clemency and mildness were wielded as weapons against him by the ungrateful, the treacherous, and the cynical. You knew well his penchant to change his mind and try to conciliate even those who had injured or insulted him. His black moods, too, spent in the study brooding. Sigmar is a god of unity, and of the light, but he is also a harsh warrior who demands much of those follow him. Father had not forgotten the duties he owed Sigmar but others had. And they exploited his good nature and goodwill. I will not forget that lesson.

I must renew our Estates and make them right in the eyes of our Lord Sigmar. And then the Church in Stirland must be renewed, reformed, or perhaps I might say reforged into a weapon worthy of its god. Only then can the corruption and weakness of the state be purged and the orders of society righted to work together in one harmonious whole against the enemies of Man. I can only hope thereby to fulfill my duty to Sigmar, and to make father proud as he watches from the Gardens of Morr.

Your loving brother,
Maximilian

PS: While I doubt even that lecherous Beast and assassin Konstantin would dare seize you from the Cult of Shallya and their hospital, I fear for our brother Klaus. Please relay that a sum has been deposited for his use in Marienburg and that I advise him to flee there immediately. We have always had good relations with certain Merchant Houses there and I believe they will shelter him against any political misfortune that might arise.

 

[Carol]

Miracles​

---

Upon this year of death and carnage, where flesh and steel and pyre did meet, a single woman journeyed with faint hope in her breast -- accompanied by a gaggle of deadlier and less optimistic persons. These lands that bore the scar of red left little alive; the old horrors that happened, out-shadowed by greater tragedies elsewhere, still hung on the air and mind. Those responsible had already paid the highest price but actions outlive their doers. In spirit, it was a journey to heal whatever was left. In truth, it was a journey to bury what had not been taken.

And the graves ran deep in Hochland.

Lulu looked at her final designation. The sum total saved thus far equaled... far too little. But she had to see it to the very end. It was the sort of dedication central to her personality. So a cloak of white entered a domain of charcoal. The caw of ravens mixed with the thudding steps of her horse. Nothing but embers and ash met them. Things that merely clung onto cloaks and the soles of shoes.

"Lu, it's time," Adam, her hard nosed bodyguard-cum-friend, said. "Let's go home already." Typical of him to leave the hardest part out. You have done all that you can. "Wait," she responded. "Let us pray here." No one objected as hymns to Morr were sung. To ask the departed be treated with better care in the Garden. That when they were to answer Him, as all do, another would do the same for them. That was all they could do. Miracles were few and far between in this cruel world.

But rare did not mean extinct.

She came to them in soot.

The ravens flew.

"Hello, my name is Beate." The child uttered with age that defied her body. "Are you going to take me away?"

"No." Lulu said. "I'm here to save you."

Spoiler: Beate

 

[Maugan Ra]

It is now 2205
Turn Six has begun​

 

[TenfoldShields]

Diptych
​

The Imperial Palace, the city of Altdorf in the Grand Principality of Reikland
Altdorf is beautiful at night. All the ancient, twisting scars etched into the stone by war and siege are smoothed away; the harsh edges of the hundreds of high-peaked roofs, the skeletal bridges, the hungry shadow-haunted alleys that spread throughout the city like cracks in an old man's hands, are brushed by palest moonlight. Made into something softer. Something gentler. Mannslieb hangs above it all, wreathed and cradled by grey clouds and slender columns of smoke; her reflection captured in the blue-black waters of the harbor. The stars above matched by the countless orange flames far, far below- lit tapers flickering behind shuttered windows. Altdorf is a maze, a mystery, a winding warren of cold rain-slick streets and rats. Altdorf is a hive of humanity, an urban sprawl that runs for miles in every direction, labyrinth stacked atop labyrinth, layer upon layer. The sheer weight of the city pressing the foundations ever deeper into the earth. Buried ruins and paved-over boulevards into new strata, into dungeons and tunnels, rivers of dark water and filth flowing through the halls of antique mansions now forgotten by almost all. Almost.

The Imperial Palace looms above it all. A colossus of stone, the city's citadel-core. Every spire a secondary peak, it's halls and arcades like deep caverns in some snow-mantled mountain. The size of a town in its own right. Rising so high that you can see it from the horizon. That it is always, always, the first thing you see.

In the Grand Prince's quarters, in the most elegant and sumptuous rooms of the fortress, another warm, amber-tinged flame dances. A candle at a desk, burning, its shine mingling with the sullen red coals, the smoldering white ash of a long-expired fire in the titanic hearth. The two together enough to give the suggestion of a shape, to paint light across the folds of the half-open robe, to drip that slow-fading glow down smooth, lithe lines of the the man's body. To let it stain the faint hollow at the base of his throat, the shallow valleys between his ribs, to run down the sleek curves of his chest, down his taut stomach and past his navel.

He is like a painting. Something done in dark oils and picked out in pieces of gold leaf; hung in a heavy frame so that men may marvel at the master's work. A thin slice of some long-past moment in the Empire's history, some long dead man re-imagined in the artist's eye (except no, this is him, in the flesh). He is like a portrait. That rich, regal image, that thin slice and that faint hint of a smile as he contemplates the half-written letter, knuckles curled against his jaw, are all that he is.

There is a kind of unreality to Konstantin. Features more pretty than handsome. Hair so lustrous it must be hammered metal. Eyes so green they must have come from the Dwarves deepest mines. There is a kind of dreamlike quality to him. The near-perpetual pink flush in his cheeks, glazed gleam in his eyes that never rises the ugly levels of shattered blood vessels and bloodshot sclera; as if he were simply...above such things. As if he had been offered them once and ever so politely declined.

The bed behind him is a mammoth thing, the thick blankets carelessly draped over a pale-skinned shape. The cold and haughty man, all arch-refinement and icy sophistication (as befitting one of the Tzarina's less-distant nephews, truly) quite exhausted from the evening's activities and dead to the world. A shadow pushes itself to padded feet by the fire, stretching languidly, a hulking shape nearly the size of a small pony padding over with a saber-fanged yawn. Butting her head against his thigh, Kosntantin absently scratching the tigress behind the ears, smiling slightly wider at her happy chuff. Careless of how she could rip the meat from his leg with a simple close of the jaws, a twist of the head. A pygmy wyvern sleeps in its cage in the corner of the vast chamber, hooded and pile of raw mouse bones beneath its claws. Scorpion tail-click-clicking against it's perch. It is quiet here. He might be all alone in the world really.

How strange.

He's never been quite sure what to do with himself when he's all alone.

It's as they say, is it not? All the world's a stage and he is but an actor. And what exactly is an actor supposed to do when the curtain falls and the lights come up. When the last applause has faded away, when the boxes have all been cleared and the standing room areas swept clean. The crowds, rich and poor alike spilling out into the streets, into the Reikland night chatting, gossiping eagerly, enjoying the lingering thrill of the performance. The performance only really exists if there's people to see it because something is only really real if there's someone there to appreciate it.

(He wonders, if perhaps, he is loved a little less after the fall of Wenzel Kraft that terribly, damnably sincere fool, Grand Theogonist to the worms and cold-choking mud now. He wonders what that might mean for him.)

His Father would have said that such thoughts are nonsense, of course. Idle, womanly musings; it is your sword and your blood that make you real, it is power that makes you real, and one flows from the others and the others cannot be stripped from you so long as you yet live. And the words would have felt like cold spittle wetting his face. The dismissal like some great door slamming shut. And Kaspar- oh Kaspar would have resolved to teach him better at Father's implied behest and that lesson would have tasted like split lips and sparring bruises and the full weight of a young man's shoulder crashing into a boy's chest. Like the bitter acidic surge of bile in the throat, sounding like the scream of joints torqued to extremes and the soft crack of a voice trying to yield.

Mother-

Well. Mother understood him. Mother always understood him. The hawk with the injured wing that he refused to abandon even as it flew slower and weaker than his brother's, feeding it scraps of squirrel until its feathers grew in glossy and pristine no matter how it tried to cut at his fingers. The stories, the old stories from the deep forest that he loved so much, about mean sisters dancing in red-hot shoes until they died, about the boys with wolf-teeth and the witch-women with snake tongues and serpent coils. The glass goblet with the last lingering dregs of something clear at the bottom, sitting at his father's sickbed; smashed by the Prince in a...fit of passion and grief. Of course.

Perhaps it would be better to say that they always understood each other. And he knows, he knows, what she would say if he padded down the halls of his great palace to her chambers and knocked on her door, what she would say with a smile and a gentle cupping of his jaw even at these small hours of the night:

Power is not in a sword. Power is not even in the blood. Power is in the ability to cut. To draw a line such that the world on the other side becomes irrevocably different from what which preceded it, changed forever in the most fundamental ways. A new world. A new reality. The sabertoothed huffed and laid itself down heavily at his feet, all but pinning his legs in place. And in the comfortable darkness, in that gloom, the Grand Prince picked up his pen...

And began to cut the world in two.

Article:

To His Imperial & Princely Highness Friedrich von Schwarzburg the Dragon of Nuln, Emperor-Elect, Grand Count of the Grand County of Wissenland and Grand Prince of the Grand Principality of Solland, Chieftain of the Merogens, Count of Nuln, Armourer of the Empire and South-Warden, Defender of the Rivers Soll and Echoes, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire.

Word has doubtless reached you, in its many and varied forms, of the great horror perpetrated at Kemperbad by the perfidious Union of Seasons. Included alongside this missive is a summation by my Kaiserjaeger of the damage wrought thus far, the defilement that will take years of labor and potent ministration to reverse, and within it: my most bitter assurances.

They protest and they pontificate as to the the responsibilities of all involved but of their intent there can be no doubt: this was a deliberate strike against my vassal in particular, Reikland in general, and the Pact as a whole. The Grand Duchies of Talabecland, Middenland, and Middenheim have made little secret of their revanchist aims and their desperate ambition as both the Black League and our own alliance grow in strength and solidarity. Are these last years not littered with testaments to this self-evident truth? That witch Todbringer's reformations of the State Armies and the glee with which her lords threw themselves into the butchery on the Salzroad, the presence of Middenland's own heir at the Barren Hills cleansing, the endless espionage from the Duchess Brigitte's court -that great fountain of venom- and her agitation of the League.

Must we bear this too? This bloody injury, this grievous insult...

My Emperor. I beg of you: the Cult of Ulric is in disarray, the Grand Duchess no longer holds the Cult of Taal and Rhya's confidence, and I have heard word that the Black League has begun to move forward with their own preparations; there is no better time to strike, to move, and move we must lest history sweep us to the side and we all be lost among the pages of dusty tomes. Lest we prove our great enterprise a lie, the spirit in which it was signed false, and cede control of our fates to those who would see us ruined. As a founding member of the Pfieldorf Pact, whose vote has seen you ascended to the throne, the first claimant in centuries- I invoke that treaty's articles as is my right and my privilege.

And ask that you call the Pact to war.

Your most loyal vassal.

His August and Imperial Majesty Konstantin I Rannulf Engel I, Grand Prince of the Grand Principality of Reikland, Chieftain of the Unberogen, Prince of Altdorf, Overlord-Admiral of the River Reik and the Fleet, Supreme Marshall of the Army, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire.

 

[Shephard]

@TenfoldShields

Article:

To His August and Imperial Majesty Konstantin I Rannulf Engel I, Grand Prince of the Grand Principality of Reikland, Chieftain of the Unberogen, Prince of Altdorf, Overlord-Admiral of the River Reik and the Fleet, Supreme Marshall of the Army, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire,

A wrong has been done to the people of the Slice, and its surrounding territories. I could pontificate on the matter of my Order's true intent, our noble and heroic aim to cleanse the Barren Hills and restore the lands to their rightful rulers. But I am reminded of that age-old saying: That deeds speak louder than words. Our good intentions do not wash away their ill results. They do not absolve blame, or evil, or the blood and suffering upon our hands. The vile Beastmen, the very same we swore to destroy, ravage the Slice and desecrate it. That is the outcome of our actions, and intentions are as dust against the weight of that sin. The Order of the Black Rose is shamed. I am shamed.

You would have cause to disbelieve my words and expect this to be naught more than empty apologies from a blackhearted villain. I have no doubt you will soon declare war upon the Union, and have likewise considered denouncing my Order. I will not plea for your clemency or offer excuses, for I know it would be a waste of words.

I ask only that you allow deeds to speak for me, and my Order. Did we not prove our courage and selflessness to you, when Knights of the Black Rose rallied to your defense that dreadful Borisnacht and shielded your vassals from the dreadful undead? I ask for you to let us do so again, and wipe clean the stain of the Barren Hills campaign.

I ask that you allow the Order of the Black Rose to honor our oaths, and finish our hunt for these beastmen. I offer you a hundred lances to bring the beasts of chaos to heel and avenge the unholy destruction they have brought about. Furthermore, Grand Duchess Brigitte II has given me an exemption from the coming hostilities, save for the defense of Talabheim itself. Thusly, I offer you my oath, with Morr as my witness and His wife Verena as my judge, to raise neither lance nor blade against you or your allies until either such time or the day we have brought the heads of their wicked shamans before you.

If you wish to condemn us still, your lordship, that is your holy remit. But I beg of you to let us slay your enemies and regain our honour first. If it must cost the lives of every member of this Order, if it must cost my own life, the beastmen scourge will be destroyed.

So vows thusly,

Sir Wilhelm von Kellner, Grandmaster of the Order of the Black Rose

 

[SirLagginton]

Article:

To His August and Imperial Majesty Konstantin I Rannulf Engel I, Grand Prince of the Grand Principality of Reikland, Chieftain of the Unberogen, Prince of Altdorf, Overlord-Admiral of the River Reik and the Fleet, Supreme Marshall of the Army, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire. @TenfoldShields

Konstantin. My ally. My vassal. My friend. Know that I still well remember of that day in Pfeildorf, where you and the others brought together your Runefangs to declare for my ascension to the empty throne. Know that word has also reached Nuln from the distant crags of Middenheim and the shadowed boughs of Talabheim, the horrors stark for any right-thinking man to see. Know that I have heard of all the same feeble protestations of innocence that you must undoubtedly hear in your own court as well, and I, like you, have judged it wanting. To the self-evident truths you have presented me with the duplicity of the Union of Seasons I add one more, that if they not intend to use Beastmen as weapons of war against you, then why have they not given you any warning of this campaign about to take place? Even divided as we are now, I hoped that the fellowship of man over the beast would persist.

Clearly I had been optimistic.

Twice now that they have inflicted unjust injury on you my friend. Both through ignoble means such that it strikes me that the dogs of Middenheim know nothing of diplomacy save through the butchery of good men and women. You are right that they will not learn their lesson, and so then let us forge justice from this crucible of atrocity and tragedy. The iron is hot. Our sword arms willing. Our cause righteous. Let all know that once and forevermore that Friedrich von Schwarzburg stands tall with his vassals as Sigmar did with the great chieftains of yore.

So declares your Emperor,

His Imperial & Princely Highness Friedrich von Schwarzburg the Dragon of Nuln, Emperor-Elect, Grand Count of Wissenland and Grand Prince of Solland, Chieftain of the Merogens, Count of Nuln, Armourer of the Empire and South-Warden, Defender of the Rivers Soll and Echoes, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire.

Article:

IMPERIAL CHRYSOBULL DECLARING THE STATE OF WAR BETWEEN THE PFEILDORF PACT AND THE UNION OF SEASONS​

We, the Imperial & Princely Highness Friedrich do hereby promulgate the recognition of the State of War between the Pfeildorf Pact and the Union of Seasons on account of the Union's Crimes against both Man and God by the use of Beastmen to Injure and Slay their Fellow Man.

By the powers invested in Us in Our Mandate to ensure that the Pfeildorf Pact is to be Indivisble in War as well as Peace through Consent Freely Given by Our Peers We so do Compel the following to join Us in War to seek Redress for this Injury to Us and Ours and bring the Villainous Scourge of the Union back in line with the Righteous Men & Women of Sigmar's Empire: His Serene Highness Luccinanto Yjsbraant van Hoogmans-Palutano @ManusDomini, His August & Imperial Majesty Konstantin I Rannulf Engel @TenfoldShields, and His Serene Highness Francis Ludwig von Ellinsbach @100thlurker.

No Quarter shall be given by the Brotherhood of the Pfeildorf Pact until such a time comes that the Corrupt and Venal Union has been judged to have been brought back in line with the Empire.

Sealed and Signed in the Grace of Sigmar Heldenhammer and the Grace of Blessed Myrmidia by,

His Imperial & Princely Highness Friedrich von Schwarzburg the Dragon of Nuln, Emperor-Elect, Grand Count of Wissenland and Grand Prince of Solland, Chieftain of the Merogens, Count of Nuln, Armourer of the Empire and South-Warden, Defender of the Rivers Soll and Echoes, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire.

 

[Sidheach]

The Duchy of the Drakwald
The Goodest of Bois



A Good Boy and a Drakwalder

---
​

It has become apparent, as of late, that the Drakwald will not know peace for much longer. To the east, Middenland stalks along the border, feral eyes ever casting covetous looks towards Carroburg, whilst to the south, the Emperor promises war with the Union of Seasons. Even with Duke Henryk still in his melancholic state, removed from the affairs of his subjects and more interested in matters of death and entropy, there is no escaping that the Drakwald shall be forced to fight once more. Her sons shall yet again be marched out through the Gate of Emperors, weapons in hand, and sent off to die either in service to the Empire or in defence of the Duchy itself. It is an inevitability that few dare deny and thus it should come as no surprise that the Drakwalders have begun to prepare for the coming days in their own fashion.

Specifically by making the Drakwald even more dangerous.

Retrieved by the nephew of Duke Henryk, the Drakwald now boasts it's own population of Giant Wolves, stolen from the Badlands where they ran in service to the Greenskins, and transplanted to the shadowy woods of the Drakwald. While some may decry the move as mad, utterly lacking in sense, and doomed to backfire spectacularly, the Drakwalders have proven remarkably pleased with themselves over the decision. Initial fear has given way to utter adoration as the growing pack of wolves roam about the Duchy, hunting Beastmen, aiding soldiers, and being visible signs of the favour of Ulric upon the Drakwald.

While none have deigned to allow the Drakwalders to ride them yet, hopes remain high that an opportunity to do so will present itself soon, with Magna von Bildhofen personally swearing to ride one by the year's end as proof of her right to dwell in Carroburg. Until then, however, the Duke, in one of his more lucid moments, has decreed that the Giant Wolves shall be accorded all the rights and privileges owed to any soldier enlisted in the Drakwald Regulars. Each Giant Wolf shall be paid a salary of meat each month, accorded honours for services rendered to the Duchy where appropriate, and given a uniform to be worn when the Regulars are called upon to turn out in parade. Whilst the final point has proven difficult, with the lupine soldiers failing to grasp the importance of a freshly pressed uniform, they have proven welcome additions to the Regulars who have taken to doting on the "goodest of boys" in all the Empire.​

 

[Revlid]

Secrets sleep beneath the soil and stone of the Holy Sigmarite Empire. The blood of ancient betrayals, the bones of conquered peoples, the rust of broken blades. The waking world consigns such deeds and dreams to the fathomless vaults of Morr, wishing only to forget, to forget that it ever forgot, staring fixedly skyward and refusing to acknowledge whatever crunches beneath their feet. If you could only speak the tongue of gods and worms, each strike of spade and pickaxe would reveal a stanza in the bitterest saga ever writ.

Sicriu might not speak those languages, but she spoke many more besides. She learned the flowing, elfin tongue of Breton across a childhood spent entertaining peasants and lords and evading the eye of the damsels. Gospodarinyi came to her easily, after years of trade across the Northern Marches. In exchanges with the desperate kings of the Border Princes, she learned Tilean, Estalian, and the difference between the two. In a long summer at a sweltering port, she'd driven herself to master glottal Arabyan – or at least, the dialect spoken by the intriguing young men sweating away by their dhows. The dwarfs at the World's Edge kept their tongue almost as jealously as their coin, but Sigmarite lore held the learning of Khazalid in high regard. From her twin bodyguards she had even learned a smattering of Grumbarth and Hargházhakh. She sounds slow and crude when she speaks it, but so do ogres.

And at her baba's knee, she learned older tongues, still. Older than Reikspiel or "classical". Perhaps they were young by the standards of elves, but to her they seemed a doorway to an ancient time and place, to a realm where ancestors walked among their people and want was kept at bay by wonders and wisdom she could barely imagine.

She could, if she squinted, see the touch of that ancient language on the tablets before her. There were few elements of Klinkarhun, but some traces of Classical – or more likely, Classical had drawn from the Stirhugel. The looters who'd cracked open the tombs of those ancient kings hadn't been much-concerned with scholarship – those who'd survived had taken whatever shone brightest through the cobweb of ages, and left the dusty tablets and moss-coated runestones that kept the wisdom of the old Barrow Kings. Her agents had rescued what they safely could, charting for the Knights of the Raven those places where the grip of the dead remained cold and tight – and surveying for themselves those places where the curses were long-expended, like water leaked from a punctured skin.

Now Sicriu spent her nights picking through jigsaw-cracked dead-end fragments of history and herbalism and astronomy, her days driving through negotiations and lessons with the manic energy of quick catnaps and steadily-stronger cocktails of "herbal" tea. Perhaps this was only a futile curiosity. Perhaps she was simply being indulgent, luxuriating in the lamplight that would have been unthinkably expensive in her youth. Perhaps none of it would be enough to stave off the disasters she saw in her dreams. It hadn't been enough to save the Stirhugel themselves, after all.

She winced as the twitching of an errant curtain sent a shaft of pale morning light into her eyes, gleaming off a polished, half-assembled lens at the edge of her vision. Another draft. They seemed to be getting worse, though it ought to be expected somewhere like this. Casting her eyes back down at the mouldering scroll in front of her, she found her place. Then she found it again, and a third time, before blinking hard. Ah. So this was her limit. No-one could deny Morr forever, in sleep or in death – a good saying, one that Sorina had picked up from her Middenlander lover and shared on the journey back East.

Yes, it was time to sleep or take up even stronger stimulants, and she wasn't so far gone as to dip into Nagash's snuff. She snorted, standing with a crackle of joints that belied her brief years. There was so much to do. Her letters to Talabheim's Royal University, and the comrades she'd made there. Commiserations for Malasangre and curriculums for Notwenn and commissions for the workshops. The arrangements for security and roadworks along the way to Marienburg – but Zusto had that in hand, surely? At the very least she should compose her reply to Brandywine's last letter before the next round of caravans left.

So much to do, and so few hours in the day, so few days in the week, so few years in the life. As she rolled onto her cot, still fully-dressed, her sluggish thoughts drifted to Von Wolfbach. He must have felt the same way. She hadn't liked him, as such. She'd barely known the man. But he'd been pragmatic. Willing to accept assistance when offered, regardless of his own prejudices. That was something she'd appreciated. Perhaps he'd felt he had no choice. There were so few hours in the day, after all. So few years in the life.

Her eyes drifted shut. Then there was a knocking on her door and the morning bells were pealing sharp and clear.

Someone had unaccountably set her clock five hours forwards. It had to be a vicious and ill-considered prank. There was no other explanation.

 

[Bandeirante]

To:
Grand Count Francis Ludwig von Ellinbach
Grand Baroness Theophaneia Ysmay Gloriana Hochen @Mina
Regent Elizabeth Todbringer of Middenland and Middenheim @Deadly Snark
Grand Baroness Jana von Moltke @Crilltic
Grand Duchess Astrid von Wolfenburg @EarthScorpion
Grand Prince Konstantin Rannulf Engel I @TenfoldShields
Grand Countess Eliana von Ellinbach @Maugan Ra
Grand Duchess Brigette II @Scia
Grand Prince Luccinanto Yjsbraant van Hoogmans-Palutano @ManusDomini
Grand Count Friedrich von Schwarzburg @SirLagginton

CC:
Count Luciano Malasangre @Wade Garrett

I write to all the grand Lords and Ladies of Sigmar's Empire driven by utmost urgency.

Over the course of last year, my longtime investigations on a matter of suspicion have finally bore fruit. With vital support from Count Malasangre and his wife Bianca, we were able to uncover a most heinous and malicious conspiracy working in the shadows to undermine the realms of Sigmar.

Beastmen have been infected with vampirism and their meat hacked off and sold as delicacy to the unaware peasantry. Using giant man eating worms, this mysterious villain built a veritable underground warren in Sylvania to carry out this mad endeavor. And while I have no proof or indication this can be happening elsewhere in the Empire, the fact that this group has the means to simply dig under our feet could very well mean that the operation destroyed by the joint forces of Ostermark and Sylvania was only but a tentacle of a far bigger beast.

I have started to put this information to paper, working closely with the highest Priests, Witch Hunters, scholars and vampire hunters of the League to dig deeper into this mystery and would gladly share further details upon request.

Do what this information what you wish.

His Imperial and Princely Excellency Frederick von Schaffernorscht, Elected Count and Chancellor of the League of Ostermark, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire, Protector of the Eastern Marches, Chieftain of the Ostagoths,

 

[Cavalier]

@Maugan Ra @100thlurker

Article:

To Countess Elianna I, Princess of Wurtbad, Chieftain of the Asoborns, Consort of the Grand Duke of Averland, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire;

Your Highness,

I write as an injured vassal appealing to my liege, in search of Justice. My father and your Steward, Horst von Wolfbach, has been treacherously murdered while defending the territories of the Grand County of Stirland. The party responsible has carried out a cruel war of terror against your Subjects on the far side of the Stirhugel and between the rivers Reik and Aver. He has burned down towns declaring their allegiance to Your Highness, and has seized your Subjects on the rivers and impressed them into slavery. He has commanded rampant piracy by the seizure of ships and goods flying the Ensign of this County of Stirland against all the laws of civilized Men.

I name this party as Konstantin Engel, the loathesome and impious lord of Reikland, unworthy of whatever titles he claims.

Let it be remembered that he seized, on no pretext whatsoever, the territories called the Slice while Stirland was prostrate after the late war of succession. That those territories passed into his hands on the assent of Averland and Wissenland even as he turned his armies against Middenland and was in no position to win them by honorable warfare. That he proceeded to hand over those lands to the greedy and vulgar burghers of Kemperbad, who fear no gods and have been duly punished for their avarice. And then having deigned to return those lands to the crown of Stirland, he insisted upon our gratitude and that of Your Highness; and then, in violation of the treaty he had signed and of his oathsworn promises, refused to vacate the territories and levies insults upon Your Highness and the Crown of Stirland until the arrival of the foul Beastmen armies outside Kemperbad.

If this were the extent of his crimes he would be an enemy of Stirland and a foul blackguard whose very presence in Altdorf is an insult to the noble Unberogen of Sigmar's blood. They are not. Having withdrawn his forces from the Slice, he did refuse to accept that they fell back under the sovereign power of Your Highness. He dispatched godless piratical folk to sack towns pledging themselves to Your Highness, and seized honest merchants on the river to take their cargoes and enslave their crews. My father, the good and pious late Steward, a Servant of your Highness, to whom Your Highness owes her very life, attempted to Pacify the lands incensed by the effrontery and tyranny of these vile Reikland scum. He acted with clemency and yet firmly defended the lives, goods, and honor of the Subjects of Your Highness in the province. And for that he was shot down, sword in hand, by the treacherous and infamous Reikland pirates unleashed upon the Grand County.

Horst von Wolfbach is not the only enemy of this Black and Foul Prince to die by cowardly blows. We must remember the late Grand Theogonist, unfortunately slandered, but a patron and friend of Your Highness and now obvious in his holiness and devotion to Sigmar. He too died to a treacherous blow in honorable combat, this time before the very eyes of Konstantin.

And so I appeal to Your Highness for the justice due a vassal from his liege. A mighty weregild would not come close to making up for the death of my father, both for my House and for Stirland, but if peace must prevail then that is the least that Justice demands. But I would be remiss not to account for the slaughter, rapine, and damages done to the Subjects of Your Highness at the hands of this miserable and gods-forsaking churl. He must make recompense to those Subjects who reside in Stirland and have been subject to wanton brigandage, piracy, and oppression. The removal of Reikland and its Kemperbadian vassals is necessary for the injuries done to the Grand County to be redressed, so that Stirland alone controls its own rightful soil. The return or repayment of cargoes seized by the piratical villains proclaiming themselves a Reikish navy must also be sought to assuage the losses of good honest merchants who have brought a profitable commerce that has seen our lands prosper.

I appeal for Justice.

It may be apprehended that Konstantin the Tyrant will not meet such terms. He is a haughty and arrogant man, who fears neither the gods nor his neighbors. But of late our Grand County has been afflicted with sorrow unmeasured. We have failed to trust in Sigmar and to live unto his example. I would see this negligence righted, and to stand firmly for our rights in defiance of a Foe of great power is to trust in the example of Sigmar. With a reformed Church, and worthy most warlike and martial nobility, a freeborn people of such exalted lineage as the Asoborn, Your Highness would need not fear any threat.

Your vassal,
Archduke Maximilian von Wolfbach, Archduke of Wolfbach, Lord of Franzen, and a Chieftain of the Noble Blood of the Asoborn

 

[Sidheach]

The Duchy of the Drakwald
The von Eslohes



Sigismund von Eslohe

---
​

As always, the New Year brings with it new developments in the Drakwald and this one has been no different. Whilst most have spent their time cooing over the Duchy's new lupine inhabitants, or staring westward with weary eyes, those within the Ducal Palace have paid closer attention to shifts within the von Bildhofen Family. Formerly but a boy squired to his uncle, Sigismund von Eslohe, the eldest son of Katerine von Eslohe, has finally reached the age of majority with the young Drakwalder officially becoming a man early on into the year in the traditional fashion; by hunting and slaying a Beastman with nothing but a dagger fashioned out of bone and wearing only a wolf pelt blessed by a Priest of Ulric. Formerly under the thumb of his domineering mother, that Sigismund is now a man in earnest - knight and bloodied as a true man ought to be - changes much within the Ducal Palace.

Where Katerine formerly held firm control over her faction, Sigismund's wildness has broken that iron grip with the Princeling amassing his own supporters in opposition not only to his mother but also to his cousin, Johann. Calling themselves the Young Wolves, Sigismund and his entourage have taken to running wild across the Duchy, hunting Beastmen, drinking Reiklanders under the table, and picking fights with the Cult of Sigmar, Ulric, Manann, Taal, and Myrmidia. After learning that Magna had sworn to ride a giant wolf by the year's end, Sigismund would pledge to have all the Young Wolves riding them by halfway through the year and to have slain a Minotaur by the same point. Rumours that he had also taken up worship of Khaine, whom some claim Sigismund favours only because of his deep association with stabbing things repeatedly in the face, would also abound though without confirmation.

Naturally all of this has only served to further complicate the increasingly labyrinthine von Bildhofen family politics as Sigismund proves utterly unwilling to side with anyone but himself, interjecting a third faction into the mess that has already been characterised by naught but sheer, unabashed aggression.​

 

[Wade Garrett]

Article:

Be It Known To All Faithful Souls of the Empire

That one HERMAN, GRANDMASTER OF HIGH AND CHIVALRIC ORDER OF DESERVED REST, MORE COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE KNIGHTS OF THE RAVEN and THE INNERMOST CIRCLE OF THE SAME

- did knowingly and with malice aforethought forsake their sworn duties to Father Morr and His Vicar Among The Living, and in so doing did expose our beloved SIEGHARD EBERL, CUSTODE DE PORTAL to mortal peril, from which he was DELIVERED BY THE HAND OF THE LORD OF THE DEAD, MAY ALL FAITHFUL SOULS REJOICE

- having pissed upon their oaths and WHORED AWAY THEIR SOULS TO THE POWERS OF RUIN, did dispatch their agents into the BLESSED SHRINE OF VENERABLE GRETCHEN OF WOE at Waldenhof, where they did reveal and revel in their new allegiance by THE DESECRATION AND DESPOILMENT OF GROUND SACRED TO MORR'S BELOVED CHILD GRETCHEN, the PITILESS BUTCHERY OF MORR'S PRIESTHOOD AND HIS WORSHIPPERS, and the WOUNDING AND ABDUCTION THE LADY CARLOTTA MALASANGRE IN THE MIDST OF HER DEVOTIONS TO THE RAVEN LORD, may all who took part in these outrages and all who ordered them carried out BURN FOR ETERNITY IN THE HELLS OF KHAINE.

- Having profaned Morr's temple and slain his servants, did flee their richly deserved reckoning to rendezvous with their depraved masters in the city of Wurtbad and did LIE, DECEIVE, AND DISSEMBLE so that they might conceal their own ABOMINABLE CRIMES, believing in their arrogance that their new patron powers would succour them and the God they betrayed had not the strength to undo their INIQUITOUS CONSPIRACY.

I, LUCIANO MALASANGRE, COUNT PALATINE OF SYLVANIA, LORD OF CASTLE DRAKENHOPF, CHIEFTAIN OF THE FENNONE, and FAITHFUL SON OF FATHER MORR, do call upon those Knights of The Raven within the lands of Sylvania to lay down their arms, that righteous may be seperated from the vile and the rot which has seeped into this once noble order may be cut out. Upon my word as Count-Palatine, THE INNOCENT WILL HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR.

I do further call upon MY LADY THE ELECTOR COUNTESS OF STIRLAND ELIANA VON ELLINBACH @Maugan Ra @100thlurker THE ELECTOR COUNTESS OF OSTLAND ASTRID VON WULFENBACH @EarthScorpion and THE ELECTOR COUNT OF OSTERMARK FREDERICK VON SCHAFFNERNOST @Bandeirante to do the same with those Chapters of the Knights of the Raven in their lands.

And to should these words reach the TRAITOR, MURDERER, AND SERVANT OF THE DARK GODS HERMAN AND HIS COVEN, let them know this.

Wherever you flee.
Wherever you hide.
Whatever man, beast, or daemon may stand between us.

I will hunt you.
I will see my daughter set free from your hell spawned hands.
And I will send your damned souls screaming to the God you have profaned, to beg for the mercy I will never show you.

SO I SWEAR THIS DAY, BEFORE ALL GODS THAT ARE TRUE

 

[Chehrazad]

To:
Grand Count Francis-Ludwig von Ellinbach of Averland @100thlurker
Count Palatine Luciano Malasangre of Sylvania @Wade Garrett
Grand Countess Eliana von Ellinbach and her most loyal Archduke and Steward of the Diet Maximilian von Wolfbach of Stirland @Maugan Ra @Cavalier

Article:

My dearest fellow-Counts of the good empire of the house of Sigmar,

On the behalf of his Imperial and Princely Majesty and Emperor-Elect of all signatories to the Statute of Pfeildorf Friedrich von Schwarzburg of Wissenland and Solland and in the interest of preventing bloodshed and the terror of la vendetta,

I write this letter to you now, suggesting my presence as neutral arbitrator and mediator between your grievances as a final opportunity to clasp hands as friends before the shedding of blood. The bonds that bind us states are yet strong and it would be most shameful if such a deed as that which has been so committed by this most shameful act of the High and Chivalric Order of the Deserved Rest were to sever them. The deliverance of her Highness Carlotta of the house of Malasangre from her captivity in Wurtbad is surely in the interests of all parties and so is surely bringing to justice the guilty party.

So let us take to the table of peace and negotiate so that compesation can be made, justice can be dealt, innocence can be discerned and guilt can be marked. Let us take each a seat at the Stadspaleis of Marienburg before this terrible situation can no longer be salvaged and each part can receive what is theirs, no less and no more.

By the Grace of Mannaan, His Illustrious Majesty, Elector Count of the Westerland, Baron of Marienburg, the High and Mighty Lord the Lord Electoral Luccinanto Yjsbraant of the Well-Bred House of van Hoogmans of the Honourable Branch of Palutano and the Most High Well-Born Peers of the Rijkskammer and Most Excellently Thrifty Peers of the Burgerhof in Stadsraad assembled.​

 

[Shephard]

Old bones popped and groaned as Leopoldine von Meyer walked through her family's garden, not helped by the morning chill. A faint patina of frost covered the plants and stone pathway, but already it was starting to melt as the sun began to rise upon the horizon. Her physician would undoubtedly throw a fit at his delicate work balancing her humours being unsettled by her walk, but she needed a moment to escape. So she walked, her ivory cane beating a slow but steady beat across the stones.

It had been a long time since she had last walked the path, but she remembered it well. How long ago had it been when she was but an unruly child with an unhealthy adoration of the first Empress Ottilian? She remembered how she would hide from her irate tutors among the winding paths, until at last her father would come to fetch her, his booming laugh and empty scolding drawing her from where she would hide. She remembered the long hours she spent here, being taught the way of the saber and rapier by her mother. Oh, how she had disapproved of when she had taken up the lance and the sword. Leopoldine almost missed the nagging.

She made her way to the old bridge in the center of the garden. Its engravings had been worn away by rain and sleet, and it creaked almost as much as she did when she stepped up on the wooden planks, but it remained strong. Stronger than her? She could still hold her own with a sword, as the young striplings squired to the house kept discovering. They were the only ones who'd dare to fight her seriously. The rest saw the gray in her hair, the wrinkles in her face, and at best made a poor show of pretending to fight before they let her win. Cowards, scared of discovering an old woman was their match.

They were both older than their years, she supposed. She placed a hand on the railing, slick with moisture, and remembered the last time she'd been on that bridge. A warm summer day, made only warmer by the tears falling down her face. She'd been too young to understand Morr's kindness, then. It had been long years since, and a lifetime spent in full harness fighting had worn her down. But she'd weathered the storms, just like this old bridge. Only one other had endured as well as she had.

Oh, Herman. Herman, Herman, Herman. In all her years, she could never imagine anyone would accuse Herman of heresy. The man had fought for Morr longer than that stripling count had even been alive, and yet the accusation stood.

Once upon a time, a young woman who had dreamed of being a knight and a hero would've donned her harness and raised her lance. She would've fought and died for glory, and honour, and brotherhood. Now, a veteran bent against the railing as a fit of giggles fell over her. Herman of all people, a heretic? You could barely get the man to drink a cup of light wine, what were the dark powers meant to offer him? Was he approached by a daemon of absistence? Boredom? Patience? Perhaps Chastity. Certainly not one of the creatures of lust, after all the years it had taken her to wear him down. Even that had been brief. She choked, tears in her eyes as she tried to breath.

Oh, the count could claim elsewise, but Leopoldine knew where Grandmaster Herman was going. It was to the same place that all men and women went to rest, whatever their deeds. The garden awaited them all. There was a strength in that, a certainy. Death was not a fearsome thing. As Leopoldine rose back up, gasping for breath, she wiped the moisture from her eyes.

She snorted to herself, looking up as the sun's beams began to rise over the roofs of the building, slowly but surely starting to light the garden. She always thought their fates would be the other way around, but Morr always did have a sense of humor. Herman would be insufferably pleased with himself, she knew.

"I live life without fear, and face death without remorse, for the Garden awaits. When He comes for me, He shalt find me smiling, content that I died well," she muttered to herself, raising up her cane. She ignored the pain shooting up her back for a moment, enjoying that last moment of darkness before the rising sun chased it all away. "Well, if you think I'm just going to sit back, my friend, you are dreadfully mistaken. I might not be able to ride, but I can still write. I can't go to Morr knowing how smug you'll be."

She snorted and turned, her walking stick once more beating out a beat. She began to mutter to herself, already lining up a draft. Like hell she was going to let him have all the fun and die first.

@Maugan Ra

Article:

To Countess Elianna I, Princess of Wurtbad, Chieftain of the Asoborns, Consort of the Grand Duke of Averland, Holy Elector of Sigmar's Empire;

I hope this letter finds you in good health, your highness. I have heard of the affairs afflicting noble Stirland in these dreadful times, and it has made me increasingly appreciative of the calm and relaxation of retiring from the affairs of the Order of the Black Rose in my old age. Alas, I am given to hearing that things have only grown even more tense. I mean, truly, the banner that the Von Carsteins flew? I can hardly imagine what possessed Count Malasangre to be so gauche.

Personally, I have a rather vested interest in the matter, and I am given to understanding my replacement, Grandmaster Wilhelm von Kellner is as well. Grandmaster Herman is a good friend of mine, and a far better man than any other I have met. Imagine my shock when Count Malansangre accuses the Grandmaster, a man who has nobly served Morr selflessly for longer than the Count has been alive, and who nary two years ago risked his own life to fend off that ghost in Carroburg. Quite an unexpected claim, particularly from a man who condemns people to Khaine's hells, when Morrite doctrine is clear all deserve the peace of the garden. It seems to me that a man with a questionable grasp of theology shouldn't be flinging such accusations.

In fact, before the count's pronouncement, I'd recieved a letter from the Grandmaster complaining about his knights kidnapping Lady Carlotta without his orders, and that he was considering returning her. Certainly, there was a bit of a grudge over her ogres eating one of his knights some years back, but he did not seek retribution then, and would certainly not do so now. No, this action was done without his consent, performed by overzealous Knights mistakenly convinced by the reported death of the Custode that foul play was afoot. To condemn a man of such noble character and proud history as a heretic because of a rogue set of knights is hardly a fitting treatment.

I am no longer the master of an Order like I once was, but nonetheless, I and many of my friends in Stirland would be personally grateful if you safeguarded the Order of Dignified Rest. I know Count Malasangre is simply doing what fearful fathers do and lashing out without thought, but if he is not convinced to rescind his accusations, I have no doubt that the Order of the Dignified Rest will defend themselves and their temple from what must seem the predations of a tyrant.

I can no longer speak for the Order of the Black Rose, of course. The Order's history with Stirland is interesting, of course. We have served under your banner before, and fought against you as well, but never ignobly. If the Count strikes against the Order of Dignified Rest, I cannot say for certain what my protege's response will be. Honour compels him to maintain his current obligations, but it would also oblige him to mobilize his Order to come to our brothers' aid. I would ask you to not force him to make such a decision. If you do so, I have no doubt that the Order of the Black Rose would be grateful. Perhaps they may even offer their lances in your defense once again, and with all the tensions that afflict Stirland in this age, I am sure the aid of the finest Knights in the Empire would be of much use.

With all sincerity,

Gravin Leopoldine von Meyer, former Grandmaster of the Order of the Black Rose

@Wade Garrett

Article:

To Count Luciano Malasangre, Count Palatine Of Sylvania, Lord Of Castle Drakehopf, Chieftain Of The Fennone

There is little in the world that burns so hot as a parent's anger. Having read your grace's pronouncement, condemining Grandmaster Herman as a heretic, demanding he and his entire Order be tried, and rather blasphemously condemning them to Khaine's hells, I am struck by purity of your fury. It is a righteous thing, I have no doubt, to seek retribution upon those who have put your children at risk.

But it has also done nothing more than further endanger Lady Carlotta. I am a good friend of Grandmaster Herman, and have been in correspondance for some time. Included with my own letter, you will find a copy of a recent letter from Grandmaster Herman, discussing how some of his knights had been driven to fear by the reputed death of the Custode, and taken Lady Carlotta prisoner without his orders. He confided in me that, despite his grudge over the death of one of his knights by your daughters' ogres, he was willing to return her to your hands, and was hoping for advice on how to best prepare his response.

And alas, now you've condemned the man who was ready to return your daughter as a heretic, condemned him and his men to Khaine's hells, and ordered the surrender and likely dismantling of the Order of Dignified Rest. I have not recieved further letter from Grandmaster Herman, but I was once a knight, and I know him well. You have put his back against the wall, and the Knights of the Raven will not shirk from proving their devotion to Morr at their final moments. They will see this as their foretold dooms, and fight to the bitter end.

Grandmaster Herman will not order your daughter's death. But not all his knights are not so patient, and when you press men to the breaking point, when you declare them heretics and insult their faith, they are wont to seek vengeance above honour. I am sorry to say, your grace, but your righteous rage has led you astray. If you had done nothing, your daughter may well be returning to you already. But now, you have put her at grave risk. If you continue on this course, I suspect there will be nothing but regret for us all at the end.

But I know Grandmaster Herman is a patient man, and above all, a forgiving man. He is a true disciple of Morr, believing with all his heart that all people deserve Morr's protection. If you were to retract your statements and threats, I have no doubt that he will return your daughter to you. Indeed, I am willing to travel to Wurtbad myself to ensure her release.

I urge you to do so, Count. For Carlotta's sake, and that of the many lives that will undoubtedly be lost if this course continues.

With all sincerity,

Gravin Leopoldine von Meyer, former Grandmaster of the Order of the Black Rose