Shadow of the Beast
2336 IC
It is difficult to overstate just how vast and deep the forests of the Old World are. Trees could rise so high, their branches thick enough to support a human's weight with ease and entangled such that one could not see their peaks. Foliage could be so clustered together only ants would be able to navigate forward. Conversely, glades that could support villages, towns, even small cities could spawn out of nowhere, entirely hidden by the dense tree cover until one stumbled out into the clearing itself.
The deepest areas of those most infamous woods such as the Drakwald or the Forest of Shadows (and "deepest" was more common than the word might suggest) were perpetually cast in a shade of unlight during the day, a darkness that acknowledged that the sun blazed over it yet sought to dye it black with gloom. Here, the fiercest, most vicious and malignant of beings made their lairs. Many were so well acquainted with the faintest and barest hint of light that they did not even notice when night came, and hunted irregularly.
Yet it was the comparatively small forests that sprang into view immediately south of the Black Mountains that were the dimmest and darkest of those in the Old World. The mountains themselves cast the woods into the shade for much of the day, a looming barrier separating the Border Princes and Bonelands from the somewhat safer demesne of Emperor Magnus and the unified Empire of Man.
As if to mock the sign of looming providence, the Kharnos and Hvargir Forests were especially deadly in reminding all that the Bonelands, Border Princes or otherwise, was the domain of the greenskin. Forest goblins infested the area, tribes of the shrieking, cackling little brutes in abundance, greater than anywhere else in the Old World. So far from the dedicated purges conducted by the greater human powers, their numbers had exploded long ago. Their ramshackle camps dotted the forest-scape from ground to canopy, whole cities' worth of small, conniving greenskins shielded from the world by the woods they called home. That, and the countless generations of building by others who allied with them.
The Black Mountains only partially contributed to the umbral shade of these woods. Leagues and leagues of webs leapt from tree to tree, an unmoving silken cloud whose cover blocked the already scant sunlight. Some forest goblins argued -- be it with words or outright violence -- that a cunning and determined spider could make its way from end of the forests to the other without ever touching a tree, much less the ground. Many webs had been built on and improved so often they boasted individual strands as dense as ship cordage. Helmets, weapons, gauntlets, boots and other arms and armor were suspended carelessly, the remains of food brought up and eaten.
Many trees had bent, twisted or collapsed (sometimes more than one) over time, opening access to the branches to the typical ground-based forest dwellers. This was both boon and burden to the spiders, as now the larger prey typically bound to the earth could wander directly into their domain. By the same token, even the smallest of humanoids armed with a stone dagger could take the fight to them wherever they lay. And fighting was very common in the Black Deeps.
For all that the forest goblins were great in number in these forests, the spiders they had a symbiotic relationship with were the dominant power. The near lightless depths of the forest was their domain, only the strongest and most devout greenskinned worshippers of the Feaster from Beyond dared live so far from the forest edge. The excess of arachnids meant more mandible-crowned mouths to feed. As often as the gossamer ceiling was empty, it was swarming with eight legged abominations.
Some skitterswarms composed of the smaller spiders (though even they could grow as large as dogs) were so numerous the canopy was at times but a writhing mass of furry bodies and countless legs and eyes. It was worse when the sun had set, and the moonlight too weak to penetrate. Many could only hear the skitter of countless creeping legs and the snap of pincer teeth all about them.
Then there were those in between, arachnids large enough to bare the weight of individual goblins. On average they grew to the size of bears and cows, and even these were commonly found skittering across the ground or foliage in skittering herds, if not for the commonality of such across the forests it would be no different from any other spider-infested wood in in the Empire or Bretonnia. But the truly exceptionals of their breed, specimens as large as trolls, stood out for how many were present. Forest goblin tribes had such high access to these larger and more intelligent cousins to the giant spiders that whole companies-worth were deployed in battle, where the tribes of other lands had to settle for their leaders and best warriors getting such prized mounts.
At other times the light of the outside world was dimmed further by hulking masses, gargantuan spider-things the size of houses, so large they could serve as mobile homes and lairs for their smaller kin. Some Arachanroks were near entirely sheathed in web spun by these passengers, an extra layer of defense whose sticky nature caught small morsels for those who had built them. It also provided a comparative mountain of flesh for the smaller skitterlings who lived in relative harmony with the younger broodlings of their titanic relatives. Relative at least, after the babies grew too large to find them worthwhile prey. For all they were spiders, Arachnaroks usually travelled by ground, too large for even the mighty oaks and pines of the Old World to bear their weight. Yet at times the highway of webs was so thick even they could ascend.
It was behavior seen almost nowhere else in the world, borne from sheer abundance of spiders, and not the only sign of such numerical prosperity. Arachnaroks lived and moved in hunting packs, bringing down prey comparable to themselves in size with ease, before dragging them into the trees to be wrapped for a long lasting, juicy feast. Ramhorns and Cygors that dared to face even two of the massive arachnids fell prey to a third that fell from above, mandibles and clawed talons plunging deep. Those who ran were herded into the prepared webbed ambush of the third.
So numerous were the Arachnaroks that a number of particularly ancient specimens bore the shrines and shanty-platforms not uncommon amongst the forest goblin hordes that took them to war, but only skeletons rode these monstrosities. They were given over to the swarmlings, small echoes of divine power upon used not as a tool of the shamans, but as magical ambience to a home. In these wooden constructs were woven more traditional webs for the strongest and most vicious and determined of those spiders that lived upon the Arachnarok, constantly breathing in small bundles of aetheric energy, growing...weirder on it, as the goblins described it. Them and their massive sibling who bore the unattended shrine on its back, less a beast of burden bearing arms to war and more a demigod drabbed in the regalia and adornments offered by their supplicants.
The massive arachnids were so assured of their dominance that many made lairs not in underground burrows or caves, but in the trees themselves, living together in the gargantuan city-webs with strands thicker than the arms of ogres, confident in their safety as they rested by dint of their size, the enveloping shells of gossamer about them, specialized trip wire lines meant to alert them to approaching danger, and of course their fellow Arachnaroks.
So large was the spider population that migrations were necessary, departing in ones and twos and whole swarms to seek out new territories and hunting grounds in the nearby mountains. The Orc tribes had learned the signs of impending migrations and viewed them with relish; there was no love lost between them and the spiders, regardless of their goblinoid kin's relationship. To the residents of the Dwarven holds and settlements, including Karaz-a-Karak itself, they were times of trouble, and they had honed their skills in combating the spiders outside of their forest haunts over thousands of years.
At times migrations occurred not out of necessity but a sort of reverent, instinctive tradition, the children of the Feaster from Beyond making the long journey to the one place in the world more valued to spider-kind and spider worshipper.
That place was at the forefront of one individual's mind as they made their way south.
A shadow darkened the forest. Never-mind that next to no sunlight penetrated that far, a brief flicker like an impossibly fast cloud drew shade across it. The shadows of trees and leaves and webs twisted and contorted after it as though violently pulled out of alignment. A gust of wind ran through the tangled branches and webs, the sound of its passing that of wooden structures splintering and crashing down. Rodents and forest critters that had grown used to the perils of living in the spider kingdom screeched with eerily human sounds of terror before running until their hearts gave out or some opportunistic predator scooped them up.
A chain of disturbing omens made its way through the forest, a trail of dark signs wrought by the shadow of even darker wings. Making its way ever closer to the sound of battle.
--
Chittering and cackling met a combination of constant low-pitched growling and manic bellows. For all that this was the domain of the spiders, it was still a forest, and the forest was the home of the beast.
Clumps of ebony-furred Gors and Ungors blended together, spears and crude polearms in abundance as they crowded together in the confines of the tunnels. The myriad holes all over the cliff walls were fiercely defended, for the Beastmen had long learned that to let the eight-legs into the open was to allow them the freedom of movement anywhere they desired.
A tide of skittering horrors pushed against them, every surface covered by spiders larger than themselves. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, everything from the front of their lines into the furthest reaches of the tunnel was a clacking, shuddering sea of chitin, furry legs and innumerable eyes.
Goblins there were too, astride their mounts, adorned in feathers, quills, and crude loincloths. They were not limited to the ground, a number of enterprising greenskins had bound their legs and torso to their rides and swung back and forth upside down or awkwardly holding themselves in place at a near vertical angle.
They died even quicker than their many-legged comrades. The Beastmen were quick to target them, spears and crude halberds darting forth to impale them from every direction, or targeted specifically by Ungor archers behind the bristling forest of long, pointy implements. These bowbeasts more often then not ignored the spiders, and as a result the goblins fell or hung limply with three, four, five or more arrows embedded in them. Where the forwardmost ranks of spider riders lost the latter half of the combination, makeshift torches were swung about wildly by handpicked Gors and Foerenders, driving back the simple-minded creatures in primal fear without their bondmates' guidance.
The short spears in the shorter arms of the even shorter goblins struggled to overcome the longer reach of their foes, their poorly aimed blows struggling to mount enough force to pierce the leather and hide armor of the Beastmen. The goblin archers had an easier time firing into such a tight force, but their arrows too lacked the force to easily penetrate.
The arachnids did the lion's share of the work, their mandibles easily ripping through hide and flesh to deposit venomous payloads into the bloodstream. Their foes could have been hulking Bestigors bedecked in ramshackle plate and they still would have penetrated near as easily. But despite their wounds and the concoctions pulsing through their bodies like lightning with the force of their adrenaline and battle fury, the Beastmen fought on with roars of mixed rage and agony, barely even slowed by toxins that should have seen them frothing and trembling on the ground already.
While the spiders' chitin was stronger than the artificial armor of their enemies, sheer number of wounds built up as they struggled to push through a prickly wall of spears, and they lacked the impetus and coordination; too often those who lost their rider but had the courage or ferocity to attack drove the weapons deep into their bodies from the force of their own movement. Their most effective contributions came from those spiders who crawled along the walls and ceiling far enough before being pecked to death, their corpses crashing into the cloven ones' ranks and disrupting them long enough for the spiders behind them to press the attack.
It was a stalemate. One unlikely to be broken without intervention.
Outside, a ravine stretched into the distance. At the bottom lay a river, and all about it the children of evil, destructive gods battled. Spiders crawled all over sheer walls, struggling to push past spear-tips and avoid arrows to reach the turmoil on the shore or the fights for the tunnels. Goblin archers exploited the mobility of their mounts to fire while their spiders scurried about at ninety degree angles, or threw volatile mixes of fungi, venom and shards of metal wrapped in web into the packed ranks of their foes. They did not need strong arms or the mechanical force of a Flinger when gravity did much of the work.
Something resembling a typical scrum was what took place on the river shore. Massed groups of spiders two or three times the size of the majority that scurried along the walls and through the tunnels hurled themselves against masses of sable-furred Gors and Bestigors armed with clubs and hammers. Both spider and rider were covered in scraps of metal forming an ill-designed but effective barrier to what might have otherwise pulped the thick chitin. In the face of such looming, terrifying monstrous creatures the Beastmen lost none of their furor. Fear had no place in their mind from the witchfyre bonefires that blazed all around them, firing their dark hearts with fervor even as the eerily black smoke obscured them from the spider riders crawling about the cliff walls and looking down from the top of the ravine.
As they stamped about in the mud and sand, venturing into the river itself, the spider legs found themselves difficult to extract in the murky soup while their hooved opponents moved about with sureness and familiarity. Bodies began to pile up, staining the water almost faster than the current carried it away.
From every blade or arrowhead gleamed poison, so much so that despite the stench of blood and smoke it added its own sour odor. One could be forgiven for thinking it had no effect for all the wounds that were being dealt, but both beastman and goblin had long built up strong resistance and even immunities.
And yet they were not immune now. It was slow to show its effects but many injured were slowly being rotted away from the inside out, the mixtures in their bloodstream advanced combinations and designs honed over centuries of mixing, testing, and random attempts. The most perilously wounded found themselves pushed over the edge into oblivion as their organs and muscles turned to ooze and pain overwhelmed their minds. The many Beastmen who fought on battered and scarred would need foul beverages, pastes, and the attentions of the shamans to survive afterwards, but survive they could if the battle was finished fast enough.
Neither side was inclined to allow the battle to end any time soon. Even the goblins and spiders in most dire straits felt the touch of the spider-god emanating from the myriad banners planted all along the top of the ravine as though outlining the perimeter. There was no fear to be found. Confusion perhaps, uncertainty at times, but never fear. The many-eyes of the many-eyed god were upon them.
Like islands in a sea of madness, enormous Arachnaroks struck back and forth at the hordes about them. By now most of the attendant goblin archers atop their howdahs had been killed, but the goblin shamans were protected by thick meshes of web in which were ensconced dozens of arrows. The Bray-Shamans strove to counter their efforts, but the air was so thick with the touch of the spider-god from the many Catchweb Shrines that even the least of the greenskinned wizards was a match for the attempts of the greatest of the horned ones. Chucking and giggling they swayed and jigged in the throughs of divine communion, poisonous yellow-tinged green light shrouding them as they hurled fireballs into the enemy ranks and willed supremely deadly Warp venom into the poisons of their followers, or lay curses upon the most troublesome of their foes.
Chief among those facing the largest of spiders were the Minotaurs of the Shadowgor Tribe, onyx-skinned and adorned with horns of darkest jet. A Gorebull wielding a massive club of stone taken from a troglodyte River Troll and blessed by shamans smashed a leg that could have skewered it so hard it nearly split in half, flopping about on a thin bit of meat and sinew. A gesture and flare of power from the attending shaman saw a new leg spring into being, pushing the dead appendage away in a shower of fluids. With eerily unerring accuracy the Arachnarok pivoted, bring its fanged maw into just the right place to intercept the Gorebull's next charge. With a snap, the large minotaur fell apart into chunks of meat and gore.
A Wargor bellowed and pointed at the offending spider with a cruelly barbed glaive. Out of the darkness a quartet of Bloodbulls emerged, their ebony fur tinged with dark crimson. As they charged forward they bore a thick tree trunk atop their shoulders, the forward end carved into a stake and fitted with all manner of sharp, pointy objects from weapons to horns to the tips of spider legs.
The shaman spun with a suddenly alert air, and emerald lightning blasted from from its eyes to fizzle out against bloody-minded contempt for magic. The shaman vomited up fire and summoned massive impaling legs made of smoke and starlight in imitation of the Feaster from Beyond. All did naught but cause the blood-red runes on the oversized lance to flare in rage. With a resounding crunch the ram-spear landed home, driving deep into the Arachnarok's body just to the right of its maw. It shrieked and spasmed, vomiting up bodily fluids as it struggled to get away on shaky, uncertain legs. It was not allowed. The other Minotaurs and pike-bearing Bestigors seized the opportunity to surge forward, smashing and impaling the spider while others climbed up and hacked at it from atop. The goblin shaman was ripped apart by the Bloodbulls, viscera gobbled down and an extra second of satiation gained from the blood of a wizard.
The flapping of a vast number of wings went unnoticed amid the tumult of battle. But as amber-skinned crows and ravens flew out of the trees to peck and scratch at the goblin banners arrayed about the ravine, those atop noticed and rushed to defend their totems. But the birds paid their efforts not a whit of attention, ignoring the blows and strikes that rent their fake bodies apart, all for one last scratch, one last bit of desecration.
A fireball so black it blazed in the darkness fell from the heavens to collide with the howdah of the largest and oldest of the Arachnaroks cavorting about the river. As the smoke from the blast faded and the fires spread across the shrine, the pavilion, the whole spider even as it skittered about in agony, a pair of nightshade wings spread. Malagor stood, the heart of the Goblin Great Shaman dripping blood in one paw, the head violently torn from the body in the other. With both palms upraised to the unseen heavens he barked in a vile tongue, the air shivering under the syllables uttered.
The remaining greenskinned mages struggled to interrupt, to disrupt his gathering energies, but the sudden death of their leader, the destruction of their banners, the sheer presence of the Crowfather was too much; their concentration faltered, and the gathering unholy power surged forward.
For an instant he was illuminated in full, terrifying splendor. Then with the final uttered black speech all light fled the ravine, the battlefield, the whole forest. Even the light of the torches and bonfires was extinguished, leaving eerily lightless flames that burned but did not illuminate.
The strength the goblins and spiders drew from each other, from the presence of their leaders, their demigods, faded. In its place was a sudden uncertainty and growing fear as the darkness they were so used to seemed suddenly ominous, as the dead that fell again and again weighed that much more heavily against them.
Then another Arachnarok fell, tendrils of vile soul-stuff draining it of vitality and life until it was an empty, broken husk, and it was too much. In ones and twos and groups and whole sections of the battlefield they began to break and run, and as order and control fled the battlefield, there was only chaos. And it was in that that the Beastmen thrived.
The battle was over, now it was a slaughter.
--
"Hail Malagor, Dark Omen, bringer of ruin, Crowfather, Harbinger!"
The Bray Shaman announcing him bore a cloak of living shadow formed from Dhar-tinged Ulgu, twisting and flickering about him, distorting the exact location of his self. Malagor spared an instant to focus and peer past the veil it wove to view the shaman in full, accentuating his power and ability. From the way the shaman twitched and ducked its head slightly, clinging tightly to a staff adorned with the head of a Savage Ork Shaman from the Bonelands, the point had been made.
Malagor turned his full attention to the Beastlord of the Shadowgor Tribe. A head that was a mixture of bovine and ferret bowed before him, the gesture clumsy and unfamiliar. A cloak similar to the shaman's adorned his form, but it was no construct of magic but something that had made its way across the world. The Pelt of the Shadowgave, Morghur's shadow given false-life by the Corruptor's existence and stitched into corporeality with the flesh of slaughtered Gaves. The Beastlord was wreathed in unlight, his every twitch and movement echoed by a shroud of darkness. The effect was only accentuated by the blessings he bore, his pitch-black fur soaking in what scant light there was, the few shadows wreathing themselves like a second hide.
No shaman but the Dark Omen himself, he suspected, could glimpse this one's true self in the lightless depths of these midnight forests.
"Shlasklor Darkwreath. I call. We go to war. Destroy goblins. Burn and tear down spider-god places. Topple lesser shrines. Kill many spiders and goblins. You show how to best kill."
The lightless Beastlord looked up, black eyes alight with the summons and its implication.
"We go to Vale of Webs? Take Gloom Forest, slay all spiders and goblins?"
It was an understandable thought. The easternmost forest of the Black Deeps was the Forest of Gloom. Lying in the shadow of the Black Mountains to the north and the World's Edge to the east, it was somehow even more shrouded and dark than the rest of the spider-infested woods. The holiest site to the Feaster from Beyond lay in a river valley held by the Black Venom Tribe for thousands of years. It had repulsed Orc Waaagh from the former Badlands and the best attempts of Barak Varr and Karak-a-Karak to exterminate it. Malagor knew that an ancient Dwarven Dreadnought from one of the most successful attempts lay at the heart of the vale, turned into a nest by some of the eldest Arachnaroks in the world.
"No. We go to Black Pit."
But it was not the holiest site of the Forest Goblins, of the spiders.
Many ears twitched. Heads turned. The Bestigor bodyguard that stood an attentive ten paces away froze for an instant.
Shlasklor leapt to his feet, howling.
"For Malagor, for Crowfather!! We go to spider-place, kill all spiders, all goblins! Kill, kill, KILLLLLLLL!!!!"
In the corpse-strewn riverbank, the tunnels and jutting stone ledges, from the cliff face above, the roaring spread. A tumult of bloodthirsty anticipation and fury, the promise of the ultimate victory in their eternal war driving the Beastmen to heights of violent exultation rarely witnessed in the Black Deeps.
Malagor looked upon this cacophony, this promise of bloodshed and destruction, and found it good.
It was not enough. Not nearly enough. But it was the beginning. With this and the other tribes even now gathering in the Drakwald in preparation, it was the first step that would see a shadow fall across the Empire.
