[] Scouting War Machines: The dwarfs are quite proud of how fruitless Urgrok Beard Burner's attempt at the Everpeak in the distant past ended up being. But if these greenksins are making use of Chaos Dwarf war machines, it might well be something else altogether. Regina is liable to know more, certainly, than Logan out of experience if nothing else.
Shades of White, Black, and Grey 20
Logan didn't need to think too terribly long about it.
"I doubt there is overmuch I could contribute to your mission," he said to Genevieve and Magister Cloudhorn, "And while I could try to investigate the leadership – or at least their tents – on my lonesome there would be no guarantee I would succeed at finding anything of use."
Shaking his head, he looked over to Regina, who's emotionless face was altogether similar and not when compared to Anna.
"I think I shall do better accompanying the Champion," he decided. "Your target is more than visible to us all," he gestured towards the eye-searing magic filling the air in one direction, "And ours is somewhat obvious as well," he lifted his chin at the rather obvious circled clearing which was closer to the gates.
Even from where they were, with all the angles and shapes of the mountain and valley, he could see the largest of the greenskin 'rock lobbas' that out-sized even the grandest of Bretonnian trebuchets sticking up into the air. None of them were firing at the moment, but he doubted that would last long.
"Very well," Genevieve nodded before tapping Cloudhorn on the shoulder and jerking with her chin in the direction of the billowing clouds of magic deep in the camp. "We have a short time to do this – sticking around a roiling greenskin war camp is no place for long term survival. As soon as you think you've done what you can, retreat here or possibly further up into the snows and slope. If I need to find you, I will from my magic."
Regina just nodded in silence, while the fidgeting Cloudhorn brushed off Genevieve's hand and crouched low alongside the vampire. Logan didn't bother speaking any more than the Champion of the Grand Theogonist did. All four knew what they were doing was incredibly dangerous, and all four also believed clearly enough that someone had to try to gain more information on the enemy rather than simply waiting behind the all-encompassing defenses of the Everpeak. Within less than a second, even with Logan watching, the vampire and magister simply disappeared from his senses in the same way he'd grown used to from the former. Seeing it happen directly in front of him didn't help, either, as despite him making sure not to blink they simply were no longer present any more. But he couldn't focus on that, either, and instead followed after Regina who had already begun moving.
He knew that she had been present amongst the dwarfs of the Everpeak for a good number of years by now, and now he was very certain she was trained by their rangers. This was not the famous bellowing and lumbering warbeast in the shape of a woman that the tales and rumors spoke of. Despite her towering over him, she crouched low and adjusted the way she walked in a way which muted her every movement all the more atop the spell cast by Genevieve. The gear she wore was not heavy plate or the like, but clearly was well-fitted to her, what metal chain and other portions that were not leather or cloth not even rasping even slightly.
As a duo, they crested the concealing ridge of snow and beheld the war camp all the more fully for the first time.
Though at the sheer amount of greenskins present, the word camp simply failed to truly encompass their numbers and breadth across the valley and paths. It would be more accurate to call it an entire city of tents made from various materials, with flames as small as individual crude torches pushed onto spears and sticks to the massive bonfires interspersed throughout them all for more communal areas. The greenskins had not bothered to build walls, letting themselves spill out like emerald oil to cover and spread across every possible surface and then some. Logan had memorized a vast amount of greenskin sigils and symbols for different tribes, some that were more recent and those more ancient, but even then all his knowledge from his studies in Middenland could not match the sheer amount of banners that flew here and there. Of course there were more famous ones like the Ironclaw or the Blue Faces, but even then there had to be hundreds, maybe even thousands of tribes that had made up this vast WAAAAAGH!! There were ramshackle towers of scrap wood and rusty metal which sprang up in a loose perimeter around it all, topped by the gleaming piggish red eyes of goblins and orcs alike on watch, but Logan knew that by virtue of what they were it wasn't a matter of defending the camp but simply announcing there was anyone foolish enough to approach.
At which point the orcs and goblins and trolls and more would swarm out in search of something to smash and kill and eat.
It was, by all rights and logical classifications, something absolutely terrifying that no sane man would want to even be within a hundred miles of.
And yet Logan followed Regina Leitdorf right into it.
(Penetrating Perimeter: 67+Logan Intrigue(8)+Veteran Ranger Training(15)+Shadow of Heaven Beneath An Eclipsed Moon(35)-Bully Bossed Watchers(10)+Entertained By Thumping(5)=117/100)
There wasn't a wall of wood or metal to pass through, and there was no gate to try and sneak through. They simply snuck forward right into the morass of it all, amidst the snow flurries and shambling shapes of more greenskins than Logan had even known could exist in the world. Heavy crates, boxes, and more that were filled with everything from rotting unknowable substances to metal scraps to other less comprehensible things were everywhere, detritus from too many greenskins hauling around whatever they wished. The ground itself had been torn up into wet mud as the snow and slush were melted away, then that mud had been churned until it too had been pushed into solid paths going every which way between the tents. Literal dozens of orcs and goblins were stomping past this way and that, grunting and hooting to one another in their guttural languages as they walked about on whatever had caught their mind for the moment. Bones and guts and other inedible bits from food along with excrement were everywhere, even though he watched as small teams of goblins with bored looking orcs whipped them from behind to try and sweep it all up with driving poles with wide metal bases.
"Can't wait to get in dere and-,"
"Anyone seen Grabba? I ain't seen dat git and I-,"
"Gonna eat me some dwarf flesh cooked up real nice and good-,"
"I ain't ever fought humies before, just dem spikey stunties, da old mastas, and ovver gribblies in da Dark Lands, wot is dey like?"
"Zog me, look at dem bigs go at dem gates. Wish I could smash like dat."
"GRABBAAAAA! WHERE YA AT?!"
But that wasn't really the worst part about it.
They were enormous.
All of them.
The smallest of the goblins that Logan saw outweighed the largest of the goblins back in the Empire by a considerable amount, almost blocky in comparison to the more svelte and thin spider worshippers. All of them were equipped like veteran raiders, covered in plates of beaten metal and multiple layers of hardened hide and leathers. A good amount of it, he knew, would be squig-based, which depending on the squig variant harvested from could mean a multitude of levels of differing durability. The orcs, were, of course, even worse. He had fought an orc or two, before, back in the Drakwald and Great Forest, and those often wore squig leather shirts with perhaps a few sewn in metal inserts. A handful were heavier equipped, with half-plate and the occasional shambling assortments of metal tied together enough to possibly be considered an equivalent to full plate. The least equipped orc present in the camp that he saw were dressed like the worst of the worst from his time in the Empire, draped from head to toe in thick chunks of beaten metal with chainmail in thick layers stuffed between it all. They were taller, too, and he suspected that if the orcs he saw getting backhanded and guffawed at by their larger peers in the camp made their way into the Empire they would have been able to scoop up leadership of those tribes easily.
Well, if they had done so before said tribes had all migrated south to join the WAAAAGH!! anyhow, leaving only the dregs behind in his homeland.
The smell was absolutely horrid as well, the stench of an army camp of belligerents scaled up to a hundred or more. It didn't smell of sweat, it stank of a stench of concentrated bodily fluids being released on a continual basis, allowed to dry, and then spilled out all over again repeatedly. It wasn't simply loud; it was almost deafening despite the fact that it was just past midnight and the moons barely visible past the clouds in the sky. So many throats calling to each other, seeking one another, insulting one another, yelling at one another. Regina did not speak, her hooded cloak and wrappings making it impossible to see anything but her eyes now. With each step, they could be discovered as they dashed in the shadows between the tents, Logan unable to stop darting his eyes down to incredulously find that their steps were not splashing against the mud or even disturbing it at all, there being practically no trace of their passage. There was no time, no opportunity, and no reason to even speak to one another, only reaching out and tapping shoulders, hands, wrists, fingers to make sure that each other was there. At one point, Logan ran into Regina as she came to a dead halt before a line between the tents that was particularly well lit, but neither made a sound about it.
Even as they hunched in place, Logan stared with wide eyes as a steady line of completely silent orcs dressed in pitch black armor stomped past in a single file line, so wide in body that they were the equals to two orcs walking shoulder to shoulder. Each of them bore enormous two-handed axes on their backs that looked far too well-made to have ever been of orc make, broader and longer in haft than the axe that Logan had been granted by the Cult. Infernal runes glowed on the heads of those axes, leaving a faint wisp of sulfur and burnt metal in the air. They also had a great many more weapons besides those axes, their bodies practically covered in filled scabbards in a manner akin to his father and alcohol containers. Where they walked, silence exuded out like an aura, the fear and menace that they carried strong enough to silence the belligerence of the lesser greenskins around them. Logan even saw two brawling orcs literally come to a halt, pushing off from one another and standing apart as the black orcs stomped by, the brawlers staring straight ahead with the best approximation of being ramrod straight that the perennially hunched spines of most greenskins could manage. Even after the black orcs had disappeared into the city of tents, the brawlers did not engage with one another again and simply went off in two different directions.
Regina shared a look with Logan, though it was hard to tell what if anything was going on behind those strange eyes of hers, before the two of them got moving again and darted through the torchlight into the next set of tents and then the one beyond that.
(Heading Forward: 42+8+15+35-10+5-Sheer Numbers In Camp(10)=85/100)
It didn't get much better the further they got into the camp. The sounds, the smells, the sights, but most importantly, the sheer amount of greenskins. There were various tribal delinations to each section of the camp, but there were more and more patrols of black orcs keeping the peace between said tribal sections. Logan and Regina watched a violent contrast to the past brawl, as when they saw two orcs bellowing at each other over some past scrap between their tribes and refused to quiet down when the black orcs approached there was no recrimination. No yelling to get over themselves. Not even an attempt to pull the belligerents apart. The leading black orc, in silence and utter contempt, simply reached out with meaty hands and gripped one throat each. There was a shrieking of metal and grinding of flesh and bone as the black orc did not so much snap the necks of the orcs in question but ground their throats to pulp through their armor.
For a moment, the lead black orc, who by Logan's reckoning would have been a chieftain amongst lesser tribes outright, simply glared from within their helmet at each of the two tribes. The little column was only ten black orcs, the two rival tribes looking like they had dozens, but he knew in his bones that if it came down to a fight the black orcs would win.
"Can't believe you runts done forgot already. Warbosses said none of it, none of dat," a deep voice like gargled rocks boomed out of the leading black orc's mouth, a deep and heavy snarl. "Iffin ya wanna die so bad, go hop in da lava afore we stopper it but good. But you save," he waggled the corpses at them, "Da fightin…FOR DA ENEMY!"
The roar was incredibly loud, and for a moment Logan could have mistaken the tents nearby from shuddering and flapping from the sound alone. A great many nearby watching orcs and goblins jumped in the midst of their voyeurism and rapidly scattered to go back to looking busy. Or, failing that, non-aggressive towards the black orcs. It was, for Logan, a revelation to watch in real time greenskins doing their best to not invite a fight. Like a sight that was just shy of being unnatural, given how the edict in and of itself was enforced through violence. At the same time, he also noticed a faint twitching in Regina's left eye, her hands having fallen to the hilts of her short swords. The grip on them would surely be creaking loud through the leather, but of that familiar sound there was no sign. The spell of the vampire at work, of course.
Then there came a great, and horribly familiar thumping and crashing. The very earth beneath Logan and Regina's feet began to shake, rising and falling so violently and quickly that both of them were practically on all fours to simply keep themselves from getting literally bounced up and out of the shadows. The source of the sounds were visible even from that position, as more giants began to thump up the pathway and towards the lava barrier. These ones, at least, were far less gruesome than the chaos siege giants, and in fact seemed largely untouched from that vileness. But Logan was far less focused on searching them for some kind of mutation, and was instead gaping in horror at the absolutely titanic tubes of metal that they bore on their shoulders or in their arms. There were crude, clearly hammered and nailed together in the most primitive of ways, even bending in multiple places, but despite that they maintained a level of structural integrity that was impossible. At least, it was until he saw the mystical WAAAAGH!! energies surrounding the wattle and daub that covered them, literally enforcing a greenskin's perception of reality into the material world.
He also saw humongous sacks at their waists, that wriggled and writhed.
"Finally!" The leading black orc grunted, "Took dere bloody time."
Logan blinked as he felt a tap on his shoulder, refocusing on Regina who jerked her head for him to follow. They scurried up out of where they'd fallen and around the black orcs and the two tribes, and began to make progress once more before it finally happened. He had known they were making good progress, and yet all good things could not last. They were both crossing through the shadows once more when there was an uncharacteristically muted yelp as a skulking goblin came creeping out from under the hem of another tent. He was carrying a glowing knife that seemed too big for his hands, looking covetously at the object the goblin had clearly just stolen, only to look up from it and see the two of them less than a foot away. The goblin's eyes practically bugged out of its head, and it started to open its mouth to scream even as its feet began to twist and push off to run away. Before it could actually verbalize anything but a surprised squeak, Regina had unsheathed one of her swords in a flash and stabbed downwards through the top of the goblin's head with so much force that she broke the goblin's skull, spine, and pelvis and squashed it down into the snow and mud in a single move. Without almost any noise at all, akin to a light twig snapping than a skeletal structure being crushed. Then, without even looking back at Logan, she reached down and began to crush and smash the goblin further underneath her bootheels and fists, leaving behind nothing more than a red and green mush spilling like a meaty slurry with bone chips out of its armor which she then rapidly covered beneath the snow and mud.
The entire silent explosion of silence took her less than ten seconds.
After which Regina picked up the clearly enchanted greenskin dagger and tucked it inside her cloak before glancing at Logan and jerked her head back towards the artillery park, her expression not seeming to have changed the entire time.
Logan blinked once and then followed with a trailing look at the new mound of snow, rapidly indistinct from the rest of it throughout the camp.
(Reaching Siege Engines: 70+8+15+35-10+5-Close To The Front Lines(10)=113/100)
There were similar occurrences on their way to the artillery park, but none that actually ended up requiring intervention from either of them. A handful of goblins stealing here and there, but none of them actually caught sight of Regina or Logan. Some of those goblins were caught by the orcs they were stealing from, and subsequently beaten unconscious or killed outright. At one point, they were nearly run over by a rattling and squeaking mockery of engineering crewed by snotlings that was blasting its way along the pathways of the camp, causing screams and curses to be thrown their way by the orcs and goblins that had to leap out of the way or get run over. At another point, a lumbering troll being prodded along by two orcs with huge spears paused and started sniffing, its head passing directly in front of a frozen and unmoving Regina and Logan. For a second, Logan thought that was it, they were dead, but instead watched as the troll's eyes literally passed them over and then blinked before moving along with the prodding of the orcs behind it.
All the same, it probably helped that there was such a massive distraction in the distance at the gates of the Everpeak. It was impossible to miss, given that the giants loomed over even the largest of the guard towers build around the camp. One of the bonegrinders had clambered back down from the dragons, and then as Logan and Regina watched, began taking up the gargantuan tubes of metal, revealed to be half-pipes in actuality in various segments that had to be crudely socketed together. There was much shouting at the lava break, and there Logan saw the largest orc he had ever seen in his life standing atop it while waving weapons around. Something in his heart knew before his mind did that this, then, that that orc was one of the most dangerous things quite possibly in the world. It bellowed and roared, and commanded giants, larger by far than any of the unmoving dots which had to be a black orc bodyguard. And as he watched, the bonegrinder, once again simply ignoring the lava, took the segments and strode over to the smaller lava pumps and shoved the pipes into place with ear-splitting screeches of metal and scraping stone. It took a few tries, trying different pipe segments, until finally one stuck into the hole. After which more half-pipes were shoved on, and then another, and suddenly the lava was carried along the new path and simply dropped off the side of the valley into one of the holes opened up by the dwarf-engineered collapses and sinkholes.
Then the giants began to repeat the feat as ordered by one of the Warbosses of the entire WAAAAGH!!
Before Logan could see any more, a thump on his shoulder drew his attention back down to what was actually directly in front of him, a silent Regina kneeling in the shadows of one of the guard towers. She held up a finger before his eyes to make sure he was focusing and then pointed at the artillery park that was in front of them. Silently, he cursed and shook his head, eyes wide as he tried to memorize every detail he could. There were the largest rock lobbers he'd ever seen, of course, but there were also what he knew greenskins called spear chukkas, effectively greenskin bolt throwers, which were also similarly enlarged than from standard. These were built for firing what looked like sharpened and shaved tree trunks, rather than the smaller bolts of the Empire or dwarfs. He also saw plenty of the so-called doom diver catapults, though he spied none of the suicidal goblins around the machines, given that none of them were firing at the moment. But of course, all of that had been known. Expected. As were the few goblins and orcs that looked like their only lot in life was endlessly performing their best attempts at maintenance at creations that looked ready to collapse at any moment. It seemed that the Warbosses had decided to not waste ammo firing fruitlessly at the dwarf walls and gate at the moment, leaving the camp likely thoroughly emptied compared to how it would be at the height of activity.
But that was not all that the WAAAGH!! had brought forth.
Not at all.
Logan had never seen them before in his life, but he had read the account of Evangeline Hertwig of his father's exploits in Karak Ungor. To the dwarfs, the chaos dwarfs were practically forbidden to acknowledge unless in the direst circumstances, but their involvement and following defeat in Karak Ungor were a triumph worth letting be recorded. Even without that, the greenskins had purposefully boasted of that existence, of taking from those accursed cousins of the dawi, and in that aspect he could recognize the touch of dwarfen expertise and mastery if turned to dark and terrible purpose. Before him, separated from the comparatively fragile creations of lashed together wood and stone and rusted metal, was a grouping of war machines that burned with infernal light. A great amount of it. So much that it burned at his eyes and forced them to water simply from looking at them. Some of them rumbled and shook, gigantic things that looked like steam tanks ballooned and twisted, huge metal spoked wheels clanking as they occasionally spun in place without warning. There were squat and wide cannons, larger than any he'd ever seen anywhere, with cracked metal spheres, the light of Chaos literally glowing from within next to them. There were firing platforms with strange cone-topped cylinders which lay near them in piles. The only one that he could actually name, that the Old World even had proper recent records of, however, were the hellcannons. The same that had been used by the Everchosen in Kislev.
"Chaos…," he heard Regina hiss from next to him, an ember of burning hatred appearing in her previously blank eyes.
The difference to Kislev, he supposed, was that there were goblins scrambling all over them poking and jabbing here and there. That and the huge chains that had been wrapped and tied around all of the various machines and then jammed into the ground with literal hundreds of iron stakes that had been shoved and hammered as deep into the ground as possible. Even as they watched, one of the hellcannons literally let loose a basso roar and violently lurched in place which snapped some of the chains, catching two slower goblins beneath its suddenly spinning wheels and grinding them apart with loud screeches and screams. The other goblins on the work crew whooped and hollered, laughing and cackling at the fate of the unfortunate pair, before scrambling around to gather up the snapped chains and then lash them over the hellcannon again.
"Bludwort! Bludwoooort!" He heard one of the taller goblins call out. "One of dem spikey pets done got ornery 'gain!"
There was an instant answer from behind one of the larger amalgamations of Chaos and metal.
"All right, all right, back up ya gobbos, step lively now!" Snapped a hunched over greenskin shaman that came into view, heavily leaning against a copper staff topped by a slack-jawed dwarf's head.
Except it wasn't a dwarf's head.
A normal dwarf, that was.
It was, he realized, his first close view of a chaos dwarf, or at least the head of one. The skin was ruddy, peeling, with a squashed and warty nose and blocky chipped teeth that looked like the chaos dwarf had taken a massive hit to the face in life or in the process of dying. The jaw was hanging open and waggled with every movement of the staff from side to side, with prominent tusks poking out of the mouth. A pair of horns were also present, sprouting from the top of the bald head. He also noticed that the tusks and horns were stone, somehow.
"All right, ya big stupid hunk of dakka and smash!" Bludwort spat at the foot of the hellcannon, which caused it to let loose a menacing and all-too organic sounding roar while shuddering in place beneath the chains. "Quiet!" He shouted at the machine, which roared back. "I SAID QUIET!"
Then the shaman drew back his staff and then gathered a massive amount of WAAAAGH!! energies into the chaos dwarf head topping it. The green light filled the dead head, and yet as Logan watched it was filtered strangely reddish as it bloomed out from dead cloudy eyes and the gaping open mouth. It looked like the chaos dwarf head was screaming before Bludwort smashed the head into the side of the hellcannon multiple times, each time causing a small shockwave of strangely warped WAAAAAGH!! magic. As Logan and Regina stilled in shock, the rumbling and defiant daemon-infused machine was literally bludgeoned into submission. Not enough to silence it, not completely, but it slowed long enough for the goblins to loop a great many more chains around its body.
"Stupid git of a machine," the shaman clucked his tongue before smacking it one last time. "You'ze ours now! Ow many times do I gotta smack ya, huh! Ya got looted, you'ze ain't Chaos no more, you'ze da property of Mork n' Gork!"
The hellcannon's growl this time was more subdued.
"Yeahahah, that's right," Bludwort chortled, straightening for a moment with a series of pops to his spine before leaning back down. "You'ze ours. S'okay," he spat a black gob of something onto the ground and scratched at his chin. "You'ze Gork n' Morks, you wanna get stuck in just like we'ze do. And we will! Just gotta be…," and here the shaman shuddered in revulsion, "Urgh,
patient."
Then there was the sound of another daemonic snarl, and one of the other machines began to shake and shudder in place, chains audible straining and the stakes of one loop being torn out of the ground entirely. There was much screeching from more goblins, and calls for Bludwort, and the shaman let loose a very put-upon sigh. Groaning and cursing under his breath, the shaman began stumping away again back around the side of one of the larger chaos dwarf machines. In the far distance, the remaining lava pumps had been fitted with diverting pipes and as Logan watched the volume of the lava river was already beginning to drop precipitously. Worse, some of the pipes had literally been shoved into the mouths of the great dragons atop the gate which had proved impervious so far. The pipes themselves were too short by far to stretch all four hundred feet back down to the ground, but instead they had used bent and angled pipes to simply push the vast amount of lava sideways until they were pouring off the walls and onto the mountainside away from the path and presence of the greenskins.
A movement caught Logan's eyes and he turned to see Regina starting to rise, eyes locked onto the shaman as he slowed moved on. Before she left cover Logan placed a hand on her shoulder, at which point the young wolf priest had to jerk back slightly as her head whipped around to glare at him, a silent snarl peeling her lips back. Only then, upon seeing his face, did she begin blinking rapidly and shuddering in place and slowly still.
"What are you doing?!" He whispered at her.
"Aiding our cause!" She whispered back fiercely. "The shaman suppresses them, to slay him ensures their rampage, or failing that harms the ability of the greenskins to dominate them."
"We don't know if he's the only one," Logan shook his head, "Given the size of the horde, I doubt it."
"And yet removing him would still aid us greatly," she argued.
She technically had a point, he knew, but his hesitation was obvious.
"Where is the courage of Ulric," she sniffed at him, making Logan growl and lean in closer to her.
"There is courage, and there is bravery, and then there is the idiocy of some Sigmarites," he snapped. "We were told to scout, to investigate. If we cannot return with information, then what was the point?"
The light in Regina's eyes almost seemed to flare up slightly before dimming slightly as she reached to the small of her back and revealed a previously hidden truesteel dwarf crossbow.
"If they see a dwarf bolt in his head, the camp will riot," he grunted, making Regina curl her lip and twitch her left eye before she pulled out the now twice stolen glowing green dagger.
At that, Logan blinked and considered the wicked weapon. It was clearly of greenskin 'make', unknown greenskin runes carved into the metal of its thick blade.
"Possible," he allowed. "Or," he glanced over at some of the machines.
All of them were bound up, but only some of them had greenskins around them. Some did not. One, the machine that appeared to be some sort of quasi-bolt launcher with the cone-capped cylinders, was completely absent of any nearby goblin attendants. Which included the pile of its presumed ammo.
"We release one of them, and get out of here."
"The shaman could potentially just suppress them again," Regina growled, making Logan tilt his head from side to side as he thought to himself.
As they were discussing, there was another growl and semi-activation of one of the machines, this one with a front made of huge drills and spikes and picks that began stabbing and slashing and smashing the air in front of it. Bludwort, complaining all the while, circled around to it and began smacking it on the side. Far, far further up ahead, past the lava break, Logan could see that with the lava redirected in multiple directions, what lay in front of the gates of Karaz-a-Karak were increasingly drained away. With enough time, that lava which had not cooled in place would be drawn off entirely, allowing the greenskins to press forward once more. And the dwarfs would potentially be none the wiser, simply assuming that the lava was still proving an utterly impassive defense.
"We need to decide," he pointed, drawing Regina's eyes to what he saw. "One way or another."
She grit her teeth, looked down, and then looked back up at him.
"I'm going to kill him," she said resolutely. "You can return to the agreed point without me."
"And leave you here?" He stared at her.
"If I die, I die," she shrugged while she began rolling the knife in her hand back and forth.
Logan shook his head at her, a grimace on his face.
"Don't be so quick to throw your life away."
"My soul is Sigmar's, in life or death," she shrugged casually. "I will attempt to escape and extract afterwards, regardless."
Logan slowly inhaled and exhaled to calm himself down.
She would not be swayed from doing
something to the artillery park's functioning, he knew. She could either be assisted or abandoned.
She was, nominally, his superior in regards to the Imperial forces, but certainly not religiously given their differing cults. But on his honor, he had sworn to aid the cause of the Empire and the dwarfs both, in as many ways as were possible.
Logan's Decision (Choose One):
3 Hour Moratorium
[] Wait and Kill: The daemonic machines of the chaos dwarfs do not rest easily in the grasp of the greenskins, and seem to regularly require continual suppression on the part of the greenskin shamans. With patience, the shaman Bludwort will surely come around again, close enough to kill without simply charging into the artillery park and committing elaborate suicide. It will be dangerous to wait for that opportunity, but nothing is safe at the moment. It could even be done quietly, potentially.
[] Close and Kill: The daemonic machines of the chaos dwarfs do not rest easily in the grasp of the greenskins, and seem to regularly require continual suppression on the part of the greenskin shamans. With the machines rumbling, roaring, and rattling, it should not be impossible to close within those confines and kill Bludwort as he is stumping about. Still, it will be dangerous to walk amidst such abominations. It could, potentially, even be done quietly.
[] Release the Daemons: Clearly, many of these machines do not enjoy their positions. There are goblins scrambling around here and there, but you have the magic of Genevieve on your side to shroud you significantly. It will be dicier to do, but potentially devastating if successful. Pulling up stakes enough to release some of them will be swift, but technically less accurate at ensuring Bludwort's death. After that, one way or another, Logan
would be pulling the Averlander away with him.
[] A Sulphuric Howl: Logan is Ulrican, sworn to the God of Wolves, Winter, and War. Black powder is forbidden from him as a priest of his God. But he is relatively sure that the chaos dwarfs do not use 'mere' black powder. Those conical objects are explosives. He knows that much. And he is, despite his God, a correspondent and brother to Anna von Hohenzollern. Before his passage to Middenheim he had ventured into a certain Imperial school. Regina Leitdorf wields a crossbow already, and has spent much time with dwarfs. And he knows fuses on sight It would be loud, dangerous, attention-grabbing, but if you put your faith into a vampire's magic to hide and shroud your passage in, can you do it again on the way out?
[] Leave the Zealot: You have information that must be communicated to your superiors. One way or another. She is willing to die for this cause, and she is not of your Cult. If Sigmar favors her, perhaps she will succeed and live without you. To abandon the pack in the face of the enemy is to abandon one's honor. To back down without orders from a superior is to fail Ulric. To one sworn before the Flame, better to tear out one's soul. 
