Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Hence why I voted leave.
Warhammer Fantasy: Divided Loyalties - an Advisor's Quest
- Thread starter Boney
- Start date
- Fantasy Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
And Bretonnian Damsels...
The last one known to do it was Magnus the Pious, who survived a lot longer than Asavar.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
He got the blessings, but I don't think he got the Blessings, so to speak.
I mentioned this before, but the argument that whacking a Kurgan warband would lead to them immediately unifying against us seems absurd to me.
These are Chaos Warbands. It's absolutely standard behaviour for them to establish their position like this. Prison rules apply. Every time a new Chaos Champion rocks up this will happen, they beat the shit out of a rival to show that they're the real deal and should be respected.
I'm pretty sure he got the Blessings. That's why he could survive walking through Ulric's Flame, for example.
These are Chaos Warbands. It's absolutely standard behaviour for them to establish their position like this. Prison rules apply. Every time a new Chaos Champion rocks up this will happen, they beat the shit out of a rival to show that they're the real deal and should be respected.
I'm pretty sure he got the Blessings. That's why he could survive walking through Ulric's Flame, for example.
Last edited:
Voting closed, writing will begin after breakfast.
More than ten, less than ten thousand. It's hard to get anything specific out of eyeballing smoke on the horizon.
More than ten, less than ten thousand. It's hard to get anything specific out of eyeballing smoke on the horizon.
- Location
- Philippines
I want to remind those who believe the dwarves don't want to talk to us, that Borek has been gone for a few hours, If Borek tells them about Mathilde's deeds, the reclaimation of Karak 8 peaks, the miracle of Karag Vlag, how Mathilde saved his life, then it will give Mathilde a opportunity. It might give them hope, enough or that might not even be needed Borek is not the main representative of Karak Dum, if they still have a leadership, then they might think differently than Borek and be willing to approach us, as long as we don't leave or give up on them.
Which is why giving up after only a few hours after arriving here is not logical, especially if food is not a issue.
Which is why giving up after only a few hours after arriving here is not logical, especially if food is not a issue.
SuperSonicSound
Shadowmancer of the Shadow Cabal
Oh god this timing is terrible there's no way I'm going to be able to sleep now and I have work in 8 hours arrghhhh. Curses.
- Location
- Aotearoa
No need to stress it, we're just gonna sit around for 24 hours while nothing happens.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Just go to sleep. It'll be fine. RL is more important.
- Location
- Spain
The thing is that we could have actually looked for information while the rest of the expedition waits for an answer, it is not like the expedition was going to leave Mathilde behind while she was talking with the Kurgan.
Food can become an issue fairly rapidly, we only have 2 weeks of it, and we probably will need 1 to make it back to our rendezvous point.
Also this isn't solely directed at you, but if Karag Dum wanted to defend themselves to the rest of the Karaz Ankor then they should send their own representatives. Like these are presumably capable adults, they can talk to big daddy Thorgrim. Actually we might be going to visit Thorgrim if we make it home, they can hitch a ride with us. I will reiterate if these people want to come back into contact with their kin a good first step would be coming to talk to us. If they can't send their representatives for whatever reason, then the least they could do is show some hospitality to the people who risked their lives to come rescue them only to see that they were fine after they appeared to get buddy-buddy with a beastmen demigod.
Last edited:
Now Mathy has a chance to do some real work.....*busting open that lizard journal she bought~*
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
That Ulric didn't burn him doesn't mean that Magnus had Ulrican divine energy swirling in him. And even then, every other god barring Sigmar just made their feelings known, there was certainly no empowerment I've ever seen mentioned.
Mopman43
Mountain-Hermit of Nitpeak
- Location
- Vermont
Pretty sure it's just him.
None still living. Any full adult dispatched from Karag Dum would be a minimum of 250 years old by now, and most Dwarves don't reach 200.
Last edited:
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Wait, was Borek old enough to qualify for "Living Ancestor"?
No, that's 400+ and he wasn't.
- Location
- Europa, Jupiter Orbit
Wait, what is Borek's timeline as known to the Karaz Ankor? Did he come as a child? If yes, what for initially?
Tales of U-K8P: A Storm from the South, Part 4
- Location
- Chicago
- Pronouns
- She/They
Tales of U-K8P: A Storm from the South
Part 4:
"WoooohoooOOOOO!!"
Hannah pumped her fist and jumped, her victory cry carefully quieter than the ringing of metal on metal which had filled the area a moment ago. Several dwarves looked up from efficiently searching the clanrat corpses, and beards twitched. One or two may not even have been scowls.
The battle had been quick and brutal. Twenty dwarves and one wizard in a double-file making their way across a rare flat space suspended in the sparse sponge of stone that made up the Lhune Depths had been ambushed from both sides by clanrats, who were quickly cut apart by the unsurprised dwarves. The ropes they had hung from were attached to crude spikes driven into the stone just far enough over the edge to be invisible, and several dwarves were busy obviously cutting the ropes and subtly working the spikes loose.
Hannah made her way back to the leader of the patrol, a dwarf that she had quickly begun to develop a fondness for. Dorin son of Durim son of Turim son of Torin was a priest of Grimnir, sort of, and he had a solid gravelly grandfather energy to him that appealed enormously to the former refugee.
"<HO THERE TORRENT-CRAFTER! GOOD WORK WITH THE FLASH.>"
And he always referred to her as a wizard, not a journeywoman, which she appreciated. The flash he noted had been her sole contribution to the battle- bright light that ruined the skaven's eyesight, fortuitously timed just after all of the dwarves had turned thier backs to her in the middle of the column. In truth, she had been terrified by the sudden assault, and unable to muster the aqshy needed for a damaging spell in the first moments. The flash- something that came almost instinctively to her with her understanding of the red wind- had been enough to pour out what aqshy she had gathered and begun shaping before it could backlash on her.
"<SIGNAL THE ENEMY FORCE SIZE AND COMPOSITION BACK-" Dorin twisted and pointed somewhere up and out into the dark, "AND NO CASUALTIES.>"
"<Yes sir!>" Hannah managed a chirp even in Khalazid, turning to face in the direction indicated and taking a deep breath. She summoned aqshy. Thrusting her hands out before her in a pose familiar from her cheer routines, she cupped them to limit the angles and conjured small flames into her palms, then waited. Perhaps ten seconds later, she got a flash in response and began her message.
'AMBUSH 60 CR NO CAS PATROL CONT [CONFIRM]'
'NEW ORD GO 11A 4 6B SUPRT ATCK ENMY EST L 000 [CONFIRM]'
Hannah gasped, quickly signaling back her reciept and hurrying over to where the patrol was assembling to continue.
"<Sir! New orders! They said to go to a rally point at 11A 4 6B and prepare to support an attack- sir, there's supposed to be a lot of them.>" Hannah didn't quite manage to keep her tone crisp as she reached the end. It was sinking in; she had gone prepared for just another scouting patrol, but the estimates meant at least several thousand enemies. She couldn't count on getting lucky as she had minutes ago.
"<OHO, GOOD! SOMETHING TO REALLY SINK THE PICK INTO! DAWI, MOVE WITH SPEED TO RALLY POINT THREE!>"
"<Aye!>" Came the quietly shouted reply.
"<JOHANN ONCE TOLD ME THAT TORRENT-CRAFTERS SOMETIMES NEED SOURCES TO DRAW ON TO BE FULLY EFFECTIVE. HERE.>"
He pushed a small bundle into her hands and clapped her on the shoulder.
"<DO YOUR ANCESTORS PROUD.>
Then he left, hurrying up to the front of the column even as Hannah moved to the middle, her fingers scrabbling at the cloth wrapping the gift as she moved. It gurgled- ah! A flask, large and full of oil from how it sloshed, and a clever little device that ran a flint over a bit of rasp with a squeeze. She smiled. Fire would not be a problem, at least.
Rally point three turned out to be a series of terraces roughly carved out around one of the few flat spaces in the depths, and close to a thousand dwarves had already gathered. Dorin headed off with his second to get detailed orders; the miners and lodewardens she was with found a spot still free on one of the upper terraces. She perched on the edge, trying to capture the gathering in her head. It would be perfect material for her art: Dim, irregular and counter-intuitive terrain, set off by the regularity and organization of the figures that made up the focus. Almost an aesthetic mirror of those familiar paintings of battles with castles- all hard lines and sharp corners behind a swirl of struggling bodies.
It wasn't long before Dorin returned, grumbling.
"<WE HAVE BEEN ATTACHED TO THE REAR BLOCKING FORCE. THERE ARE ABOUT SIX THOUSAND RATS TO KILL, DAWI, AND TODAY WE ARE AN ANVIL!>"
A low rumble of approval greeted this, and as the dwarves gathered their kit for a forced march, Dorin gestured for Hannah to join him to the side.
"<STAY CLOSE TO ME. PRINCE BELEKAR HAS COMMAND OF OUR FLANK, AND WE ARE ATTACHED TO HIS PERSONAL GUARD AS RESERVES.>"
___________________
Four hours of hard marching followed. Trying to map the depths was a nightmare, with trails that wound back on themselves and eachother in three dimensions, spinning out a dozen miles of walking to connect two points no more than a few hundred yards distant. Hannah was lost completely, and even some of the miners were grumbling quietly. But the prince at their head moved confidently, not hesitating at the junctions and dividing bridges.
"<It's really not that hard if you think about it right,>" she heard the Prince quietly explain to one of his companions, "<you just have to think of a normal cave system- like a series of extended bubbles in the rock- except reversed. So instead of air on the inside of the caves, they are the rock and the outside is air. You have to think about it as if you were walking on top of the ceiling of a normal cave, but the shapes are pretty close.>"
The skaven column they were stalking had been spotted by chance near one of their forward observation posts with a quick path back to command. With the forewarning, the dwarves had positioned an ambush force ahead and sent Belekar's force to hit them from behind after the battle had begun, pushing as much fear and confusion onto the field as they could. That such things favored dwarven discipline over skaven morale was Eightpeaks doctrine.
This the prince explained in terse sentences, having called Hannah and Dorin to him, the latest in a string up subcommanders to cycle through the prince's presence.
"<I want to position you somewhere off to the side and above our main line of attack, so your journeywoman can announce us with something big and scary. After, you are to see to her safety and provide fire support. She may also be called upon to relay signals in a manner that they can be seen at the other end of the battlefield. Can you do that?>"
Dorin glanced from the prince on his left to Hannah, a pace behind him on his right. She nodded determinedly.
"<YES, YOUR HIGHNESS.>"
"<Good. There's a ladder three bridges from now, split off from the main group there and take the F, Th, U, and F branches in that sequence. That should get you close to an overlook. Dismissed.>"
Dorin saluted and fell back, raising a bushy eyebrow at Hannah as they made their way back to the patrol, now designated as the 23rd platoon of Group 3. (Group 1 being the force holding the defenses to the Karak, and Group 2 the main ambush force.)
"<WELL NOW, YOUR FIRST BATTLE AND ALREADY GLORY SEEMS PREORDAINED! DO YOU LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR NAME BEING KNOWN BY THE THANES?>"
"<I just don't want to mess it up. I came here on my journey because I wanted to be an artist, I never thought I'd be fighting a war! So now I just want to do this RIGHT and not think about what people are going to think about me…> I do enough of that anyways…" Hannah trailed off in rakspeil, her eyes down. Dorin quickly hid a smile.
"<A CORRECT ATTITUDE TO TAKE. VERY WELL. WE WILL DO OUR PART SO YOU CAN DO YOURS.>"
_______________________
The dwarves did good work. An hour later, Hannah crouched in a saddle between two hanging masses, looking down at a six-wide flow of rats in a variety of shapes and conditions. They were seperated by perhaps fifteen meters and an unknowably deep chasm. Behind and above her, Dorin monitored the throng of dwarves moving into position- a natural bridge over the column of rats- as they drove in anchors for rapelling and waited for the last stragglers to get clear off the landing zone.
"<THE LAST ARE PAST… THEY ARE DROPPING ROPES NOW… TEN, FIFTEEN, TWENTY-FIVE- THEY HAVE SECURED THE CAUSEWAY. TORRENT-CRAFTER, ON YOUR MARK.>"
Hannah took a deep breath in. Off to her side, she upended the flask she had been given and let the volatiles inside spill down the side of the rock. Deep breath out. Pushing all the doubts and worries and tangents down out of her soul. She squeezed the sparker. Deep breath in. Flames burst from the shower of sparks as the fell into the fuel, a billowing inferno leaping forth from the rock. The sudden whirlwind of aqshy swirling in towards her, into her. Deep breath out, the words and gestures fresh in her mind, the entire spell spoken in an exhale.
Dorin turned to see the sparks fall, and the fire billow up before it bent suddenly sideways, like it had met a hurricane force wind wet with distilled alcohol. It blasted out across a dozen ranks of skaven, the heat killing them where they stood. Almost before the flames died, dwarven warhorns sounded out from behind, and moments later from ahead.
"<KHAZUKAN KHAZUKIT-HA!>"
And then the cavern lit up. Harsh electric flashes and booms of thunder from the front, unseen through the hanging rock but throwing sharp shadows. Flashes of warplocks and grenades, sudden washes of flame from the dwarf-carried drake cannon the engineering guild had been working on- it all added up to a strobing, multicolored battlefield where stepping wrong would see you plummet a hundred feet, or far more. Naturally the skaven began to do exactly that.
Hannah had sunk to her knees following her spell, unused to the sheer volume of power it poured through the caster. Deep in the depths of her pupils, a flame kindled.
Dorin moved down beside her, close enough to catch her if she started to tip, and enjoyed the show. The lucky members of the impromptu platoon began firing into chaotic mess that had been an army with crossbows, the unlucky ones grumbled and kept an eye on the approaches to their position. Dorin himself kept his eyes on the flow of the battle, and the dwarven wedge pushing forward, and the command banners just coming into sight from here.
Hannah was slow to return to full lucidity, but the sight of the dwarven front lines reaching the patch of scorched rock she had created kicked her into motion.
"Fire support. Relay signals at need. Right." She drew another deep breath, and pulled herself to her feet, reaching out for the aqshy threading through the anger and fire in the battle in front of her. Firebolt was a simple spell, the most basic of a bright wizard's battlefield tools, but it worked well enough.
__________________
It had been a one-sided affair. No rat ogres, no mutants, only a smattering of clanrats and exactly two storm vermin, bodyguards of the apparent commander. Only a few dwarves had died, mostly from falling.
Dorin had received instructions for a different route back, the prince thinking hard for a few moments before laying out a twisted down and up climb that should keep them away from known skaven routes but still save them two hours or more on their return. Sensible in the aftermath of a large battle, he thought, and the prince's cavern-sense was proving to be a thing of wonder. It did mean, however, that they would be moving as a small group through potentially hostile territory. The dwarves stayed tight, moving quietly, lights dim and ears open.
They had reached the lowest point of their route when the dwarf in the lead held up his clenched fist, and everyone froze to listen. Harsh, gasping pants and heavy boots getting closer, skittering claws, and swishes of weapons cutting air. It only took him a moment to decide- this was a pursuit, and the quarry was likely a dwarf. He stood up.
"<HO! THERE ARE ALLIES HERE. DAWI, TO ARMS!>"
The gasping breath hitched, and sobbed in relief as a hunchbacked dwarf, barely more than a plaitling, bolted through their formation to safety. Dorin stepped to close the hole in their line, punching forward to pulp the skull of a skavenslave that leapt after it's quarry. The melee was short- seven skaven may have been enough to run a single dwarf down to exhaustion, but they fell quickly to a score of axes and one Priest of the Pick. But where… Dorin turned to find his wizard crouched by the rescued dwarf.
"DARNA!?!? We thought you were dead! Oh my gods are you ok? How did you survive?" Hannah was gaping.
"It was- was all thanks to this one!" What Dorin had taken to be a hunchback instead turned out to be a crippled We hunter carried on her back, with only three legs and it's polyps remaining to it. "I'm calling him MeWe, at least until he can rejoin the mind and tell me otherwise. But Hannah, what are you DOING here?" Darna demanded.
"Oh! Well, we just fought a big battle against the skaven who were going to attack into Karak Lhune, and we won, but our group has to take a different way back because of all the weird winding this place has and…?"
Darna was gapping, horrified.
"You fought a big battle? Just now, with a bunch of dwarves outside the Karak? Hannah, it was a diversion! I saw the Master Moulder! He doesn't want Lhune, he wants the We, and he's found a way in! You have to get me to the King as soon as possible!"
Part 4:
"WoooohoooOOOOO!!"
Hannah pumped her fist and jumped, her victory cry carefully quieter than the ringing of metal on metal which had filled the area a moment ago. Several dwarves looked up from efficiently searching the clanrat corpses, and beards twitched. One or two may not even have been scowls.
The battle had been quick and brutal. Twenty dwarves and one wizard in a double-file making their way across a rare flat space suspended in the sparse sponge of stone that made up the Lhune Depths had been ambushed from both sides by clanrats, who were quickly cut apart by the unsurprised dwarves. The ropes they had hung from were attached to crude spikes driven into the stone just far enough over the edge to be invisible, and several dwarves were busy obviously cutting the ropes and subtly working the spikes loose.
Hannah made her way back to the leader of the patrol, a dwarf that she had quickly begun to develop a fondness for. Dorin son of Durim son of Turim son of Torin was a priest of Grimnir, sort of, and he had a solid gravelly grandfather energy to him that appealed enormously to the former refugee.
"<HO THERE TORRENT-CRAFTER! GOOD WORK WITH THE FLASH.>"
And he always referred to her as a wizard, not a journeywoman, which she appreciated. The flash he noted had been her sole contribution to the battle- bright light that ruined the skaven's eyesight, fortuitously timed just after all of the dwarves had turned thier backs to her in the middle of the column. In truth, she had been terrified by the sudden assault, and unable to muster the aqshy needed for a damaging spell in the first moments. The flash- something that came almost instinctively to her with her understanding of the red wind- had been enough to pour out what aqshy she had gathered and begun shaping before it could backlash on her.
"<SIGNAL THE ENEMY FORCE SIZE AND COMPOSITION BACK-" Dorin twisted and pointed somewhere up and out into the dark, "AND NO CASUALTIES.>"
"<Yes sir!>" Hannah managed a chirp even in Khalazid, turning to face in the direction indicated and taking a deep breath. She summoned aqshy. Thrusting her hands out before her in a pose familiar from her cheer routines, she cupped them to limit the angles and conjured small flames into her palms, then waited. Perhaps ten seconds later, she got a flash in response and began her message.
'AMBUSH 60 CR NO CAS PATROL CONT [CONFIRM]'
'NEW ORD GO 11A 4 6B SUPRT ATCK ENMY EST L 000 [CONFIRM]'
Hannah gasped, quickly signaling back her reciept and hurrying over to where the patrol was assembling to continue.
"<Sir! New orders! They said to go to a rally point at 11A 4 6B and prepare to support an attack- sir, there's supposed to be a lot of them.>" Hannah didn't quite manage to keep her tone crisp as she reached the end. It was sinking in; she had gone prepared for just another scouting patrol, but the estimates meant at least several thousand enemies. She couldn't count on getting lucky as she had minutes ago.
"<OHO, GOOD! SOMETHING TO REALLY SINK THE PICK INTO! DAWI, MOVE WITH SPEED TO RALLY POINT THREE!>"
"<Aye!>" Came the quietly shouted reply.
"<JOHANN ONCE TOLD ME THAT TORRENT-CRAFTERS SOMETIMES NEED SOURCES TO DRAW ON TO BE FULLY EFFECTIVE. HERE.>"
He pushed a small bundle into her hands and clapped her on the shoulder.
"<DO YOUR ANCESTORS PROUD.>
Then he left, hurrying up to the front of the column even as Hannah moved to the middle, her fingers scrabbling at the cloth wrapping the gift as she moved. It gurgled- ah! A flask, large and full of oil from how it sloshed, and a clever little device that ran a flint over a bit of rasp with a squeeze. She smiled. Fire would not be a problem, at least.
Rally point three turned out to be a series of terraces roughly carved out around one of the few flat spaces in the depths, and close to a thousand dwarves had already gathered. Dorin headed off with his second to get detailed orders; the miners and lodewardens she was with found a spot still free on one of the upper terraces. She perched on the edge, trying to capture the gathering in her head. It would be perfect material for her art: Dim, irregular and counter-intuitive terrain, set off by the regularity and organization of the figures that made up the focus. Almost an aesthetic mirror of those familiar paintings of battles with castles- all hard lines and sharp corners behind a swirl of struggling bodies.
It wasn't long before Dorin returned, grumbling.
"<WE HAVE BEEN ATTACHED TO THE REAR BLOCKING FORCE. THERE ARE ABOUT SIX THOUSAND RATS TO KILL, DAWI, AND TODAY WE ARE AN ANVIL!>"
A low rumble of approval greeted this, and as the dwarves gathered their kit for a forced march, Dorin gestured for Hannah to join him to the side.
"<STAY CLOSE TO ME. PRINCE BELEKAR HAS COMMAND OF OUR FLANK, AND WE ARE ATTACHED TO HIS PERSONAL GUARD AS RESERVES.>"
___________________
Four hours of hard marching followed. Trying to map the depths was a nightmare, with trails that wound back on themselves and eachother in three dimensions, spinning out a dozen miles of walking to connect two points no more than a few hundred yards distant. Hannah was lost completely, and even some of the miners were grumbling quietly. But the prince at their head moved confidently, not hesitating at the junctions and dividing bridges.
"<It's really not that hard if you think about it right,>" she heard the Prince quietly explain to one of his companions, "<you just have to think of a normal cave system- like a series of extended bubbles in the rock- except reversed. So instead of air on the inside of the caves, they are the rock and the outside is air. You have to think about it as if you were walking on top of the ceiling of a normal cave, but the shapes are pretty close.>"
The skaven column they were stalking had been spotted by chance near one of their forward observation posts with a quick path back to command. With the forewarning, the dwarves had positioned an ambush force ahead and sent Belekar's force to hit them from behind after the battle had begun, pushing as much fear and confusion onto the field as they could. That such things favored dwarven discipline over skaven morale was Eightpeaks doctrine.
This the prince explained in terse sentences, having called Hannah and Dorin to him, the latest in a string up subcommanders to cycle through the prince's presence.
"<I want to position you somewhere off to the side and above our main line of attack, so your journeywoman can announce us with something big and scary. After, you are to see to her safety and provide fire support. She may also be called upon to relay signals in a manner that they can be seen at the other end of the battlefield. Can you do that?>"
Dorin glanced from the prince on his left to Hannah, a pace behind him on his right. She nodded determinedly.
"<YES, YOUR HIGHNESS.>"
"<Good. There's a ladder three bridges from now, split off from the main group there and take the F, Th, U, and F branches in that sequence. That should get you close to an overlook. Dismissed.>"
Dorin saluted and fell back, raising a bushy eyebrow at Hannah as they made their way back to the patrol, now designated as the 23rd platoon of Group 3. (Group 1 being the force holding the defenses to the Karak, and Group 2 the main ambush force.)
"<WELL NOW, YOUR FIRST BATTLE AND ALREADY GLORY SEEMS PREORDAINED! DO YOU LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR NAME BEING KNOWN BY THE THANES?>"
"<I just don't want to mess it up. I came here on my journey because I wanted to be an artist, I never thought I'd be fighting a war! So now I just want to do this RIGHT and not think about what people are going to think about me…> I do enough of that anyways…" Hannah trailed off in rakspeil, her eyes down. Dorin quickly hid a smile.
"<A CORRECT ATTITUDE TO TAKE. VERY WELL. WE WILL DO OUR PART SO YOU CAN DO YOURS.>"
_______________________
The dwarves did good work. An hour later, Hannah crouched in a saddle between two hanging masses, looking down at a six-wide flow of rats in a variety of shapes and conditions. They were seperated by perhaps fifteen meters and an unknowably deep chasm. Behind and above her, Dorin monitored the throng of dwarves moving into position- a natural bridge over the column of rats- as they drove in anchors for rapelling and waited for the last stragglers to get clear off the landing zone.
"<THE LAST ARE PAST… THEY ARE DROPPING ROPES NOW… TEN, FIFTEEN, TWENTY-FIVE- THEY HAVE SECURED THE CAUSEWAY. TORRENT-CRAFTER, ON YOUR MARK.>"
Hannah took a deep breath in. Off to her side, she upended the flask she had been given and let the volatiles inside spill down the side of the rock. Deep breath out. Pushing all the doubts and worries and tangents down out of her soul. She squeezed the sparker. Deep breath in. Flames burst from the shower of sparks as the fell into the fuel, a billowing inferno leaping forth from the rock. The sudden whirlwind of aqshy swirling in towards her, into her. Deep breath out, the words and gestures fresh in her mind, the entire spell spoken in an exhale.
Dorin turned to see the sparks fall, and the fire billow up before it bent suddenly sideways, like it had met a hurricane force wind wet with distilled alcohol. It blasted out across a dozen ranks of skaven, the heat killing them where they stood. Almost before the flames died, dwarven warhorns sounded out from behind, and moments later from ahead.
"<KHAZUKAN KHAZUKIT-HA!>"
And then the cavern lit up. Harsh electric flashes and booms of thunder from the front, unseen through the hanging rock but throwing sharp shadows. Flashes of warplocks and grenades, sudden washes of flame from the dwarf-carried drake cannon the engineering guild had been working on- it all added up to a strobing, multicolored battlefield where stepping wrong would see you plummet a hundred feet, or far more. Naturally the skaven began to do exactly that.
Hannah had sunk to her knees following her spell, unused to the sheer volume of power it poured through the caster. Deep in the depths of her pupils, a flame kindled.
Dorin moved down beside her, close enough to catch her if she started to tip, and enjoyed the show. The lucky members of the impromptu platoon began firing into chaotic mess that had been an army with crossbows, the unlucky ones grumbled and kept an eye on the approaches to their position. Dorin himself kept his eyes on the flow of the battle, and the dwarven wedge pushing forward, and the command banners just coming into sight from here.
Hannah was slow to return to full lucidity, but the sight of the dwarven front lines reaching the patch of scorched rock she had created kicked her into motion.
"Fire support. Relay signals at need. Right." She drew another deep breath, and pulled herself to her feet, reaching out for the aqshy threading through the anger and fire in the battle in front of her. Firebolt was a simple spell, the most basic of a bright wizard's battlefield tools, but it worked well enough.
__________________
It had been a one-sided affair. No rat ogres, no mutants, only a smattering of clanrats and exactly two storm vermin, bodyguards of the apparent commander. Only a few dwarves had died, mostly from falling.
Dorin had received instructions for a different route back, the prince thinking hard for a few moments before laying out a twisted down and up climb that should keep them away from known skaven routes but still save them two hours or more on their return. Sensible in the aftermath of a large battle, he thought, and the prince's cavern-sense was proving to be a thing of wonder. It did mean, however, that they would be moving as a small group through potentially hostile territory. The dwarves stayed tight, moving quietly, lights dim and ears open.
They had reached the lowest point of their route when the dwarf in the lead held up his clenched fist, and everyone froze to listen. Harsh, gasping pants and heavy boots getting closer, skittering claws, and swishes of weapons cutting air. It only took him a moment to decide- this was a pursuit, and the quarry was likely a dwarf. He stood up.
"<HO! THERE ARE ALLIES HERE. DAWI, TO ARMS!>"
The gasping breath hitched, and sobbed in relief as a hunchbacked dwarf, barely more than a plaitling, bolted through their formation to safety. Dorin stepped to close the hole in their line, punching forward to pulp the skull of a skavenslave that leapt after it's quarry. The melee was short- seven skaven may have been enough to run a single dwarf down to exhaustion, but they fell quickly to a score of axes and one Priest of the Pick. But where… Dorin turned to find his wizard crouched by the rescued dwarf.
"DARNA!?!? We thought you were dead! Oh my gods are you ok? How did you survive?" Hannah was gaping.
"It was- was all thanks to this one!" What Dorin had taken to be a hunchback instead turned out to be a crippled We hunter carried on her back, with only three legs and it's polyps remaining to it. "I'm calling him MeWe, at least until he can rejoin the mind and tell me otherwise. But Hannah, what are you DOING here?" Darna demanded.
"Oh! Well, we just fought a big battle against the skaven who were going to attack into Karak Lhune, and we won, but our group has to take a different way back because of all the weird winding this place has and…?"
Darna was gapping, horrified.
"You fought a big battle? Just now, with a bunch of dwarves outside the Karak? Hannah, it was a diversion! I saw the Master Moulder! He doesn't want Lhune, he wants the We, and he's found a way in! You have to get me to the King as soon as possible!"
Last edited:
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Sorry, I meant "is". I'm already talking about him in the past tense!
(The logic being he was 250+ at the time Karag Dum was cut off 180 years ago, that's at least 380 years old and probably older.)
Last edited:
He was dispatched by Karag Dum to call on the Karaz Ankor for reinforcements just as the Great War Against Chaos kicked off in earnest. He was about 100 at the time.