Da Warpath - "Heavy is the Crown"
2 weeks ago
Alex Polimeni
Hail, warrior!
In the weeks before every Animosity Campaign, we hold a prelude period we call Da Warpath, featuring reveals, information and pre-registration for the coming narrative event. With Animosity VII - Azyr Asunder kicking off this July 12th, the hour is at hand...
... Da Warpath has begun!
***
Hooves thundered as Prefect Markus Pallaeon and his honour guard rode hard towards the exposed flank of the enemy, forming a tight lance formation within the mountain’s passes. They drove deep into the enemy’s lines, Bonesplitter orruks trampled under hooves and monstrous dragon ogors skewered on heavy lances. The King discarded his shattered lance, drawing his runed sword which burned with a star’s fire. He parried a monstrous axe, then riposted with a thrust that punched through the dragon ogor’s scaled hide.
Despite the damage done by his charge the ferocious horde held, and despite the sword impaling its chest the Thunderscorn howled its defiance. “For our home! For Suneater’s Spine!”
The King’s blood ran cold at that name, and as more of the savages rushed into the mountain pass to overwhelm him and his forces. They appeared from caves and tunnels he never knew existed, arrows, bolts, and boulders raining down on his forces right before the enemy charge struck. A member of his honour guard hacked down the ogor spewing spittle onto the King, as others formed a protective circle around him.
Markus had hoped to crush this enemy as they emerged, break their morale and drive them from his lands, so he and his limited forces could contain these portals and focus on stopping the enormous, rampaging monster from reaching the city. But the stubborn savages not only held, they kept coming with a resolve that matched his own. That may have exceeded it, whispered dark thoughts in his mind.
Despite the growing piles of dead beastmen and orruks around his Valeguard, more threw themselves at them. Overwhelming his shield wall, turning the ordered formations into chaotic melees, dragging once shining knights into the mud and eviscerating them with stone knives and chipped claws. The Temple’s fanatics and the Union’s levies fared better in the brawl that ensued, but even their zeal and grit couldn’t restore the order necessary to turn the battle. The King hacked at enemies on all sides, trying to escape with his honour guard, but the thunder that echoed through the mountains did not belong to Sigmar or His followers any more.
“We are the March of Thunder!” the horde roared. The boogeymen from children’s tales told across the Vale made manifest, the dangers of forbidden areas made real. “For Grakko Thunderhide! For the home she leads us to! For Suneater’s Spine!”
And just as it built into a crushing crescendo, a new thunder broke it. The thundering of guns and cannons coming from roaring skyships. These were not the sleek and clean ones he knew of, instead clad in black metal and belching green and yellow smoke that wilted the forest around them.
Markus accepted them all the same, the ships withering the savages as much as the plant life around him, carving a bloody gap for his forces to escape through. He and his honour guard secured the path out, their escape covered by the levies and gunfire from motley marines that dropped from the black skyships. As the King whispered his thanks to Sigmar for sending these strange saviours, he noted the badge that tied the humans, duardin and other mercenaries together: a ram-horned wolf of black metal, haloed by amethyst fire.
Before he could chide them for not bowing to him, the Prefect’s head snapped toward a familiar sound.
“Papa!” his eldest son, Vextram, cried, approaching him in brightly coloured armour that had yet to see battle. “I have saved you! Saved the entire Vale!”
“You idiot, what are you doing here?” Markus snapped. “You’re the Heir-Apparent!”
“Father, it’s fine!” Vextram replied, stung but undeterred. He raised his voice as the mountains thundered with battle once more, the savages still in pursuit. “I’ve contracted these brave soldiers to hold our lands!”
“You what?!” the King bellowed. “This isn’t aid from Sigmar?! What did you agree to?”
“Lord-Magnate Dainn Brisingrsson of Wolfram Industries holds an ancestral claim to some long dried out mines,” his son preened. “So I secured us an army in exchange for worthless lands and some minor trade agreements.”
“You idiot… you made him a landed noble? Gave him…” A chill went through the King. And it took him a moment to realize it was not from his foolish son’s poor negotiating skills.
That the thunder was not merely from guns and beasts.
“Where’s your mount, boy? How did you get here?” Markus shouted into his son’s face, shaking him by the shoulders when he only got a confused expression in return. Knowing they had no time, Markus hopped off his steed and threw Vextram onto it, then slapped the beast’s rump to get it running. “Get back to the city! Protect my heir!”
“Men, form up! Hold the line!” Markus shouted, raising his flaming sword into the air. The heavy infantry and surviving levies formed up before him, using the mountain pass as a choke point while the Wolfram mercenaries fired down into the mass of savages pressing in at them.
The heir and honour guard galloped away at full speed, none of the fighters left behind noticing in the chaos of battle. Nor did they notice the Prefect rush toward one of the skyships, sheathing his sword as he did so. A begemmed gauntlet earned him immediate passage, the skyship’s engines screaming like the damned as it rose back into the air.
As the troops he left behind fought, killed and died to secure their escape, Markus whispered a prayer to Sigmar for their brave sacrifices. Knowing it had to be done, that order had to be maintained to fight off this menace. He prayed that they could buy him and his son time as the unnatural blizzard fell over the battle, snuffing out all signs of mere mortal struggle.
The titanic form of Mogrek swept into the contested valley with all the fury of a hurricane, the howling Everwinter about him turned red with gore and hurled bodies. One sweep of his blade annihilated a group of Eklysium’s finest gargants while his other hand crushed the skull of an enormous ghorgon. Humans, duardin, orruks and others fared worse - beneath the monster’s blood thirsty notice, yet obliterated just the same.
Mogrek broke them all, leaving nothing but macabre carnage where once there were hopes, dreams, and resolve to see them made real.
Sirens blared from the skyships, the mercenaries and what few survivors escaped Mogrek’s bloody maelstrom grabbing onto rope ladders to head to the skies. Mogrek chased the savages as they ran into caves and marshes, but drew back to the skyships as they pelted him with gunfire and explosive payloads. Nothing stopped him, or even slowed him.
Mogrek tore the slowest of the skyships from the air, hurling it into another and causing both to explode in spectral green fire and oily-black smoke. All those aboard screamed well beyond their time of death, be it from the explosion or the long fall back to the jagged rocks. Mogrek’s long strides ate the distance between him and the heir, trampling those stranded on the ground. A bolt of green lightning exploded from Mogrek’s blade, raking across the mountains and burying a skyship beneath snow and rubble. The avalanche raced ahead, cutting off the Vextram’s escape.
“Sigmar, please!” Markus prayed aloud. “Do anything to save my first-born son!”
Holy lightning struck and a Templar from the Order of Azyr emerged, mounted upon her stardrake, and flanked by two stormdrake guard. They shot toward Mogrek like loosed bolts, draconic breath weapons raining starfire upon the raging brute in the moments before they slammed into him. Sigmarite weapons chipped away at his bone armour, while monstrous teeth and claws raked at his flesh.
The eye of the storm rumbled with laughter. Then the colossaboss peeled one of the drakes off his body by the tail, swinging it like a sack into the mountain to smash the mighty draconith and its rider like a bowl of eggs. The next was bisected with a skillful cut from his blade and the last tried to pull back to harass him from a distance, but underestimated Mogrek’s speed like so many before her. The Drakesworn Templar was plucked from her saddle and hurled into the heavens like a toy, missing her mount’s death as Mogrek hacked a wing off it then pinned it to the earth with his sword.
The Valeguard’s elite, torn apart as quickly as his levies.
“You have to do something!” Markus roared over the never ending sirens, into a duardin’s masked face. “We… no, send another ship to pick up my son! Or kill that beast!”
“Already on it, m’lord. It’s what the sirens are for.” the duardin replied, stepping around Markus. “Look away ser, yer not cleared nor equipped to see this.”
“Gravequaker loaded in chase cannon!” a human barked.
Markus turned, a harpoon tipped in purple glass sticking from the cannon. As he spied screaming faces within the smoky glass, he felt his body wither, and felt little better when he pried his eyes away from it.
“Live fire trial thirteen recording,” the duardin said, taking out a wax tablet to take notes on. “Fire!”
The Prefect watched as the harpoon sailed towards the monster bearing down on his son, knowing it was the boy’s last hope. But also knowing that if all else failed, at least he would survive the day, to continue bearing the burden of rulership in these troubled times. Even with Vextram lost, he technically had three more heirs, though Dracothian forbid the mantle ever fall to that drunken wastrel, Pelham. He felt a mote of pride as Vextram turned and faced Mogrek with his honour guard, drawing his own ancient blade and igniting it with a war cry.
The harpoon struck Mogrek’s back and exploded. Searing amethyst light radiated outward to render trees and animals to naught but dust. It passed over Vextram and his honour guard heartbeats later. Then kept going to snuff the life from beastmen and orruks that lurked in the dark, the animals they shared caves with and the canopies and ground cover they hid in.
The light consumed all life within a hundred yards or more and blinded the stubborn Prefect well beyond that range. The last thing he saw as the light faded and everything went dark, was an enormous blade hurtling through the air toward the ship he was on.
“No…” Markus breathed, unheard over Mogrek’s roar. His sight was gone, yet suddenly he saw how it would all unfold. All the divinations in the stars he never heeded... “He’s not ready. He doesn’t have the iron to control the people, or the will to keep the Seal o-”