The Silent Guidestones
It was cold in the tunnels beneath the City. Cold gray stone walls, finished with the precision of a master mason, rose up into the darkness. Cold blue light shone from small gemstones set into the stone, giving off just enough light to define the darkness, not illuminate it. In places where the gems had cracked with time or been pried away, deep pools of darkness clung. It was a seasoned darkness, aged and rich, which had not seen sunlight in centuries. Cold water leeched down the stone walls. The waters of the Ur-River, flowing from the city above and the unstable portals that had opened across the Vale. Old tales said that wherever the waters of the Ur-River ran, conflict followed, and from their own experiences, Baal’Oot had little reason to doubt the truth of them.
The skink was moving carefully through the twisting passages, following the thin golden band set in the wall high above. From what the scouts had told them, it ran all throughout this layer of the vast underground maze of hallways and chambers that the locals called ‘the Citadel’. The place had been built by the gargants over centuries, that much was common knowledge to the people of Eklysium, before the City had grown so vast that it covered over the top of the Citadel. According to Pelham, it was likely that that golden band that had given these upper levels their name - the Gilded Manor. They were only a few centuries old, and had been well preserved, at least until Mogrek’s invasion and the floods in the city above had sent buildings across the city crumbling down into their upper levels. They had also been built, again according to Pelham, in a time when the builders had long since moved past the building plans left to them before the gates of Azyr were sealed and the Vale forgotten. Despite the mastery of their construction, the layout of the floors were maddeningly bizarre. Hallways that ran for miles before simply ending in a dead end. Rows of empty, square rooms without purpose. Doors that open onto blank stone walls, or out over sudden chasms. Galleries overlooking elegant colonnades or stairwells that are inaccessible from any other part of the Citadel. It was, as the Prefect had said, as though once the builders ran out of direct plans, they simply continued to build whatever came into their heads without rhyme or reason, year after year, century after century. That was not, however, the mystery that Baal’Oot had come to solve.
The runes on the golden bands had truly perplexed them. They were not of any known language, either of the skink’s own experience or that the scholars of the City had ever discerned. The symbols and characters were unique, offering no clues to the linguistic root. Yet, they seemed undeniably to be writing. Baal’Oot had followed them for days, deeper and deeper into the Gilded Manor. According to local stories, the bands all lead eventually to a single chamber somewhere in the gloom. Golden tablets covered its wall, hundreds of them, bearing the same strange runes. They were called the Silent Guidestones, and Baal’Oot was certain that they would be the cypher they needed, the key to understanding the golden runes.
The first sign the skink had that they had reached their destination was the sound of screams. The Valeguard were not the only ones interested in understanding the secrets of the Citadel, and Baal’Oot’s small party had been skirmishing with Wolfram mercenaries for the past two days. Radhrion and the Starfall Glade Knights had split off from the expedition only an hour or so before, chasing down a marauding band of skaven bearing the sigils of Clan Refrakd, and for a moment the skink thought the battle might have caught up with them, but no, these sounds were different, deeper and bestial. The skink followed them through a partially collapsed doorway, and found themselves standing on a gallery. The chamber below gleamed in the cold light. Dozens - no, hundreds - of standing stones lined its floor like shelves in a dusty archive. Their surfaces swam and shimmered, the gold reflecting the gemlight in strange waves that washed across the chamber, making it seem strangely under water. It might have been serene, peaceful even, if not for the battle that raged across the floor below.
The forces of the March had fallen upon a Boltbreaker expedition with relentless savagery. Bloodpyre tribesmen hacked through the risen ranks of the Dark Forest, their vampiric master cutting down a Slaughterpriest as he retreated out of the cavern. Ghouls washed across the chamber floor, tearing through Bronzebelly ogors and swarming across a gargant. The giant figure tried desperately to swat them away, but fell to a knee against the tide of bodies, then dropped to the ground. Everywhere, an unnatural Shyishian mist wove through the standing stones, giving them a sepulchral, gravestone air. Amidst the carnage, however, Baal’Oot could see several of the March generals studying the golden tablets with care. The massive ghoul known as Silanore, an old foe from countless battlefields, ran a claw along one of their faces. The skink could only guess what madness the self-styled queen saw in the writings, but it seemed to excite the gibbering squires surrounding her. The queen raised a hand high in the air, shouting something triumphant that was lost in the distance, and the hordes of ghouls that had been chasing the Boltbreaker survivors broke off and raised their voices in a screeching victory cry that would haunt Baal’Oot for days to come.
Sensing an opportunity, the skink slunk across the gallery, searching for a way down to the chamber floor. They could see the closest tablets from here, and committed what they could to memory, but a proper examination would require getting down amongst the standing stones. The mists which had aided the March’s assault would serve to hide the skink’s small party just as well. A stairwell sat at the gallery’s far end, but just as Baal’Oot approached, the bulky figure of Glotul Coalcutter swaggered up the landing. The ogor's forces had snuck past the Valeguard patrols, though it had cost them, and a wide grin split the tyrant’s corpulent face. A glittering red gem glowed an angry orange-red in his hand, and with a grunt, Glotul hurled it at the stone ceiling. Baal’Oot was already diving out of the way when the explosion sounded, their skinks flitting back up the passageway like shadows, but the blast still washed across their backs in a rush of heat and light. Baal’Oot felt the back of their crest singe, but paid it no heed as the angry rumble of stone resounded behind them. A whoosh of air and dust slammed into them, hurling them back out of the gallery before countless tons of stone came crashing down behind them. The skink leapt to their feet, then hissed in frustration. The way to the Guidestones was sealed.
The March of Thunder defeat the Boltbreakers Union
Wolfram Industries defeat the Valeguard
All Coalitions gain Knowledge
March of Thunder has completed Tier 1 of the Discovery Objective
The Battle Below
Pelham had half known about these tunnels for most of his life, but he'd never really paid their existence any mind. Just another one of Eklysium’s many secrets, something for his mother to worry about while he spent his time on more important things like discovering the bottom of a cheap bottle from some filthy tavern, and perhaps finding some handsome young rogue or pretty barmaid to win over. Those days, mere months past, felt a lifetime ago now, his mother and elder siblings slipping away from him as the world collapsed in on the young prefect. Quite literally, in fact, as he found himself fleeing yet more falling masonry as another part of the unstable roof crumbled away into the half light below. He felt a heavy hand yank him back, a shield deftly placed between him and a large stone. Kalured of the Knights Numinous had saved his life while he'd been lost in his own resentful thoughts. It was time to get himself together; he'd come down to clear these tunnels of March vermin by his own hand, and it was a task he had to accomplish. He wasn't the fighter that Thunderhide was, but he had to uphold his family's legacy, and that meant that he must stand his ground. Focussed now, he quickly pulled a dagger from his boot and stabbed up below the ribs of a Tzaangor of the Blazing Winds that had used its fell sorcery to silently descend behind Kalured, blade drawn. The Stormcast’s unreadable metal gaze lingered on Pelham for a moment as if surprised, to which he returned an obliging grin.
The March of Thunder had made good headway into the tunnels since their brief retreat after the collapsing of the Grand Cathedral of Sigmar. The surviving fighters who had fallen into the Gilded Manor had found plenty of places to hide and regroup in the confusion, and had worked to open up new entrances all across the city. What had started as minor skirmishes and ambushes set by festering undead warriors under Dutchell Veinfell Gristlerasp had progressed to Veilguard patrols finding themselves suddenly beset by hooting orruks of the Shadowspittaz astride bizarre contraptions built from stolen Kharadron airships and the wreckage of various machinery destroyed in the fighting. Finally, with rumours reaching Pelham's ears that Grakko Thunderhide herself had ventured into the tunnels, there had been no choice but to prepare for an all-out battle.
The dark confines of these forgotten tunnels, grand though they might have been, were proving to be a claustrophobic and difficult battlefield for many of the combatants on both sides. Dodging wild blows and falling rubble in the half light of rents in the earth and soft-glowing crystals was no easy task for most, and just as many fell to their unpreparedness for this particular terrain as to any deliberate attacks from the enemy. Some, however, found themselves particularly suited to this challenge; the Beastcast, providing vanguard for Grakko's advance, had much experience of such spaces, having been held in agonising confinement for centuries within a Stormvault, their bestial eyes well-adapted to the gloam. Their advance into the Veilguard line was stymied only by the onslaught of Lord Bolton's Winter Wolves, the nocturnal ghouls and their more monstrous, batlike kin deftly navigating the dark to meet the Beastcast advance. They were soon joined by King Leopold’s Ventoleon Crusaders as well as the Purulent Expedition, the ghoulkin rushing the enemy with ardent devotion to the young Prefect. The tide of ghouls worked to slow the March's progress towards Pelham's position, even as the Prefect used every dirty trick he'd learned in the seediest watering holes of Eklysium to fend off aerial attacks by screeching Tzaangors, Stormcast warriors from the Knights Numinous and the Silver Legs closing ranks around him in an attempt to keep their liege from harm.
The sound of Thunder and the ominous crackle of red lightning grew ever closer as the Sylvaneth of the Deeproot Copse attempted to shore up the Veilguard’s defenses by calling forth sorcerous roots, winding them together into verdant shields ahead of the Veilguard line even as the Brass Reavers hacked at them with bloodied axes. Pelham gritted his teeth as he fought, his daggers dripping with change-touched ichor as he swiped them across another Tzaangor’s avian throat. Despite everything, his people were being pushed back by sheer numbers, penned in by attacks from chaos-twisted monstrosities of the Hands of Hate, fomoroids and furies tearing into the flanks and preventing his lines from forming a focussed defense at the fore even as Vallash Kall and his armoured retinue held out valiantly against the onslaught. Pelham shouted orders, desperately drawing on hazy memories from a particularly dull lecture one of his many forgotten tutors had given on the importance of battlefield coherency to keep some semblance of order in his ranks. Despite his best efforts, it was becoming painfully obvious that they were on the back foot, and before long he would be forced to call the retreat, loathe as he was to do so after fleeing from the battle at the Cathedral. That was when all semblance of order went out of the window entirely.
A rasping call took up at the front of the March of Thunder’s advance, a hideous bleating that seemed to warp the close air of the tunnel around itself, pulling the air from warriors’ lungs and twisting it into the shapes of fell beasts and primordial nightmare. The Great Bray Shaman B’agnok focussed his magic on the daemon-possessed Chaos Warrior Corona, who let out an earth shattering scream, the primal magics of the beastkin amplified through her, sending the warriors of the Veilguard reeling, the front line screaming in torment as their flesh was twisted into beastly forms, their minds breaking under the weight of madness pressed upon them. The Khornate warriors of the Hands of Hate took advantage of the disarray, their baying flesh hounds tearing into the ragged remains of the Veilguard defense, their axes chopping the sylvan barricades created by the Deeproot Copse to kindling in moments. Hollering with rage, Dailor Elephas of the Silver Legs thundered forth to meet them, his Stormcast warriors behind him. His blade met that of Shërbëtor G'Jak-u once again as the two champions met in a clash of iron and Sigmarite, just as they had outside the Grand Cathedral of Sigmar. It was obvious at this point that the Silver Legs would be covering the retreat, not stealing a victory for the Veilguard. With a grimace Pelham brought his mother's warhorn to his lips, a mournful howl rising above the din of battle to sound the retreat. His Stormcast escort made to bundle him away to safety, but he held up a hand in refusal. Understanding, they took up defensive positions around him as their allies surged past them to relative safety.
“So, the boy-regent has a backbone after all,” came Grakko Thunderhide's booming voice as she finally loped to the fore, her lightning-wreathed blade steaming with the boiling blood of numerous foes that had failed to take her life as she'd advanced on Pelham's position. The Prefect still had his daggers raised, the blades wreathed in a weak light, his proficiency at battle-magic stymied by his disinterest in continuing study after a few months. Slowly, his retinue backed away, fending off the warriors of the March and buying time for their allies to escape back down the tunnels. Slowly, Grakko raised an enormous hand, signalling her warriors to cease their advance.
“I have control of these tunnels, boy. Your forces are bloodied and exhausted. Give me the jewel, and I might not have to slaughter my way to it. Perhaps I'll even give you a merciful death.”
At that, Pelham looked directly into Grakko's flinty eyes and spat on the ground before him. The Dragon-Ogor shook her head mournfully before taking a step forward, blade raised. Not taking his eyes from hers, he reached behind him, pulled the sceptre from the straps on his back, and hurled it with as much force as he could muster over the heads of the March. While Grakko and her warriors scrambled to catch the precious object, Pelham pelted his ensorcelled blade at the ground before her. She stopped in her tracks, wary of some deception, when the blade triggered the magical barrier that Pelham's sorcerers had worked into the ancient stone of the tunnel before the battle had begun. Sweat dripped from the Prefect’s forehead; it had been no easy task to transfer the activating enchantment from himself to the blade while fending off a horde of Tzaangors, but he had just about managed it in time. This had been a devastating loss, and Pelham knew that the worst of the fighting was yet to come. The barrier would not last long, even now stuttering under his foes’ onslaught. He turned and, without looking back, joined the retreat.
Grakko Thunderhide’s face was impassive as she watched the Prefect disappear into the gloom, but beneath the surface she boiled. The boy represented everything she hated, every evil that had plagued her long life. He might have escaped this time, but it would not be long. She would have Prefect Pelham's head, and everything that had been stolen from her and her long-lost people would be restored. Rearing up on her draconic hind legs, Grakko roared a challenge down the great stone corridor, her thunderous bellow bringing stone tumbling down all around her. To Pelham, the meaning behind that awful howl could not be more clear.
March of Thunder Major Victory
The War for Gloamsend
After a week of conflict, 10th House Regnum had been reforged by the crucible of war. Wolfram had fortified the heart of Gloamsend, raising metallic structures and barricades by repurposing components from the landtrains of their convoys. They had done so under constant fire by the Boltbreakers, besieged by daemonic and plague-ridden artillery of Helmsiths and skaven. Only rubble lay within hundreds of yards of Gloamsend. Whatever buildings the Boltbreakers hadn’t destroyed were levelled by Furnace City demolitionists, to prevent Boltbreaker saboteurs and sappers from sneaking too close to their walls. Beyond, Regnum’s ancient towers and crumbling edifices to the former nobility were pockmarked with ruins and craters where Wolfram’s artillery returned fire on enemy positions.
Fortunately for the many refugees that fled to Regnum from districts flooded by the Ur-River, both the Boltbreakers and Wolfram had their safety in mind, if, perhaps, for different reasons. Still swayed by Wolfram’s propaganda, the people and refugees of Regnum that hadn’t found work as miners took shelter in their homes, refusing to leave or admit anyone under any circumstance. This kept the city streets clear and open for Wolfram’s ranged supremacy and the Boltbreaker conscience clear as long as they avoided seeking shelter.
At least, for the most part.
As Wolfram’s armada of sky-ships blotted out Azyr’s celestial skies with their numbers and toxic smoke, many a refugee sought comfort in the long blackened and burnt-out temple of Varnish Run. There, the temple’s prophets had always claimed to see the stars through their ash paintings, harbingers of Regnum’s present state long before Wolfram was founded and a grim source of inspiration to the people living in such dark times. Unbeknownst to the refugees or even each other, it was also a base for infiltrators working for both the Union and Wolfram.
Until, against all orders, members of the Hydra Company and the Acolytes of Ruin went rogue, and attacked one another in the open. The panic spread like wildfire, yet was more deadly. Innocents trampled one another in an attempt to escape the escalating conflict, as both sides tried to ascertain who shot first and called for reinforcements. Cultists of the Great Horned Rat battled shadowy Kharadron as more of their number sparked conflicts in the surrounding streets and buildings. With the Cultists more adept at swarm fighting and less concerned with civilian casualties, they pressed the Hydra Company higher into the crumbling, towering ruins of Regnum, pinning them with no escape.
The duardin fought like cornered animals, until the Kill-Bomb All arrived to pull them out of certain doom. The monstrous, ramshackle skaven sky-ship coated the area in toxic gas to incapacitate their enemies. While many victims screamed in pain at the blisters, the Stormcast of The Brazen Suns shrugged off the gas and launched their attack. Gargants of the Fisher Guild harpooned the Skaven vessel, keeping it anchored while Questor-Knight Kadriye led her strike team onto the ship’s deck from the nearby towers.
The ship opened fire, warp-lightning cannons tearing apart nearby buildings and their occupants, but the brave Boltbreakers refused to let up. More harpoons and grapnels were thrown alongside chunks of masonry, hardy workers chanting loudly as they held the lines that rooted the Kill-Bomb All. Among their number were many an orruk and hobgrot slave of the Union’s allied Helsmiths, who had lost many of their number when thrown into Wolfram’s meatgrinder but had found a glimmer of hope, of kinship, by the good souls that surrounded them. In that moment, they worked hard not out of fear of the lash - but out of solidarity.
Working together, they kept the Kill-Bomb All in place while Kadriye and her Stormcast fought through the twisted metal of the sky-ship, sabotaging what weapons and engines they could. They cut down eerily disciplined skaven and deadly Kharadron, moving through the ship with surprising ease, as if aided by an unseen force. Then they came upon an uprising of the ship’s slaves, aided by duardin who had betrayed their company.
At least, that’s what they thought, until the slaves and duardin threw themselves at the Stormcast with reckless abandon. The sudden shock cost a number of the Stormcast their lives, the hesitation to kill innocents cost a number more. But as more of the creatures screeched in cacophonous harmony, they realized the Voidblight had already returned. Immortal instincts kicked in, and the Stormcast carved a path to their escape, Kadriye the last to rappel out of the burning sky-ship on the same lines that had saved the Hydra Company earlier.
Those below fared worse, as more Voidblight Infected emerged from sewers and buildings, throwing themselves on Boltbreaker and Industrialist alike. Lacking the Stormcast’s experience, many died or were infected as they hesitated to defend themselves against former comrades or innocents. The cold-blooded among them survived, however, and spread word of the Infected: how they fought with the skill and power of their hosts, how they seemed more coordinated than the previous Voidblight cases encountered, and how the number of Infected was growing at an alarming rate.
The music-inclined Boltbreakers were the first to discover a means to detect them, after rumours spread of copper mugs humming and instruments playing themselves revealed that the Infected - like the mine’s Sibilith crystals - emitted a sonorous resonance average mortals could not hear. Copper mugs were hammered into tuning forks, standard issue for Boltbreakers everywhere. Once Wolfram caught onto the same from leaks and looting, they were the first to come up with a countermeasure. Brutal experiments on captured Infected led to a resonance that could repel the crystalline centipedes, mass produced from children’s music boxes and replicated by Boltbreaker musicians less than a week later.
Both sides rushed to implement the countermeasures and protect civilians within their spheres of influence, all while fighting one another and the Infected. But while that took place on the surface, the battle below escalated until coming to its explosive conclusion.
Maps were redrawn on an hourly basis, the already bizarre nature of the mines criss-crossing with layers of the ancient citadel exacerbated as countless passages throughout had collapsed, triggered on purpose against the enemy or incidentally due to the raging battles over the weeks. Many battles took place between scattered forces that had been cut off from lines of communication and supply, their bravery, efforts and deaths going unregistered. And while maps were updated constantly to meet the insatiable need for intelligence to guide the chaotic battles below, rosters were quickly forgotten and the fate of many left simply as Missing in Action.
Deep beneath Gloamsend, the Boltbreakers lurked in one of the Gilded Manor’s enormous, empty banquet halls, its sanctity breached by ancient miners and its surfaces overrun by Sibilith crystals that consumed all light. Foreman Junnrik ‘Strong’ wiped sweat from his brow, the heat from the Brynhar Lodge’s volcanic ritual nearly intolerable. A scout listed off the latest losses, Junnrik’s fists tightening as the list of those missing grew.
“Varinja’s Four, missing in action against Wolfram drill five around tunnel thirty-tw-”
“Enough,” Junnrik said, the word rumbling through the makeshift command room. “We can’t abandon all those people down there.”
“Sir, with all due respect, we can’t afford to-”
“No. What we can’t afford is losing sight of who we are, why we fight.” Junnrik cut in. “Every life matters, we owe it to those laying down their lives to at least find their bodies, return something to their families, if not return with them alive.”
“How about we end this?” a fyreslayer suggested. “The Runesmiters can unleash the ritual early, get us into Wolfram’s base right now, and we put them down like the rabid dogs they are.”
“I thought they needed time to control the ritual’s power,” Junnrik said. “If they loose it now, can they guarantee where the eruptions will happen?”
“No, but the collateral would be-”
“Unacceptable!” Junnrik snapped. “We’re here to save innocent lives, not take them! We’d be no better than Wolfram if we destroyed what we pleased and cut our losses just because it’d be more convenient for us.”
The Foreman stood to his full height. His eyes swept his military advisors, and softened along with his tone. “I know you’re doing your best, but we lose this war if we win our battles by dirtying our hands like the enemy. I need you to understand that, and I need you to hold the line until the Runesmiters can control those eruptions. I’ll be back.”
With that, Junnrik left, shouldering a pack full of supplies and hefting a heavy mining pick. As his form vanished into the darkness, he hummed the Boltbreaker’s new tune to counteract the Voidblight. Many watched him go, not expecting to see him again, but more than a few picked up their own tools and weapons, and joined his expedition to find the lost.
Even when they failed to return after three days, none had the heart to mark them missing like the rest.
When he didn’t check in on the fourth day, they were too busy with Wolfram’s assault to check the rosters.
The criminal underworld had sided with Wolfram, using their knowledge of smuggling lanes to guide their new allies to the Boltbreaker’s ritual site. The Rime-Touched led the charge, icy undead meeting fiery duardin with explosive results. The fyreslayers held, until Chaos warriors of the Gilded Eye arrived at the head of a force of criminals armed with Wolfram weaponry. And amidst a retinue of Chaos chosen, Dainn pitted his arcane might against the Brynfar Lodge. Spectral winds screamed like the damned, the entropy of Shyish draining the divine power accumulated over weeks, threatening to unravel all their work.
“We have to unleash the spell!”
“No! Junnrik said-”
“The Foreman’s dead! He aint in charge no mor-”
Thunder boomed in the underground chamber, ending the panicked conversation.
“We hold, my kin!” Sigrid the Radiant roared from atop Silverflame. “The Wolf-Ram’s skull shall be mine!”
Stormcast appeared in blasts of lightning. Boltbreakers rallied and charged into the fray once more, crushing skeletons and hacking down warriors and oath-breakers with renewed vigor. The press allowed Sigrid to dive headlong into battle against the Chaos chosen protecting Dainn, the armoured hulks falling to monstrous claws and immortal blade. Dainn’s counterspell was interrupted as draconic fire wreathed him, melting away his mortal facade and leaving only spectral smoke behind.
Then the Voidblight arrived in force, their unified howling erupting from every tunnel and corridor, resonating with all the hall’s crystals. Monsters were among them, those infected longest mutated with crystalline growths and insectoid appendages that scythed down their former friends and enemies without hesitation. Those lost in the darkness for days and weeks, left for dead by comrades who couldn’t afford to save them, returned with a vengeance. More ancient beings, mutated dragon ogors and other beasts, joined the assault as well, awakened once more by Wolfram’s meddling within the mines.
“We’re almost ready! Just a bit more time!”
“Zog it, just blow’em up already!”
“No, we can hold!” a liberated hobgrot shouted. “Together, we can hold!”
Other Boltbreakers shouted the same, voices joined as they chanted their anthems and took down crystalline beasts and armoured mercenaries with mining picks and tools. But Wolfram’s lines had also stabilized, reformed by abandoning pockets of warriors surrounded by Boltbreakers and Infested. Anaris Rime-Wrought cleaved a deep wound into Silverflame, forcing the draconith to withdraw with its howling rider, allowing Dainn to focus on his counterspell once more.
Then a terror from beyond emerged. A centipedal monstrosity wider than any gargant and of unknown length skittered from a mining tunnel, enormous, crystalline appendages impaling fyreslayers as it overran one of the Runesmiters and her entourage.
“Sister, no!” the other Runesmiter shouted, trying to keep control of the ritual by herself, pitting her will and rage against the revenant’s.
A Wolfram aethermatic-drill punched through the wall closest to the titan, with nearby Wolfram forces converging on it and threatening to finish off the Runesmiter and the Boltbreaker’s flank. But before they could flag, the Boltbreaker’s anthem amplified, as more voices joined it from the Wolfram machine and its new tunnel.
Junnrik led the charge, joined by many of the missing teams that hadn’t given up hope. Wolfram’s forces expected to meet allies, and instead were cut down by Boltbreakers that sang alongside those they thought they’d never see again. Varinja’s Four carved a bloody path through Wolfram’s lines, straight for Dainn and his ritual, breaking the Gilded Eye’s criminal allies. All the while, Junnrik escorted the aethermatic-drill, hammering away at Infested monsters as if they were simple nails. Then at the last minute, the titan turned its attention from eviscerating fyreslayers to him and the drill. The gargant blocked one of its impaling appendages with a giant hammer, then shattered it with the pick in his other hand.
That gave the drill the opening it needed, driving itself into the titan. As the drill burrowed through its crystalline carapace, its soundless scream tore across the hall, joined by the throat-tearing screeches of all the Voidblighted. Though few could hear it, mortal, undead, and even daemon were stunned as it clawed at their souls. The titan’s scything mandibles cut the machine in half and the creature withdrew back into the darkness from whence it came. The earth shook as if its hideous footfalls came from all about them, and lasted for minutes before falling into silence.
In that time, Dainn’s forces had withdrawn, cutting their losses, and the Boltbreakers drove the Voidblighted monsters back into the tunnels, for now. The Runesmiter twins completed their ritual, and an explosion rocked the Wolfram compound above as a small volcano erupted. Before many of Wolfram’s troops could recover their footing, pyroclastic rock and lava rained down upon them. The remaining Boltbreakers rushed up the channels created by the fyreslayers, pouring into Wolfram’s compound and overwhelming its defenders from within.
There, the Furnace City Expedition Force served as rear guard as Wolfram assets were pulled out. A new evolution of their golems rampaged through Boltbreaker lines with no regard for their own safety, forcing the revolutionaries to drag them down to tear them apart with picks and hammers. The Angels of Retribution, committed to Wolfram’s cause of victory at all costs, appeared in a storm of lightning, fighting back against their brethren and any Boltbreaker that dared despoil progress. And all the while, Wolfram’s sky-fleet rained toxic bombs and incendiary munitions down on the invaders, costing them dearly and buying the wounded time to withdraw.
The Boltbreaker’s aerial Stormcast rallied, surging into the sky-fleet’s midsts and turning their guns elsewhere. Lightning javelins skewered gunners and draconith fire burned away hulls, while warp-static shields zapped angelic warriors and cannon barrages tore draconith apart. Lord-Celestant Vytravius led the charge on Hjolgin Forgecaller’s monstrous flagship, his strike force tearing gouges into the hull and clearing its deck with starfire and blade. With an enraged roar, they were driven off by Hjolgin and his Chuganaut marines, but it was too late. The experimental flagship limped away, forced to sound the retreat and marking the end of the War for Gloamsend.
Junnrik looked around as the Boltbreakers raised their weapons into the air and cheered all around him. Loved ones hugged one another and comrades reunited, thinking they’d never see one another again. Hope lived. And the oppressors fled, their buildings burning to the ground. It was a close call though, and it had cost them dearly.
He knew it wasn’t over yet, and it wouldn’t be until the titan of night-spun crystals was dead. Until the Voidblight was ended, once and for all.
Boltbreakers Union Minor Victory (by the skin of their teeth!)
Battle of Lucrum
With Asavash the Serene’s cursed skies roiling above them, the Chainbreaker Empire marched upon the Second House to the sound of thunder. The contingent of halfling longrifles left behind by the Léofolat Grymbane did little to dissuade Kuugax’s army from taking the Starroot Grove, and for a long moment the Shaggoth reflected upon his return to this ancestral place, a reflection which soon gave way to rage.
Despite its wealthy opulence even Lucrum had an underbelly, all sewers and banking-vaults that were as like to a labyrinth as a honeycomb. Kuugax’ fury shook the very foundation of the Second House as his warriors set upon the Shaggoth’s most reviled foe, the Stormcast Eternals. The enemy before him were no fresh-forged Liberators, but the Reclusians of Lord-Terminos TyZaren, tasked with holding the tunnels at any cost. The Shaggoth mocked the name “Eternal” as his terrible lightning transmuted the coffers themselves into killing-fields, TyZaren’s warriors seared alive inside their armor as Kuugax turned Chamonic currency into scorching liquid metal. Ensnared by Asavash’s cursed skies, Kuugax claimed the venerable warrior’s souls even as the Wolfram lackeys from Furnace City made off with the Stormcast’s gold-encrusted bodies.
Their methods rough and ready, the Boltbreakers Union’s found themselves precious hours ahead of the Valeguard in their entrenchment efforts. Many hands made for light work, and unwilling to cede Lucrum to either the outsiders or the Prefect, the Foreman had dispatched many work crews to assist in the defense. Kaia Wolfkin’s armored soldiers had dug in behind makeshift barricades and hastily-fortified guildhalls; they hadn’t looked twice at the street-urchin that cowered in alleys, or the heavily-garbed labourers moving to and fro. Screams rang out even before the alarm bells as these undesirables threw off their disguises to reveal milky-white eyes, distended jowels of rotting, sharpened teeth, and too many limbs with too many joints and digits. The fruit of Vreeche Maggottail’s flesh-garden had finally ripened.
Trapped inside their own fortifications, Kaia’s Thundering Wolves fought like cornered animals as the Sanatorium’s “abomoanoid” monstrosities pried open sewer grates to set loose more of their grotesque kin behind Boltbreaker lines. Many found their reinforcements already dead, drowned in tunnels and pipes that should never have flooded, the befouled water already beginning to overflow them. Victorious but badly mauled, the Wolves had no choice but to retire, their bloodied state making them more liability than asset in the battle ahead.
Replaced on the line by Khainite witch-queens Malita and Melura and Decuriarch Marcus Aurelian, all of the Valeguard, the battle’s first skirmishes were between the Coven of Twilight’s Blade, the X Fretensis, and Urif Miresson’s Barak Gorn 83rd Gyrocorp. Fighting upon the roofs of the banking houses themselves, neither side claimed advantage until the purpose behind Miresson’s feint became clear. In the streets below, the Wolfram vanguard smashed aside the improvised and under-manned defenses, allowing the Penumbra 3rd Assault Company to pour into Lucrum functionally uncontested. Malita and Melura withdrew to the Nebularch Court, while Marcus received a desperate plea from Lord-Terminos TyZaren and quickly descended into the tunnels below.
Once there, Marcus found a desperate and treacherous battle, his Legionnaires and TyZaren’s Reclusians badly disadvantaged in waist-high water Kuugax’ larger Goroans. With the water now rushing and steadily rising, each side found themselves entrapped in vicious fighting as each sought to reach the few available surface entrances. The wounded of both were quickly dragged beneath the bloodslick waters, and those Legionnaires or Stormcast unfortunates who became separated found themselves stalked in the hellish darkness by a Wolfram vampire monstrosity of terrifying strength and violence.
With the Union’s fortifications swept aside, Lucrum at large was soon ablaze as the battle reached the threshold of the Nebularch Court itself. Their advance preceded by the relentless bombing of the Barak Gorn Gyrocorp, Daergran Shatteraxe found himself suddenly deprived of his air support as duardin Doomseekers of the Valeguard’s Kitsungi and Ibenholt Varme lodges were dropped onto the Gyrocorps’ decks by Seraphon Terradons of the Unblessed Exiles. These unhinged warriors went gladly to their own deaths, and the 83rd Gyrocorp was thrown into disarray by this sudden onslaught, rendering them vulnerable to the Union’s Rygra Darkkin and her smaller Kharadron air force.
Surging into the Court without cover from the Gyrocorp, Daegran Shatteraxe and his Penumbra 3rd Assault Company balked at the sight of what awaited them. Beneath the many drifting constellations of Celestite orbiting above them, the reformed Coven of Twilight’s Blade was accompanied by the Unblessed Exiles’ serried ranks of fresh saurus warriors, eager to be blooded. With them stood the remainder of the Kitsunagi and Ibenholt Lodges, already shouting insults and mockery at their foes; Knight-Questor Léofolat Grymbane, his Stormcast retinue and remaining halfling sharpshooters by his side; High Queen Heterfer and the undying warhost of Amarna; the fusil gunlines of the Soot Hounds and the myriad soldiery of the Tyrian Guild. The alliance had not abandoned Lucrum to the Wolfram armies, but allowed it to ensnare them.
The tables turned, it was only the timely arrival of the Templars of Our Burning Savior that kept the Penumbra 3rd from quitting the field. The Tzaangor Paladin of Fate, Asavash the Serene, assured Daegran the ritual they had prepared would alter the very earth beneath their feet, bringing high Azyr and the Realm of Chaos into malefic alignment. Now reinforced by Kuugax, Asavash’s own Templar Chosen, and Vreeche Maggottail’s remaining Abomonoids, Daegrun sounded the advance and charged his Penumbra 3rd into the awaiting enemy line. Vreeche still had one wicked trick left to play, and even as the Wolfram line surged forward, the keening shriek of artillery split the air overhead. Shells the size of a Mournfang howled over the Valeguard and Union lines, disgorging a tightly-packed cargo of Abomonoids that may have once been skaven, human, duardin or otherwise.This insane infantry tore into the Soot Hounds’ fusiliers- and without their withering fire, Léofolat Grymbane’s halfling sharpshooters simply weren’t enough to blunt Daegran’s advance.
The Penumbra 3rd crashed into the seraphon and undead lines while the skies churning above them churned like a nurgling’s stomach. Asavash returned to the sky upon her disk, leading a choir of her followers in the Sacred Hymn of Tzeentch. Miresson’s Gyrocorps had been so kind as to haul great crystal monoliths engraved with sorcerous sigils over the Second House, which now fell into place among the drifting Celestite orbs of the Court. Fires of damnation itself flowed between the monoliths, and Asavash herself shuddered with bliss as the energies of Chaos coursed through her veins.
The battle joined, Asavash’s Templar Chosen hacked at Hetefer’s undead legion like farmers harvesting wheat- yet always more replaced them, their countless spears felling the Chosen one at a time. The Penumbra 3rd was all but stopped in its tracks by the raging saurian warriors of the Unblessed Exiles. Kuugax’s Goroan’s butchered Tyrian soldiers while the Fyreslayers Karghax Eboneheat and Brynifor-Grimnir fought back-to-back alongside their warriors against a slavering tide of Moulder rat-things.
“In the Name of the Dark Pantheon, this wretched place shall be sanctified by their Divine Will!” Asavash intoned as she channeled Tzeentch’s magical night into the ritual, yet something felt… amiss. She peered into prophecy, into the future that she meant to manifest. Despite their earlier ploy against the March, not a single Ghoul fought upon the battlefield below. Neither were the Bloodpyre Tribe nor the Murder of Axes, their threads of fate pulled astray by other battles. Without the carnage they were meant to wreak, the shadow of desperation fell across Asavash’s thoughts. She cast about for the terrible zombie dragon King Scrazoth, a force that could yet enact the violence Asavash required, and found herself abandoned.
Instead, she saw the 83rd Gyrocorp on approach, having finally shaken the ambush. Asavash’s relief was short-lived, however, as Urif Miresson’s unfortunate airships came under renewed assault, their decks hammered with lightning bolts revealing the Sigmarite-clad Questors of the Tarnished Tempest. Already on an attack run, a Gyrocorp airship corkscrewed wildly out of control, slamming down into Wolfram lines and panicking the already hard-pressed warriors. Only Maggottail’s wretched creations seemed unbothered, but even as they closed in upon the Soot Hounds’ leader, Captain Garth “the Lucky” was spared by the timely intervention of Decuriarch Marcus Aurelian, himself badly wounded. Bloodied but unbowed, the X Fretensis joined the battle, shoring up the Soot Hounds’ lines as Lord-Terminos TyZaren set upon the enemy like an avenging angel. Aggrieved beyond reason at the unfathomable loss of his warriors, the enraged Stormcast cut a bloody swathe toward Kuugax, vengeance and retribution his weapons of choice in this moment.
Hanging as if by threads, the monoliths about Asavash wobbled, and in a final act of desperation, the Tzaangor herself turned to Kuugax for the power to complete the ritual… yet the Breaker of Chains would have no hand in perverting his ancestral lands to Chaos. His own rage toward the Stormcast momentarily sated, Kuugax chose instead to quit the field before more Goroan lives could be lost to Wolfram folly.
Their threads cut, the monoliths crashed down as Asavash fled and what had been a battle became a rout. Without Kuugax’ Goroans in the fight, the combined arms of the Tyrian Guild could follow up TyZaren’s unstoppable advance, driving back the disordered Penumbra 3rd as Rygra Darkkin and her Able Albern Baking Company ran to ground any they could before the Wolfram commanders slipped away. The day was won, and for a moment Union fighter and Valeguard soldier celebrated without ill regard between them.
Yet even as the allies reclaimed Lucrum, they found the dead of both friend and foe afloat on higher waters, the lowest streets, warehouses and vaults already lost and deeply submerged…
Valeguard and Boltbreakers Union Major Victory, Valeguard Glory
Deeper into the Citadel
The scout walked carefully down the long corridor, mindful of every footstep. She had made it deeper than any of her comrades, passing down through the cold but well maintained areas known as the Gilded Manor, and into a new layer they had taken to calling the Snarl. It was a fitting name. The air here was heavy and humid, the stonework is plainer and less pristine, and creeping plant life had taken root on every surface. Moulds and fungus lined the wall, creepers and vines hung from the ceilings, and giant mushroom-like forests clogged the open spaces and seemed to shift and move to block previously open passages. The plantlife was hostile, corrosive and dangerous. The passageways were smaller, yet there were more large open areas, alive with the susurrations of the overgrowth and the feeling of being watched. After the coldly pristine upper levels, this entire layer made her skin crawl. Burn, more like. The further down she progressed, the more she felt like her limbs were on fire from the inside.
For days, she had been following a trail of broken and shattered masonry. It drove through the jungle-like catacombs, a steamroller’s path of snapped stalks and flattened flora. Scorch marks lined the walls, and frost-shattered stone trailed in its wake. Mogrek had been here.
Ahead, the jungle abruptly ended at the entryway to a grand chamber. No lights filled this space, no carvings or images to mar the smooth black walls that stretched upwards beyond sight. Floors of polished black marble gleamed in the reflection of her torch. At the far end of the chamber stood a massive gateway, as tall as a mega-gargant and sealed with the insignia of the twin-tailed comet. It was, she knew immediately, the door to whatever inner keep the Citadel was built to protect. It pulsed with an energy that made the hair on her neck stand on end and her skin itch and burn all the fiercer.
There too lay Mogrek.
The massive orruk was slumped against the door. Great rents and burns scarred his body, the toll of tearing open the Noctis Eye realmgate and the battle through the City above overwhelming even his own prodigious rate of healing. The Longblade lay at his side, its flames low and deep red, while the Everwinter he held was a mere wisp, all but spent. For a moment, the scout believed he might already be dead, before the orruk rolled his head back and bellowed an ear-shattering cry at the sealed door. He raised his hand, and hammered the blade against the bulwark, its flames washing the ancient seal in red. Then, his burst of energy spent, he slumped back against the wall, readying himself for another strike.
The scout turned and ran, with all the speed of the realms behind her. She did not run because she had seen Mogrek - she had witnessed the beast’s rampage through the city, and was hardened to his monstrous visage. She did not run because of the dangers of the jungle around her, trusting to her instincts and her veteran’s savvy.
She ran because of what she had seen when the beast struck the gate. There, at the center of the twin-tailed comet that legends say Grungni himself had set, she saw a crack splinter the golden seal.