Flawed Legacy
The Dornayar name was dead, struck from record and memory alike. Enthroned upon an artefact-device of mythic creation, their Satrap had forfeited his claim to Ceraph and thrown in his lot with the usurper and vampire Mithridates Alti. In the end, those who once fought for him turned upon him, and he was struck down by his own Seraphon equerry, the Skink Starseer known as Tetar-Munteq.
Like many who rescinded their fealty to the Dornayar, Ceraph Dariel turned a blind eye to Tetar-Munteq, allowing her Coalesced to flourish in the deep wilderness of his Ceraphate. As with the rest of the Dornayar, most Iscarneth simply chose to forget the Skink had ever existed.
***
Tetar-Munteq leapt nimbly off the back of Kaldera and placed a reassuring hand on the Draconith’s snout. The task before her would not end her, but it would take a heavy toll.
Ham-Galad, the Throne of Light, crown jewel of the Dornayar. Legend claims the Lumineth crafted it before the spirefall, while folklore says it was a Seraphon relic from a world before time. Tetar-Munteq knew both to be true and neither. It was a conduit wrought by a god of light from the dreams of Dracothian, an impossibility of deep Haixiah cast in the ridiculous appearance of a chair. Thick vines curled around and away from it like exposed veins, half-concealed by a thick and clingy fog in the hot, damp chamber. The Skink made ready to sit, and hold the power of a sun in the palm of her hand.
Tetar-Munteq’s years among the Iscarneth had served their purpose. The Voice-of-Embers had spoken, and her time here was finished. She would abandon the Dominion to its fate, whatever that may be. Her place was elsewhere, now.
***
The ground shook and the skies split with a deafening thunder. Defenders mustered out and prepared for battle, even as their attackers braced for unexpected counter-attack. Both looked up, dumbfounded, as behemoths of cut stone pulled themselves from the mantle. Crafted among and from the deep and hollow places of the Dominion, a dozen Seraphon temple-ships shook themselves free of the earth that once held them and departed, upward and away. They gave no reason and fought no battles. The Ceraphate and her allies took it as an ill omen; the Waaagh! spat rage at their backsides for cowardice. Neither side understood, but soon they would.
Ellisar City
None suffered worse for the Starseer’s departure than Ellisar City. Her streets stood empty, her citizens evacuated to Iscarion only to be caught there beneath the Bad Moon. The Dawnguard and their allies had marched en masse to reinforce other battlefields, trusting in luck to spare the city while they fought elsewhere.
Great slabs of earth fell from the Seraphon temple-ship as it passed over the city, obliterating whole buildings below as those who remained sought what cover they could. Seeking rest and resupply after their battles to secure Iden’s vaults, the Caengan lodge witnessed the disaster from afar and rushed to lend aid. Alrik and the Children of Humbis were already within when they arrived, searching for survivors. With Renaya Oathsworn away in Iscarion, the city was vulnerable. That’s when Alrik and Fhurgyn heard it, looking to each other to confirm their worst fear: the ground-shuddering tread of a Rogue Idol. Leaving his Runesmiths behind to shore up the city’s defenses with great Runes of Fiery Determination, Alrik and Fhurgyn sallied forth to harry and delay, hoping to bleed the Waaagh! before it reached the city… yet what they met could hardly be a horde at all.
Ironjaw Megaboss Beergutz and Kruleboy Mugwort Widegrin had fought under the Celandec flag during the civil war and lost most everything in their defeat. Branded bandits and raiders, they hadn’t the strength at arms to reach Catarhactes or the ability to navigate Haixiah. They’d scratched a living off rocks, pillaging what they could, fighting anyone who wouldn’t fight back. When the Temple-Ship tore itself from the ground, it had destroyed what passed for their home; seeing the city on their doorstep finally vulnerable, they’d thought to deliver a worthy prize to Mogrek Longblade and a place somewhere other than the dregs of his armies.
The Dawnguard would not have it. Their teeth cut on stronger foes, the Caengan Lodge and the Children of Humbris set upon their enemy, cutting them down and driving them back. Beergutz was put down by Fhurgyn in single combat, while the Widegrin tribe turned to their Rogue Idol to save them as they retreated. The stone gargant had once fought upon the span of Elena’s Bridge, yet now Alrik’s steam tank, hidden among the woods far afield, emerged and blasted it apart from behind. Their foe routed, the Dawnguard withdrew to Ellisar City and prepared for the final days of the war.
Four Sisters
Lightning burned Artyr’s face as the Stormcast before him ruptured, the daemon blade Clarent licking at the dying Stormcast’s soul even as it returned to Azyr. There would be little left to reforge, and what returned to battle in Sigmarite clad would be forever haunted by the manner of his slaying. Then the warrior was gone, streaking upward, leaving nothing for the Blackblade to wrench his namesake from. Closed his eyes and grinned, raw tongue licking at chapped lips. Each brutal slaying was another step along the path, each dark deed righteous in the eyes of the Everchosen. Abraxia’s favor was upon him, and he would not fail her.
***
Beergutz and Mugwort weren’t the only detritus of wars long done to turn up in the Prime Dominion. The Many Wives of Dale, mega-gargants all, had earned their moniker among the defenders of Amasya. Their reputation alleged they’d bedded the renowned Freeguild Marshal Dale von Ervin, and true or false, the name had stuck. After Amasya was destroyed they made their way down river, pillaging the Scarlands before finally washing ashore in the Prime Dominion. Paddling the Shimmersea like great sea monsters, they’d smashed boats from both sides before finally thinking to make the Four Sisters their new den. They thought wrong.
The isles would never be the same again; the Sporesong Swarm had seen to that. Living proof that even the finest works of Alarielle can be turned to Nurgle’s ends, the once-Sylvaneth that was Puscifex Blightwing had twisted and perverted the Four Sisters into something reeking and rotten, a festering boil in the flesh of the Prime Dominion. They descended upon the gargant interlopers like angry hive insects, but were swatted away; the Many Wives had fought worse, and the Swarm itself were too few.
The Hand of the Rotten Orchard and the Cult of the Blue Flame had other ideas. The decaying forest and foul, soupy fog served to conceal the Chaos ambush. In pain and enraged, the Many Wives rampaged, crashing blindly through the forest in their fury. Maggestus Rotspleen and Jabathai Twistflame served rival gods, but in this battle they fought as brothers born. Formidable opponents and capable sorcerers in their own right, they cut down the mega-gargants no differently than the trees around them. The last two, subdued and defeated, were dragged howling into the depths of the Sporesong’s foul forest, their end unknown.
Standing silently among the trees, the Basalt Lord watched from afar and knew their works to be good.
Lhoris
The tohnasai trees of Orym Forest had taken root even as the Prime Dominion had first formed around them, their seeds carried on the nascent Shimmersea itself. For an age they’d grown tall, the shadow of their boughs a place of peace and contemplation. Marshal Casca would see them cleared and repurposed, the woods made into palisades and archer’s stakes to be set along a trench network cut through their roots.
Ironweld cannon crews and ranks of fusiliers made ready to fire from behind these makeshift defenses even as the Iron Spire Guard and the Fighting Legion of Hochazec formed ranks beneath Horith’s Tower. Silent and dour, the Iron Templar’s Ruination chamber assembled at the fore, ready to break the enemy’s charge like water upon rock.
The time had come. Gargants and ogors lumbered forward; cannons boomed, and a mancrusher gargant toppled over, killed instantly by a shell through the eye. With a rain of skull fragments its limp, flabby body crushed a number of orruks and chaos warriors too slow to scatter. Yet the horde’s advance did not cease; goregrunta cavalry bravely- or madly- rushed the defenses, only to be blown apart by the crossbows of black ark corsairs or fusilier’s shot. Herded into a single approach by withering fire, the Iron Templar’s Reclusians and Liberators met them head on with a counter-charge of their own.
“Blood for the Blood God!” the Reclusian-Prime screamed as he butchered, the final words catching in his throat. In the heat of battle, he’d forgotten… or perhaps remembered… who he was. “Skulls for the God-King!” the Reclusian next to him bellowed, and the Prime returned to his red work.
The Waaagh! advance faltered as the goregruntas lost momentum, but soon the weight of numbers threatened to overwhelm the embattled Iron Templars. Into the gap marched the Fighting Legion, Marshal Aegrun’s hydra mount snapping and biting at the press before them. Still the line threatened to buckle and fail, the lads behind so eager to get stuck in that they pushed their fellows onto Azyrite blades.
Their Ruination chamber finally opened, the remainder of the Stormscale Covnenat struck down upon bolts of lightning, more Reclusians and Liberators joining the effort from behind their enemy’s line of battle. Caught between hammer and anvil, the Waaagh! routed and withdrew. The Armies of Azyr had won the day, but their foe would soon return.
Hycis
Abandoned by their leader Ghostface in pursuit of other, more important matters, the skaven of Clan Skorchfur had taken up residency in the Myriil Monastery. Hoping for an easy battle to bolster faltering morale and prove their mettle, Ghostface’s underlings had the bright idea to simply loot the monastery if they didn’t see any action. Of course, what they hadn’t counted on was the monk’s vows of abject poverty and the hundred Rogue Idols which soon descended upon them.
Their beachhead secured by Gazlok Blackstone’s warhost, the Rogue Idols hauled themselves from the depths, the land breaking and cracking open beneath the weight of their tread. For a single brief moment, Clan Skorchfur prepared to fight, thinking only of the glory they’d win. These aspirations were dashed as Tragrok Skullsmasha’s Shadow Trappas crashed the monk’s own hijacked supply ships into the monastery’s towers even as Tragrok himself scaled them from below. Abandoning the towers to their enemy, the skaven routed entirely as Dolgul the Wise and his Shadowsplittaz teleported into the food pantry Skorchfur’s clanrats had been busily raiding, seeming to burst from within the sacks of leeks and potatoes to hack and slash through the choking stench of fear musk.
Hycis had fallen without a fight. Not a single stone of the monastery was left atop another, yet of the monks themselves, there was no sign.
Namys
Galkus Goredrenched watched the storm break upon Namys, and stood alone against it. What remained of his soul was drawn to places of battle and bloodshed and for such a young land, the Prime Dominion had seen a great deal of both.
A hundred Rogue Idols marched against him, the tortured sky twisting above them. Galkus knew there would be no victory here, but what did that matter to him? They were Nighthaunt, and death held no terror to them. The winds picked up speed, whipping at Galkus’ incorporeal form as the Rogue Idols crashed forward like a landslide. In their midst was the eye of the storm, something so great and terrible even the Idols parted around it. It was a vortex of Waaagh! energy, caught in a feedback loop with the Idols around it. Galkus heard the tell-tale howl of dire wolves, their half-rotten bodies running about the cyclone like shepherd’s dogs, and within the storm itself… bodies, dozens, hundreds of bodies, great, furry things…
“We dun did it!” Dur’log Mawmangla gleefully howled across to Kuzma Wulfynn. “PIG’NADO SPIN!!!”
Zaleria
It began with half-drowned orruks clinging to the wreckage of their ships. High Queen Heferter’s vigilance was unrelenting; even as they crawled ashore, her Deathrattle cut them down with javelins and arrows. There’s nothing like a chance at a scrap to motivate an orruk, and those left alive rallied together to push up the beach, eager to get stuck in. Skeletal horseman and ancient chariots counter-charged, scattering them back to the sea before slaughtering every last brute.
Something ponderous shifted beneath the waves even as the dead orruks were washed back out to sea. More than one thing; many things, bulbous and misshapen. Dozens, then hundreds.
The full might of Waaagh! Mogrek had fallen upon Zaleria.
***
Four generations of the Mithridates bloodline rested in silence upon the Candlesoul Dais. They said nothing as Shella Haunchknyfe jolted awake, woken by the dream that had saved her life twice before. She drew a shuddering breath and shouted.
“Alarm!”
***
Darathuus Rootguide stirred to wakefulness. Something was terribly wrong. Nearby, in the Dais, Shella’s mercenaries were mustering for battle, hacking away at the undergrowth that clung to it and setting fire to the Dais’ approaches. This stirred an ember of anger in the Rootguide’s chest, but he paused; they wouldn’t be doing this without reason.
Then, Darathuus felt the tremor in Zaleria’s roots and knew their doom was at hand.
***
Heterfer’s expeditionary forces fell back in good order, but there would be no stopping the Idols’ advance. The forest was crushed and ground beneath them, reduced to so much mud and splintered wood. Leaving the Dominion ruined and aflame in their passage, the armies of Mad Queen Silanore, Azoth Realmgorger, and the Little Wren swept through the forest before the slower-moving Idols, certain of their victory.
Haluspiré Joyuse was ready for them.
Even as the Chuglord’s diabolical engines surged forward they became ensnared by Spiré’s trap. Bitter cold stilled the Realmgorger’s fires as Spiré counter-charged in her new war-form, clawing and tearing in a wicked mockery of Silanore’s familiar frenzies. The Mad Queen would not be waylaid, however, and left her ally to his battle; she had other plans.
The Emerald Pilgrims and the Screaming Court left the sounds of battle and the crushing din of the Rogue Idols behind them, searching, seeking. They knew their prize was hidden here among the depth and darkness of the haunted wood; they had only to find it.
With a terrible crash, battle was joined once more. Baal’oot and Varrag da Wall had not abandoned their Remnant allies to their fate, and had come to Zaleria with all haste to fend off the impending attack. Badly outnumbered, the Wargrove of Nod bolstered the line even as an endless tide of frothing, gibbering ghouls pulled Seraphon and Orruks alike to their grisly deaths, feasting upon dead and wounded alike even as the battle raged around them.
With Spiré’s ambush broken, the Chuglords rejoined the battle as it spread further through the haunted wood. The first of the Rogue Idols caught up, crushing and smashing as they came to grips with the enemy. Triumphant madness in her eyes, Silanore watched as Baa’oot, Varrag, and Dynawr’s resolve wavered in the face of overwhelming odds.
The Mad Queen howled as Viktor Selvig’s blade drove upward through her jaw and out the side of her face, tumbling away and clawing at the sword before wrenching it free. The Grey Blood Host, Rootgor Wildgave and rallied Amarna’s Expedition crashed into the enemy line, sweeping out of the forest en masse to catch the seething mass of ghouls and ogors from two sides even as more Rogue Idols waded into the battle, crushing fiend and foe alike with abandon. Silanore screeched at her second, Sir Gnawbone, to bear her flag. She would not let the Tetrarchy slip away; she was too close to be cheated now.
***
Thirty-one minutes after the dream woke her, Shella’s breath caught in her throat as a nightmare made flesh tore its way into the clearing. It paused, leering at the soldiers blocking her way into the tumbled-down stone building and the Tetrarchy within. Both sides stood frozen in the moment, waiting for the other to make a move, for all hell to break loose.
Something stirred in the woods behind Silanore, something big, and then something else. Shella bit her bottom lip so hard it bled as a wicked, fiendish grin came over the Mad Queen’s horrifying, bloody features.
Clan Kyodai had arrived.
The mercenary stomp bowled into the clearing, crushing and kicking the Champions like children’s toys. Shella found herself screaming orders before she was aware of having thought them even as her soldiers fought, desperate for any advantage against their towering adversaries. She spun on the spot, looking, knowing what was coming-
A great and wicked hand, splattered with gore, swept out and knocked her from her feet. Long fingers wrapped around Shella’s body, and threw her against the stone wall, knocking the air from her lungs as she collapsed in a heap, the world spinning before her eyes. She made to shout as the Mad Queen bolted past her and into the Dais, but she couldn’t draw the breath to speak and in another moment, her world went black.
***
The halls and rooms of the Dais were empty as Silanore stalked them, alone. No, not alone; they were here. She could feel them. The Mad Queen rung the bell on her scepter and bellowed her accusations.
“Mithridates Bir, blasphemer! Mithridates Iki, deceiver! Mithridates Uc, defiler! Mithridates Dort, sacreligious!” The bell tolled with each name.
A whisper upon the air, and Silanore realized she stood in the presence of the Tetrarchy, alone, undefended, four skulls arranged around an ancient crown. “Silanore…”
“... you are but a crying babe, lost in the forest.” Mithridates Bir said gently.
“We speak with the dead, on behalf of the living, and we speak for the living, on behalf of the dead.” Mithridates Iki continued, firm and unyielding.
“You are apostate,” Mithridates Uc snarled. “Dead yet alive, living like the dead.”
“What did you hope to accomplish here?” Mithridates Dort mocked.
A face appeared in front of the Mad Queen and she swatted it away. Spectres meant nothing to her. “By sparing mortals of inevitable death, you blaspheme against Nagash! Now doom comes for you and yours! Your treachery is clear, your deception revealed! Now face the judgment of your betters!”
“Judgement…” Uc’s voice carried like a knife’s blade. “My family has named me the lowest of us, and yet still you are nothing before me.”
Silanore looked about as more faces appeared, dozens, then hundreds, then thousands.
“Generations of hallowed supplicants entrusted their souls to us… trusted our faith… trusted our power…” Iki continued, rising anger in his tone. “Do not think you speak for the Undying King, babe. We are your betters, and our doom has come for you. A hundred thousand souls, an underworld of our family’s making, descends upon you!”
Silanore howled in dread and panic, her delusion run amok as the spirit hosts set upon her like starving hounds, biting and cutting and clawing, their voices screaming hunger for their pound of flesh. She pitched and hacked and spit her magicks, losing sight of the skulls even as their voices deafened her, thundering inside her own mind.
Then they were gone- the spirits, the skulls- and she was alone for a long, still moment. Suddenly, a great pain tore through her chest and she crashed against the wall, looking down at the Stormcast blade plunged through one side of her ribcage and out the other. She made to shout for Azoth as the blade was ripped free of her body, but she couldn’t draw the breath to speak and in another moment, her world went black.
Hycis Destroyed
Namys Destroyed
Zaleria Destroyed
The Shimmersea
Kaptin Sharkbiter swaggered across the deck, his thick bowed legs rolling heedlessly with the unnatural sea of light below. The stern deck of Da Ungorkable had been taken over by a bewildering array of drums, tubes, metal sheets and whatever else the weirdboyz had found lying around. A chugcast something had been built at its center, a whirling array of metal arms and squealing pistons built around a central forge. Before they’d left, the mad Warchanter Wapkagut had sat for an hour, staring at the metal monstrosity without moving. Then, snatching up a jawbone from a leather cord at his waist, he had hit the construct one ringing blow across what might pass for its head. The sound had echoed within the metal until the last reverberation was almost beyond hearing, then the thing reared to life, bashing the huge lithodon-skin drum that sat before it. It hit another, and then another, its metal limbs unfolding and picking up speed until it beat a crazed war call all around it. Sharkbiter smiled all the wider, his yellow filed teeth glinting. There was no denying the rhythm fired up the green of his blood.
The fleet flared out behind him, plowing through the waves like a green tide. Each ship had its own orruk drummer picking up the rhythm of the metal monstrosity aboard his flagship, and as what was left of the armada spread out around his flagship, with their prey in sight, he had never felt more connected with the Waaagh! This was what the Son of Gork had promised them, and what they had been born to do.
The aelflings and their allies had evaded him in the bloody straits, turning his pursuit into an ambush. They had fought well, and had luck on their side then, but that was all spent now. He had their flagship The Inevitable in sight. He’d seen a wild maw-krusha take down a rhinox once - a bloody, brief and spectacularly violent sight. He would recreate that sight today.
“Pull harder ladz!,” he yelled down at the crew below struggling to raise yet another sheet to the roaring wind. “Let’s end this!”
***
Admiral Soraya’s orders were quick, precise and clear, and her crew leapt to respond. The finest of the Iscarneth navy - and thus the Iscarneth as a whole - served aboard her flagship. They understood their duty. Despite the successful ambush, they had been pursued for nearly a week by the orruk warships. There would be no better time. The allied command had promised her help, though they could not say what it would be. The time to make a stand, to form the iron anvil that the orruks would smash themselves against had come. She looked out at the allied forces rallied around her, at the gleaming guns and the sleek Khainite catamarans that flanked her warship. Yes, they would hold. They must.
“Close crop, be ready on those lines! Let them come into the guns then keep apace, we can still out dance them-“
Her command was cut short as the ship suddenly heaved and lurched forward. A cry from the railing brought her running over to see the sea around them bubbling and churning. Its light dimmed a sickly green, and Admiral Soraya saw the reason for both at once. Great, writhing masses of stinking bog kelp rose from the lighted depths, clinging to the sides of her ship. Foul swamp gasses rose from the morass, making her gag. Sailing through this would be like sailing through mud. Her advantages were running low.
Across the shrinking distance, Swampcalla Shaman Meletuz cackled with glee at their floundering prey, and called more Waaagh! energy to fill their sails.
***
The first blood of the final battle for the Shimmersea was spilled as a stormcloud coalesced between the approaching fleets. Lightning struck down at the invaders, slaying a few and setting fires across the decks. Then, from the storm, the Shattered Skies Extremis Chamber emerged. Draconiths broke from the stormclouds, falling like hawks on the approaching ships, gleaming knights upon their backs and grim Reclusian warriors in their claws. Fire rained down on the armada, setting a panic among some of the smaller crafts. The orruks armada responded swiftly however, well practiced now in defending against aerial attacks. Killbows sprang into action, launching dozens of beast-skewer bolts into the air. Stormcast warriors caught by the wicked bolts were sent flashing back to the Anvil, but their mounts were not so lucky. A dozen or more of the rare and treasured draconiths were killed in the return volley. Their riders and passengers, if lucky, came crashing down onto the armada’s ships, or caught themselves in the light sea. The unlucky ones, their armoured mass and momentum too great, punched deep into the Shimmersea itself and were sent spinning out the other side, disappearing as distant immortal specks drifting helplessly towards the Perimeter.
What few of the Reclusians managed to land upon the orruk ships carved a bloody path through the pressing crew towards the helms. From overhead, they looked like sharks swimming through a school of fish, singular gaps in the pressing horde. Yet they were too few. One by one, they were pulled under by the press of orruk hakkas, vanishing in blasts of armoured shrapnel and solitary bolts of lightning.
Mios Altenguard, racing across the battlefield in his own draconic form, breached the farthest into the charging armada. A half-dozen man-skewer bolts had pierced his armoured sides as he crashed into the upper deck of Da Ungorkable, yet still he fought. Gathering a great gout of sorcerous power, he let it loose into the bowels of the machine drummer on the bridge. Elemental fire and ice screamed against each other until the stress of their forces sent a crack running through the machine. Stress fractures spread like spider webs, and with the sound of a peeling brass bell the machine tore itself apart. Weakened and bloody, Mios took to the skies once more, having accomplished as much as he could that day.
***
With a thundering crash, the first of the orruk ships slammed into The Inevitable. Mayric’s Kharadron mercenaries swept the deck with a withering hail of fire, providing a gap for Soto’s piratical orruks to charge across. They were met head on by Mazoka Kurse-Breaka, shouting a Waaagh! of his own in defiance as the two mighty orruks met in combat. The Ironfang fleet, sailing so long under Kaptin Sharkbiter’s orders, turned their colours to the new highest bidder and began firing on the towering Hyakki Yagyō. Shots peppered the massive targets, tearing great rents across them, but the gargants found their wounds healing almost as soon as they appeared. Channeling the arcane energies of Ghur into a swarm of glittering motes of green rising from the sargassum swamp suddenly around them, Glottul Coalcutter shaped the Waaagh into a healing green wave. Surging forward under this revitalizing tide, the boarders pushed deep across the deck, its life-giving magics scattered the wraiths of Oldstone. The X Fretensis, headed by their champion Baldor, formed up around the Admiral, ready to defend her to the last, yet it was Asavash the Serene that stepped in front of them. Waves of holy fire washed off of her, searing away the green mists that in blessed radiance and stopping the horde in its tracks. Bedecked in runic gold and holding her holy sword aloft, Asavash leveled the blade at the orruks before her, seeking any that would accept the challenge of single combat. Yet before any could step forward, a rending crash thundered across the deck, throwing the boarders and defenders alike from their feet.
Rising from the sea, tearing through the sargassum with ease, roared three monstrous Soul Grinders. Fed on the souls lost in the devastation wrought across the countryside, the daemon-machines roared in brazen and brassy fury. Hell-wrought iron claws like monstrous crabs closed around several of the smaller orruk vessels, splintering their keels and dragging them down into the light. Another clawed its way onto the deck of Da Ungorkable, scything death in all directions and disgorging a slew of warriors bearing the marks of the Dark Choosing. Retchagar Crowfeast and his warriors, their weapons dripping virulent toxins, and the Fimm of Baron Krogg attacked the orruk boarders from behind, slaughtering killbow crews and orruk sailors with wild abandon.
Sensing the tide was turning, the Iscari Dawnguard revealed their own secret weapon. Channeling the power of the Black Lotus Combine and the Abyssal Sword, Lethe Ashendawn released the power of the Incarnate of Chamon bound within her. Growing in size and wreathed in elemental flames, the soulbound amalgam monstrosity unleashed a rain of magmatic stone arrows searing through the sky and punching down into the ships of the orruks. Fire and panic spread, and with their attack repelled, the orruk fleet looked on the brink of collapse.
And then the Foot appeared.
Plunging down out of the sky, the colossal green Foot of Gork came stamping down on the pyroclastic creature that had once been Lethe. Raising her arms, the magma monster looked for a moment as though it would catch the Foot, holding back the full fury of the Green God. Then, in a spray of sparks and molten stone, the legs of the creature exploded under the pressure. It collapsed, stone cracking and falling away, its broken shell expelling the form of Lethe once more. A second stomp smashed the metalith they rode to broken pieces, raining down into the Shimmersea as Koyou pulled Lethe clear. A mad cackling sounded from Da Ungorkable’s deck, the Swampcalla Meletuz once more revelling in power, and the Foot pulled up again searching for another target.
On one of the smaller orruk ships, Kido Takara emerged from below decks and squinted in the sudden brightness. The Exiled Blades had pushed hard, repelling boarders and counter-charging across the deck and down into their own ship. It had been butcher’s work, hard and close fighting in the confines of the lower decks, but at last the ship was clear. The clean air was a blessing after the reek below decks, but her moment of relief was short-lived. A shadow fell across the ship, and Kido looked up in confusion at the massive green foot hovering in the air above her. Then the Foot fell.
“No!” Veithan cried, throwing herself across Da Ungorkable’s deck and slamming bodily into the Swampcalla Shaman. It was a desperate tackle, nothing more, and Veithan strained in anxious fear to hear the thundering crash of the Foot, yet nothing came. With Meletuz’ concentration broken, the spectral Foot dissipated a dozen feet or so above the heads of the Exiled Blades.
“That will cost you,” the orruk growled, scowling at Veithan. The Waaagh-mother went for her blades, but the orruk was faster, flinging a handful of oddly glinting powders across her eyes and mouth.
Veithan’s vision swam. The shaman before her writhed, his form twisting and distorting like a flame caught in molasses. His leering, toad-like face bubbled and changed, becoming faces she recognized, faces she had known and trusted in the past. Orruks she had fought alongside once, who had shown her the ways of the Waaagh! to begin with. She could see the Green radiating from the shaman, bubbling and churning. The Waaagh! was strong here, and he wore it like a cloak. Even now it called to her to cast aside all else and give in to its wild abandon, join the great fight amongst the horde, where she belonged.
A heavy blow from the shaman’s wooden staff sent her sprawling across the deck. She knew that she shouldn’t have let that hit her, but it was so hard to concentrate in this haze.
Another blow cracked across her back, and she felt something in her shoulder give way. She tumbled aside, blades held up defensively. She had to fight back. Even if she couldn’t defend herself, she had to defend another.
A third blow swung down at her head, and this time she was ready. Turning the blow aside with her short blade, she spun in close to the shaman, spinning around his back and burying her dagger to the hilt in the side of his head. The orruk slumped against her, staff clattering to the deck and one weak hand clutching at her arm.
Veithan looked down at the dying creature, and saw the face of Sokrateez staring back at her.
With a start, she slowly lowered her old orruk mentor to the ground, cradling his leap in her lap. One pale hand reached up, dragging a bloody handprint across her face.
“Da Waaagh!…” the croaking voice spit out “… don’t forget.”
Then, in the voice that she remembered so well, she heard “It found you when you needed it, and now you turn your back on the Green? On me?”
With a cry, Veithan pushed the corpse away from her and crawled back on the deck, getting clear of it. The orruk’s form no longer danced and swam, and she saw only the dead Swampcalla before her, yet Sokrateez’ words haunted her. She could feel the pulse of the Waaagh! around her still, yet it felt strangely distant to her. Unfamiliar.
Veithan was terrified.
***
With the destruction of Lethe’s metalith, the tide had turned once more for the Waaagh!’s favour. The Acolyte of the Burning Contagion had routed Mournful Choir, aided by Yoshiro wrestling the last of the Soul Grinders off the deck and into the Shimmsea. The skaven and orruks swarmed across The Inevitable once more, intent on bringing the flagship down.
High above the heaving deck, Quolk Killwhisker leapt across Da Ungorkable’s rigging. He had left his Laughing Rats fighting off a party of Blightking boarders, two of the Nurglites dead to the sweeping blows of his curved blade and a third with a smoking hole where its forehead should have been. He had larger prey in mind. He could still win this battle by cutting the head from the fleet. Kaptain Sharkbiter stamped and bellowed orders below, unaware of the doom that stalked above him. Building to a run across the swaying yardarm, the Paladin of the Horned Rat leapt out into the air, his wicked blade plunging downwards in a killing strike.
It was the Sigmarite trophy Sharkbiter wore that saved him from death, torn from a defeated Stormcast Eternal at the Ashfall Delta. Quolk’s blow struck off the charm and deflected upward, plunging deep into the orruk’s shoulder instead of his heart. The skaven gave a quick pull on the blade, hoping to free it and finish the job, but it was stuck fast into bone and iron muscle. One massive hand the size of Quolk’s head wrapped around his throat and lifted him bodily upwards. A dagger leaping to hand, he struck wildly at the orruk’s arm, but could do little more than draw a shallow bloody line before a gnarled forehead smashed into his face with the force of a cannonball. The first blow broke his nose, sending a shower of foul blood across the orruk captain. The second shattered his snout and sent broken teeth falling free. With the third, he felt a crack echo through his head. Blood swept across his vision, and the noise of the battlefield was drowned out by a pulsing whine. Kaptin Sharkbiter tried to raise his arm to pull the blade free, but the limb hung dead at his side. Growling in anger and disdain, he hurled the skaven down a nearby hatchway and into the empty bowels of the ship below.
Quolk lay broken in the darkness. No sound from the battle above reached his ruptured ears. Time was reduced to each ragged, wet breath. He was dying. His mind wandered in a fog, trying to offer one last prayer, but he could not find the words, so he simply readied himself to meet the Great Horned Rat.
A brief flash of green light lit the dim room. Through blood-filled eyes, Quolk saw the skaven figure before him, clad in runic silver plate and crowned with horns. With ruptured ears, he heard the voice.
“Brother. Friend. Warrior of the Great Horned Rat. The time for Ascension draws near, and those true of faith are called to serve.”
Quolk felt metal pressed against his tattered lips, and cool liquid on his tongue.
“For the worthy, those truly dedicated to the Great Horned Rat, the Chalice brings life. For the rest, death. You are called. Will you drink?”
The hold was quiet when Gorrum Bladebreaka push through the doorway, quickly gathering an armful of large man-skewer bolts before hurrying topside once more. He did not notice the small, bloody footprints that disappeared into the bulkhead wall, or the smell of burnt metals that hung about the room.
***
Aboard The Inevitable, Acolyte Blisterpaw found himself below decks as well, though for a very different purpose. While his fellows battered away at the Admiral’s bodyguards to little effect, he had followed the scent of sulphur and metals deep into the guts of the ship. A few minutes of searching and some quiet knifework later, and he stood before the ship’s powder magazine. Taking the keys from the dead powder master’s body, he quickly found a small cask and started making a long line along the ground.
***
Admiral Soraya stood her ground, the last of her defenders arrayed around her. They had been so close to driving off the orruks so many times. She knew she need only hold for a few minutes longer, and then the help the allied war leaders had promised her would arrive.
“Stand fast! Stand fast! We are the pride of the Iscarneth Navy, the rulers of the Shimmersea! We shall never break our flag to these barbarians, these creatures, these-“
BANG
The shot took her clean through the center of her chest, the warpstone bullet punching clear.
She looked down, confused, then back to the sprinting form of the skaven that had emerged from the lower decks behind her at a run.
“FLEE-FLEE all-things! Quick-fast! Fire!”
The smoke of burning powder was already rising from the open hatchway behind Blisterpaw. Those left on the deck of The Inevitable broke rank and ran, their mortal foes of a moment before forgotten. Those that could leapt aboard the orruks ships, or any of the milling smaller vessels that spun in their wake. Many others simply jumped for the Shimmersea and the promise of land on the horizon.
Admiral Soraya raised a hand slowly to the hole in her chest, poking at it tentatively. Strange. She thought this should hurt, but it didn’t. She didn’t feel anything.
The Inevitable exploded in a torrent of fire, raining shrapnel down across the Shimmersea.
On the deck of Da Ungorkable, a cheer went up for da Waaagh! and for Kaptin Sharkbiter, his dead arm hanging listlessly at his side.
The Battle for the Shimmersea was over. Waaagh! Mogrek ruled the waves, Help for the beleaguered outer settlements of the Prime Dominion would not be coming.
Waaagh! Mogrek Victory
The Bad Moon Above
War had once again come to the ancient streets of Iscarion. A veil of madness and gloom hung over the streets as the Bad Moon leered down from above, its ever-shifting surface taking on the appearance of a boggle-eyed face locked in a rictus grimace. The wealthy elite of the city huddled alongside the servant class within their estates, palaces and spires, all of which seemed to distort menacingly under the baleful light of the Moon. The streets that the Iscarneth troops marched down seemed to twist at odd angles, transforming their home into an unfamiliar labyrinth. Still they marched, for their lord marched among them, the Warden at his side. Dariel and Renaya stood together in defence of Iscarion, blade and spear drawn not against one another, but against a common foe. As it always should have been, the pair both privately thought with regret. The absence of a particular red-handed presence was felt now more than ever.
“They come!” The call came up from the lookouts on the walls, making its way back through the defensive lines to the commanders. Behind them, representatives of each faction of the Alliance stood ready to weather the storm alongside Renaya’s battalion and Dariel’s personal guard. A clattering army of skeletal warriors arose at Scrotta the One-Eyed Crow’s command, bearing ragged banners in Remnant violet, while the martial might of the Shadowsworn host rallied in the name of the Dark Choosing. The flame-haired Khargax Ebonheat raised his axe, redolent in the cobalt of the Armies of Azyr, contrasting the drab greys of the Undesired raised aloft by the Slaaneshi warriors of the gleaming host. Renaya’s contingent broke off, ready to fortify the first lines of defence, her own warriors bolstered by the ghoulish contingent of house highsong, winged beasts scouting the air above them in preparation for the airborne assault. As she left, Renaya snapped a sharp salute at Dariel, who met it in kind. With a terse nod, she was gone, and Dariel looked to the sky as he unsheathed his blade. It would taste blood before the dawn.
In the sky, silhouetted by the sickly light of the Moon, a ragged flotilla advanced with unrushed menace. At their head, floating through the sky as if carried by an invisible mount, came the Mooncaller himself. Even for the peculiar grot, he looked wrong. He twitched and jerked erratically, almost lost within his tattered black robes like some fell revenant. Then, as if finally giving up a long battle to remain coherent, those robes unravelled into their component threads and disappeared into the night, revealing a nightmarish sight as the once-grot descended slowly upon the waiting city. His emaciated form had near-rotted away, held together by vine-like tendrils from his hideous mask, gangrenous flesh intertwined with livid multicoloured gyres.
“Thesis,” came the first voice, high, reedy, and tinged with a barely restrained giggle.
“Antithesis,” the second voice, commanding, unsettling, full of thinly disguised contempt.
“Synthesis,” a new voice, somewhere between the two, crackled forth from behind the Mask’s grin, “the Moon makes us whole.”
Then, with a scream and a crack, the Mooncaller’s spine snapped backwards, his face upturned towards his leering god. The Mask’s tendrils thickened and coiled, knitting together around the broken form of the grot, forming psychedelic muscle and chitinous skin. The Mask seemed to melt into the Mooncaller’s ruined face, ceasing to be any sort of mask at all. Curved yellow horns sprouted from the Mooncaller’s head, unbroken and gleaming. Two enormous boggle-eyes blinked and rolled, and a crack-toothed grin split the newly formed face like a curse. The night seemed to settle upon the nightmare form, resolving into pristine robes of darkest black, offsetting the sickly colours of the creature’s new skin. Iscarneth artillery burned in the sky all around him, catching in the air before it could reach his nascent form and falling back down upon the city as sickly green-flame engulfed shrapnel. With mad glee, the Mooncaller reached into the air and pulled. With a lurch, the celestial colossus above began a slow descent upon the city.
He was not alone in the sky, however, for even now, in the light of the falling Moon, the Mooncaller’s flotilla advanced. Alongside rickety grot-manufactured contraptions of rotting, mushroom-riddled wood and squig-hide, a cadre of ghost-ships cut silently through the sky. At their head stood the Moon-touched Bonereaper who had raised them for the purpose, Khataras Khan. The rest ferried those fighters of the Waaagh! without their own forms of aerial transportation, eager to get stuck into the fight. From aboard one, Ned Blackpowder and the Eureka Stockade rained fire upon the City with their looted and modified Iscari rifles. From others, the precipitation was more biological in nature, as the troggbosses Mudglutt and Darga sent troggs and squigs hurtling over the sides as living cannonballs. The troggoths who survived the descent lumbered out of the blasted craters they left, swinging about the disarrayed Iscarneth ranks with fists and clubs, while the bouncier squigs ricocheted about the darkened streets in a blur of teeth and drool.
This initial assault hit Renaya’s vanguard like a hammer, the Warden turning her voice hoarse as she rallied her scattered troops to her side even as she drove Celennar’s Bite deep into the belly of a Loonchompa troggoth. A blow from a makeshift greathammer, more an uprooted tree with a boulder lashed to it, came at Renaya from the side as she struggled to pull her weapon from the dying beast, but was turned away by the timely intervention of Ashavohlk, the White King. The vampire nodded at her before driving his Death Knights into the fray to meet the next wave of Waaagh! troops arriving from the low-flying ships, finding himself facing Karitha the Destruction Lord herself. The two forces clashed, Karitha’s Moon-mad grots and Waaagh!-infused orruks moving to cut off Ashavohlk’s undead reinforcements, trapping the vampire behind enemy lines. So be it, he thought with a snarl, and raised his weapon to fight. Seeing that Ashavohlk’s men had this front in hand, Renaya turned back to the city centre. That would be the Mooncaller’s destination, and she’d be of better use in the final fight if she was present.
In the sky above, the rest of the Mooncaller’s fleet followed the once-grot steadily towards the centre of the city, harried as they went by Iscarneth aerial forces. Any who made an attempt on the Mooncaller himself found themselves swatted away by invisible arcane hands. The rest of the flotilla was less well protected, however, and, though they found themselves taking potshots from both the Eureka Stockade as well as the skullcannons and ironblasters of G’Jak the Savage, the allied force managed to close on them. Queen Talnya’s three-headed griffon raked its claws across the hull of a grot ship, causing the rickety contraption to collapse into shards and screaming grots, falling down onto the battle below. Aledrec the Wind mage called up a fierce gale, which the Guardian Legion’s aerial wights used to great effect in closing on the enemy. The largest blow to the Mooncaller’s sky fleet came when the mages of the Remnant reached into the aether to find the life essence of the unchecked fungal growth aboard the ramshackle vessels. Streakorn, alongside a conclave of other sylvaneth mages, called upon the power of the Everqueen, channelling it into the mushrooms. As they filled with the life-giving energies of Ghyran, the fungus exploded into wild growth, tearing the vessels apart from within, sending grots and kruleboyz hurtling to their dooms. Some particularly cunning members of the fleet sought to use the manner of their destruction to their advantage, however, using the giant mushrooms to break their impact, spilling out into the streets with rusty blades drawn as the colossal fungi burst apart on the ground.
Dariel found himself suddenly surrounded by foes as the remaining fleet of ghost ships bore down from above and a horde of grots and orruks bore down upon him. Though they fought valiantly, his guard were falling at an alarming rate and, though the bodies of the foes he slew were already piling up around him, even his near-unmatched marshal skill could not hold out forever under such an onslaught. Things got worse when the Mooncaller suddenly vanished into thin air, just as he was coming into view above Dariel’s position. Cries of alarm came from all across the city as Iscarneth fighters reported coming into contact with the Mooncaller, only to have him vanish when their blades struck. Orgus the Ravager found himself charging into an ambush as he tried to take his blade to one such apparition, while Keldahar of the Fangs of Garm and Questor-Prime Salvestra Beast-Stalker found themselves surrounded by phantom Mooncallers, cackling as they vanished and reappeared with each blow that passed through them. That was when Dariel felt the prickling on the back of his neck. “Alright, Darry?” came the sinister voice in his ear, then a feeling like a fist gripping his heart. He found he could not breathe, could not move. Was this truly the end, after everything he had fought for? Then a whistling passed by his ear and the feeling ceased as quickly as it had come. He whirled and jumped back, seeing his foe gripping the haft of the spear that protruded from his monstrous sternum. It was Celennar’s Bite.
The Mooncaller gave a gurgling laugh and vanished, leaving the legendary weapon clattering down upon the cobbles. Renaya sprinted to Dariel’s side, taking up her spear as she went. The tip was covered in a bubbling ichor which shifted strangely in the Moon’s sickly light like an oil slick. Then the Mooncaller reappeared. He reached up to where the same ichor pooled from his mouth, drawing it out of himself in the form of a vile sword. With swift, erratic prowess, he set about capering around the embattled pair, who desperately parried and dodged, covering each other’s blind spots as they went. Then, with precise timing, Dariel plucked the creature from the air with a fist around his throat. The Mooncaller gurgled again, attempting to disappear once more, but Renaya was too quick, driving her spear into the grot’s sternum once more. “I am Warden Renaya Oathsworn,” she shouted, “I am the Daybreak General, and I shall see your unnatural night ended. We will see the dawn once more!”
The Mooncaller laughed, more ichorous blood pooling from his mouth and wounds, and vanished once more. He reappeared a few feet away, breathing raggedly as his monstrous flesh unnaturally reknitted itself. “It don’t matter. The Moon will have its due. You cannot stop the inevitable.” Then he was gone, his absence leaving a perfect view of the ever-growing grin of the Bad Moon descending upon Iscarion. It seemed as if the Iscarneth Alliance’s efforts would be for nought. The remaining ghost ships hurried away into the night, leaving the city to its fate. All seemed lost until an enormous blast of crackling green energy split the air, cascading across the surface of the Bad Moon. With alarm, Renaya and Dariel turned to see, framed by ruined buildings, an enormous skaven construct in the distance, sticking out of the destruction like a spire of brass and warpstone. Squirm Pactmaker and Sleekit Fang screamed at their underlings to give the contraption more power, even as the thing screeched under the strain, panels bursting and smoke billowing. The construct was tapping into the raw chaotic energy of the Vermindoom, through means of a ritual conducted by members of the Undesired behind Likspit’s back. The concentrated blast was beginning to tear holes into the fabric of reality itself, countless rats spilling out of the rents into the city, but it appeared to be working. The Moon’s descent had halted, its trajectory shifting away from the city. Then, as if the tension of the Mooncaller’s spell had snapped, the celestial body pinged away. As it went, the very edge of the Moon scraped along the ground outside of Iscarion, tearing a deep furrow into which the skaven energy that corruscated across it discharged, and then it was gone, hurtling off to Sigmar knew which distant corner of the Realms would next feel the madness of the Bad Moon.
Ragged cheers arose across Iscarion as the light of dawn finally broke over the city, battered but alive. Dariel and Renaya leaned on each other as they watched the light break, each bearing a dozen wounds from the fight. They had weathered the storm, and they had earned a brief reprieve.
Below, in the gloom of the Lux Umbra, Grey Seer Likspit felt all their hairs stand. Something had changed. Something had been brought into the Prime Dominion that never should have come here. Above, in the chasm left by the Bad Moon’s passing, a tear was opening, and beady eyes peered hungrily from within.
Iscarneth Ceraphate Victory
Dread Intrusion
It began where the Temple-Ships had departed. A blight of stench, feces and fur spilled from the great earthen wounds like a pot left to boil. Scouting parties fled in panic and were run down, even as battlefields of orruks and aelves turned as one to face their attackers. Behind them came the din of bells, deafening and striking dumb all who heard them. Longblades who had fought for Mogrek since the Ashfal Delta bolted like frightened pups, while veterans of the Iscarneth civil war cast down their arms and hid away where-ever they could. Places yet untouched by the Waaagh! found themselves besieged or overrun, while those places they’d thought they’d kicked to the ground suddenly swarmed with this new enemy. The ruins of Bilgebottom, Sylmare, the Colosseum and more became rickety bastions overnight, with winding trains of slaves and plunder forming beneath wicked whips and misshapen beasts. The sky itself took a sickly green hue, and nausea became a constant companion for attacker and defender alike.
The Vermindoom had begun, and nowhere in all the Mortal Realms would be spared.
Elsewhere
Mogrek walked across the burgeoning wetland, his mind on that distant cave in Aqshy. The message in the stone, left in Myth for this moment now. The strange faces he did not recognize, and what they might mean for his plan.
This place sang with life. Of the lands he had travelled through since his awakening, he felt the sick, oily feeling of Chaos corruption here the least. Perhaps it was due to that black eye that hung aways on the perimeter of your vision. That was what the locals believed, at least. Strange that it would, but he’d seen stranger things.
Well, he thought, gathering himself up, it seemed about time. This land had been a distraction, but that was all it was. It was time to get down to business.