01 - Empire in Chaos

For Joy, a woman full of life, love and poetry, and the baker
of the dreaded curried shortbread.

This is a dark age, a bloody age, an age of daemons and of sorcery.
It is an age of battle and death, and of the world’s ending. Amidst all of
the fire, flame and fury it is a time, too, of mighty heroes, of bold deeds and
great courage.

At the heart of the Old World sprawls the Empire, the largest and
most powerful of the human realms. Known for its engineers, sorcerers, traders
and soldiers, it is a land of great mountains, mighty rivers, dark forests and
vast cities. And from his throne in Altdorf reigns the Emperor Karl-Franz, sacred
descendant of the founder of these lands, Sigmar, and wielder of his magical
warhammer.

But these are far from civilised times. Across the length and
breadth of the Old World, from the knightly palaces of Bretonnia to ice-bound
Kislev in the far north, come rumblings of war. In the towering Worlds Edge
Mountains, the orc tribes are gathering for another assault. Bandits and renegades
harry the wild southern lands of the Border Princes. There are rumours of rat-things,
the skaven, emerging from the sewers and swamps across the land. And from the
northern wildernesses there is the ever-present threat of Chaos, of daemons and
beastmen corrupted by the foul powers of the Dark Gods.

As the time of battle draws ever nearer, the Empire needs
heroes like never before.

Thunder rolled across the sky and clouds heavy and pregnant with rain hung
low over the land. A malformed figure stood leaning awkwardly on a shovel, his
thick, mud-caked features set in an expression of idiocy as he watched Udo
Grunwald’s approach.

Up through the mud and the waste Udo trudged, leading a half-starved mule
that struggled beneath the weight of the cart it hauled up the incline towards
the temple.

The wretched beast strained as the uneven, swollen wheels of the cart turned
laboriously carving a pair of deep furrows through the mud. A dark cloak of
oiled leather covered Udo’s large shoulders, and he wore a heavy crossbow upon
his back. His shaven head was bare to the elements, and his face was thuggish,
his nose having been broken and badly set more than once and his jaw heavy and
protruding. The malformed servant of the temple grinned stupidly as he passed.
He stared hard at the simpleton for a moment before he turned back to look upon
the temple gateway.

Dominating the surrounding landscape with its brutal, martial architecture,
the temple appeared more like a small fortress than a place of worship, as
befitted the warrior deity it honoured. Carved statues adorned the buttresses,
their features smoothed and crumbling from centuries of attack from the
elements. These were the saints of this priesthood, warriors all, the devout of
holy Sigmar. Each was heavily armoured in mail and plate and bore weapons—hammers and flails.

Through the arched, fortified gateway he walked, under the raised portcullis
that hung like an array of deadly teeth, and into the dimly lit cobbled
passageway leading to the temple courtyard. He led the mule and cart through the
gatehouse, murder holes and arrow slits watching his progress darkly.

Dozens of pairs of eyes tracked his approach, men-at-arms upon the ramparts
leaning on tall, broad-bladed halberds, cold-eyed priests with the arms of
blacksmiths, and muddy servants of all ages, some crippled and deformed. A
heavy-set soldier in studded leather blocked his path; Udo glared at him. After
a quick look into the cart, the soldier stepped aside without comment.

Udo stopped in the centre of the courtyard before the great double-doors of
the temple. The mule sagged in exhaustion, its bones pushing against its thin
skin. Udo strode to the back of the cart, and glanced down upon its flat bed, at
the dead body lying there—the dead body of his employer.

Dressed in knee-high black riding boots, uniform black trousers, shirt and
vest, and a black shoulder-cloak with a purple lining, the corpse could have
been that of any wealthy young Empire noble with a penchant for morbid colours,
but it was the combination of these clothes with the wide-brimmed black hat, the
pair of ornate wheel-lock pistols on his wide belt and the prominent bronze
talisman that hung around the corpse’s pallid neck that gave away his true
calling.

Witch hunter.

A calling that filled even the innocent with dread and guilt.

Ruthless and without pity, the witch hunters stalked the lands of the Empire,
rooting out corruption, sorcery and mutation wherever it was to be found. To
even be suspected of infernal dealings was to be subject to the witch hunter’s
cruel ministrations, and many confessed to crimes they had no knowledge of
merely to achieve a swift death.

One of the great doors of the temple creaked open, and an ancient,
broad-shouldered figure emerged, his breath turning to steam in the cold air.
Adorned in simple robes of deepest red, his only adornment a pin on his breast
in the shape of a warhammer, the priest had clearly once been a powerful
warrior, but the cruelness of time had robbed him of his strength. His skin was
heavily lined and covered with liver spots, yet he moved with an assurance that
belied his age.

The priest stepped down the broad steps of the temple and came to a halt
before Udo. His eyes were slightly cloudy, but there was strength there still.
His face was grim, set in a deep frown that looked like it had not moved in
several decades, and he acknowledged Udo’s presence with a sour nod.

“I will inform the abbot that you have brought his body back to us,” the old
priest said dourly, looking upon the broken body of the witch hunter. Even the
dark clothes of the corpse could not hide the terrible wounds that had killed
him—the savage tears in his flesh that were caused by no human hand.

Udo thought back to that night, only seven nights earlier. He saw again the
painted flesh of the feather-cloaked zealot ripple as
things
clawed
within him. He saw again the horrific carnage that followed.

The elderly priest turned to climb the stairs leading within the temple once
more. He paused after a step, and turned his rheumy gaze towards the face of the
cloaked man.

“Come,” he said. “Your old master spoke well of you. The Temple of Sigmar has
much it wishes to discuss with you.”

The Armies of Destruction march against the Empire.

From the east come the greenskin hordes, massing beyond the Worlds Edge
Mountains in the Dark Lands, gathering in numbers not seen since the age of holy
Sigmar, before the foundation of the Empire. The dwarfs are stalwart defenders,
but I fear that even their great, ancient holds will not have the strength to
stem the tide.

Far to the west, beyond the Great Ocean, our allies the high elves of Ulthuan
are beset by their hated dark kin, hampering their efforts to come to our
plight.

And to the north comes the greatest threat of all, for the hordes of Chaos,
they who have sold their immortal souls into damnation, are marching upon us
once again.

The Raven Host, an army mustered for the sole purpose of the destruction of
the Empire, advances against us. Already they have swept through the Peak Pass,
and overrun the lands of our allies the Kislevites in the frozen north.
Dispatches from the Tsarina have informed me that the great city of Praag itself
is besieged.

War has been met in the northern states, and war parties are pushing south
towards the Talabec as I write this. Towns and cities are being sacked even as
the electors gather their armies. Already my people are being butchered, but I
know that this is merely the beginning of a far greater conflict that threatens
to overwhelm us.

Elector Hertwig of the Ostermark struggles to hold back the tide, and von
Raukov of Ostland has already lost much of his state army. Todbringer of
Middenland musters his forces north of the Talabec, but I fear even his martial
skill will do little against the overwhelming hatred driving the enemy. The
electors bicker amongst themselves, bringing ancient enmities and feuds to the
surface in this our time of greatest peril. The temples of Sigmar and Ulric are
at loggerheads, and I fear what shall come to pass if a reconciliation cannot be
achieved.

A great plague is sweeping the lands, striking down thousands of my citizens
beneath its unnatural pestilence. My agents of the Order of the Griffon are even
now investigating the source of this dire sickness, and all fingers point
towards its sorcerous nature—it would seem that this is a ploy of the enemy,
to weaken our resolve as their first forays strike against us. It has even
reached the streets of Altdorf itself—it seems that nowhere is safe from the
vile pestilence.

The doomsayers predict that this is the dawning of the End Times. I fear that
they may speak the truth.

K.F.

The flames crackled, curling around the fresh wood like infernal, flaming
tongues. Annaliese Jaeger stared deep into the glowing blaze, lost within its
destructive beauty.

Though she could feel the heat from the fireplace reddening her face, it did
nothing to dispel the icy chill that pervaded the darkened room of the cabin. No
matter how much wood she stacked within the fireplace, no matter how high the
flames rose, the intense cold would not lift. It was like the cruel touch of
death itself—unstoppable, and so, so cold.

The window in the small room was obscured by a heavy, moth-eaten curtain that
had once been a deep green but had long since faded. Beams of cold, grey light
slipped through where the moths had eaten completely through the fraying
material. The timber beams of the roof sagged as if the weight of existence was
too much to bear, and a rug covered the uneven wooden floorboards. There was no
furniture within the room bar an old straw pallet upon the floor, and a low
chair beside it. In better times, her father would sit in that chair before the
fire, lost in his thoughts.

Annaliese tore her dead-eyed gaze from the fire and back to the pale, grey
face of her father. She prayed that she would remember him as the powerful man
that he had been—not this wasted skeleton breathing painfully beneath the
heavy, sweat-drenched blankets. His once strongly muscled arms were now little
more than skin and bone, wasted away as the sickness ravaged his body. For four
days he had remained in this comatose state, neither waking nor uttering a
sound. It was only the nigh-on imperceptible rise and fall of his sunken chest
that told her he still lived.

It would not be for long, if Morr were merciful.

Merciful! She almost laughed at the thought. What mercy there was in the
world had long since abandoned the people of Averland.

Winter still held the land tightly to its icy bosom, as it had done for
almost five months, long after the thaw should have come and gone. Snow was
banked up outside. The crops in the fields had long withered and perished in the
frozen earth, and none of the hardy, long-coated sheep farmed in the area had
survived. Death was prevalent, particularly amongst the elderly and infirm, and
there had even been blood spilt amongst the desperate villagers, disputes over
the scarce supply of blankets, firewood and food. Adelmo Haefen, the village’s
quietly spoken miller, had been stabbed in the stomach only two days past after
an altercation over a loaf of bread.

But the harshness of the winter was as nothing compared to what had come
next.

A deranged, half-naked wretch had come to the village almost three weeks ago.
Nails had been hammered into the bones of his arms, and his back was stripped of
flesh, the skin hanging in loose, bloody rents. Upon his forehead a crude shape
of a twin-tailed comet had been carved, both dried and fresh blood covered his
face.

He had screamed and ranted of the end of the world, proclaiming that death
was coming and that he was its herald. In accompaniment to his doom-laden, fiery
screech, he lashed himself with a flail of leather straps studded with metal
barbs.

And the flagellant had been correct, but possibly not in the way that he had
imagined, for he had brought the plague with him. He had collapsed within the
day, falling into a deathly coma from which he could not be roused.