C. Werner - Blighted Empire

‘Eventually the book found its way to Wolfenburg and into the hands of one of my… associates.’ Marko stood up, setting his hands on the table and leaning towards Lothar. His voice dropped into a warning hiss. ‘You will never be closer to such power, herr baron! The few who have truly understood that book have learned secrets that have been forbidden to men for a thousand years. They accomplished great things, feats of magic that have been immortalised in myth and legend.’

Lothar looked up from the ancient tome. His voice quaked as he questioned Marko. ‘What of those who couldn’t understand, who couldn’t unlock Kadon’s secrets?’

‘They were driven mad,’ Marko admitted with a shrug. He smiled and stood away from the table. ‘That is why, when I ask you for two thousand gold crowns, you will oblige me by paying before you begin your researches.’

Lothar’s expression became indignant. At the same time, he wrapped his arms protectively about De Arcanis Kadon . ‘Two thousand gold crowns! That is robbery. I will not pay it!’

‘You will pay it,’ Marko assured him. ‘I have never sold you false merchandise, never lied to you. Two thousand crowns is cheap for the knowledge that book can bestow on you.’ He looked down at the table, littered with deeds and promissory notes. He waved his hand over the heap of documents. ‘What is wealth except a means to power?’ he asked. ‘And what power is greater than knowledge?’

Lothar raised his head, listening to the faint wail of the mourners. It was true, what the peasant said. In trying to secure temporal wealth, he had stumbled upon true power — the power of magic and the arcane. What did lands and titles matter beside the ability to invoke death with a touch, the power to raise the dead from their tombs?

‘You will have your money,’ Baron von Diehl promised. ‘But let us wait a little.

‘I have a father I must bury first.’

Sylvania

Vorhexen, 1112

The smell of burning thatch and timber boiled across the air, the tang of man-thing blood laced with man-thing fear was borne upon the breeze, the stink of rat-fur and skaven musk rolled down the muddy lanes. They were exciting, invigorating smells that filled Seerlord Skrittar’s nose and teased his olfactory organs, but none of them were so enthralling as the burning scent of warpstone.

The seerlord’s grey paw closed tighter about the black nugget it held, a little wisp of smoke rising from his clenched fist as the warpstone singed his fur. He was oblivious to the caustic emanations of his prize, too absorbed in the enormity of what it represented. That nugget was the first, the first of a treasure so vast it would reshape the whole of skavendom!

A blood-chilling scream scratched across Skrittar’s hearing, causing him to turn and watch as a lone man-thing tried to fend off a pack of clanrats. The sword-rats of Clan Fester weren’t the mighty killers of Clan Rictus or Clan Mors, but they were more than equal to the hapless peasant they menaced. Warily, the skaven circled around the man, making little mock attacks that drove him steadily backwards. Each step he took allowed the ratmen to spread out, the skaven at either extremity fanning out to nip at the peasant’s flanks.

There was nowhere the man-thing could retreat to. The wattle-and-daub wall behind him was smoking away, cinders dribbling from its burning face. The building beyond it was fully engulfed, its roof a fiery pyre that blazed into the night sky. There were a few man-things inside the building — their screams made that clear — but bullets from Fester’s slingers were keeping the Sylvanians penned up inside the burning structure. No hope for the doomed peasant there.

Moved by some caprice, Skrittar stretched forth his horned staff, channelling magical energies into the warpstone talisman set between the curled horns. He chittered an invocation, drawing down the malignity of the Horned Rat. Despite the fires blazing away in the village, a chill crept into the air as he worked his sorcery. A green glow leapt from the talisman, flashing down the lane. One of the sword-rats squeaked in agony as the light slashed through him, boring a smouldering crater in his shoulder. Undiminished by its incidental victim, Skrittar’s spell struck onwards, slamming into the embattled peasant’s head and popping it like an engorged tick.

Skrittar chittered maliciously as the surviving clanrats scattered, terrified by the grey seer’s display of magic, leaving their stricken comrade to writhe and bleed in the mud. The seerlord savoured their fear. It was good to remind the vermin of Clan Fester who was in charge, who held the real reins of power in their little alliance.

The seerlord whipped his tail through the mud in annoyance. Left to his own devices, he would have preferred to avoid the inconvenience of an alliance altogether. But that ten-flea tyrant Vecteek had made decrees limiting the number of grey seers the Order could maintain and had further placed prohibitions on the Order possessing any warriors of its own. He had seen to it that the Order would never be self-sufficient, claiming that the grey seers must serve the needs of all skaven rather than their own selfish interests. Of course, the despot hadn’t made similar conditions to control the upstart heretics of Clan Pestilens! The plague monks were more powerful now than ever, with two seats on the Council and the entire Under-Empire squeaking their praises because of the Black Plague!

They would soon squeak a different tune. With the rat-power of Clan Fester’s teeming masses to provide him with the brute force he needed, Skrittar would fill the halls of the Shattered Tower with warpstone. He would curb the dictatorship of Vecteek and Clan Rictus, usher in a new age of balance and cooperation among the clans where no one voice was supreme among the skaven. All would hearken to the Voice of the Horned One through His chosen instrument, Seerlord Skrittar. The clans would be led by the wisdom of their god, and any that wouldn’t hearken to Skrittar’s words would be exterminated.

Casting his gaze across the burning village, Skrittar watched as Clan Fester’s slaves scurried about the fields and meadows, pawing at the dirt as they retrieved nuggets of raw warpstone from the ground. His spell had performed even more magnificently than he had dared dream. The land was littered with warpstone ripped from the moon, so much that he could see a green glow on the horizon when he squinted his eyes. It might take years to gather it all!

Not that Skrittar intended to be so patient. He’d contact Warlord Manglrr Baneburrow and demand he send more labourers. He didn’t care exactly where Manglrr got them. There were plenty of weaker clans Fester could conquer and enslave to deliver the workers he needed.

Manglrr would obey, too. There was no question of that. Sylvania was ripe for the picking, helpless at Skrittar’s feet. Half the province was dead because of the plague, and the other half had been poisoned by the warpstone.

Who was there left with the strength to oppose the skaven?

Middenheim

Sigmarzeit, 1118

There were many stories about the Kineater, but the most popular held that the thing had been born to the family of a prosperous raugraf. The rural lord was desperate for an heir, and after giving birth to daughters for twelve years, his weary wife had prayed to the Ruinous Powers for a son. In their malice, the Dark Gods had answered her, but the son she bore was far less than human. For many years, the raugraf had kept the mutant child locked inside a hidden room in his castle, but with the coming of the Black Plague, his lands had become too desolate to feed the horrible monster. One night, wracked by hunger, the mutant had escaped, butchering its own family to sate its appetite. Since that time, the Kineater had prowled the Drakwald, preying upon any human it could catch.