Battles 1&2

Prince Khorandis marched on through the Badlands, his gleaming armour reflecting the glory of his warhost in every curved plate. They had been marching for two days and it was then, as they made their way swiftly through a narrow valley that they heard the howls of two legged beasts upon the cliff tops.

“Ogres,” said Vraitel, the champion of the Dragon Princes with whom Khorandis rode. “How can this be? We were told that the undead inhabited this region!”

“Evidently the winds of fate have blown us off course!” Khorandis replied bitterly. “Prepare for battle!”

Woe betide Khorandis’ host that day, for the horde of ogres rolled over them, not as from any strategy but simply with the animalistic instinct to march straight forward and crush any they found underfoot, and that they did.

“Beasts!” Khorandis hissed from the back of his barded steed as he saw the last of his regiments crumpled underfoot. They had come to this fight unprepared and understrength but as Khorandis turned his back on the field of battle, he swore that he would see the ogres’ blood spilled in a great river of vengeance.

LOSS

Elsewhere the territory the elves had taken came under attack themselves by yet more ogres. Calistari the moon-sage summoned all her powers of healing and potency but the ogres overran them all the same. Her bodyguard, the sword masters of Hoeth, received the blessing of her magic and felt their bodies become as hard as great oaks and yet still the ogres slaughtered them without breaking step.

The regiments of spearmen similarly received Calistari’s attention and likewise became tougher than any elf ought to be and at the same received powers of regeneration and yet still the ogres crushed them easily. All the while, a trio of repeater bolt throwers uselessly sank bolt after bolt into the ranks of the ogres without felling even a single one of their number.

LOSS

Translation of the Plaque of Huaxtepec

Much of the Plaque of Huaxtepec is destroyed but what remains is intriguing. The mighty slann mage Axayacatl had arrived in the region locally known as the 'badlands'. His forces the army of the 7th Sun had already established themselves and had already made contact with the enemy. Huitzilopochtli was present at the mustering of the host and was given the honour of being named the Tlacateccatl or general of the army.

Axayacatl was to spent a week in meditation, scrying the strands of the future. Then on the eighth day it was announced by the skinks that interpreted his musings that they would be returning to the site of the battle where only a week previously Huitzilopochtli's expeditionary force had narrowly escaped defeat.

As predicted the forces of Ulric had remained and had swelled in number. As Axayacatl approached he sensed the fear wash like a flood through the enemies ranks. His presence unnerved them and he relished the sensation. This Ulric and his men saw Axayacatl as a bloated toad, but he knew that his body was merely a vessel for his transcendent consciousness. They knew his power was great but still they underestimated him. It would be their undoing.

Huitzilopochtli led the Nahuatl or 'saurus' warriors forward to the left of Axayacatl and his Cuauhtli believed to mean 'temple guard'. Neither side committed forces forward to readily and the opening phase of the battle was cagey. The 'skinks' ranged ahead tying up the enemy formations and goading them into charges.

As expected, charge they did, and while the temple guard and saurus warriors led by Huitzilopochtli became embroiled in a long and bloody swirling melee the Tepoztopilli or 'cold one' cavalry ran down and crushed Ulric's own cavalry forces. With the left flank won and the regiments of men turning tail and running one by one it was only Ulric and his unit that remained fighting.

From the safety of a nearby tower the priest Ixlilti called on the power of the heavens to watch over and protect the warriors while Axayacatl himself cast powerful warding and healing magic. It is written that Huitzilopochtli challenged Ulric to single combat to settle the grudge they both harboured from the first battle. But while Huitzilopochtli could not best Ulric neither could he kill the mighty Tlacateccatl of the army of the 7th Sun. Each wound inflicted by Ulric drawing only more roars of hatred and bitter curses. Axayacatl's regenerative powers healing Huitzilopochtli as he fought.

It was clear that the battle was lost for Ulric and his men, and indeed Axayacatl could have ordered them all slaughtered. But while Huitzilopochtli detested and loathed the man, as is clear in the text from the Plaque of Tochtepec, the mighty slann mage had seen further into the future than just this minor battle and knew that this Ulric had a greater role to play somehow. As such Axayacatl ordered his warriors to hold fast and allow Ulric's retreat. The field was won, the Tzintzuntzan were victorious.

So ends the Plaque of Huaxtepec.

Translation of the Plaque of Tochtepec

As is written on the Plaque of Tochtepec Huitzilopochtli's battalion of the army of the 7th Sun made landfall on the eve of the Feast of Coyolxauhqui. The next morning they marched west and at Quetzalcoatl's zenith they encountered the forces of Ulric 'the arrogant' (translation?). Quite foolishly but typical for the race of man, they sent an emissary intent on suing for peace. It is believed that Huitzilopochtli sent back two meager blow darts a symbol which represented the utter contempt he held for Ulric.

Battle was joined soon after with the Xiuhcoatl or 'skinks' skirmishing ahead of the main army. This tactic is a well-known one for the armies of the lizardmen and woe betide any who ignore these diminutive creatures for the jungle poisons they employ on their blow darts and javelins can fell the mightiest of beasts.

The plaque describes Huitzilopochtli's army as having foreknowledge that the battle was unwinnable, that they would have to fight with brawn and cunning alone and without the guidance or blessings of the heavens to escape but that a greater victory was on the horizon should they survive. This would go someway to explaining death of their priest Cinteotl early in the engagement and how it did not affect them. His spirit sits at the right hand of the old ones and is at peace.

The knights on the right flank took the bait and charged the skinks that had been harassing them. While the loss of those brave warriors was mourned later, it was a strategic necessity for it allowed the tepoztopilli or 'cold one' riders to flank charge the knights and gain the advantage. Ultimately these cowards as Huitzilopochtli would describe them later were run down and slaughtered, their scalps shorn from their heads right then and there. However, they allowed a single man to escape, the army's priest. Seeing this supposed man of courage and faith flee from combat across the field of battle driven mad by fear would give the army of the 7th Sun the respite they needed.

Just moments before Ulric the arrogant's craven wizard would cast the cataclysmic spell of Tezcatlipoca or as men in the Empire know it 'the Purple Sun of Xereus'. The plaque speaks of this monumentally destructive energy employed by Ulric's forces that annihilated an entire flank of the lizardmen and would have seen them all routed had it not been for the prescience of their mage-seers and the foreknowledge of the effect the fleeing priest would have on Ulric's army. It was at this point that had the humans pressed their advantage they would have surely won the day. But instead they were paralysed by fear and sent running themselves. The chaos that ensued and the time it took to restore order in the ranks allowed Huitzilopochtli and his remaining forces to withdraw.

So ends the Plaque of Tochtepec

Ulric the Black rallies his forces and returns to battle. Battle 2

Ulric refused to let the raving flagellants join his army this time. Their leader was a familiar figure to those who had fought the week before: the chaplain of the Knight's Teutonia, who had been flogged to within an inch of Morr's embrace, and had gone quite mad.

Ulric had summoned all his swordsmen, and they formed up in two columns with fresh knights on the right wing, again facing off against the lizard cav. The battle started badly as their only canon blew up without firing a shot.

They had brought their toad this time, a vast bloated thing that looked out on them with lidless eyes. 'A Jabba!' Hovman Daark said. 'Look - a Jabbatoad! This bodes ill, I fear. They are said to control the winds of magic.'

So it proved. Hovman struggled with the winds - but could do little with them.

'Faith in Sigmar!' Ulric shouted to the men around, and so it proved. Faith protected them and Ulric's greatswords flanked the toad-guard and began to chop ruthlessly into them, while Ulric battled in mortal combat with the enemy's general: a little blue lizard with yellow cat eyes - that hissed in pain as Ulric smote it.

'They're blood is red!' he shouted, and the greatswords cut down the guard around the quivering bloated thing at their centre.

There was a long and bloody battle, but fate did not favour Ulric again. At last the swordsmen broke before the onslaught of the lizards, and only the mortar crew stood unharmed. Fitting, as they had failed to harm the enemy also.

Loss.

Ulric the Black leads his forces into the east. Battle One

I
The two Nordland halberdiers stood awkwardly as Ulric the Black knelt before bare foot, in the snow before the shrine of Sigmar.

He had been there all night, but rather than succumb to the cold, the snow had melted around him so that there was a patch of wet ground in the midst of all the snow.

'Sire!' the first halberdier cleared his throat. 'The enemy have been sighted.'

Only at the word 'enemy' did Ulric look up. 'The cold-bloods,' he called the lizard folk. 'Have they accepted our offer of peace?'

'No sire.'

The emissary was brought to him. There was a sickly colour to his skin.

'I tried to parley,' he said. 'But they answered me with these.'

He held up what looked like sharpened twigs. 'Poison darts,' he said.


II
Father Ulric surveyed the battlefield. On the left wing, a demi-lance of battle hardened Knights Teutonia kicked their warhorses forward. In the centre the main body of the army, drew up in ordered ranks, with halberdiers in close support.

Hovman Daark stood at the fore, while the Sigmar banner flapped stiffly overhead.

Hovman Daark was already in the middle of some spell, and he suddenly turned and grinned. 'There was a mage with them. One of the little lizards. He reached out to me, and I crushed his soul and sent it back over the seas to where ever they have come from.'


III
The Knights Teutonia saw lizard cavalry ahead of them, and they spurred their horses forward. They hit a skirmish line of small lizards with blowpipes and although they cut them down all around them, somehow, beyond hope, the little blue-skinned creatures did not flee. And as the knights cut the last of them down, the enemy cavalry charged forward and took the milling knights in the flank.

IV
Ulric led the swordsmen forward towards the main body of the enemy. They came forward with an eerie silence, only the flicking of red tongues any indication that these strange creatures felt anything approaching fear.

Hovman Daark was in the middle of his scorceries. The temperature suddenly dropped, and a whirlwind stirred in front of him, and then a dust devil swirled up, and deepened and blackened as it dragged dirt up with it.

It was a dreadful purple colour as Hovman hurled it forward straight into the face of the approaching foe.

There was a dreadful silence as scores of the foe were dragged into the unearthly maelstrom. Only four were left when the maelstrom passed.

Ulric dropped his arm in a brief order. The hellblaster roared, barrel after barrel, and when the smoke had cleared, not a single lizard was left standing. There was a strange silence, and a few blooded bodies twitched on the ground. Some of the men made the sign of Sigmar, or mumbled prayers to Morr. No one could witness such slaughter, without feeling sympathy for such creatures.

It was unfortunate, looking back, that this was the moment, that suddenly from beyond the woods a single raving horseman came galloping. The Knight's Teutonia's chaplain: a thin and sour-faced man.

'Slaughter! Horror!' he shouted, 'they are all dead. All your brothers. Devils on monsters are coming! Flee Flee!'

Ulric smote the man across his face. 'Silence, coward! This day is won!'

But chance played strange games on battlefields, and even as he spoke the first shouts were raised, and soon the whole company was falling back in disorder.

'Stand!' Ulric shouted. 'Stand you fools! We have but to face these monsters down and the day is ours!'

DRAW

Introducing the Marienburg Freeswords

Marshal Kurdt von Uffen
A vicious old fighter, Marshal Kurdt von Uffen is an exile form the manor of Nordstomland, near Marienburg, five years ago, and after many wanderings eventually found his way to be leader of the Marienburg Freeswords.

He leads the Eagle Confederation Knights, a tough band of younger sons of great and ambitious families, who have to leave home to make their fortunes.

He has a string of great victories behind him, and a serious dislike of beastmen: in fact anything with horns. Brave, impetuous, and bold.








Father Ulric the Black
A cleric who has seen it as his vocation to come to the borderlands and minister to the men who look to Sigmar for guidance. A reformed boozer and whorer, Ulric has long since gone on the straight and narrow. Unfortunately, he also believes everyone should be on the straight and narrow, and deals ruthlessly with his men, who have come to respect him, despite his ale-free ways.

Father Ulric is fearless and confident, and leads from the front.







Luddvig the Accursed
Luddvig the Accursed is a border prince exiled from Wissenland after being accused of murder – and like all the great leaders of the borderlands, he knows how to get his way, by force or other means.

The arrival of the Marienburg Freeswords, with Marshal von Uffen and Ulric the Black, has cramped Ludvvig's style, but as Marhsal von Uffen is his cousin, he felt unable to refuse.

A renowned strategist and perjurer, he was overcome by a rare bout of bravery, and whilst fighting in personal combat with the ogre tyrant, he was taken alive, and finally sacrificed to the Great Maw. His last words were said to have been 'At least my gold is safe!'




Uter the Bastard
Sixteen year old son of Luddvig. Luddvig never planned for his early death, and certainly never allowed any of his bastard sons to be recognised as his heir in case they over threw him. When he died suddenly, there was something of a tussle for his kingdom, but Uter's mother, a Tilean whore by the name of Countess Franzeska di Polionis, was quick to exile the other rivals, and install her son as king.

Uter is something of an unknown quantity amongst his subjects: but the fact he has banned his mother from court politics bodes well. She is currently locked in Ormshole Castle, the site of the great massacre of Prince Khorandis' advance guard.

The army of the 7th Sun (Tzintzuntzan)

What follows are extracts from the life works of Alessandro Del'Arvelli, an astronomer, scholar and one time explorer from the College of Verezzo in Tilea. He has spent his life studying the art and architecture, religion and culture of the Lizardmen and those they call the Citlalicue or 'Old Ones'. Now he can be found locked away in one of the towers of the college but at one time many years ago in his youth Del'Arvelli had journeyed to the lost continent of Lustria itself and explored first hand the ruins of some of those great cities.

...From what I can gather in the year of the Xlanax a sizeable host of the Lizardmen set out across the great ocean bound for the lands of men, more specifically the region known only as the 'badlands'. It is not totally clear as to the full motivation behind this undertaking but what is known is that the slann-mage Axayacatl had spent ten lunar rotations or two hundred years in deep meditation before awakening from his trance-like state and determining that such a journey were necessary. It is interesting to note that at this point the theft of a valuable artefact by a traveller from the east is widely mentioned throughout the glyphs and that while its recovery had long been given up there had come a time when it would be possible to right the wrong that had been perpetrated.

It is this humble scholar's opinion that this army known in the lizardmen tongue as Tzintzuntzan set out with the specific goal of tracking down and recovering this lost artefact that was to be found somewhere in the 'badlands'.

Little is written about Axayacatl also known as the 'high general' or Tlacochcalcatl. The slann-mage is mentioned in texts from Oyxhotl and as such I have arrived at a tentative conclusion that it hailed from this city, or at least is it's guardian.

Referred to in the same texts as Axayacatl is the scar veteran or Tlacateccatl known as Huitzilopochtli. This mighty warrior was created with the sole purpose of guarding Axayacatl as are all Cuauhtli or 'temple guard' spawned to protect the slann mages. Accounts of his deeds and glories in battle are quite wide ranging and much celebrated. It is written that he has been ordained by the Old Ones to right a great wrong and shall never fall in battle until a specific debt has been settled. Quite what this debt could be is unclear.

Attending on Axayacatl is the Tlamacazqui, the skink chief Itzli. His mention is only in passing and only in direct reference to the slann mage itself. Suffice to say Itzli holds great power and standing in the army. He is always depicted being borne into battle on a giant beast. I believe the creature to be the one they call a stegadon although my colleagues scoff at the notion believing them to be mere legend and long since extinct. I know better of course for I have seen the fearsome creatures in the flesh long ago and they exist...oh how terrifying an aspect are they that would turn the heart of even the most valiant knight.