Following Bartheliman’s subtle, at least for a Stormcast, investigations, the traitors responsible for the unleashing of the Khornate army were found and imprisoned. Tcimmera wanted them dead, but Bartheliman argued to keep them alive, both so that Hammer’s End might dispense its own justice, and to interrogate them further in case they harboured further plans.
Bartheliman’s instinct proved correct. The traitors weren’t acting at their own behest, instead either unwitting catspaws of or corrupted by the the Legion of the Barbed Darkness. Who these Chaos-worshippers were was still a mystery, but their immediate plans were not. Bartheliman learned that the Legion sought to weaken and distract the Wardens while they secured an unearthed Stormvault. Such a repository of forbidden artefacts and knowledge could not be allowed to fall into the hands of the Legion, and so the Wardens of Burden set out on the march to reach the Stormvault first.
Thanks to the speed of their Dracoths and their enduring relentlessness, the Wardens were able to find the Stormvault first. Bartheliman led the vanguard to the site, but were quickly attacked by the Legion. The Legion crashed upon the Warden vanguard and mauled it savagely, putting many of the Stormcast and Dracoths out of the fight. They nonetheless held their ground long enough for the reinforcements led by Tcimmera to charge into the battlefield, slowly but implacably reversing the course of the battle.
Bartheliman duelled the fel sorcerer atop her Manticore and was outmatched by the fierce monstrosity. But as he lay broken upon the ground, still breathing life into himself, the fickle powers of Chaos turned against their champion. With a scream, the sorceress was rewarded for her triumph by being melted into her manticore, the two fusing and mutating together into a mewling monstrosity that was put out of its misery by Wyttige, the last Fulminator standing.
The rest of the battle was hard fought, but in the end the Wardens’ bloodily triumphed. The last of the Chaos Warriors attempted to retreat in good order, but were finally caught and shattered by the combined charge of every Dracothian Guard still standing, run down and annihilated without a chance to bring word of their defeat to their dark masters.
In the end, the Wardens of Burden controlled the battlefield, but that didn’t mean that the prize they’d bled for was secure. After they’d recovered enough of their strength, they began exploring the depths of the Stormvault, discovering the name given to it; The Crack Within Darkness. So too did they discover that they and the Legion were not the first to get to the Stormvault after its Penumbral Engine had failed, as they found evidence of theft in the upper levels. If Hammer’s End were to be made safe, the contents of the Crack Within Darkness would have to be restored to their proper place, lest they be wielded by the wrong hands.
Within the dark depths of the Stormvault, the Wardens found mind-bending abominations and eldritch evils stalking the gloam, prisoners that had escaped and crawled from their gaols. Though they had yet to breach the wards keeping them from the upper levels, they would have to be contained once more, for if they reached the surface even the foul daemons of the Ruinous Powers would pale in comparison to the terror these monstrous demi-real entities could inflict.
It would be a task that would perhaps never end unless relieved of them by Sigmar, but even as Bartheliman began to categorise and track down what was stolen from the Stormvault, Tcimmera led chosen Dracothian Guard to brave the stygian nightmare below. Shirking the responsibility of containing the Stormvault’s dangers was unthinkable; they were Knights Excelsior. There was nowhere evil could hide from the judgement they bore.
