Below is excerpts from the Turn 3 Unfolding Narrative of Animosity II included here with permission.
Perhaps the most titanic of the clashes yet in the war would come to be known among the Soulmuncherz as “Da Big Bash”. Word of a good scrap gets around fast, and almost every Soulmuncher around the lake descended on the village of Poznyy and the warrens beneath it like an avalanche of muscle and violence.
The Wretched had seen it coming, of course- invited it, even. The Oracles knew their dominion over Lake Bykaal would not stand unchallenged forever, and had worked tirelessly to scrape the means of conquest and domination from this harsh and unforgiving landscape. This was the bounty reaped from the Corpse Shallows: withered Namarti Idoneth souls, and the fey magic bound to them. The Wretched’s greatest minds had long labored in their warrens, their science and experiments undisturbed… until now.
The water bubbled and boiled with energy, the center of the pond filled with lumps of flesh, limbs, heads, smattering of fur and hair, dimming the water. Misting over with offal and blood, any wildlife in the pond had long since died, drowned by barrels of toxic chemicals and bursts of warp lighting from powerful warp actuators.
Doktor Morr-Ratt stood watch over the proceedings, his second tail thrashing the ground in anticipation, the other clutching a ruddy warp lantern, emerald light bathing the proceedings. Packmasters worked feverishly, stitching limbs to bloated body parts, a menagerie of races rolling over and over as the body parts floated to and fro, like in the embrace of a giant specimen bottle. Here an Orruk head, there an Aelf arm, an eel head, a nightmare soup to be sure!
Morr-Ratt rubbed his hands together with glee, or to restore circulation, his eyes glittering with glee, a look he always had when he played deity. Surely his creations were much better than those of Nagash. Not brainless, but born of intelligence, living, breathing, feeding, thinking. Gods in their own rights!
Pointing to the nearest of his Packmasters, Morr-Ratt nodded his head. The lever was depressed and a burst of warp lighting burst into life, throwing energies along the cables, and surging into the pond. The waters jerked and heaved as the power of the generator covered the mounds of flesh in the pond in emerald light, the limbs started to slither.
Morr-Ratt bellowed more orders, each lever being thrown in succession, jade light illuminating the water as tentacles and more began to writhe and move, as mounds of flesh began to crawl forth from the pond, bodies glistening in lurid water, almost as if crawling from the womb…
Eola Waveshaper surveyed the relatively pristine churning waters with frustration that threatened to show itself. “Where are the bodies,” she said, thinking out loud. Where are the souls, was what she meant, for those were what she truly cared about. Their green-skinned allies had boasted about all of ratmen, goatmen and regular men they had ‘krumpted’, while raiding parties from the other Enclaves had spoken of a torrent of lingering souls. And yet….
“Void are the waters when one was promised it to be full of lifelessness,” came a voice behind her, causing Eola to turn and come to face with to a female Lumineth. Astarine she thought was her name, for the siblings were not here to tell her for certain. The darker robes compared to the rest of the Y’sarneans suggested as much. “I can feel your displeasure, it blackens your soul. Quite literally.”
“Yes,” she said. “May I ask if you have any suggestions to why that happened? The most plausible theory I have gotten so far is it is something to do with those wretched Wretched.”
Astarine tilted her head. “Yes. I believe the cursed Skaven to be responsible. The clan known as Moulder in particular. May Tyrion slay them all. Far too many noble sons and daughters of Teclis have fallen to them, only to be desecrated. And though I am loath to describe any encounter with them using these terms, the lucky ones were dead when it happened. They… created creatures…hybrids between monsters and—”
An alarm horn blew in the distance. “Teclis’ hairy toenails!” Eola heard Astarine curse. Eola herself was a step ahead, having already broken into a sprint. Though she did not get a chance to finish her sentence, Eola knew what Astarine meant as soon as she laid eyes on the bodies of the attackers. Monsters…and aelves.
“They attacked the Northmost entrance,” Huntmaster Kraven said to her. “Under a cloud of the mist you Deepkin use. Fortunately we were just setting off to hunt and were upon them before they could even bite someone. Dispatched them real quick.” The Simbarrian shook his head. “I’ve never seen beasts like this and I’ve hunted many.”
“That’s because these are not natural creatures,” she said, detached. An instinctive defense mechanism against the rage now bubbling within her, cast into a trench for the moment until it could be channeled towards something useful. “You did well, Huntmaster… and I… I thank you for putting them out of their misery.”
In the darkened hills behind the village, away from the shore, the Bullripper Brothers gathered their weaker sheep and goats. Using blood-soaked feed and ancient rituals, Krazark chanted day and night, the animal’s wool and fur darkening and vicious bleating carrying on throughout the night. By the morn, this new, darkened flock grabbed bloodstained armor and weapons and made off to spread the gospel of peace and humility. The other goats looked on then, filled with envy of the black sheep of the family…
Inspired, the Pauper Prince rallied the wretched peoples of Poznyy into a desperate charge against the Soulmuncher occupation. While ill-fated, their sacrifice summoned daemons-and darker things- to the battle.
The Rotgardeners had conceded the shoreline to the Soulmuncherz, much to Lord Verdous’ dismay. His small comfort is that his garden’s deadly delights would be surely appreciated by the Soulmuncherz during their advance inland. And the Rotgardener knew his garden’s roots ran deep.
In the days that followed, Urrookabar’s Orc’gorz incursion into the dens beneath Poznyy ground to a halt. The underground roots and fungoids of the massive overgrown pestilent garden, dripping pus and feeding all sorts of maggots and larvae, finally blocked their advance, as the daemons servants of the Plague God shared their bountiful blessings with Urrookabar’s Warclan.
After surrounding and cutting off the camp of the Loonshine Gitz and the Verdant Maw ogors, the Misthorned Greatfray of Bray-Shaman Moonhide found themselves reinforced by the Knight in Silks and his Chaos knights charging down from the hills. Underground, the newfound Troggoths recruited by Da Woit Grunt are put before their first, real opponent – Qheel Skitterpaw, Master Moulder Extraordinaire and Grey Seer Pritislik of the Plague Wardens.
Although it looked to be anyone’s fight, the unconventional nature of the Soulmuncherz would ultimately carry the day, as Gundrikson’s Iron Fleet has been slowly enacting their plan to deal with the underground warrens for good…
A sharp screech accompanied the sick crunch of aether treated iron smashing into flesh and bone as another many faced, stitched monstrosity plummeted from the sky.
The strange beasts summoned from the darkest magicks and sciences of some diseased mind had assailed the fleet all week long. Usually in ones and twos, sometimes in vast swarms. There was no consistency of the patchwork monstrosities except the bizarre faces embedded in the stitched flesh. It was lucky that few of the beasts had any natural source of flight, relying on co-opting the strange magic of the sea aelves. The waterlike aether did not persist more than a score of yards into the sky, and Admiral Broki Gundrikson had been able to avoid the worst of the assaults by directing his ships to take to the sky.
Still, every few of the creatures had some sort of aerial locomotion, and they were often aided by more common, though no less horrible beasts like a cockatrice or chimera. There had even been a cadre of avian headed beastmen upon tzeentchian discs armed with greatbows. They’d manage to down one of the gunhaulers Broki had hired from the Grundstock corporation, an expensive loss.
“We’re coming upon the site of another tunnel Admiral!” Called the lookout at the aetherglass. “And it looks all clear from here!” Broki nodded and turned over to the helmsman “Take us down Gottri.”
After a few tense minutes, the work was done, piles of barrels stacked in key sections, wired up to a detonation device. The Kharadron retreated from the warren and fell back a hundred paces from the entrance. With a firm nod, Broki gave the order to detonate. A loud explosion rent the chill Shyish air, debris ejecting from the entrance to the skaven warren and raining down around it as the tunnel collapsed in on itself.
Literally smoked out of their holes, the Oracle of Peace abandoned his plan to draw the Soulmuncherz into the warrens and destroy them, choosing instead to abandon Poznyy for the BogYuuvitre without their enemy defeated. This retreat would prove costly, particularly among the numbers of their prized aether-abominations, but untold Wretched slipped away into the South Wind and disappeared beyond the Soulmuncherz grasp.
