Swiftly, the season in Efengie turned from Winter to The Reaping, and Nurgle’s plagues took hold on the land. First, the kings of Efengie ordered their troops to return, but as the weeks wore on supplies grew thin. Now, they are at a crossroads. How should they proceed in this more dangerous world?
The Vale of Efengie lay quiet and blighted. Crops withered on the vine with no-one to harvest them. Life, however, had returned to the skies. Low flying temple-ships hovered over the plains and rotting airships drifted ominously over the Geistwald. Within the keeps where the people had sequestered themselves to ride out the plague distrust ran deep as spies were uncovered and loyalties frayed. After numerous interrogations and illicit communiques, leaders were well apprised of the intentions of their “allies” and enemies alike.
Fecula Flyblown nodded in satisfaction, thus far everything had gone according to plan. Daemonflies buzzed around her head, whispering of the terror stalking the land, telling tales of families cowering in their homes, desperately hiding from Grandfather Nurgle’s blessing. “Go,” she croaked to the daemon flies, “spy out what resistance remains and bring your reports back to me.“ Flies in all shapes and sizes descended upon the Vale, wings zipping and thrumming, from fruit flies to hulking plague drones.
Though the Seraphon ate well in their new settlement, men and duardin do not eat insects. Yet for some reason the swarm had spared some regions. The ripening fruits of the Dark Forest remained untouched as did the fields surrounding the Ruins of Bludor. Empty grain stores make for restless citizens. The Seraphon filled their stores with a bloody-won harvest leaving their enemies with nothing but gruesome daemon-flies to eat.
Meanwhile, Lady Fecula augured the future in her foul lair. Reflected in compound eyes, the same scene played out a million times… an epic duel between champions of Order and Chaos, each bearing artefacts of mythic power. The sound of thunder rumbled and lightning cracked the sky. In the still-smoking earth, Sigmar’s Herald Ser Hugh stood! He sought the raucous bagpipes of his ancestors, thought to be in the fabled stormvault Thindrongol Nuk. A champion of Order had appeared, but who would oppose him?!
———-
Ser Hugh and Lady Fecula sought the foretold artefacts, but seemed reticent to meet in epic battle. Perhaps the prophecy was incorrect. Such things can be difficult to portend. Now armed with the bagpipes of his ancestors, Ser Hugh sometimes walks the hills of Efengie playing a powerful dirge that strikes fear into the hearts of heretics who hear its wheezing call.
On a note completely unrelated to any sorts of prophecies, Lord Cueyatl’s newly opened ‘Orange Julius’ displaced High Innkeeper Itzach bar Itzach’s ‘Foetid Tankard Brewery’ as the most popular drinking establishment in the Reaper King’s Guidebook to Efengie. This should in no way be considered to be a triumph of Order over Chaos in an epic battle between champions bearing artefacts of mythic power (like for example Cueyatl’s Realmstone Juicer, or Itzach’s Keg of Sorrows).
