Endless Whispers: A New Campaign

A new year races over the horizon on swift, midnight wings.  Along with it comes a new campaign.  Mordheim has been saved by the actions of the Great Rebellion.  Its nightmarish, disorientating influence has spread a blanket of fiery, new stars across the firmament.  The Palace of Dreams uprears as a pillar of gemstone fire from the center of the city, visible even in such far off places as the Starlight Forest; a dark sea of trees huddling beneath unfamiliar skies...

Serene Annihilation: Clay Golem

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
-Michelangelo

Inanimate matter is now come to life beneath the gaze of insane skies.  A new, darker reality intrudes upon what is left of Mordheim and what stumbles out from its shadow is beyond impossible.  Living arrangements of fossil, bone and earth lurch through hopeless alleys.  Thirsty for the magic which sustains them, these animate idols follow those versed in the arcane arts as a dying man begs for water.

Serene Annihilation: Vulthoom, Rogue Necromancer

Come Thou forth, and follow Me: and make all Spirits subject unto Me so that every Spirit of the Firmament, and of the Ether: upon the Earth and under the Earth: on dry land, or in the Water: of whirling Air or of rushing Fire: and every Spell and Scourge of God, may be obedient unto me!

-The Bornless Ritual

Vulthoom, to hear him tell it, came to Mordheim after narrowly escaping an attempt by his mentor to kill him.  The reason for this is not clear, but given Vulthoom's penchant for skullduggery it is likely related to precious items which suddenly went "missing."  That being said, Vulthoom has also told the story in the reverse: that it was he who tried to kill his mentor.

Either way, Vulthoom's knowledge of Necromancy is not complete.  Possibly due to his shady past - or, perhaps not.

Serene Annihilation: Sojourn, Pumpkinhead Eidolon

Grow, tiny seed,

you are gone to the tree.

Rise, till your leaves fill the sky,

until your sighs fill the air in the night.

Lift your mighty limbs,

and give praise

to the fire.

-Come Wayward Souls, Over the Garden Wall

With the corrosion of reality, more and more terrors seep into existence; larger creatures which were once unable to overcome the barriers between worlds - now stalk the benighted streets under their own power.  Sojourn is another example of the larger variety of Pumpkinhead which have been termed "Eidolons."

Serene Annihilation: Hate Triangle

What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born.

-Jean Genet

The story between Thul, the Kairic Acolyte; Conan, the Barbarian; and Alestorm, the Dwarven Slayer is a tragic one.  It has ensnared all three in a triangle of hatred and destruction - from which only one will emerge alive.

Serene Annihilation: Alestorm, Fallen Dwarven Slayer

My talent was the uncompromising ability to feel spite.

-Grotesque, by Natsuo Kirino

 
Despite Mordheim's plummet into an ultimate abyss of insanity, it seems that certain fragments of reality - or, perhaps, a "world-that-was" - have dripped into the doomed city.  One of these living memories is Alestorm, the Fallen Dwarven Slayer.  Once a mighty thane, he was tricked into selling his soul to Tzeentch.  Although he escaped the chaos god, the Lord of Change's mark remains on him.  Alestorm has become a wretched husk of his former self, reduced to begging and creeping after anyone who will accept his services.  He is driven no longer by a righteous anger, only a hateful spite.  There is no redemption at the end of his journey, not even revenge awaits him - only murder.

Serene Annihilation: Thul, Kairic Acolyte of Tzeentch

I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.

-Diary of a Drug Fiend, by Aleister Crowley

With Mordheim's endless spiral into madness, it is not surprising that servants of the Lord of Change should appear with increasing frequency.  Thul is one of the first to breach the vortexes of insanity surrounding Mordheim to arrive since its schism with reality after the success of the Great Rebellion.   What is most disconcerting, is that Thul and his ilk seem to be in Mordhiem not to further the schemes of Tzeentch - which would at least imply the Lord of Change is behind the "dreaming" state of the city: they are in Mordheim to study the change wrought by the Great Rebellion.  Which begs the question: if Tzeentch is not behind it, who - or what - is?

Serene Annihilation: Sparrow, Elven Shadow Mage

Paint me as a dead soul...
The flesh, the image, the reflection
Let's complete the illusion
-John Balance

Few elves dare the depths of Mordheim, but those who follow the path of the Shadows are an exception.  Sparrow has plunged into the depths, seeking revenge - but now finds herself trapped along with everyone else in the continually-twisting labyrinth of madness and despair which is Mordheim.  After the schism in the Witch-Hunters, Sparrow joined Nightingale and her faction - perhaps out of racial unity, or perhaps out of pragmatism.

Serene Annihilation: Baba Yaga, Pumpkinhead Witch

Distributor of pain

Your loss becomes my gain

Anger

Misery

You’ll suffer unto me

-Harvester of Sorrow, by Metallica

As the facade of reality continues to crumble, more and more bizarre entities wriggle forth from the cracks.  Pumpkinheads, once merely unusual guests in the City of the Damned, now comprise a significant portion of its tenants.  Typically man-sized, larger specimens have been observed.  With the continued spiral into madness, even more varieties have emerged.  Baba Yaga is the first observed to have the ability to wield magic.  Her spells are darkly sinister and can suck the soul from a person, leaving him an aimless husk.  When wielded against others of her ilk, she can banish them completely - all while strengthening herself in grotesque, vampiric fashion.

Serene Annihilation: Gelatinous Cube

For the gray mass quobbed and quivered, and swelled perpetually; and from it, in manifold fission, were spawned the anatomies that crept away on every side through the grotto. There were things like bodiless legs or arms that flailed in the slime, or heads that rolled, or floundering bellies with fishes' fins; and all manner of things malformed and monstrous...

-The Seven Geases, by Clark Ashton Smith

In the depths of formless void, there exists a horror which is birthed from the awful blackness which, despite its emptiness, is not empty.  Formless nightmares wriggle from the primordial ur to crush their horrid bulk into the dreary world of the mundane.  Of these terrors, the most stable in form - if such a definition can be utilized - is what men call the Gelatinous Cube.

Serene Annihilation: Blood Golem

I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.

-Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Day and night are meaningless in the City of the Damned: nightmares no longer obey the cycle of the sun.  From this radiant abyss sloughs the terror known as the Blood Golem.  With an affinity for magic, it seeks out those of the Craft and follows them, slobbering up their supernatural spoor.  It drips with ever-running rills of hot, steaming, red ichor - the leavings of its own abominable existence.  Strange shadows hobble behind it, and there are those who dare whisper it is not the only example of its kind.

Serene Annihilation: The Automaton

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

-Profiles of the Future, by Arthur C. Clarke

Born from the dreams of madmen, the Automaton clanks and whirs through the streets of Mordheim.  From whence does it come?  Some claim a mad dwarf built it, then was slain by it in turn.  Some say it is a statue come to life.  Some say it is a manifestation of lunatic gods.  Some say it is yet another traveler from another realm.  None have had time to ask when confronted with the spinning of its deadly black-powder gun.

Serene Annihilation: Atlas Gemini, Blue Whale Knight Colossus

Bound by the world all alone
Crushed under heavy skies
Atlas, Rise!

-Atlas, Rise! by Metallica

The spiral into an ultimate abyss continues.  Fortresses of dark nimbus occlude the sun, rising ever higher in stacks set alight with the azure agony of otherworldly lightning.  The sky becomes a labyrinth until it mirrors the shattered streets below; until city and sky become a single, inseparable maze.

The dream-surge continues.  Those things once frightful, swell to monstrous proportions.  This is an era undreamed of new gods and old nightmares long thought dead.

Atlas Gemini is the next evolution of the Blue Whale Knight Order; he is a portent of the impossible madness yet to come.

Serene Annihilation: Conan

Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.

-Queen of the Black Coast, by Robert E. Howard

He comes to Mordheim with sword and axe in hand; possessed of gigantic mirth and gigantic melancholies.  Like all the other new and singularly nightmarish entities stepping onto the cracked flagstones of the City of the Damned, he is a mystery.  A walker, perhaps, between worlds.  A daemon made human.  A devil in iron.  Or simply a barbarian who is exceptionally skilled at the craft of his kind: slaying.

Serene Annihilation: Ganymede Widdershins, Blue Whale Knight Swordsman

The earth does not want new continents, but new men.
-Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne

With the success of The Great Rebellion, the mysterious Blue Whale Knights have become increasingly numerous.  Their strangeness, like their numbers, is also amplified. Origins shrouded in mystery, Sir Ganymede Widdershins has come to Mordheim.  Unlike his brethren - who are utterly silent - he has been known to speak.  His voice is thin and warbling, as though coming from a vast distance.  He never speaks of who he is or where he came from.  If he was once a man, he certainly is something else now.

Of course, like other of my work, this one was inspired by the amazing work of Bruticus.

Serene Annihiltion: Enoch, Pumpkinhead Eidolon

Come wayward Souls,
Who wander through the darkness,
There is a light for the lost and the meek.
Sorrow and fear,
Are easily forgotten,
When you submit to the soil of the earth.

-Come Wayward Souls, Over the Garden Wall

The world is changed.  Dreary hour by dreary hour passes with no distinction between dream and the waking world.  Something terrible is undone at the heart of existence.  Things which should not be now lumber easily through the streets.  Run in terror if you can, because soon there will be naught but terror remaining.

THE GREAT REBELLION: Part 3

Annihilate this Eden now

Blasphemy gives birth to divine

-Be Without Fear, by Behemoth

Part 1 of the Battle Report HERE. 
Part 2 of the Battle Report HERE.
Part 3 of the Battle Report HERE.

All the awesome terrain for this battle provided by Blueforge Terrain.

I can feel my talons sink into the earth; behind me, the aether flows as a molten lunar ocean.  It surges across the cracked flagstones, and to my second-sight, they glitter like emeralds in the fiery spume.  This place is the rot of Eden; its air is golden wine.  I breathe deep.

Hail the ever-changing Serpent!  Hail the bloodied Lion!  The warp is my endlessly descending oubliette.  Its impermanence makes all my efforts meaningless.  But here, amongst this plague of mortals, I am infused with vigor.

Across the drift of crooked alleys, slumping rooftops and shadowed hovels, I behold in my second-sight the golden halo blazing about the head of the Enemy.  It is so brilliant that it causes me pain.  Even the foolish mortal beings mewling beneath me must be able to perceive it at some level.

Sigmar. The hand of the Enemy at work.  I owe my long banishment to him.  I spread my wings and ready my blade.  Magnus.  His puppet.  Such wrath I shall visit upon him that the very firmament will shake with terror.

I can feel the dream-nexus swirl about me; I perceive its raging, reality-shattering breath as a hurricane of gemstone fire.  Here, at this juncture, fate is unravelling.  Now is our chance to change things.  To make everything right.

So let it be written; so let it be done.

THE GREAT REBELLION: Part 2

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

-The Tempest, by William Shakespeare

Part 1 of the Battle Report HERE. 
Part 2 of the Battle Report HERE.
Part 3 of the Battle Report HERE.

All the awesome terrain for this battle provided by Blueforge Terrain.

The old man shook his head.  His ice-white hair flailed about wildly.  Last night, he had stayed awake until the small hours desperately trying to recall the name of his wife and daughter.  He had lost.  Come the morn, his own name had vanished with the dismal starlight.  Every night, he lost that battle.  For years now, everyone simply called him "The Professor."  Why?  He wasn't sure.  During his rare periods of lucidity, he recalled embarking upon a Grand Experiment long ago.  Just what its purpose or goal was, he wasn't sure.

He adjusted his goggles.  The war for his sanity was hopeless; he lost another battle each night.  He cackled.  Did he even have a wife and daughter?  Did he ever?  Or were the two women just images in  painting?  Or perhaps statues in a graveyard?  No matter.  Defeating insanity was not something he was interested in anymore.  The voice inside his skull hissed louder, demanding murder, death.  Two men charged up the cracked stairway towards him.

His sword leaped into his hand.  His age belied a powerful strength and speed.  He drove his sword into the chest of the first man, he fell with a gurgle.  But try as he might, the Professor could not yank it free of the corpse's rib cage.  Blood spattered on the ground, pooling into arcane formulae.  "More data for the Experiment!" he shrieked.

There came the hiss of a taper followed by a crack and a loud boom as the second man fired his pistol.  The Professor felt the ball whizz past his ear, taking a clump of his hair with it.  The voice in his soul screeched, demanding vengeance.  The Professor felt warp energy surge through him.  He cast his sword aside.  With a roar that shook the cobblestones, the Professor flung himself bodily upon the second man.

Moments later, the Professor stood tall and red, covered in entrails and shattered bone.  Aloft he held the man's head.  More of the Empire's mislead soldiers charged at him.  The Professor flung the severed head at the closest.  The voice echoed his laughter.  It made promises of incredible power; of the completion of the Professor's Grand Experiment.  The Professor cackled.

Whenever he fought for his sanity, he lost; whenever he fought for his life, he won.  A most equitable trade.

THE GREAT REBELLION: Part 1

Don’t suppose that I have come to bring peace to the Land. It is not peace I have come to bring, but a sword!

-Matthew 10:34

Part 1 of the Battle Report HERE. 
Part 2 of the Battle Report HERE.
Part 3 of the Battle Report HERE.

All the awesome terrain for this battle provided by Blueforge Terrain.

With a hatred born of righteous fury, Magnus the Pious stared down upon the nightmare expanse of sagging hovels, crooked towers, fuming miasma and shattered streets - the wretched place fools called The City of the Damned.  Mordheim.

The blood of Asavar Kul - the so-called Everchosen - still befouled Magnus' hammer.  He had chosen not to clean it - that its dreary state might remind him always of the threat of Chaos - lurking just beneath the surface of all reality; and, perhaps, all dreams.

Mordheim.  A boil once lanced by Sigmar's righteous comet, now become a festering wound - worse, and more poisonous than ever before.  Magnus steeled his heart.  He would cauterize the rotten flesh with holy fire.  A final task to accomplish before uniting the Empire once and for all.

He raised his hammer.  The army at his back screamed their war cry.  "It is their gods that failed them!" Magnus called, "Our God is always with us!"

He took a step forward onto the deformed cobblestone.  For a moment, something checked him.  As though the patch laid bare before him was not the one expected, but a darker road - as though something beheld in a dream.  Magnus shook it off.  Sigmar was with him.  The squirming, loathsome denizens of the city were as nothing compared to the Chaos warriors he had defeated in the Great War.  One last step on the path - one last step before a united Empire would bring, at last, peace to the Old World.

Magnus descended upon Mordheim as a fiery comet, his army surging behind.  He beheld the slinking shadows of the city beginning to congeal.  A foulness coalesced to oppose him in a Great Rebellion against sanity, against the light.

Serene Annihilation: Ardan St. Cygnus

'tis thy god I yearn to kill
thus reigning universal

-Natural Born Philosopher, by Behemoth

Eternities burn with his coming; the angels shriek in terror to hail his return; galaxies explode in fear.  Ardan St. Cygnus once again bestrides the earth.  The Annihilator Prime of the Death Clan - Eden rots at his touch and the scent of its death is as golden wine.

Serene Annihilation: Stormcast Eternals

He will judge among the nations, He will fill them with corpses, He will shatter the chief men over a broad country.

-Psalm 110:6

The army of Magnus the Pious approaches the city of the damned - the favor of Sigmar, exalted in the highest, marked clearly upon them.  The metal-clad angels of the god ride the lightning to storm the gates of the damned.  Tremble, O mighty!  The holy might of the Stormcast Eternals falls as the blows of an immense hammer.  Judgement is here.

Serene Annihilation: The Nightmare Engine

I am the cosmic storms
I am the tiny worms
I am fear in the night
I am bringer of the light

-Puritania, by Dimmu Borgir

Madness has always seethed within the very fabric of Mordheim. As though the city itself is only a thin veneer over something far more horrific. But now, as the army of Magnus the Pious draws nigh with the murder of the city as their goal, this madness has surged from a slow boil to a frothing tempest. From this impossible chaos, things have begun to arise from the radiant abyss just beyond the ken of mortals. Impossible, sanity-defying monsters transgressed from sheer nothingness. Of these, the Nightmare Engine is greatest of all.

Serene Annihilation: CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY - KRAMPUS IS BAAAACK!!!

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!

-Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley

All around Mordheim garlands are hung - but not with cheer!  The children huddle in the ashes of cold fireplaces - terrified that Uncle Krampus will soon be near!  All of Mordheim is a feast for Uncle Krampus - a banquet of corpses and corpses soon-to-be!

An old favorite returns in a brand new - and terrifying - form!

Serene Annihilation: The Gallows-Horse

Better raise your ears

The sound of hooves knock at your door

Lock up your wife and children now

It's time to wield the blade

-The Four Horsemen, by Metallica

There are those things which sanity cannot ever content itself with.  The labyrinthine alleys and thoroughfares of Mordheim are a labyrinth of madness - and within its fetid depths, there are those things which spawn from the seething loam of fertile madness.  The Gallows-Horse is one such abomination.  A thing which should not be.

Serene Annihilation: NPC: Magnus the Pious

I am not covetous for gold,

Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;

It yearns me not if men my garments wear;

Such outward things dwell not in my desires.

But if it be a sin to covet honour,

I am the most offending soul alive.

-Henry V, by William Shakespeare

The end is nigh.  The clock approaches midnight, darkness falls and thousands of torches appear like fallen stars in the hills surrounding Mordheim.  Magnus the Pious has united the Empire; now, he marches on Mordheim followed by an army of fanatics.  Chants of "Sigmar!  Sigmar!" echo from the hills to resonate through crooked alleys, over drooping roofs and across cracked boulevards.  Doom has come at last.

Call me Ishmael...

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

-Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

There are things in the deep which we think we have lost; yet, they always return.  One way or another.

 My second Blue Whale Archer: Ishmael Salt.

Serene Annihilation: Bazaar of Wonders

Glory be to Him who changes others and remains Himself unchanged.
-The Arabian Nights

At some point players in Mordheim have too much gold and not enough to spend it on.  For my own Serene Annihilation Campaign, I aimed to solve this by adding the Bazaar of Wonders.  Big items with unfair power - at unfair prices!

Mordheim Battle Report: The Pig-God

Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath been.
-The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allen Poe

Long delay, I know - but here are the results of the battle against the Pig God!

Warband composition and pictures and stats for the Pig God available in the Previous Post.

Saturday Night Mordheim! Carnival of Chaos & Averlanders vs. The Pig-God

He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.

-Samuel Johnson

At last, it has come to this.  The unlikely alliance of the Averlanders and the foul Carnival of Chaos vs. the unspeakable Pig-God.  Will they prevail?  Or will they be devoured?  Below are the current standings of each warband and the stats for the Pig-God himself.

Mordheim Battle Report: Dark Farm

Let the red dawn surmise What we shall do, When this blue starlight dies And all is through.

-The Yellow Sign, by Robert W. Chambers

Join me now in the hateful eternities between the stars.  Now comes at last the results of the first Saturday Night Mordheim.  Battle is joined across a dark farm which huddles fearful and alone below endless, glittering starlight.  Bathed in this cosmic glory, the Witch Hunters ambushed the frightful Possessed with an aim to putting an end to the King in Yellow's reign of terror once and for all.

Warband composition and pictures from available in the previous post.

Saturday Night Mordheim! Possessed vs. Witch Hunters

Why does the horn blast?
Why are we called to arms?
We come with our weapons,
we come armed!

-Götterdämmerung, by Richard Wagner

We stand ready for conflict!  This week's battle will be between the vile Possessed and the (somewhat) incorruptible Witch Hunters.  Below are the current states of each warband.

Starting Warband: The Possessed

What can it then avail though yet we feel

Strength undiminisht, or eternal being

To undergo eternal punishment?

-Paradise Lost Book I, by John Milton

And so comes to Mordheim the outsiders, the "Bogeymen" - the Possessed.  This is a warband I am highly familiar with, having played it myself twice in various campaigns.  Scott is controller of this warband, and a latecomer to the campaign.  As a result, this warband has been expanded beyond what a typical starting warband is.

Serene Annihilation: Universal Heroes - Blue Whale Archers

The souls did from their bodies fly,—

They fled to bliss or woe!

And every soul, it passed me by,

Like the whizz of my cross-bow!

-The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Blue Whale Knights are a knightly order long-thought extinct.  They were men of enormous stature, recruited to fight in full-plate armor on the high seas - leading, naturally, to a high rate of attrition.  Yet in recent times, the Blue Whale Knights have been reappearing in various places about the Empire.  The Blue Whale Knights seem drawn, as many are, to Mordheim - City of the Damned.  Yet, although the order has returned, it hardly seems it is unchanged...

Of course, like other of my work, this one was inspired by the amazing work of Bruticus.

Serene Annihilation: Carnival of Chaos - Update 01

Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.

-Caligula

The Carnival is back in town!  This warband has grown by leaps and bounds.  A carpet of nurglings and brethren stage-hands screen several terrifying heavy-hitters.

Serene Annihilation: Averlanders - Update 01

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

-Mark Twain

The Averlander warband, despite a bumpy start, pulled ahead in the early campaign.  They fell behind for a while, but then a couple huge windfalls resulted in them once again becoming the most fearsome warband around!

Serene Annihilation: Witch Hunters Warband - Update 01

What we need is hatred. From it our ideas are born. 

-Jean Genet

-

After the opening battles of the Serene Annihilation campaign, the warbands have already changed dramatically.  Here is how the Witch Hunters currently stand.

Serene Annihilation: Battle Report - Rescue Hawke!

Follow me now and you will not regret
leaving the life you led before we met
You are the first to have this love of mine
forever with me 'till the end of time
-N.I.B (Nativity in Black), by Black Sabbath

Today's update to the Serene Annihilation Campaign is a battle report.  This game was a custom scenario where the Averlanders, accompanied by "Old Man" Caleb try to rescue his daughter Hawke before the Great Hoodoo, Master of the Carnival of Chaos can snatch her up into his foul clutches.  Will father and wayward daughter be reunited?  Or will Chaos prevail?

Serene Annihilation: Universal Heroes - Pumpkinheads

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

-A Dream Within a Dream, by Edgar Allen Poe 

In recent times, there have been sighted around Mordheim the most curious - and disturbing - individuals.  All resemble, in general arrangement, normal human beings.  Save for being unusually tall, one might mistake them for men at a distance.  But up close, their bizarre nature becomes apparent: filthy robes, creaking armor - and carved pumpkins for heads.

Serene Annihilation: Second Encounter with the King

After the Averlanders encountered the hideous King in Yellow, he returned several battles later to torment the Carnival of Chaos.  By this time they had hired a Reaver (Universal Hero).  The King once again appeared as though from nowhere, immediately surrounding them and offering no escape - but instead offering a choice:

• Agree to have the right arm of your leader chopped off.
• Give up the life of their newest hero.

Serene Annihilation: Universal Heroes - Reavers

Who is like unto the beast? And who is able to make war with him?

-Revelation 13:4

The fate of Mordheim rests on the edge of a knife.  During the moments when the haunted wind is still, the alleyways seem to hold their breath in anticipation.  There is a storm brewing deep in the heart of the Empire.  A young man named Magus gathers his followers to him as fire is drawn from the storm.  It is a storm headed for Mordheim.  In these days, these final days, violence seems to spring up with ever-waxing frequency.  Men born from this free-floating, amorphous violence gather in Mordheim, offering their services to anyone who will accept them.

Serene Annihilation: First Encounter with the King

O and night...the night!
Wind of the infinite
blowing away all faces.

-Duino Elegies: The First Elegy, by Rainer Maria Rilke

After the first three battles, the players came face to face with their heretofore unseen antagonist: The King in Yellow.  Be he man or daemon?  None know.  But he is the King whom Emperors have served.  There is a madness to him, but it is a madness born from knowing the awful truth.  He, and he alone, has peered behind the veil which is Mordheim.  He has seen beyond the terrible, black spires of the Palace of Dreams.  He has opened the Chamber of Truth.  What he has seen has made him insane - but also given him a terrible power over the reality which fools call Mordheim, City of the Damned.

Serene Annihilation: Universal Heroes - Hired Swords

"Bullseye" the Tilean Marksman promoted to Hero

As the Serene Annihilation Campaign continued, all three warbands prepared for a match-up to determine the fate of Hawke.  Sensing the import of this encounter, "Old Man" Caleb reached out to his connections and dug into his pockets to add a Tilean Marksman to the Averlanders warband.  The Witch Hunters and the Carnival of Chaos likewise received additional help (more to come on that...).

The battle itself will be discussed elsewhere, suffice to say, Old Man Caleb was left wailing in anguish as the foul Carnival of Chaos carried away his daughter.

But the real change came after...

Deciding that the hired swords which had been added to each warband were just way too awesome to remain just bit players, I allowed each player to add them to their rosters as Heroes.

Serene Annihilation: Hawke (NPC)

Hawke is the long lost daughter of "Old Man" Caleb Schwartzwald.  Whilst Hawke is most likely not her real name, it is what she has chosen to be called since she fled her home.  She is as tight-lipped about her past as her father, but a few facts are known: she is a magic-user - and therefore prosecuted by the Empire.  It can be inferred that after manifesting her powers, that she fled her home and father.  Though the exact reason is still unknown.  It could be that "Old Man" Caleb tried to force her to suppress her talents and that she rebelled; it could be that he tried to turn her over to the Templars of Sigmar; or it could be that she simply desired to learn more about her skills and set off into the wider world.  Whatever the reason, she, like many of her ill-fame ilk, has come to Mordheim.

Serene Annihilation: Old Man Caleb (NPC)

"Old Man" Caleb Schwartzwald is a man tight-lipped about his past.  His dress and attire seem to indicate that he is from Nuln, yet his accent is not equally congruous.  His weapons are of fine manufacture, but kept in ill repair.  There are those who are certain he is a disgraced nobleman, whilst others say he is just a common thief who somehow managed to avoid the noose and reach old age.  What is certain is that the Old Man is desperately seeking something in Mordheim much more dear to him than wyrdstone: his daughter Hawke.

Serene Annihilation: Campaign Results, Part 01

The Witch Hunters close in on the gallows of Executioner's Square
 

The campaign has begun.  Our initial games were played over the course of a two and a half day marathon of Mordheim, BBQ'ing and drinking.  Here are the results.

Serene Annihilation: House Rules and Additional Rules

I thought I would share the additional rules my gaming group has been using for the Serene Annihilation campaign.  The first part of the document is for the changes to the basic Mordheim rules (ie. House Rules) and the second part contains the special, additional rules we used to represent the additional horrors and terrors of Mordheim and the haunting Palace of Dreams.

PDF available HERE.

Tell me what you think!

Starting Warband: Averlanders

Prior to this campaign, I had virtually no knowledge of the Averlander warband.  As it turns out, they are a really strong, characterful force.  The Averlanders fight well with starting WS4 on their leader, Sergeant and henchmen!  They also shoot really well with starting BS4 on their Bergjaegers.

Wallace led the Averlanders in our Serene Annihilation campaign.  They are his models and mostly non-GW Reaper miniatures.

Starting Warband: Carnival of Chaos

Worse than any mortal enemy is the awful Carnival of Chaos!  Step right up!  Step right up!  Tickets only two groats!  The Carnival of Chaos is a terrifying warband, with outrageously powerful hand-to-hand ability and cheap, powerful henchmen.

John led the Carnival of Chaos in our Serene Annihilation Campaign.  He comissioned me to make the models themselves and they are some of my absolute favorites!

Starting Waband: Witch Hunters

Welcome back to the Serene Annihilation campaign!  Over the coming days, I will be reviewing all four warbands which are taking part in this campaign.  First up: the Witch Hunters!