Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapters 1&2

Greetings!

It is time to release the second chapter of the Mortenhoff Chronicles, a novel-style record of my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay group's adventures under my omnipotent GMing.

This chapter tells the story of the group's first actual quest, when they have already had a bit more time to get to know each other. Captain Schniller is sending them out to check on a remote inn at the edge of the Middle Mountains.

If you have already read Chapter 1, then you'll be familiar with the player characters by now. In case you haven't read it yet, here's a quick rundown of the group before you dive in:

- Dracoh Rigulah, Human Cadet
- Kalós Malákas, Human Pit Fighter
- Toga, Human Protagonist
- Nywon Nuntius, Human Scribe
- Mellion, Elven Apprentice Mage

This pdf-file also contains the first chapter for easy reference. Chapter 2 begins on page 23!

Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapters one & two

Enjoy 🍺

Raid on Gazadan Holdfast

Greetings!

Time to kick in the year's first battlereport. So, what's better than an Age of Sigmar narrative battle? Two Age of Sigmar narrative battles, of course!

We played Battleplan: Key to Victory with Skirmish rules before following up with Battleplan: Monolith using the regular ruleset. The idea was that my Sunsplitter orruks are assailing a duardin outpost, but before launching the actual attack the sneaky savages try to wrest control of a nearby Realmgate in the hopes of using it for flanking maneuvres in the actual battle.

The first battle determined whether or not the orruks can deploy a flanking unit in the final battle by using the Realmgate. The second battle represents the actual raid the Sunsplitterz launch on the duardin holdfast of Gazadan!

On with the story!

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Grom the Punch of the Shifty Mountain was determined to raid the bursting granaries of the duardin holdfast of Gazadan. After the defeat of the Sunsplitterz tribe in the Flamescar Plateau, they had wandered from Realm to Realm, aimlessly following their prophet, Wozoc Squinteye. The tribe had known little success in the Firestorm War against all the ghosts, humies and daemons that had kicked their orange arses over and over again: now their numbers were lower, and their abysmal luck always seemed to throw them into barren wastes and other environments were food was hard to come by. Dozens of boyz had already been eaten by their fellows.

Now Grom saw a chance to put things right once again. He would raid the duardin food storages to sustain the tribe until they could once again find a suitably epic scrap to enjoy. To this end he had sent Wardokk Muhgar Bonejaw to take over a nearby realmgate in the dead of night: it was cunning to send a mob of boys to the enemy's flanks, Grom had heard.

Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapter 1

Greetings!

Today you are witnessing something truly extraordinary and magnificent. In addition to the blog's usual narrative battlereports, campaign updates, painted models and the occasional short story, I'll start posting a longer story in chapters of around 15 to 30 pages a piece.

How is this so extraordinary? I have never posted anything written that was grander than my pseudo-philosophic hobby-ponderings, campaign (and one-off) short stories and battlereports. Today is the day I exceed myself by posting the first chapter of Mortenhoff Chronicles, a write-up of my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay group's adventures in a campaign I'm currently GMing for them.

Your eyes are not deceiving you. I am actually writing the constantly evolving story of my players' exploits in the Warhammer RPG in a novel format; dialogues and all. It is a story of what has actually happened to the players in the game: a combination of my memory, my GM notes, the player notes and a tiny pinch of artistic freedom.

We are playing by the 2nd Edition rules, and most of the adventures so far have taken place within the Empire. The Imperial Year is 2522 and the Old World is just as you remember it from the time before the Storm of Chaos. I wanted my players (many of which were not familiar to the setting) to experience a more lively Warhammer world, so I cancelled the entire war. Yeah, I did. It's in my power, I'm the GM.

There are also some minor changes I've done to the world in order to fit it into my campaign, things like new towns and villages, fixes to population sizes and (non-canon) alternative fates and behaviour for some lords/ladies of the realm.

Chapter 1 begins with the introduction of the player characters as they meet each other for the first time. This is basically what happened in our first game session. Before the session, however, each of the players got to play a short introductory solo-mission that I had tailored to their unique backstories: missions that got them all in the same location for the first group session. I found this the best solution for introducing players to the basic mechanics of the game and the feel of the Warhammer world: each of them got to interact with the game world alone with the GM and to figure out the way they wanted to roleplay their characters. By having the chance to actually live through some of their own backstories, I feel the players were more confident in roleplaying and simulating their character's decision-making once we started the group sessions.

I have the Chapter 2 ready and waiting, and I'm currently working on the third. It will probably take up until the 4th Chapter for me to catch up with our group's current situation, but I'll get there eventually! In the meantime I'll be dropping these previous chapters for you folks to read through.

Mortenhoff Chronicles: Chapter One

The story itself is told through the viewpoints of the player characters, but as my players are also reading this (I'm actually writing this for them, you lucky dastards just get a glimpse at it on the side), I will not be revealing anything crucial about the PCs or their backstories in the Chronicles until something comes up in the game itself.

A HUGE thanks to my dear players for bringing life to the pile of .txt-files and notebooks that is my campaign! All the hours I spend preparing the material and coming up with crazy stuff would be for naught if it weren't for them turning it into a wonderful adventure with their dedicated roleplaying and intriguing characters. They were also kind enough to let me share their heroic deeds here in the blog!

Tales of Instahammer: January

Greetings!

The first month of the Tales of Instahammer community event is nearing its end, meaning that it is now time to show off what I have accomplished so far.

The first month was all about getting your warband started, hence the theme Making an Impact. My impact was a unit of 10 Ulgumgi Trappers, a unit of 10 Ulgumgi Hirdmen and one of the army's heroes, an Ulgumgi Thegn!

That easily checks out the minimm requirement of one unit and one hero. I also completed the Secret Challenge for January by painting a standard bearer and taking a groupshot of the lot by the end of month.

Here they are in all their glory!

Tales of Instahammer 2019

Greetings!

Time has come for me to announce one of my first new projects this year: the Tales of Instahammer 2019. I joined this amazing hobby event to feel the grand power of community inspiration and pressure, which I hope will see me building myself a new finished army by the end of June.

So, what is my Instahammer project? A brand new Order army, of course, with Sylvaneth and Free Peoples units combining to make up a totally useless but extremely thematic force for me to play some sweet narrative games with.

Right. And the theme?

Some of you might recall the events of the recent Twilight Prince campaign. My army represented the Breuer's Regiment of the Grand Army of the Puffington Empire, which got drawn into a perilous quest to seek and defeat a Slaaneshi daemon trapped in the woodlands of Uglu. Led by a cold Gunmaster and a power-hungry Battlemage, the valiant freeguilders fought their way through many bloody battlegrounds to reach their destination, only to find a duardin army blocking their way right at the end of their arduous journey. Urged by these two warmongers, the soldiers attacked the duardin and were mercilessly slaughtered at the Battle of Twinpoints. The human officers were left at the mercy of their surviving miseld underlings by the duardin Thanes, who didn't see the wretches worthy of their attention.

This is a story of what happened afterwards.

Meet the Ulgumgi, a bloodline of humans living in Ulgu which branched off of the Puffington Empire that fateful day the Breuer's Regiment was defeated. The survivors of the army scattered into the dark woodlands of Ulgu after dealing harsh judgement upon the leaders who led them to fight an allied race. No-one yet knows what actually happened to the regiment's officers, but none of them have been seen ever since.

Puffington Post #18

The Ultimate Dice Cup

Greetings, and welcome to the hobby year 2019!

To kick this year off I will show you something I ordered last year and received just before the year changed...

An ExtraBushyBeards Dice Cup!

This beauty here is the handiwork of Anpilcraft, a truly skilled Russian craftsman who tailored this cup to my needs, based on my wishes of two colours and a single blurry screenshot of my blog's logo. It looks amazing, feels incredible and sounds like nothing short of wargaming ASMR when you rattle some dice in it.

It has a base structure of dyed leather with the beard logo embossed on its surface, all bound together with pure white thread. The inside is smooth, royal blue leather that muffles the rattling of dice to a pleasant level. It can hold a ton of 16mm D6s, and is sturdy enough to use as a means of transporting the dice!

Stunning work. Here's a picture of the very first roll I made with the cup: two 6s and five 5s. That's more than I usually roll during a 2000-point game! I say it is safe to deduce that this hand-made miracle has drawn the attention and appreciation of the Dice Gods.

I highly recommend checking out Anpilcraft's Instagram page for an entire gallery of his works and working methods. That man knows what he's doing.

Armed with this newly-acquired hobby tool, I expect great success in my upcoming battles and campaigns this year. The Dice Gods have had the tendency not to like me; let's hope this mighty totem will change my luck!

Battle of Farscry Holdfast

Greetings!

Here we have a 2000 points non-campaign battlereport to wrap up the year, my Aelves against my friend's Blades of Khrone.

The scenario was generated from the new Battleplan Generator that comes with the Core Book, giving us a straight-up "kill 'em all" game where nothing but slain enemy models and their Wounds mattered.

Without further ado, here's the game!

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Lord Sundamar Blazeborn surveyed the green field that stretched out far below him, his tactician mind memorizing the buildings and ruins that dotted the scene. A'undtur, his great red dragon, growled approvingly as it carried its aelf companion through the clouds.
"Daemons," the ancient being mind-sang to its rider.
"Daemons of the Blood God, hungry for the lives of mortals."
"And barbarian tribesmen, too. I can smell them all the way up here," Lord Sundamar sang back as he watched the ant-sized dots forming up into hordes and warbands on the field.

Across the field from daemons and barbarians stood a glittering host in neat, arrayed ranks. This was Sundamar's force, drawn from the loyal members of the Order of the Moonserpent to reclaim the distant Farscry Holdfast that had been lost to Chaos a couple of months earlier. Their aim was to secure the holdfast and its surrounding area so that astronomers and loremasters could once again gain access to the holdfast's structural scrying engines.

Puffington Post #17

A special thanks to Baron Klatz for the amazing Muskrateer sketching! Check out more of his wonderful drawings at his picture gallery.

Puffington Post #16

A special thanks to Baron Klatz for the amazing Cletus sketching! Check out more of his wonderful drawings at his picture gallery.

Battle of Twinpoints

Seventh and final battle of the Twilight Prince campaign!

2000 points marking the zenith of the entire league, I know fielded most of my available Free Peoples collection. My army had to change their allegiance from Free Peoples to Order: Anvilgard in order to accommodate enough artillery and heroes for it to work, as my collection is based on the old Warhammer Fantasy Empire faction, after all. I got to play against Kuqry's amazind Dispossessed army, except that he also changed his allegiance to a more general level, taking Order: Hammerhal in order to fit in all his models.

So, it was 152 humans against 114 duardin, a total of 266 models on the board. Biggest game I've had in months! We played one of the scenarios in the Nighthaunt Battletome (customised to fit out campaign's theme) in which my Free Peoples march onto the field through a portal, facing a host of mountainfolk that didn't expect our sudden arrival. There were two objectives on the field, one on each end of the board. The rules were simple: if the Free Peoples controlled both of the objectives by the end of the game, they won, but if they controlled neither, they lost. Any other result was a draw, and as a suitably fluffy narrative spice the Dispossessed couldn't use Command Abilities on the first battleround due to, emmm, being surprised.

These two objectives mark the entrance to the dungeon housing the Slaaneshi daemon. Will Fersen and Rosengart be able to defeat the duardin, open the dungeon and defeat the daemon? On with the story!

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After a day's march Breuer's regiment had travelled across the Hyshian plains to arrive at the realmgate that would take them to the daemon's dungeon. With the arcane knowledge of Ernest Rosengart they were able to activate it and traverse into the shadowy Realm of Ulgu, to the Twinpoints, where the scholars assured the goal of their journey would await.

What awaited them was not only the dungeon they were after, but also an entire army of duardin camped right at the gates of the daemon's lair. General Breuer was among the first to ride through the realmgate, appearing at a lightly forested plain right in front of the mountainfolk army. The General couldn't believe his eyes.
"What? Wait, this can't be the location..." the stammered, turning to the rows of lieutenants and sergeants behind him.
"Where's Fersen? I must have words with him. Now."

The officers merely shook their heads, gazing around helplessly. Behind them the rest of the regiment was still marching in, rank after rank of heavily armed freeguilders appearing from the depths of the realmgate. The General saw there was no way to turn them back now.
"We need to rethink the plan. Cease the..."
"You'll do no such thing, General," Gunmaster Fersen interrupted, walking in from among the troops.
"The plan proceeds as we agreed. We need to gain entrance into the dungeon."

The Final March

The field was silent, except for the low hiss of the comets as they lay in their craters of wet soil. All around the site there were huge piles of ash where the corpses from the recent battle had been burned, those of friend and foe alike. Yet now there were no armies fighting over this blood-soaked swamp, no clashing swords, no echoing gunfire.

Two men were standing beside one of the comets, with no signs of other living beings anywhere to be seen. One of the men was walking down to the celestial orb, while the other stood on the edge of the crater, keeping watch.
"Will one comet be enough?" Gunmaster Wolfgang Fersen called down.
"How much power can the artefact bear?"
"I... believe one will suffice, as... the structure of the key doesn't seem to... be meant for enormous amounts of arcane energies," Battlemage Ernest Rosengart replied as he carefully descended into the crater.

Upon reaching the bottom, he placed the ornate key on top of the glowing half-buried comet. The surface of the celestial orb began glowing with golden light under the touch of the artefact. Ernest took his grimoire from his belt and began reciting a spell. Fersen scratched the back of his neck with his repeater, gazing around the swamps around them. This was the critical moment in which the wizard could not be disturbed.

Puffington Marshal Emmerich Heilman inspecting the Breuer's Regiment before they march off to war

Puffington Post #15

Oldentown District Council Election

Who will you elect to sit on the District Council of Puffington Oldentown?

You are allowed to vote for several candidates at once and fill the form as many times as you like - we have an entire city district's worth of denizens to impersonate, after all!

The candidates have listed their goals and agendas in the Election Special of the Puffington Post newspaper. Study carefully before voting (or don't)!

This form remains open until 7.12.2018, exactly a week from now.

web polls

Puffington Post #14