Lothar Rothmanns - Mordheim Diary Entry #2

 Rothmann cursed under his breath........damn this weather. He and his followers should have been safely at the inn by now.

Now, the light was failing, they were still on the road, they were sodden and they were miserable, silently trudging through these woods, filthy to the knee.

A cry went up from the lead man. What was it this time? Not another delay, he hoped. 

Rothmann moved up to check.

What was that? Something shuffling amongst the treeline.............Rothmann gave the cry to pull back and regroup. Make all weapons ready!

Vile beastmen! How many? Where? Which direction?? They seemed to be flooding out of the trees in all directions.

It was all descending into a series of individual fights, each man for himself. Rothmann saw Brother Belgar fall near him, the Priest taking what looks to be a dreadful wound. 

No time to assist, as the beasts were attacking from all directions, Rothmann bellowing orders to keep the band together. People were splintering and being isolated - we must stay together!

An unholy animal appeared in front of him, roaring in what seemed to be a guttural language. Was this leading these creatures? Rothmann had to charge and attempt to swing things by defeating this enemy.

 The baggage animals frothed and screamed in fear as fighting continued all round them.

Men were falling all round him. Rothmann saw there was no other option.............he gave the general call to retreat, feeling the shame of his last retreat. This time it would be an ordered withdrawal, not a rout again.

Lifting their injured fellows, the Witchfinders fled the scene, leaving the beasts looting their baggage, gorging on the dead and pack animals they had left behind.

Thankfully, as he was being carried away by the Zealots, Brother Belgar stirred and gave a cry of pain. He had survived, but was clearly seriously injured.

Return to Mordheim Secnario #2

They had to rethink how they would do this. The last attempt at entering the city had been a disaster on all levels, really, with the undead being almost unstoppable. 

It was not a rout, they told themselves, but they all knew the truth really. 

To this end, a new band has been assembled, more heavily equipped, better funded (from where, noone yet felt able to ask Rothmann) and the initial approach to the walls of the city more planned, this time approaching from the more often used Palesovan trade road.

However, that is not to say that this will make things any easier, as that road passes through the deep forests of the region, with multiple winding routes. Indeed, this appalling weather has all but washed out the path and made slogging through it in any semblance of order highly difficult. The wagon constantly slipping into puddle holes and having to be pushed out, let alone that constant greasy rain that soaks everything completely and keeps the ground sodden.

They have not been unobserved, they knew, but there was always going to be something out there. Quite what they could about it other than hope for getting to the next village with no problems? Damn this weather, just keep the men alert!

Lord Durward

“I remember at this hour, at nine, they used to go out......... They sent their dog to me, and he took me along. The dog’s name was Anubis. 

They went hunting, hunting all night, as wolves do. How happy they were. Sometimes I could escape, and went hunting with them. 

You couldn’t understand. They went after some monstrous prey, with pikes. They wore holy relics, talismans and crucifixes. They resembled the knights of the crusades. 

When they returned, they were covered with blood, drunk with carnage! 

But one day, they came back with wounds on their throats, wounds that looked like bites. Out of which their blood was flowing… flowing...”

Lothar Rothmanns - Mordheim Diary Entry #1

Lothar Rothmanns was a veteran of the Empire army having fought in many battles and witnessing many horrors over many years. But the screams he heard coming from the inn as he and his band of witch hunters scurried away like so many sewer rats would scar his soul for the remainder of his life.

They were supposed to be protecting those people.................... and they had utterly failed them. 

The screams cut through his warrior soul, and he fancied that he could even hear flesh being rent from bone, although that was almost certainly his tortured imagination lending colour to his guilt. But that young mother of the mewling infant could have been no more than 17 summers old. What dark fate had befallen her and her swaddling babe now that her protectors had fled?

To his shame the horrors of the undead and the armoured devil leading them had unmanned him, and his hoarsely shouted order to withdraw had cut the clammy night air.

Once distance had been put between him and the eldritch dead his fear had turned to anger at the abject failure they had been guilty of. He raged, and raged, and his anger was wrathful indeed, blackly reflecting his family name. He dismissed all but the ogre bodyguard, brother Odo, the hurt at the failure in the brute’s eyes softening his enraged heart. It was a miracle the beast had survived being cut down by the undead fiend’s great sword in any case. Maybe he was indeed favoured by Sigmar?

Sending the warband on their way with curses and imprecations unworthy of a servant of Sigmar he and the hulking giant had made their way from the cursed city to the relative sanctuary of a rural tavern at a popular crossroads.

There he met the first of his new recruits - Sister Jaklyn, recently of The Sisterhood of the Monthly Anguish. She would serve as a warrior priestess of Sigmar and her faith and strength would stand as the keystone for the new band he would form with vengeance in mind for the vampiric fiend who had fallen upon the innocent soules back at the inn...................................

Return to Mordheim - Intro and Scenario #1

23 years since the doom of Mordheim, and in this time the ruins have been left to fester, rot and become truly ridden...........until whispers begin to stir in the Ostmark of something dreadful being felt in the environs close to that city. Milk sours, animals are stricken with a curious distemper and the very plantlife rots and seem drained of.........something.

Eventually, the local Baron declares something must be done about this and tasks a team with investigating and ending the spreading rot that seems to be seeping out from the walls of the ruined city. 

However, who and how? Noone has been that way for at least a dozen years, and those who did came back......silent.

Finally, word spreads that living in the temple of Sigmar in Oestnar, there is someone who could be a suitable leader for such an expedition?

Lothar Rothman, survivor of the Krappefort wars of 2010/2011, is approached. 

Older, somewhat more tempered in his attitudes now, but no less worthy than he was back in the day, he initially finds the idea disagreeable..............still bearing the scars of his previous journeys into Mordheim and being the only survivor that emerged in one relative piece.............. but after some meditation and a night in the chapel, agrees to lead the expedition to uncover the cause of this malady.

Thorough preparations of both mental fortitude, equipment and an assembly of his crew complete, they set off towards the walls of cursed Mordheim.

They arrive late on the outskirts of the city, intending to spend the night safely within the infamous Tybor House - the final inn before the road turns solidly to nowhere. 

However, as the evening deepens, noises, yells and a strange scraping sound are heard from the door and it becomes apparent that something is out there, someone needs to see what it is and someone needs to go out..............and the faces of the other inhabitants of the inn turn towards the Witchhunter party with a "well, this is your job, isn't it? Not ours?" series of expressions, leaving no choice - either they venture outside to investigate or they find themselves barricaded in with people who are likely to turn as disagreeable as whatever is out there................

Wandering Fanatics

 A warband, system neutral, of warrior fanatics. Might be chaos, might be something else - not entirely sure! Made from a mix of GW, Perry and Warlord pieces. 

Got a feeling this may be the warband following my Khorne character Obrist Weil as they look suitably no nonsense enough

They Came From the Woods! Mordheim Scenario

Settlers of Soare have to maintain a guard. A watchful peace, but from time to time, something does happen.......

The construction of villages and attempt at a settled society is always a fragile affair, but the years pass and things seem to quieten, but that does not mean safety.

Within the woods, the graves and the fen, eyes watch, hunger takes and the offence of watching a community grows until, eventually..........the beast appears to pillage and reclaim the land of the dead

Table Size: 8x4

Rules: Mordheim


Forces

Attacker choices: Beastmen/Undead/Possessed/Evil Humans
Defender choice: Humans/Witch Hunters/Sisters/Bretonnians

Weirdness, oddities and unusual concepts are encouraged - let me know if wanting to do something different and we'll work it into the game.

Deployments:

The Village is in the middle of a clearing, surrounded on three sides by woods, with a clear gap from the village to the woods. Graves, Death Houses and the Crypts of Soare are situated to one side of the village.

The defenders deploy first, within the village and surrounding walls.

Attackers are not deployed onto the table, but use their first move to emerge from the surrounding woods wherever they feel is suitable for them, on any of the three sides of the table.


Attacker Considerations: The village is an offence, the inhabitants little more than food or fuel. You must destroy the buildings by putting them to the torch, destroy all you see and make good work of it.

Defender Consideration: This is your life, your families, your homes, your community. You have to defend or lose everything.


Attacker takes first turn


Warband Rules and Upgrades

Each warband has 500 gold points to spend, in the usual way.

To make some unique character for warbands, each player has 10 "points" to spend on the following:

A point for a piece of special equipment from the rare items list
A point for a characteristic upgrade, up to the maximum allowed for races in the rulebook.

These can be spent as the player wishes throughout the warband, spread throughout or stacked as you like, but keeping solidly to Rule #1 please.



Additional rules

Burning buildings - any attacker may spend a full turn in contact with a building and do nothing else but setting it on fire. Conversely - a defender, if situated near a well, may spend a turn in contact with a building and do nothing but fight the fire and put it out.

Defenders to not have to take rout tests. They'll die on this hill.

Skeletons: Additional troop type for undead warbands. Stats below, may be equipped as per the undead equipment list. Same points cost as a Zombie.

M: 4
WS: 2
BS: 2
S: 3
T: 3
W: 1
I: 2
A:1
LD: 5

Cause Fear, May Not Run.