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................

Painting Tally - April 2022

 Dwarf Slayers - 16

Slayer Lord - 1

Mordheim Necromancer - 1

Mordheim Dregs - 3

Mordheim Zombies - 4

Month Total - 25 

Year Total - 123

Agema, Captain of the Lachrymose and assorted crew.

For a while, about a decade ago, I was quite the fan of Infinity and played it. Or tried to, as the game was so bastard complex that we gave up in puzzlement and condemned frustration. Then they released a new edition (3rd) which went further down the rabbit hole and we cashed out.

................only, I held on to my models, many of which were unpainted and in blisters (as ever), and I even bought a couple now and then over the years.

Cue Stargrave coming along. Perfect - I always knew a stash of sci fi models would be handy at some point. 

So here we are - the crew of the Lachrymose, commanded by Agema. Essentially yr hardened vets who didn't return to society after a decade killing people on order of their government, so decided to do the same as guns for hire and make full use of the skills and equipment they had developed.

Satisfyingly easy to paint - enamel washes really do a lot of the heavy lifting for me nowadays, as I'm enjoying painting to order rather than being on the production line (I've broken the back of my collection, as its about 80% fully painted now).

Used them once and did very respectable business, but not the biggest sci fi person around, so it'll be a month or two before they see table again. Still, nice to be done after many years in the undercoat of shame.