- Jan 28, 2012
- 1,897
Geheimnisnacht. The most terrifying night of the year. At least, according to the local townsfolk of Immenburg. The dead would rise and roam the fields; corpse carts would rattle through alleyways, and the undead would claim their toll.
Morturion had always disagreed with the simple-minded folk who spurned this evening. The weaklings seemed to be all around him. Not physical weaklings, of course - as the future wizard had learned after many a beating by stupid, uncomprehending bullies. A less arrogant boy might have supposed that it was his own fault that he received such violent outbursts, given the fact that he had taken to sneering at their incompetence and pointing out the obvious flaws in their capacities for thought. However, Morturion was not such a humble person, despite not having achieved great status at this point in his life, and blamed the attacks on the attackers' inability to accept their own inferiority to himself.
He did not look upon everything with disdain. The aforementioned evening had always been seen by him as an opportunity that he had not yet dared to take - an opportunity to achieve immortality. For with the undead came the necromancers, and with the necromancers came power. Morturion wished to seize this power, and cast off his weak, insignificant, human life.
And so, every Geheimnisnacht since his 13th birthday, when he hoped for 'opportunity' to come knocking at his door - barred at the time, of course, due to his parents' fear of the undead - he resolved to be ready and waiting for it...
-------------------------------------------
The Geheimnisnacht of 1545 was particularly vicious. The undead rose up, invigorated, as Nagash inched closer and closer to regenerating his physical form. Battered hatches could not save the innocent civilians; hundreds were slain, and whole villages decimated. The case of Immenburg, in those days an isolated town, was a particularly bloody story.
The wind howled through the streets, its force toppling rickety signposts to the ground. Rain lashed the windows of the grubby little houses, which had condemned so many of the town's inhabitants to a pitiful existence, and infuriated those with ambition. They were precursors to a distinct sound that became louder as its source approached the town - the sound of tramping feet. Though a small clanking sound was audible within the walls, it did not raise any alarms, although it did induce a sergeant to encourage his soldiers to be vigilant.
The walls of the town were high - they always had been, for it was a location vulnerable to attack and it required defences against the many external threats present in the Empire at that time - and they seemed to glow as they basked in the sickly green light of the ascendant, full moon of Morrslieb.
The watcher at the gates was approached by an old man - a harmless little creature, who somehow filled the sentry's heart with dread. He seemed to take an eternity to reach the gates from the position from which he emerged out of some eerie fog. The fog itself was only significant in its presence on one side of the city. That's odd, thought the sentry, It seems to be coming from the graveyard, and the marshes beyond that. I'd best be on my guard, but I am more than a match for one old man, no matter how strange he may seem to be. Being a particularly stupid sentry of a particularly boring town on a cold night that every inhabitant was just wishing would end, he was not as suspicious as he should have been, and did not signal for aid from his fellow guards. This lack of a cry for help was no doubt something to do with the prospect of facing the embarrassment of admitting to being terrified of an elderly traveller in the pub the following day.
And yet, the old man continued to strike fear into his heart: despite his slow pace and the evidence suggesting he was in the winter of his years, he walked as if he had all the time in the world. "Who goes there?" the young sentry called out, attempting to make his tone more steely to hide the fact that he was not the most experienced of soldiers. The senior citizen raised his head, slowly, carefully, as if waiting for the tense guard to break the silence once more, out of nervousness and impatience. Rewarding the younger man's patience, he drew a wrinkled smile across his ancient face, and duly opened his lips to speak.
"I am a herald, and a student."
The sentry frowned. A student? Even those who could afford education rarely pursued it beyond their youth; it was plausible that this man was in fact a desiccated scholar, but 'student' would not be the appropriate word to use in his case. It, after all, implied that he had a senior, and presumably older, master or mistress, something that seemed practically impossible given his age. This thought process only gave the sentry a more bizarre impression of the ancient's cryptic message.
"And what is your business here?" the guard asked after several confused seconds.
"You wouldn't leave a poor man like me out here in the cold, would you? I'd freeze to death!" the stranger rebuked.
"I'm afraid I would," retorted the guard, angry at the patronisation that had just occurred. Getting his temper under control, he continued in more considerate tones, "Security is important. You'll need to be assessed by others - priests, the captain of the town guard, witch hunters - before you can be allowed within these walls: I can bring them to you now. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
The guardsman's last sentence was spoken in a slightly suspicious tone, for the old man had winced as each type of his potential inspectors was named, and the dread that had accompanied the elderly being - who looked so old and decomposed that he seemed not too dissimilar from a walking corpse - increased. Perhaps he did have something to hide, but in that case, perhaps it was the guardsman who had something to fear.
"I..." the old man said, stopping his response midway as it was interrupted by a train of thought. Facing the expectant look of the guard, he said, "...didn't answer your question." He beamed again apologetically, but somehow his apparent happiness seemed sinister.
"I am here to prove myself to my masters and mistresses...but of course, I am also here to prove them to you." Lightning flashed, and for a moment the guard thought he caught a glimpse of something horrible in the fog behind the stranger; for an instant, light was cast across the old man's features, and they seemed horribly disfigured. The guard dismissed the thought; the thought was too terrifying, and, if true, would certain doom for him, at least.
However, there was no escaping the truth. "Yes," the old man said, his tone now a hushed whisper, "you saw my companions. You know why I am here. But you will not call for aid, for you know what awaits you if you do."
The guard remained silent, paralysed in terror.
"It is a rather special night, after all. And perhaps a fitting celebration for the Geheimnisnacht of 1545 is a little story. Would you like to hear it?"
The younger man, reduced to a fearful wreck, nodded his head limply.
"Once upon a time, your precious Man-God -" the necromancer - for that was what he was - spat after uttering that word, before proceeding, "killed the supreme lord of undeath. But you can never kill Him forever," he said with a chuckle. "Nagash will return, soon. In the meantime, we have to ensure that you mortals honour Him by keeping the faith on His holy day."
The wizard sneered, before speaking once again. Tiny coils of dark magic, only noticeable from nearby, were wrapping themselves around his hands at this point, and the air was brimming with arcane energy. "Methods of divining available to His greatest disciples can reveal to us fragmented parts of certain possible futures, although never utter certainties, of course. I won't bore your basic brain with the details of prophesy, but it suffices to say that a master of undeath may be made here, by the destruction of this city."
The wizard seemed to be about to launch into an even longer crazed monologue, before he paused again. An orb in the folds of his cloak whispered into his mind, We must make haste. The city's defences may be hard to breach, and the night is short affair, so get him to open the door now.
"Naturally, the disciples have insisted I venture here, I intend to be this master, and you intend to survive," the necromancer continued.
The guard nodded his head once more, his eyes wet with tears of shame - the shame he felt in the confidence that he was about to fail his own duty, and the shame that his courage had already failed. Thankfully, the necromancer could not see that he had already soiled himself, but small mercies were placed in perspective in the dire world view the guard now had.
"Our arrangement will be very simple, then. You tell me where all your hidden colleagues are - where exactly they are stationed on this wall, that is - and then call out the inspectors. I'll handle the inspectors, but if I find there are hidden guards that you have not informed me of, I will make sure you die before I do," he said serenely. "If there are no hidden guards you have not informed me of, you will be allowed to walk away from this place."
The immortal grinned again, as the guard nodded. "See, that wasn't hard, was it?" the necromancer said cheerfully. "Oh, and of course I then destroy the entire city. Your family don't get free passes to safety, I'm afraid." The guard gulped. He had a few cousins he could feel guilty over, but it was a relief his parents no longer lived here. Otherwise, his dilemma would be a trickier beast to tackle. Not that I'm going to be tackling any beasts, he reflected sadly. No, I'll be the coward I always was. With this ominous thought in his mind, he nodded his head again, and duly pointed to the locations on - and in - the wall where armed guards were hidden. It was probable that they couldn't see what he was doing through the fog, but even if they could, they would likely be confused. All they could see was a curious old man, probably with poor sight to match his age, being shown various parts of the city.
Even if they were suspicious of their sentry being held hostage, they would have their doubts reassured by the fact that there was only one adversary for him to face. In such a scenario, he would signal for them to fire arrows at his assailant. They could not see the undead army through the fog.
"Thank you," the old man said after being shown the various locations on the wall facing him, his voice laced with insincere gratitude. His eyes glowed for a moment, and the guard shivered. He was afraid, but he could not possible know that the necromancer was once again communicating with his masters through his orb. Beaming a mental image to a certain Dark Lord of Nagash, he waited for another few seconds as specific locations, each of where a guard was placed on the wall, were sent out to individual Nagashi spell casters. behind the fog. These people prepared to fire bolts of dark magic at their assigned targets, on the Dark Lord's signal.
"Now, call your little group of inspectors out," the necromancer snapped impatiently. The sentry proceeded to make a distinct signal to the guards on the wall, and one ran off to fetch the inspectors - a witch hunter, a warrior priest and the captain of the town guard - whilst another gestured to the other guards stationed on the wall, ensuring that they were ready to fire at the ancient man should he prove to be a hostile target.
In a few minutes, a grating sound was heard as the great doors of the city were opened, and one of the inspectors emerged from them. The captain stepped outside the gate of the city, and frowned suspiciously at the old man. He wasn't given time to think: with his mind, the necromancer sent a message - Now - to the Dark Lord commanding him , which was duly relayed to the Nagashi in the fog behind him. With his right hand, the necromancer hurled a ball of shadows at him. It exploded, tearing him to shreds. With his left hand, the twisted mage conjured up a bolt of darkness which impaled the sentry.
The sentry looked up at him, appalled. "But...your half of the bargain..."
"...will be fulfilled," said the necromancer. "You will walk away from this place, once you are dead. It's a long way to Nagashizzar." The guard's last thoughts were a realisation that his betrayal had been pointless and survival but a foolish fancy ever since the old man spoke to him outside the city walls, and puzzlement at the fact that the wizard had not been shot by his fellow sentries. They had been killed at the same time as the guard captain, their bodies pierced by bolts of darkness sent forth from the hands of Nagashi spell casters. Multiple bolts had been sent to each one, so that none would escape their doom. Of all settlements, this small town, like the sentry, had never stood a chance against the will of Nagash.
That will was expressed by the necromancer striding forth over the corpses of the sentry and captain of the guard, dark fire leaping forth from his hands to shoot through the open doors of the city like a great fountain of death, preventing anyone from closing the doors without great difficulty, pain and a risk of agonising death. It was also expressed by the tide of walking corpses and hellish creatures that then rushed out of the fog on the Dark Lord's command, eager to wreak carnage on those that possessed that life that they were built to extinguish.
Opportunity, after all, did not coming knocking at Morturion's door. It smashed it wide open. A master of undeath would be made in the destruction of this city, and all who were unlucky enough to witness that and live could not possibly conceive of the chain of events that would then occur as a result of it.
Morturion had always disagreed with the simple-minded folk who spurned this evening. The weaklings seemed to be all around him. Not physical weaklings, of course - as the future wizard had learned after many a beating by stupid, uncomprehending bullies. A less arrogant boy might have supposed that it was his own fault that he received such violent outbursts, given the fact that he had taken to sneering at their incompetence and pointing out the obvious flaws in their capacities for thought. However, Morturion was not such a humble person, despite not having achieved great status at this point in his life, and blamed the attacks on the attackers' inability to accept their own inferiority to himself.
He did not look upon everything with disdain. The aforementioned evening had always been seen by him as an opportunity that he had not yet dared to take - an opportunity to achieve immortality. For with the undead came the necromancers, and with the necromancers came power. Morturion wished to seize this power, and cast off his weak, insignificant, human life.
And so, every Geheimnisnacht since his 13th birthday, when he hoped for 'opportunity' to come knocking at his door - barred at the time, of course, due to his parents' fear of the undead - he resolved to be ready and waiting for it...
-------------------------------------------
The Geheimnisnacht of 1545 was particularly vicious. The undead rose up, invigorated, as Nagash inched closer and closer to regenerating his physical form. Battered hatches could not save the innocent civilians; hundreds were slain, and whole villages decimated. The case of Immenburg, in those days an isolated town, was a particularly bloody story.
The wind howled through the streets, its force toppling rickety signposts to the ground. Rain lashed the windows of the grubby little houses, which had condemned so many of the town's inhabitants to a pitiful existence, and infuriated those with ambition. They were precursors to a distinct sound that became louder as its source approached the town - the sound of tramping feet. Though a small clanking sound was audible within the walls, it did not raise any alarms, although it did induce a sergeant to encourage his soldiers to be vigilant.
The walls of the town were high - they always had been, for it was a location vulnerable to attack and it required defences against the many external threats present in the Empire at that time - and they seemed to glow as they basked in the sickly green light of the ascendant, full moon of Morrslieb.
The watcher at the gates was approached by an old man - a harmless little creature, who somehow filled the sentry's heart with dread. He seemed to take an eternity to reach the gates from the position from which he emerged out of some eerie fog. The fog itself was only significant in its presence on one side of the city. That's odd, thought the sentry, It seems to be coming from the graveyard, and the marshes beyond that. I'd best be on my guard, but I am more than a match for one old man, no matter how strange he may seem to be. Being a particularly stupid sentry of a particularly boring town on a cold night that every inhabitant was just wishing would end, he was not as suspicious as he should have been, and did not signal for aid from his fellow guards. This lack of a cry for help was no doubt something to do with the prospect of facing the embarrassment of admitting to being terrified of an elderly traveller in the pub the following day.
And yet, the old man continued to strike fear into his heart: despite his slow pace and the evidence suggesting he was in the winter of his years, he walked as if he had all the time in the world. "Who goes there?" the young sentry called out, attempting to make his tone more steely to hide the fact that he was not the most experienced of soldiers. The senior citizen raised his head, slowly, carefully, as if waiting for the tense guard to break the silence once more, out of nervousness and impatience. Rewarding the younger man's patience, he drew a wrinkled smile across his ancient face, and duly opened his lips to speak.
"I am a herald, and a student."
The sentry frowned. A student? Even those who could afford education rarely pursued it beyond their youth; it was plausible that this man was in fact a desiccated scholar, but 'student' would not be the appropriate word to use in his case. It, after all, implied that he had a senior, and presumably older, master or mistress, something that seemed practically impossible given his age. This thought process only gave the sentry a more bizarre impression of the ancient's cryptic message.
"And what is your business here?" the guard asked after several confused seconds.
"You wouldn't leave a poor man like me out here in the cold, would you? I'd freeze to death!" the stranger rebuked.
"I'm afraid I would," retorted the guard, angry at the patronisation that had just occurred. Getting his temper under control, he continued in more considerate tones, "Security is important. You'll need to be assessed by others - priests, the captain of the town guard, witch hunters - before you can be allowed within these walls: I can bring them to you now. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear."
The guardsman's last sentence was spoken in a slightly suspicious tone, for the old man had winced as each type of his potential inspectors was named, and the dread that had accompanied the elderly being - who looked so old and decomposed that he seemed not too dissimilar from a walking corpse - increased. Perhaps he did have something to hide, but in that case, perhaps it was the guardsman who had something to fear.
"I..." the old man said, stopping his response midway as it was interrupted by a train of thought. Facing the expectant look of the guard, he said, "...didn't answer your question." He beamed again apologetically, but somehow his apparent happiness seemed sinister.
"I am here to prove myself to my masters and mistresses...but of course, I am also here to prove them to you." Lightning flashed, and for a moment the guard thought he caught a glimpse of something horrible in the fog behind the stranger; for an instant, light was cast across the old man's features, and they seemed horribly disfigured. The guard dismissed the thought; the thought was too terrifying, and, if true, would certain doom for him, at least.
However, there was no escaping the truth. "Yes," the old man said, his tone now a hushed whisper, "you saw my companions. You know why I am here. But you will not call for aid, for you know what awaits you if you do."
The guard remained silent, paralysed in terror.
"It is a rather special night, after all. And perhaps a fitting celebration for the Geheimnisnacht of 1545 is a little story. Would you like to hear it?"
The younger man, reduced to a fearful wreck, nodded his head limply.
"Once upon a time, your precious Man-God -" the necromancer - for that was what he was - spat after uttering that word, before proceeding, "killed the supreme lord of undeath. But you can never kill Him forever," he said with a chuckle. "Nagash will return, soon. In the meantime, we have to ensure that you mortals honour Him by keeping the faith on His holy day."
The wizard sneered, before speaking once again. Tiny coils of dark magic, only noticeable from nearby, were wrapping themselves around his hands at this point, and the air was brimming with arcane energy. "Methods of divining available to His greatest disciples can reveal to us fragmented parts of certain possible futures, although never utter certainties, of course. I won't bore your basic brain with the details of prophesy, but it suffices to say that a master of undeath may be made here, by the destruction of this city."
The wizard seemed to be about to launch into an even longer crazed monologue, before he paused again. An orb in the folds of his cloak whispered into his mind, We must make haste. The city's defences may be hard to breach, and the night is short affair, so get him to open the door now.
"Naturally, the disciples have insisted I venture here, I intend to be this master, and you intend to survive," the necromancer continued.
The guard nodded his head once more, his eyes wet with tears of shame - the shame he felt in the confidence that he was about to fail his own duty, and the shame that his courage had already failed. Thankfully, the necromancer could not see that he had already soiled himself, but small mercies were placed in perspective in the dire world view the guard now had.
"Our arrangement will be very simple, then. You tell me where all your hidden colleagues are - where exactly they are stationed on this wall, that is - and then call out the inspectors. I'll handle the inspectors, but if I find there are hidden guards that you have not informed me of, I will make sure you die before I do," he said serenely. "If there are no hidden guards you have not informed me of, you will be allowed to walk away from this place."
The immortal grinned again, as the guard nodded. "See, that wasn't hard, was it?" the necromancer said cheerfully. "Oh, and of course I then destroy the entire city. Your family don't get free passes to safety, I'm afraid." The guard gulped. He had a few cousins he could feel guilty over, but it was a relief his parents no longer lived here. Otherwise, his dilemma would be a trickier beast to tackle. Not that I'm going to be tackling any beasts, he reflected sadly. No, I'll be the coward I always was. With this ominous thought in his mind, he nodded his head again, and duly pointed to the locations on - and in - the wall where armed guards were hidden. It was probable that they couldn't see what he was doing through the fog, but even if they could, they would likely be confused. All they could see was a curious old man, probably with poor sight to match his age, being shown various parts of the city.
Even if they were suspicious of their sentry being held hostage, they would have their doubts reassured by the fact that there was only one adversary for him to face. In such a scenario, he would signal for them to fire arrows at his assailant. They could not see the undead army through the fog.
"Thank you," the old man said after being shown the various locations on the wall facing him, his voice laced with insincere gratitude. His eyes glowed for a moment, and the guard shivered. He was afraid, but he could not possible know that the necromancer was once again communicating with his masters through his orb. Beaming a mental image to a certain Dark Lord of Nagash, he waited for another few seconds as specific locations, each of where a guard was placed on the wall, were sent out to individual Nagashi spell casters. behind the fog. These people prepared to fire bolts of dark magic at their assigned targets, on the Dark Lord's signal.
"Now, call your little group of inspectors out," the necromancer snapped impatiently. The sentry proceeded to make a distinct signal to the guards on the wall, and one ran off to fetch the inspectors - a witch hunter, a warrior priest and the captain of the town guard - whilst another gestured to the other guards stationed on the wall, ensuring that they were ready to fire at the ancient man should he prove to be a hostile target.
In a few minutes, a grating sound was heard as the great doors of the city were opened, and one of the inspectors emerged from them. The captain stepped outside the gate of the city, and frowned suspiciously at the old man. He wasn't given time to think: with his mind, the necromancer sent a message - Now - to the Dark Lord commanding him , which was duly relayed to the Nagashi in the fog behind him. With his right hand, the necromancer hurled a ball of shadows at him. It exploded, tearing him to shreds. With his left hand, the twisted mage conjured up a bolt of darkness which impaled the sentry.
The sentry looked up at him, appalled. "But...your half of the bargain..."
"...will be fulfilled," said the necromancer. "You will walk away from this place, once you are dead. It's a long way to Nagashizzar." The guard's last thoughts were a realisation that his betrayal had been pointless and survival but a foolish fancy ever since the old man spoke to him outside the city walls, and puzzlement at the fact that the wizard had not been shot by his fellow sentries. They had been killed at the same time as the guard captain, their bodies pierced by bolts of darkness sent forth from the hands of Nagashi spell casters. Multiple bolts had been sent to each one, so that none would escape their doom. Of all settlements, this small town, like the sentry, had never stood a chance against the will of Nagash.
That will was expressed by the necromancer striding forth over the corpses of the sentry and captain of the guard, dark fire leaping forth from his hands to shoot through the open doors of the city like a great fountain of death, preventing anyone from closing the doors without great difficulty, pain and a risk of agonising death. It was also expressed by the tide of walking corpses and hellish creatures that then rushed out of the fog on the Dark Lord's command, eager to wreak carnage on those that possessed that life that they were built to extinguish.
Opportunity, after all, did not coming knocking at Morturion's door. It smashed it wide open. A master of undeath would be made in the destruction of this city, and all who were unlucky enough to witness that and live could not possibly conceive of the chain of events that would then occur as a result of it.
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