In Warhammer Fantasy as my ERP Character

99

In the grim darkness of an underground floor. A hidden temple with plenty of skulls as decoration. Most if not all of them are real human skulls. I will not elaborate. Here is the temple of Morr, the God of the Dead. More specifically it is the headquarters of a certain Order of the Shroud. But coat it in gold and it becomes a temple of a certain Emperor. But we are not here to talk about that. Few hours after the latest vampire abduction and before the vampire brought upon the effigy.

“Hi, I’m Guerino.” The fat man in a butler attire introduces himself with a smile. “You might know me as the servant of Count Steirmann. I am actually an apprentice of—

“Former!” A shout came from an old man in one of the rooms. Followed by a scream, pleading to just throw them to the sun or something along the line.

“Former… apprentice of the Order of the Shroud.” Guerino continued though his smile faded a little as he fixed his glasses.

“Anyway…” He lifted the small chair he made and sat on it the moving effigy which now hosted the elven Valariel’s soul. “I am told to give you a tour. We found someone that can read elvish so after the tour, we can communicate properly. You ready?” 

The effigy patted his hand and he started the tour.

“Our first room is,” He opens the door and immediately an old man throws a bucket of holy water to a bound and stripped vampire who immediately screams. “Torture chamber.” Guerino said with a smile. Though there is no usual instruments normally present in torture chambers. Here there is only a chair, some blessed silver chains, water pumps, and a whole lot of buckets.

“Where’s your vampire sire?” The old man shouts and immediately coughs after

“I told you I don’t know. I can’t even tell you his name.” The vampire answers in pain.

“Sigmar blesses this water so that it may burn the unholy and the undead!” The resident priest of Sigmar blesses another bucket of water which the old man immediately grabs. “Oh, hi Guerino.” The Sigmar priest then waves, clearly enjoying his job here while the old man just nods.

“Hi Roland.” He waves back. “Master.” He greets the old man a bit more stiffly. “Just giving Our God’s messenger a bit of a tour.”

“You do that.” Roland said as he took an empty bucket and filled it again from the nearby water pump.

“Can you write your sire’s name and where they are?” The old man continues interrogating the vampire.

“I-I Don’t know.” The vampire answers and screams again as another bucket of holy water is what he gets.

“Let’s leave them to their work.” Guerino said as he left the room and closed the door. He then went to another door.

“The next room is,” He opens the door. In this room, a skeleton is wrapped around a chair. “Another torture chamber. Yay.” 

“Who’s your Lich Lord?”

“I told you I have no Lich Lord. I am Essah, proud soldier of Nehekhara and I demand you to set me free immediately.” The skeleton answers with its raspy voice.

“Hi Guerino.” The sole torturer in this room greets him.
“Hi Ludger. Just giving a tour.”

“You are getting fatter.”

“LISTEN TO ME!” The skeleton shouts but ignored

“Ah yes.” Ludger’s attention returns to the skeleton. “These skeletons from the south are different from the rest. Holy water is not as effective on them.” Ludger explains while poking the Nehekharan skeleton with a stick. 

“So I decided to get a bit creative and instead I prepared this.” He pulls out a complete skeleton of a cat but without the head. Then he went to the skeleton.

“What are you doing?” Essah starts to panic as Ludger grunts before pulling the skull free. Then he went to the cat’s skeleton.

“No! No! No! Wait! Wait! Wait!” Then Essah saw the effigy. “Usirian!? My God is that you? halt these savages. Barbarian! Don’t you dare.” Ludger then fix Essah’s skull on the cat’s.

“Did you tell your worshipers to do this?” Valariel asks Morr who is sharing the effigy’s senses with.

“No. Must be Sigmar’s influence. Or maybe just because they are Stirlander.” Morr claims his innocence.

“Who’s Usirian?”
“Don’t worry about it.”

“BLASPHEMY!” Essah screams as Guerino exits the torture chamber. “Once I am free I will kill you blasphemer and end my undead existence for the blasphemy forced on me!”

“Can you do the latter without doing the former?” Come Ludger’s answer as Guerino closes the door.

“I think we have enough to torture chambers.” Guerino said as he walked past four more of such chambers. Then he opens the door at the end of the hallway and walks up the stairs. Opening the door to a much more expansive room with plenty of doors around and one huge marble table in the middle.

“Here’s the planning room or the middle room as we call it.” Guerino then went to the huge parchment map covering the entire table. The map covers a very detailed area of the Empire’s southern provinces from Grey Mountains and Reikland to the west, Black Mountains and Wissenland to the south, all the way to World’s Ends Mountain and Ostermark to the east. Dotted around the map are soft coins made from animal bones with the symbols of ravens, skulls, and tombstones.

“The coins indicate certain places. The ravens show the place of recent battle or skirmish or places of accidents with many deaths, skulls show hidden places that necromancers once stayed or still stays, while the tombstones are ruined buildings, mines, or even some dwarven passages. Some of the places indicated by skulls and tombstones are usually visited by adventurers or desperate people. We from the Order of the Shroud are to visit the places if those people didn’t come out and offer funerary rites on site and if possible take their skulls so that necromancers cannot properly raise the body.” 

Valariel’s effigy leans down to see the map. Few raven coins dotted the border of Wissenland and Nuln at the Gray mountains. Particularly near the mountain passes to Athel Loren then sparsely spread around the map. While skull and tombstone coins are mostly gathered around the border of Sylvania, its surrounding woods, near the ruins of Mordheim, then spread out mostly near the Gray Mountains on the west and Black 

Mountains to the south with few very sparsely spread on hills all around the provinces. The map did not cover anything above river Talabec. Excluding the four northern provinces of Middenland, Nordland, Hochland, and Ostland.

“You know, my last mission as an apprentice of the Order of the Shroud was quite exciting.” Guerino started reminiscing. “There’s this loudmouthed adventurer finding a dragon’s lair and boasting that he will steal some of the treasure. Two weeks after the adventurer left, I was sent to offer them their funerary rites after you know, the dragon finished digesting them. When I get there, the adventurer is in fact still alive. Then when I arrived, I alerted the dragon again. So we ran and I ran faster than the adventurer. Which is what we apprentices are trained to do. But hey, we can return later, and give them their funerary rites then.” With each sentence, his excitement fades as he realizes his last adventure is not as exciting as he remembers it to be.

“Then the dragon ate the adventurer. After that I bumped into a vampire in blood red armor. Then the vampire fought and killed the dragon. Then uh..” Guerino finally stops. His right hand fingers rubbing each other then he fixes his glasses. “So, yeah. Maybe I am not cut out to be a member of the Order of the Shroud.”@@novelbin@@

“Then what? Finish the story!” Valariel starts tapping Guerino’s hand furiously with its small wicker hands.

“Yeah. It's not exactly a good story. Sorry.” Guerino apologizes instead as the effigy cannot speak.

“The vampire in blood red armor is probably from the Blood Dragon bloodline. They are into hunting dragons and only killing and drinking from worthy opponents. Most of them. So the vampire probably ignores him.” Morr answers Valariel’s question instead.

“Enough tour for now.” Whispered the old man that suddenly appeared behind Guerino with Valariel being the only one surprised. “Time to see if our newest addition can read elvish. If not, we are going to abduct another one.”

“Yes master.”

—

Back in the black ark within Manann’s Teeth. The black ark is now landed on the shore, a massive drawbridge from the ark’s prow extended. Hundreds of beastmen moving back and forth carrying the ark’s loot along with all the weapons and armors. The daemon Valariel sat on one of the towers on the black ark.

I hum as I study the black egg in my hands. A war hydra egg. Apparently the late dread captain wants to trade it for a personal manticore mount as he already has one hydra. Had one hydra. Its corpse is found in the black ark’s vault, died from drowning as its insides are bloated with seawater and the only corpse left that shows how the rest of the dark elves died before being turned into the soul water by Manann. I leave Marissith to sort all the loot from the ark’s vault. Most seem to be mundane wealth though she already notified me of the abundance of poisons and the materials to make them and there still might be some magical artifacts to be identified and sorted. All in all, the most valuable loot to me is this one hydra egg, that one bound medusa, and the thousands worth of souls in the form of water. 

Everything is easily moved with the exception of the soulwater as I have no proper place to place them. Technically I can just tell my beastmen to move the soulwater and dump them to Laurelorn forest to store them. But I don’t know what would happen if I dump thousands of dark elven souls will happen to Laurelorn. It might irreversibly change the forest’s magical nature. If wood elven souls processed by a forest results in magical forest with capricious ents and dryads, what would dark elven souls make? I can also drink them all but I am torn whether to do that or keep the souls for soulforging materials. Keeping them on the black ark is also a definite risk as the massive ship is not easily concealed and as soon as winter passes, the empire’s navy will undoubtedly try to sink the ark. Then there’s the question of what to do with the ark. I can definitely try to trade them for favors either to the Empire or Ulthuan. For the time being however, the soulwater is safe and I keep some beastmen garrisoned here in addition. So let’s not get hasty on spending it and properly think it through. The dilemma of having so many things to spend must be properly resolved. For now, let’s check the hydra egg.

Nice. With these mutations I can make my own version of lizardmen. The lizardmen in Lustria will undoubtedly see them as a fake and sacrilege though. As they are not made by the Old Ones and not according to their plan or something. Then I noticed something. Greater Regeneration? Multi Headed? Oh yes, it’s all coming together. Time to finally seduce that dragon that should be watching me.