IRON KINGDOMS

  EXCURSIONS

  SEASON ONE, VOLUME FIVE

  AERYN RUDEL

  WILLIAM SHICK

  HOWARD TAYLER

  Cover by

  MATT DIXON, DAVE RAPOZA, AND ANDREA UDERZO

  CONTENTS

  MAP

  WELCOME TO THE IRON KINGDOMS

  A HERO’S END

  RAIDERS IN THE NIGHT

  CALL OF THE CABER

  GLOSSARY

  MAP

  WELCOME TO THE IRON KINGDOMS

  The world you are about to enter is the Iron Kingdoms, a place where the power and presence of gods are beyond dispute, where mankind battles itself as well as all manner of fantastic races and exotic beasts, and where a blend of magic and technology called mechanika shape industry and warfare. Outside the Iron Kingdoms themselves—the human nations of the continent called Immoren—the vast and unexplored world of Caen extends to unknown reaches, firing the imaginations and ambitions of a new generation.

  Strife frequently shakes these nations, and amid the battles of the region the most powerful weapon is the warjack, a steam-powered automaton that boasts great mobility, thick armor, and devastating weaponry. A warjack’s effectiveness is at its greatest when commanded by a warcaster, a powerful soldier-sorcerer who can forge a mental link with the great machine to magnify its abilities tremendously. Masters of both arcane and martial combat, these warcasters are often the deciding factor in war.

  For the Iron Kingdoms, what is past is prologue. No event more clearly defines these nations than the extended dark age suffered under the oppression of the Orgoth, a brutal and merciless race from unexplored lands across the great western ocean known as the Meredius. For centuries these fearsome invaders enslaved the people of western Immoren, maintaining a vise-like grip until at last the people rose up in rebellion. This began a long and bloody process of battles and defeats. This rebellion would have been doomed to failure if a dark arrangement by the gods had not bestowed the Gift of Magic on the Immorese, unlocking previously undreamed-of powers.

  Every effective weapon employed by the Rebellion against the Orgoth was a consequence of great minds putting arcane talents to work. Not only did sorcery allow evocations of fire, ice, and storm on the battlefield, but scholars combined scientific principles to blend technology with the arcane. Rapid advancements in alchemy gave rise to blasting powder and the invention of deadly firearms. Methods were developed to fuse arcane formulae into metal runeplates, creating augmented tools and weapons: the invention of mechanika. The culmination of these efforts was the invention of the first colossals, precursors to the modern warjack. These towering machines of war gave the Immorese a weapon the invaders could not counter. With the colossals the armies of the Rebellion drove the Orgoth from their fortresses and back to the sea.

  The people of the ravaged lands drew new borders, giving birth to the Iron Kingdoms: Cygnar, Khador, Llael, and Ord. It was not long before ancient rivalries ignited between these new nations. Warfare became a simple fact of life. Over the last four centuries periodic wars have been broken up by brief periods of tense but wary peace, with technology steadily advancing all the while. Alchemy and mechanika have simultaneously eased and complicated the lives of the people of the Iron Kingdoms while evolving the weapons employed by their armies in these days of industrial revolution.

  The most long-standing and bitter enmity in the region is that between Cygnar in the south and Khador in the north. The Khadorans are a militant people occupying a harsh and unforgiving territory. The armies of Khador have periodically fought to reclaim lands their forebears had once seized through conquest. The two smaller kingdoms of Llael and Ord were forged from contested territories and so have often served as battlegrounds between the two stronger powers. The prosperous and populous southern nation of Cygnar has periodically allied with these nations in efforts to check Khador’s imperial aspirations.

  Just over a century ago, Cygnar endured a religious civil war that ultimately led to the founding of the Protectorate of Menoth. This nation, the newest of the Iron Kingdoms, stands as an unforgiving theocracy entirely devoted to Menoth, the ancient god credited with creating mankind.

  In the current era, war has ignited with particular ferocity. This began with the Khadoran invasion of Llael, which succeeded in toppling the smaller kingdom in 605 AR. The fall of Llael ignited an escalating conflict that has embroiled the region for the last three years. Only Ord has remained neutral in these wars, profiting by becoming a haven for mercenaries. The Protectorate has launched the Great Crusade to convert all of humanity to the worship of Menoth. With the other nations occupied with war, this crusade was able to make significant gains and seize territories in northeastern Llael.

  Other powers have been drawn into this strife, either swept up in events or taking advantage of them for their own purposes. The Scharde Islands west of Immoren are home to the Nightmare Empire of Cryx, which is ruled by the dragon Toruk and sends endless waves of undead and their necromantic masters to bolster its armies with the fallen of other nations. To the northeast the insular elven nation of Ios is host to a radical sect called the Retribution of Scyrah that is driven to hunt down human arcanists, whom they believe are anathema to their gods.

  The savage wilds within and beyond the Iron Kingdoms contain various factions fighting for their own agendas. From the frozen north a disembodied dragon called Everblight leads a legion of blight-empowered warlocks and draconic spawn. The proud, tribal race known as the trollkin work to unite their once-disparate people to defend their lands. Deep in the wilds of western Immoren, a secretive order of druids commands nature’s beasts to oppose Everblight and advance their own various plans. Far to the east across the Bloodstone Marches, the warrior nation of the Skorne Empire marches inexorably closer, bent on conquering their ancient enemies in Ios as a step toward greater dominion. Shadowy conspiracies have arisen from hidden strongholds to play their own part in unfolding events. These include the Convergence of Cyriss, an enigmatic machine-cult that worships a distant goddess of mathematics, as well as their bitter enemies the cephalyx, a race of extremely intelligent and sadistic slavers who surgically transform captives into mindless drudges.

  The Iron Kingdoms is a setting whose inhabitants must rely on heroes with the courage to defend them using magic and steel, whether in the form of rune-laden firearms or steam-driven weapons of war. The factions of western Immoren are vulnerable to corruption from within and subject to political intrigue and power struggles. All the while, opportunistic mercenaries profit from conflict by selling their temporary allegiance for coin or other favors. It is a world of epic legends and endless sagas.

  Enter the Iron Kingdoms, and discover a world like no other!

  A HERO’S END

  By AERYN RUDEL

  Primus Xicus’ swords had become part of him, extensions of his will made manifest in twin arcs of glittering steel. The Iosans, the toksaa, could not stop him; they could only die, falling in plumes of crimson beneath the scything sweep of his blades. He would not let his own wounds hinder him: a shattered bone in his right leg, a piece of broken blade transfixing a lung, and a gash in his abdomen through which a single loop of pink intestine protruded. Hoksune demanded that he fight until his body simply would not allow him to go on.

  The battle had largely moved past him, and he fought the last of his enemies on a field soaked with blood and strewn with skorne and Iosan corpses. He and his brother Praetorians had battled their foes until only he and one final enemy remained. The Iosan leader was splattered with gore, his white armor nearly as red as Xicus’ own. The toksaa officer was skilled and precise, and he had deftly cut down many skorne with a great two-handed sword. He was a worthy opponent, and Xicus stepped forward to face him.

  The Iosan brought his sword down in a low guard, hilt at his belly and four feet of steel projecting forward. It was the proper defensive stance against an opponent armed with shorter weapons. Xicus nodded and advanced, gritting his teeth against the pain that suddenly settled into his flesh now that the rush from fighting had ebbed. His body was remembering its wounds, reminding him that death was imminent. He had no time to spar with this Iosan. His strength was waning, and it would fail long before he could penetrate this enemy’s defenses.

  Xicus charged, throwing a high cut with his right blade and a rising low cut with his left. The Iosan grimaced and took a single step back, just out of reach of the high cut, then flicked his sword out as Xicus quickly shuffle-stepped forward to bring the low strike into range. Their blades came together with the ring of steel on steel, the sound rebounding upon the great wall of the elven fortress behind them—the wall his supreme archdomina had cracked open, the wall that could not hold back the great Army of the Western Reaches.

  He and the Iosan were close to one another now, and Xicus saw in his opponent’s eyes grim determination, anger, and, behind it all, fear. The Iosan feared the end; he feared death. In this, Xicus had already defeated him. To die in battle was the very heart of hoksune, the warrior’s code. There was no better death and no other way to cheat the Void awaiting all skorne souls. Xicus had no fear, only the hope he would be deemed worthy to join the exalted and his soul would be

preserved.

  Xicus took a step back, ducking under the Iosan’s return stroke. His blades had become heavy, and he felt cold creeping from the great gash in his belly and spreading to his arms and legs. He staggered backward, and his right leg buckled beneath him. The Iosan, sensing his advantage, lunged, and Xicus lurched forward to meet him. The Iosan’s blade punctured Xicus’ breastplate, and he accepted his enemy’s weapon into his body, trapping it there within the prison of his own flesh and bone. Realizing too late that his skewering thrust would not kill his foe immediately, the Iosan tried to yank the weapon free. Xicus pushed toward his enemy, sliding along the blade that impaled him, riding a final surge of adrenaline that gave him the strength to bring both his swords up, slashing. The Iosan’s head came away from his neck, splashing Xicus’ face with wet, red warmth. Headless, the Iosan toppled to the ground, leaving his blade jutting from Xicus’ chest like a great silver fang.

  Xicus sagged to his knees, strength and vitality fleeing his battered flesh. His vision grew cloudy, but he saw Makeda, her banners flapping in the wind, leading hundreds of skorne warriors through the breach in the enemy wall. Tears stung his eyes at the sight of what he had helped create: conquest in a new land.

  He fell over backward, and the point of the Iosan’s blade dug into the earth, pinning him to what would be his last battlefield. His vision shrank, the edges of the world hemming in until he looked down a long, narrow tunnel. His mind faded, spiraling toward darkness, and he wondered distantly if the Void was simply a state of not being, an unending nothingness.

  The blackness grew, and he realized someone stood over him casting a long shadow across his body. Xicus closed his eyes as he accepted the end, but before the nothingness swallowed him completely, he saw a black sky glittering with a field of crimson stars.

  There was no way to measure time within the comfort and peace of a sacral stone. His voice was one of many that existed alongside the great spirit of the ancestral guardian, a skorne hero who had died many centuries earlier and who had been awakened at the behest of the supreme archdomina. There were other voices too, fragments of thoughts and emotions from others like himself, those deemed worthy enough to be rescued from the Void for deeds of martial renown.

  Now Xicus was awake, and he could no longer hear the voices of the others. He could hear only the extoller standing before him. The skorne mystic stared at him with one eye of flesh and blood and another of cold stone—the crystal oculus that could see into the spirit world. Behind the extoller were blocks of black stone upon which skorne workers toiled with hammer and chisel. One of the blocks resembled a massive stone warrior.

  “You are Xicus of House Zhuron,” the extoller said, his occulus flashing with silver light, “once of the Praetorian caste.”

  “I am . . . Xicus.” The sound of his voice was deep, resonant, and alien. The name held no meaning to him; it was simply a word, an echo of something he might once have been.

  “Take up your weapon, Xicus,” the extoller said and gestured at a great sword of black stone leaning against an unworked block of the same substance. The mystic’s crystal eye glowed silver again, and Xicus found the radiance oddly compelling.

  Xicus took a step. The sound was that of a mallet striking a boulder, and his movements, though slow, felt inexorable and full of purpose. He walked the few short paces and grasped the massive blade by its hilt. He knew it weighed as much as an armored skorne warrior, but to him it was light and well balanced, as a good sword should be.

  The extoller moved past him and opened a set of broad double doors. Harsh sunlight streamed in, but it did not blind Xicus. He saw the shining desert beyond and the glaring sun beating down, but all was diffused, muted, as if he were viewing the world through a thin shroud. It looked like his homeland, but Xicus knew it could not be.

  “Join your brothers, Xicus,” the extoller said. “Go forth and fight again. Your supreme archdomina has need of you.”

  Xicus stepped through the doors and out onto a huge field of baked earth. He glanced around and saw the walls of a great fortress rising behind him. Ahead, rank upon rank of motionless black figures waited, their stone bodies silent and terrible, their hands grasping great swords—like his own, each ready and sharp. As one, the immortals turned to face their newest brother, and Xicus heard their mental voices, the welcoming susurrus of pride, purpose, and strength.

  He saw before him a field of heroes, and he went to stand among them.

  RAIDERS IN THE NIGHT

  By WILLIAM SHICK

  Ordic Coast, 607 AR

  As the pirate landing skiff came within a hundred feet of the shore, captain Terapex turned toward her chosen raiders, the Mortus Kelend. All were garbed in their captain’s chosen colors of deep purple lined with bloody crimson. Golden half-masks hid their feminine features beneath snarling bestial visages. Combined with the horns that jutted from their skulls, the masks gave them the look of nightmares pulled straight from Urcaen itself. Only Terapex remained unmasked, a mark of leadership among the fearsome warriors.

  “Remember, nothing remains alive by morning.”

  As one her entourage nodded, silent. Terapex knew they would remain so until the first kill was made, at which point they would unleash their voice in a chorus of oblivion. She could see the anticipation, the absolute desire for battle, within each of her sisters’ lean, muscular bodies. She had hand-picked each one, taking the measure of her sister Satyxis in the fires of combat. She had chosen them for their skill as well as their cruelty and determined their worth by their cunning as well as their loyalty. The masks they wore were more than a psychological weapon in combat. Outside of battle they obscured the face so that no member was indistinguishable from the other. Among their sisterhood they were all equal, all the right hand of Terapex. It was their privilege to serve within her exalted company.

  The skiff ground upon the sandy shore, and Terapex was the first to leap over the side and race toward the sleeping town. Her boat was only the vanguard, containing her and her cadre of twenty Mortus Kelend. Three more skiffs would be landing within minutes, having departed from the Shadow Weald a respectable time after their captain, as was her due. Those boats carried a group of brutal bloodgorgers as well as several bands of human pirates from Blackwater in addition to a small coven of blood witches led by the ancient hag Ezmaraz. Despite its Cryxian origins, the Shadow Weald held none of the Nightmare Empire’s undead minions, which suited Terapex. She far preferred the fiery bloodlust of the living over the predictability of bound thralls.

  As she ran, the Satyxis captain uncoiled the barbed lacerator at her hip and drew a bladed pistol from its holster on her thigh. It was impossible to know when the village’s lax sentries would spot their approach, though she wouldn’t be entirely surprised to find them sleeping at their post. She felt an inkling of disappointment creep within her at the possibility of such a simple slaughter. She hoped for at least some sport tonight.

  She felt no small measure of satisfaction as she saw movement from the lookout tower at the edge of the village, quickly followed by the dull peal of the town’s alarm bell.

  Terapex motioned for a trio of her raiders to eliminate the sentries and continued to the first small house near the shore. She kicked down the light wooden door with ease. The house was barely more than a common living area, where the family bedded. A metallic snap of her lacerator split the sternum of the young man who had barely wiped the sleep from his eyes at the sound of the alarm bell. Blood sprayed from the fatal wound, glistening black in the dim rays of Laris and spattering Terapex’s face. She licked the droplets from her lips and let out a shrill battle cry heralding the man’s last night on Caen. Soon the banshee-like wail was echoed across the town.

  Terapex’s celebration was cut short as a hard blow connected against her back, knocking her forward. Instinct took over and she spun about, ignoring the dull pain that throbbed where the blow had struck and using the momentum of the blow to speed her movements. Her animalistic snarl became a wicked chuckle as she caught sight of her attacker. The man’s wife stood clutching a heavy iron skillet in her trembling hands. She was barely older than twenty years. Though the woman stood squarely with the Satyxis who had just murdered her husband in cold blood, Terapex could see the terror barely held in check behind her wild eyes.

 

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