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Rites of Passage: A WARMACHINE Anthology, page 1
RITES OF PASSAGE
A WARMACHINE ANTHOLOGY
OREN ASHKENAZI
DARLA KENNERUD
AERYN RUDEL
DOUGLAS SEACAT
WILLIAM SHICK
MATTHEW D. WILSON
Cover by
NÉSTOR OSSANDÓN
Illustrations by
TODD HARRIS, VIKTOR TITOV,
AND ANDREA UDERZO
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
WELCOME TO THE IRON KINGDOMS
MAP
THE PRICE OF A GIFT
MERCY AND WRATH
ADVANCED TACTICS
ON A BLACK TIDE
A TYRO’S CRUCIBLE
GYPSY’S LUCK
GLOSSARY
FOREWORD
With the recent abundance of superhero movies, an interesting trend has emerged: in almost all instances where multiple movies about a superhero exist, people seem most drawn to the first movie in the series. Despite the sequels boasting more action, bigger budgets, and more stunning visuals, it is still the humble (by comparison) first movie—the origin story—that we find most compelling and most engaging.
The reason I think we love an origin story is that it lets us get to know heroes when they are ordinary people, before they become larger than life. They suggest that we can become more than what we are. That each of us can transcend our limits to become something greater. That despite seemingly impossible trials or challenges, we can not only overcome them, but in doing so change from ordinary to extraordinary.
It is this tradition that Rites of Passage follows. Within the pages of this anthology are the origins of six characters who, though they don’t know it, are about to become great heroes (or villains, depending on your point of view). They are destined to shape the futures of their nations, and in so doing, the future of the Iron Kingdoms itself. These stories set the stage for the journey these characters are about to take and provide a candid, personal insight into the very real fears and trepidations each feels as they struggle to discover their place in the war-torn world of the Iron Kingdoms. It is our hope that subsequent stories involving these characters will be all the richer for getting to know them first and seeing how each was set upon the path to greatness.
In addition to serving as a beginning for these new characters, Rites of Passage itself represents an even greater origin story for Privateer Press and WARMACHINE—Privateer Press’ hugely successful WARMACHINE: Tactics video game Kickstarter project begun with game developer partner WhiteMoon Dreams. For the first time the adrenaline-fueled action of the WARMACHINE tabletop game will come to life on the screen. Players around the world will have the chance to see the world through the eyes of these young warcasters as they continue the story in glorious high resolution on their own desktops.
It is with great enthusiasm that we invite you to take part in Rites of Passage. We hope that once you finish these tales you are as excited as we are by these characters and look forward to the stories that are yet to come!
William Shick
Privateer Press Director of Business Development
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 saga
Enter the Iron Kingdoms, and discover a world like no other!
THE PRICE OF A GIFT
By Matthew D. Wilson
Early 609 AR
The battlefield raged like a storm.
Lightning arced overhead in long, crackling streaks, drawn from the heavens by half-mad scientists who could conjure weather and bend it to their will. Thunder boomed from batteries of cannons and arcanely charged pistols infused with explosive elemental force. The earth quaked beneath the iron feet of massive automatons charging across the landscape, smoke and ash billowing from the steam-powered boilers that propelled each machine’s armored mass on an unstoppable rampage of destruction.
Lieutenant Allison Jakes stood at the center of it all, but there was no calm eye in this storm. Every inch of blood-soaked ground was consumed by the fury of two nations at war and the eternal consequences of their endeavor to eliminate each other from a world too small to contain both their beliefs.
Like every soldier at her side, Allison Jakes fought with an intensity only the promise of death can inspire. In her dexterous hands, two mechanikally augmented dueling blades flashed in silver arcs around her, slashing and piercing armor and flesh alike. Her faith-driven targets gasped inside their golden helms as white tabards turned red with blood.
Unlike the rank-and-file soldiers equipped with standard-issue military hardware around her, Jakes moved with agility and finesse, clad in state-of-the-art armor crafted by the finest mechaniks and smiths in Cygnar. Beneath the outer shell of plates painted blue and white, rune-stamped sheets of precious metals conducted Jakes’ own arcane energies to amplify her physical strength and resistance to attacks.
Such accoutrements as her armor and weapons were afforded to only the most elite breed of warrior found in the Iron Kingdoms—though often Jakes thought this ironic, as she and those like her arguably needed these advantages the least. For Lieutenant Allison Jakes was a warcaster, a rarity among rarities, gifted in the womb with the talent to manipulate magic and the ability to project her will through mechanikal constructs.
The ultimate expressions of those machines were self-governing giants of steel and iron that towered over Jakes and the other soldiers on the battlefield. Warjacks, they were called: warriors born of forge and fire, meticulously constructed in factories and granted the attributes of thought and reason through the fusion of science and magic.
Even now, Jakes’ senses were intertwined with the consciousness of the metal beast that battled beside her, an Ironclad-class warjack. Jakes was instinctively aware of every strike landed with its seven-foot-tall quake hammer, cognizant of every blow colliding with its iron carapace, and in her mind’s eye she could see every friend and foe its optical receptors could behold.
Including the man who had trained her for battle.
Girded in gold, he spun his double-bladed staff through an endless series of energized attacks, cleaving through armor and leaving a trail of gutted corpses in his wake. If the battlefield was a storm, he was its epicenter. Jakes needed neither her own eyes nor those of her warjack to know he was near. This man, a force of nature by any measure, simultaneously visited ruin upon the flame-bearing fanatics before him while commanding an army with artistic ease. A cadre of warjacks linked to his mind executed every silent order with precision and potency while he directed an array of spells that could transpose his position on the battlefield as quickly as they could blacken his enemies with lightning.
For all his deadliness, for all his authority and the force with which he dominated this chaotic arena, Allison Jakes revered him more than any man living or dead. To the soldiers on the field, he was Commander Dalin Sturgis. To Jakes, he was her mentor, an example every warcaster should aspire to, a model of perfection.
But perfect he was not.
As Jakes glimpsed him through the eyes of her Ironclad, the commander was suddenly struck by a blur of bronze orbiting the fist of a massive white warjack by a length of chain as thick as her leg. The Vanquisher was ten tons of blazing retribution borne on a twelve-foot frame, and it had come out of nowhere. By the time its spiked metal sphere completed its second revolution, Sturgis had disappeared from sight amid the haze of the melee.
Jakes cried out, her concentration shattered at the sight of her mentor’s fall, but her voice was swallowed in the cacophony of metal crashing on metal. She parried the blade of a conscripted tribesman and disengaged, rapidly weaving her way through the fray in search of Sturgis. She could sense his presence; their connection as warcasters—mentor and student— was as tangible to her as the swords in her hands. But he was nowhere to be seen.
A voice called to her—a sergeant leading a squad of pot-helmed trenchers supporting the Cygnaran advance with rifle fire and strategically placed smoke bombs that concealed them from incoming fire. But recognition of the voice came too late. A crash just steps behind her snapped her consciousness back into the Ironclad in time to realize it had intercepted the attack of a lighter warjack, shielding her from what would surely have been a lethal blow from the enemy’s spiked flail.
She focused power into the Ironclad, guiding its attacks and infusing them with supernatural strength. Feinting with the massive hammer, it reached forth and seized the lighter warjack with its unarmed fist, then twisted with the full force of its hydraulic core and hurled the enemy ’jack into an oncoming group of zeal-crazed nomads.
Her flank momentarily unthreatened, Jakes resumed her frantic search, weaving a spell on the move. Three small, rapidly spinning rings of glowing runes appeared before her. With a glance, she sent the runes to orbit the Ironclad. The enchantment supercharged the machine’s power plant, pushing the Ironclad beyond the usual limits of its running speed. Under her telepathic control, it raced ahead, scouting as she gathered more support.
Mere moments had passed since Sturgis had been struck down, but before Jakes could reach his location, a wall of blue armor converged on the Vanquisher like a tidal wave of iron. A spear-wielding Centurion warjack and two Defender-class warjacks brandishing electrified hammers reduced the Vanquisher to inanimate scrap before it could continue its assault.
The Vanquisher’s destruction filled Jakes with joy, not because another enemy had fallen, but because she knew her mentor had not succumbed to the attack. This trio of warjacks was his personal battlegroup, linked to him just as the Ironclad was linked to her. If they were still fighting, so was he.
Jakes strained to be heard above the clamor. “Commander! Commander Sturgis!”
Before she could take another breath, he appeared before her. Spiraling rings of luminous arcane runes encircled him, dissipating before Jakes’ eyes as the spell-effect that had brought him concluded. His left pauldron was dented, its rank insignia all but ground off, and dirt streaked his face. But as far as she could see he was otherwise unharmed.
“Commander. Thank Morrow,” Jakes exhaled in relief, invoking the name of the god she worshiped, as most Cygnarans did.
Sturgis grimaced, not looking at Jakes as he methodically assessed the situation around them. “You left your position, Lieutenant. You exposed our support units to attack.”
Jakes’ guts coiled into knots. Even in the middle of battle, Sturgis made time to impart his lessons, and they were never gentle.
“I saw you—” was all she could utter.
“If you had found me unable to fight, what would you have done?” he barked. But after nearly a year of his tutelage, Jakes knew—she believed in the deepest recesses of her soul—that if she fell in combat, Commander Sturgis would come to her aid.
“Understood, sir,” she answered in the most confident voice she could muster, to assure him his point had been received. She was not placating him; her reply was sincere. By now she knew how he expected his training acknowledged. There was a correct way, and there was a way that produced an excess of monotonous instruction later.
Sturgis’ eyes glowed subtly as he silently called his warjacks to his side. “Your orders remain the same, Lieutenant. Cover those trenchers. Make sure nothing gets within reach of our artillery.” He was already stalking toward the thick of the fighting before he finished his instructions. “Stay focused. Thunder follows lightning.”
