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.

    “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.

    New Mutations

    Greater Regeneration

    Able to regenerate limbs even heads as long as there is still one fully intact head and heart, cannot be turned off, burn energy constantly, resulting in insatiable appetite

    Multi headed

    Add more heads to a creature. May result in conflict between heads if no additional mutation to improve coordination

    Noxious flame breath

    Add an organ that can belch poisonous fire. Resulting flame is lesser than mutations that gives only flame breath but resulting burns will result in sickness and disease

    Hydra scales

    Adds another layer of protection. Less protective than dragon’s scale and heavier. Creatures without proper limbs or support are unable to swim.

    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.