I got the inspiration for this when I was rolling up Imperial Knightly Orders using the 1d4chan creation tables and by pure luck, rolled a perfect 100 on size, making my order super huge. I decided that that was too good to pass up, so I decided to write this, not least because the patron god I rolled was Taal, and he and Talabecland don't get nearly enough love. I hope you enjoy it, and I welcome any criticism, constructive or otherwise. Fair warning: I get bored really easily. I cannot and do not promise that there will be many future updates, nor can I promise any sort of timetable. If you'd like a map for reference, I use the Super Huge Detailed Map of the Warhammer Old World at Gitzman's Gallery. It's huge and awesome, though not consistent with some of the other maps I've read. I really can't tell the difference between fanmade material and GW material (since I don't actually play the game but enjoy the fluff), but I suspect this is fanmade. I'm also probably going to be posting this in the Space Battles creative writing forum and on the Bolthole.

The tall, slender knight idly stroked the silver-inlaid butt of his master crafted pistol, as he gazed out on a scene of utter devastation with cold, grey eyes. The screams of the dying mingled with the wails of the mourners and the crackling of still-burning fires, creating a din almost as horrific as the battle that preceded it. And Gustav von Scharnhorst ignored it.

Instead, he stared intently at the massive beast at his feet. A hulking Greenskin warboss, it was covered in crude iron plates, roughly hammered into an ill-fitting shape and daubed with profane symbols. A student of such matters, Scharnhorst recognized them as symbols of the beast's devotion to Gork and Mork, the savage Greenskin gods of brutal cunning and cunning brutality, though even they knew not which was which. A broken pole, bearing the skulls and banners of fallen enemies, lay on the ground beside him where it had broken off when the beast had fallen. There was a neat hole in his forehead, where a bullet from Scharnhorst's gun had killed it. To either side of the creature were two massive axes, finely made and deadly sharp. Dwarf-craft, by their look, they had also been defiled with Greenskin devotional icons.

Scharnhorst squatted, and rifled through the various pouches and satchels scattered around the body, where the Warboss kept his most treasured possessions. What he found, mostly Dwarfen and a few Imperial trophies, was probably worth half of his father's estate, but it brought him no closer to the answer. After surreptitiously pocketing one or two of the trinkets, he deposited the rest into a leather satchel, to be given to the Knight-Captain when he had finished. He looked up, and saw a small knot of peasants vainly trying to extinguish a burning hut with thrown buckets of water. He stood, and shouted "You there! Enough of that. Get over here and help me turn this beast over." They turned and stared at him with hollow, exhausted, and traumatized eyes. "What are you waiting for?" he said, irritation leaking into his voice.

"Yes, milord," their apparent leader said dully, and the peasants clumped over. Scharnhorst bent at the waist, and shoved his hands into the muck underneath the beast, heaving along with six others. After a minute of straining, they had managed to shift the six-hundred pound beast onto its stomach. "That'll be all for now, return to your work," he said, ignoring the peasants as they stood there stupidly, staring at the beast. They clumped off again, and began throwing more water on the sputtering flames.

Scharnhorst squatted again, flicking his hands together to get rid of the mud, and looked for a moment at the massive exit wound the gunshot wound had left in the back of the Orc's head. He then drew a long dirk from his belt, which he used to scrape the mud and muck off the beast's back, the better to inspect it. After a few minutes, he snorted in disgust. Nothing. He knew there were more nobles to inspect, but he took another look at the fire the peasants were attempting to put out. It was getting out of control, and threatening to consume the few undamaged houses, nearby. He sighed heavily, turned to the peasants and shouted, "Right then, let's get this fire out."

After about half an hour of struggling, the impromptu firefighters had managed to quench the flames. Scharnhorst didn't stay for the cheering, except to allow himself a moment to enjoy a cool wind that blew through his close-cropped blond hair, relieving his headache and drying some of the sweat streaming down into his cuirass. Along with a cuisse covering his thighs, vambraces and pauldrons covering his arms, it was all the plate armor he wore, in contrast to virtually all of his brother knights, who wore suits that encased their entire bodies. After a moment, he set off across the mean little settlement, hacked out of a miserable Ostermark forest, called Beckdorf, looking for more Greenskin leaders. He wasn't optimistic. He had already searched what was, indubitably, the largest of the small horde, a splinter force from a larger one that was currently rampaging west towards Scharnhorst's homeland, that had descended on this village. If it didn't bear any evidence of what these Greenskins were fleeing that would have brought them so far north, Scharnhorst doubted its lieutenants would.

He came upon the smoking ruin of the one stone-built structure in the settlement, an inn. The 'mayor' of the town and his militia had made their stand on its steps, and so the area around them was littered with nearly a hundred corpses. Scharnhorst drew his sword and began using it to poke through the Greenskin corpses. Around him, several of his brother knights were executing wounded orcs. Near the ruins, the sisters of Shallya had erected a hospital tent, where they vainly struggled against the oncoming death of their patients.

One knight, a huge bear of a man with a white beard that ordinarily would have been tucked into his belt, looked up in askance. "What are you doing, sapling?" he growled.

"My job, lord."

"Our job is to kill the enemies of the Empire and Taal. Quit mincing and help me kill these bastards."

"Merciful Verena, preserve us from morons," he muttered, perhaps a little loudly, under his breath.

"What's that, sapling?" the knight snapped, his head whipping up.

"I said, 'Merciful Taal preserve us from abominations,' lord."

"Rhya's tits. I heard you praying to Verena, heretic."

Scharnhorst tried to change the subject. "Just so you know, my lord, I was charged by the Grandmaster himself to investigate why these Orcs have come so far north."

"Who cares? They're here, killing Empire citizens and defiling Taal's domain. And I don't see the Grandmaster, do you?"

"No, but if we return to Talabheim without an answer for him, he's going to ask me why. And I'll tell him that I was obstructed by meatheads like you, my lord."

Quick as a flash, the full-plate armored knight sprang towards Scharnhorst, and closed his fist around his throat, Scharnhorst's half-plate providing no protection from the attack. "Now you're assuming, sapling, that you'll live to make that report," Dieter von Rapp, Templar of Taal, Knight-Banneret of the Knights Jaeger, growled.

Scharnhorst managed to choke out, "Now what would Taal think, lord?" as he pointedly tapped the barrel of his drawn pistol against Rapp's chin. Rapp released Scharnhorst with a bark of laughter. Scharnhorst fell heavily on top of a Greenskin corpse, hacking and heaving, barrel still fixed on larger knight's forehead.

"You may be a Verena-worshipping milquetoast, sapling, but you've got spirit. I'll give you that," the older man said, smiling. Scharnhorst grinned weakly himself, and holstered the weapon. Without another word, Rapp spun on his heel, his sword flashing into his hand, ready to kill more orcs. Another knight ambled up behind Scharnhorst, his helmet under his arm, gnawing on a chicken bone. He said to Scharnhorst's back, "What in Rhya's name was that?"

"Just a little philosophical disagreement." Scharnhorst said, still rubbing his throat.

"Looked like more than that," Markus Kohl said, grinning. The other knight was about twenty, the same age as Scharnhorst, with a mane of golden hair and a fencing scar on his face. To the extent that the studious, gun-wielding knight had any friends among these backward, hypocritical Templars of Taal, Markus Kohl was Scharnhorst's.

Unlike most of the Templars, Kohl wasn't from Talabecland. He was from Nuln, where Scharnhorst's father had sent him to study, when he refused the life of a priest. His father had, Scharnhorst reflected grimly, gotten his way in the end, managing to force him into the Knights Jaeger. "What do you really want, Markus?" Scharnhorst asked, somewhat wearily.

"Do I need to want something?"

"You usually want something."

"Not this time, my friend. This time, I have something for you."

"Oh really?" Scharnhorst asked, his suspicions roused. Kohl, for all that he was a steadfast companion in battle, wasn't much for giving without any take.

"You need to relax. And I have-"

"Oh, no," he said, his suspicions confirmed. "You are not pushing another provincial slut on me tonight."

"Taal's nuts, man, it's not like they're not willing. You saved their village! You've earned it. You know it, they know it. For Morr's sake, you killed the warboss."

"Doesn't mean I'm looking to catch a venereal disease."

"I have no idea why I waste my time on you. I really don't. Good day, Herr Scharnhorst," he said, standing and bowing sarcastically low, a stupid grin on his face.

"Why, why could I not just have stayed at the university?" Scharnhorst called to Kohl's back. He didn't turn around. "Asshole," he muttered. Scharnhorst stood up, and continued the work of searching the Orcs. Soon after, he idly kicked a severed Orc head. He was about to move on when he noticed something glinting eerily in the orange light of the sunset. He poked at with his sword. The result was a surprisingly loud, clear, but foreboding note. He pulled a handkerchief from inside his breastplate, and tore the silver amulet out of the muck, without allowing it to touch his bare skin.

It was ancient, that much was immediately clear. It was nearly smooth, with only the faintest ghost of old designs visible, but it was surprisingly heavy. Scharnhorst estimated that it weighed twice what a similar amount of gold would have weighed, and he was glad he had covered his hand before touching it. He sheathed his sword, and drew the dirk. He used the tip to trace what remained of the designs on each side. On what Scharnhorst assumed was the reverse was a depiction of a creature. He traced it several times, and each time he did, the sick feeling in his stomach worsened. After the seventh time, he was sure of what it was. He had seen it dozens of times in his textbooks, but seeing it for real nearly made him throw up. He quickly covered the whole thing in the cloth, and hid it inside his breastplate. The only reason he didn't run to the tent the captain had set up outside town was because he didn't want to answer any questions.

Ten minutes later, he burst into the Knight-Captain's war tent, where he and five or six of his Knights-Banneret were conferring over a massive map. The map charted the path of the Greenskin Horde of Grom Peak, which had come out of the mountains near the source of the River Stir, and had rampaged west, down then north bank of the river. After sacking the river town of Essen, they meandered north, to avoid the dead city of Mordheim and the Dead Wood. Now, they turned south and west, back toward the Stir and Talabecland. Most immediately, the horde threatened the undefended river town of Bissendorf, the last town on the Stir within Ostermark. Imperial forces were attempting to rally after a major defeat at the village of Dorlesk, directly northeast of Bissendorf and directly east of Beckdorf, but consolidation was proving to be problematic. The map was marked with some of the largest functional concentrations of Imperial units, mostly clustered around the encampment of the Elector-Count of Ostermark, Wolfram Hertwig, at Seuthes, directly northeast of Dorlesk, and the main encampment of the Knights Jaeger and its Grandmaster, Gunther von Werder, still in Talabecland, outside the temple village of Trautenan, north of the Stir. One look at the map would tell you that the Imperials would be too late to save Bissendorf.

"Ah, the investigator," the young Knight-Captain Otto von Donnersmark said, indulgently. "What's the meaning of this, Scharnhorst?" he asked, less indulgently.

"My lords," Scharnhorst said quickly, dipping in a fast bow. "Forgive me, but I need a moment with the Knight-Captain. If you would give us the room? It's quite urgent." The Knights-Banneret didn't say anything, but looked at Donnersmark, who gave a quick nod. The heavily armored men clanked out of the tent. At least one, Scharnhorst noted, gave him a dirty look.

"This better be good, Scharnhorst. If I've embarrassed myself by listening to an overeager sapling, I'm taking it out on you."

"Of course, lord," he said, holding up the cloth-covered amulet. "I found this, among the Greenskin corpses."

"And what is it?"

"An amulet, definitely not of Greenskin, Dwarf, or human make," he said, setting it down on the table, and withdrawing the handkerchief. Donnersmark reached out to touch it, and Scharnhorst snapped, "No! Don't touch it, my lord."

"Why not? It's just blank silver."

"With respect, it isn't, lord. It's ancient, and the designs are nearly worn off, but it bears the image of none other than Nagash himself."

Donnersmark's eyes widened and his mouth dropped slightly open. "I may not have grown up in a library like you, Scharnhorst, but I know that name. Are you sure?"

"Completely, my lord. It's faint, but I traced the outline many times. More to the point, this thing has a mind of its own. It's as if it wants you to know who created it," he said, swaddling the amulet in his handkerchief again.

"And an Orc would never possess this unless he got it as a trophy?"

"No, lord. Orcs keep no gods except their own. This horde has encountered at least one, probably several, powerful necromancers. Anyone in possession of an artifact even distantly linked to Nagash will be a very dangerous individual."

"But the Orcs killed him, yes?"

"Yes. But they didn't stop running. They must not have been able to overcome the necromancers, so they fled. If a person possessing such an object was defeated by the Greenskins while they themselves were being defeated, the original owner's cohorts must be very dangerous indeed."

"Only Morr hates the undead more than Taal, sapling. We must find the source of this taint and destroy it. That much is clear."

"But how? The Greenskins still threaten to overrun Talabecland."

"We will have to deal with the Orcs first. But our standing orders no longer bind us. We do not have time to conduct raids on outlying Orc warbands. All of us must be ready to ride in one hour. We must find the Grandmaster. And we can't afford to go through the forest. We will have to overtake the Horde."

"With respect, my lord, this amulet will do us no good if we die before we reach the Grandmaster."

"I didn't say it would be easy, sapling. Only that we would do it."

"Yes, my lord."

"Ready your lance. Go now, and show no one what you have found. Find Sir Julius. You will ride with him and the scouts."

Scharnhorst left the command tent and made his way to his tent, near the outskirts of the company camp. There, he found his squire and men-at-arms, who comprised his lance, the smallest unit in the Knights Jaeger. "Hansie!" Scharnhorst called, getting his squire's attention, and bolted up from a card game he was playing with the men-at-arms. The lad was young, only fifteen, but huge. He towered over Scharnhorst at over six feet, and already had the makings of a fierce beard. He was a natural on horseback, with a sword, a lance, and in full plate. He was devoted to Taal, the god of mud, to boot. Hans Strasser, Scharnhorst suspected, would make a better knight than he ever would.

"We're leaving. We must find the Grandmaster at once."

"Why, sir?"

"On an errand of great import. I cannot tell you more. I'll see to getting us packed up and ready to fight on the road. You go find Brandt, and make sure he knows we're leaving. If he asks, tell him the orders come direct from Donnersmark. Then get back here and make yourself ready to leave. Full armor."

"Aye, sir."

Strasser sprinted off, towards the center of the camp, and Scharnhorst turned to men-at-arms, who had continued their game. "On your feet, you dogs. Get this tent packed, get your gear, and load your weapons."

"Aye, Sir Gus," the sergeant, Wilhelm Rauch, a grizzled veteran from the Lord Scharnhorst's personal guard said, as only one who had known Scharnhorst from birth could.

"Not in front of the children, Willi," Scharnhorst said, looking pointedly at the three other soldiers.

"You wound us, lord," said Lothar Ertl, about the same age as Scharnhorst, holding his hand over his heart in mock outrage.

"I'm going to wound you if you don't follow orders, peasant."

"Mercy, lord!"

"Shut up."

Forty-five minutes later, Scharnhorst and Strasser were on their palfreys, half-plate and sallets in place. What they lacked in armor they more than made up for in armament. On their belts were longswords, dirks, and break-action pistols. In leather holsters on their saddles were cut-down rifle carbines and saddlebags full of brass cartridges. The god of mud might look down on firearms, Scharnhorst thought, but Myrmidia knows that the point of war is to win.

The other men-at-arms were also mounted, on lesser steeds, wearing their cuirasses and morions, and checking their break-action carbines or oiling their swords. Behind them were three pack horses, two carrying their tent and other gear, one carrying six full-length lances, as well as two massive warhorses for Scharnhorst and Strasser. Several company grooms were making their final checks of the lance's saddles and gear. When they finished, they led the additional horses to the rear of the column of knights and men-at-arms forming up outside Beckdorf, facing southeast. Scharnhorst and his lance were almost at the front, befitting their place among the scouts.

From slightly ahead came a great shout, "Scouts, move out!" and a long, loud blast of a horn. And with that, the knight company began its march south, towards the Grandmaster and the assembled might of 1,200 Knights Jaeger. Between them and the three hundred of Donnersmark's company were fifteen thousand slavering Orcs and twice as many goblins. Too late, Scharnhorst realized that it probably wasn't productive to dwell on such things, and swallowed quickly, gripping his carbine a little tighter.