The Giant of the North

Whether Emperor Barbarossa really gave the Hamburg merchants the privilege of free passage up the Elbe and the right to exchange money is unknown. The document that said so is rather likely a forgery from the 13th century. What is undisputed is that from about 1200 Hamburg developed a harbor that had these rights. The city joined the Hanse, the federation of trade cities who agreed on trade rules, kept the sea lanes open and the nobles at bay.
Merit replaced noble birth, trade replaced crusades and the bank book snuggled into place besides the bible. Hamburg facilitated the trade in many things, foodstuffs like fish and salt the most important among them. Its supreme advantage was its position: deep enough inland to be situated on some of the most important trade routes and at a river wide enough so that seagoing ships could reach it.
The harbor was the most important part of the city, which kept itself apart from the struggles around it as far as possible. That did not mean that the city did not suffer, there were wars, famine, epidemics and fires that killed many, injured more and impoverished a multitude. And still the city thrived through all of this, eschewing martial glory and dynasty building in favor of making money.

All of that was threatened in 1881. The wars against Denmark, Austria and France had allowed Prussia to unite Germany under a common banner. Hamburg was already the odd state out when a typhus epidemic stemming from an age-old water supply made the Hamburg senate look weak. Joining the German Reich was inevitable and joining the customs union would wreck disaster. Like so many states of its time Germany financed itself through excise taxes and tariffs on imported goods. For a city with a business model based on transshipment and trade it would be a shackle that would mortally slow it.
For a change common sense and a bit of creativity graced politics. The city of Hamburg joined Germany, but it built a district of warehouses, the Speicherstadt. And while the city and the harbor were very much a part of Germany the Free Harbor was, for customs purposes, not so much.

Anything could be brought and shipped out of the Hamburg harbor, with no excises, controls or duties. Nothing that reached the harbor was taxed until the time it passed through the gates of the harbor into the city proper. The Hamburg Free Harbor was the role model for many such harbors all over the world. It attracted a very special kind of people, from the hard-working stevedores, the remarkably well-paid craftsmen that made the yards tick to the merchants who did business all over the world. Often organized into small, closed circles they were a bit special. And for all their craftiness one thing remained constant from the 13th century to the 21st: "Das Wort eines Hamburger Kaufmanns gilt"
(The verbal contract by a Hamburg merchant is final and valid.)

All of this was threatened again by modern times. Most freight was handled by containers; the old warehouses lost their reason for being. The EU was not happy with the special status and the city planners wanted different things with the old warehouse district no longer useful to shift freight. The Hamburg Free harbor was to end on 01.01.2013.
Then the Weltensprung came and while the end became law, the chaos after Germany's trip to the Warhammer World made it so that there was little to no change. And before the huge fences could be torn down, before the customs stations could be demolished the need for it was reestablished. The Free Harbor did not die, it again birthed more than a few clones around the world.

At first it was the needs of the Germans, their unending thirst for raw materials that made them build harbors with modern facilities around the world. It did not take long for the merchants, the traders and anybody who had to ship things in bulk around to realize that the Germans offered a unique service. If a merchant shipped priceless spices from Ind to far-off Marienburg, the merchant was exceedingly lucky if half the barrels arrived within three years. Now you could give the Germans whatever one wanted to ship . If it was big, fragile, needed cooling or had to be kept dry, it did not matter. It would reach any port the Germans used within three months and it would arrive or the merchant would receive money from an insurance policy.

It had taken a while to build the trust, but now shipping on the Warhammer World had changed more in ten years than in the thousand years before. All over the globe nations sold territory to the Germans to build their harbors on. They were administrated by them, obeyed German law and were inviolable to whatever government was around them. To most rulers this was less threatening than it seemed given that the area around this harbor was free of any raiders. And so long-distance shipping fell to the Germans, the locals brought their merchandise to huge warehouses where a lot of sweat and muscle brought these into containers or offloaded merchandise into lots the locals could handle easily. These warehouses were the adapters which connected the Warhammer World to the marvel that was modern sea transportation.

There were other harbors of course. Wilhelmshaven was home of the German Navy and handled a lot of the petroleum that reached Germany. Bremerhaven took care a lot of the traffic that arrived by sail. Rostock was huge in the trade that went on the Sea of Claws.

Hamburg dominated the far trade, connected all parts of the world with Germany and through it with each other. Having made transport so much easier, faster and safer, offering the voracious appetite of Germany to those with something to sell and offering German goods to all who could pay had increased trade on this world by leaps and bounds.

Day and night huge container ships arrive at the Burchard and the Altenwerder Quays. Trucks and trains, smaller ships and even Zeppelins feed into and from the harbor that never sleeps. Even a decade after the Weltensprung the amounts shipped are down, but compared to what this world was used to it is an immense amount and it is increasing every day. On Earth the Hamburg harbor was doing brisk business and it was among the top 20. Here it is immense, a place of legend and a symbol of mercantile power.
And like spiders in their web the Hamburg merchants were at the center of the action, managing and controlling the fortunes of nations. Princes, Kings and Emperors might consider themselves mighty, the Hamburg merchants knew better.

Sitting in the Giant of the North they could afford to be discreet about it.

Cavern, Underground Sea, Naggaroth

The beam was only visible as a faint afterimage where it had vaporized dust and droplets. The line connected the ruin of Wilhelm Schumann's torso with something that seemed to consist of a great many tentacles.
Andrea Hermanns lost sight of this thing when she dropped on her belly and rolled behind something solid. When she peered around the corner she saw the thing jerk this way and that when it was hit by bursts from two assault rifles. There was another crack, another line and more bullets before something in the middle of the mass of tentacles sparked and dropped to the floor.

She was about to get up when a strong hand pushed her down again. She wanted to protest when she saw more of the tentacled somethings coming through the entrance. One reacted very badly to a grenade, one dropped when 7 mm bullets hit something vital. Two more got beams out and all of a sudden there was a heavy weight on her back and hot fluids made their way down her back.
The Mauser dropped right in front of her and she looked at it like a hare might look at a snake.

It took the cry and the crash to shake her out of her fugue.
It was Gotrek's battlecry as he vaulted something that might be a bench and the crash with which his ax bit into one of the beings that threatened them. Whatever it was, it did the same thing like anything else hit by that ax and died. The one behind it did not fare any better and two others started to smoke and burn when they were hit by Felix.

Andrea lost her view of the fight when she crawled from under the soldier who had died saving her. His head had been encased in a helmet made from some of the best armor Germany was able to make. It was still mostly missing.
She was about to grab the rifle before her when she had a second look at it. She had shot firearms before, but never one like that. She needed to figure out how..CRACK. All hairs on her body stood up and she felt something hot on every part of her skin. She wondered that she was still alive when she heard the low moan behind her.

Herbert Lammert had had two legs when he left the submarine this morning, now one of them was mostly missing. The white bone that protruded from the ruins of his shin was blackened at its end. Both biologist and geologist did not know what to do for a long second. Lammert dropped to the ground, making sounds that should not emerge from a human throat and Andrea Hermanns sprinted to him. There was another hair-raising crack and stone splinters whizzed past Andrea's head. Something heavier than an assault rifle fired two bursts and the fire coming her way slackened considerably.

She inspected the remains of a leg and found that it was half burned, half exploded, probably from vaporized body fluids. So far, the vasospasm kept any major bleeding at bay, but this could not last. She was about to apply pressure on the wound when she realized that approved procedure had to take a leave of absence for a bit. No ambulance would come to relive her, no doctor would apply clamps in the foreseeable future. A bandage served as an acceptable tourniquet and stemmed all blood flow until it would be released. That this likely meant that anything below the strap would have to be amputated was not a major issue, survival was.

She peered above the top of a low wall and saw that the room they were in was currently free of whatever had attacked the Germans. There were the tentacled remains of several, too close to a German soldier that would no longer protect her. A drone was missing two wheels and half its frame. Captain Bauer was talking into a wireless set while his soldiers were guarding the survivors. Time to join them.
Lammert was out of it by now, not able to help her in any way. She had to do this the hard way. Gripping a lower arm and making sure that her thumbs were not resting on a rib she pulled the geologist first on her shins before heaving both of them up. Balancing the heavy man on her hip she started to backpedal towards the others.

The Warp

For mortals time is something experienced in one long, linear path. It might seem to run faster or slower, it was always the straightforward. There was no going back, no taking the other fork, no way to see what lay ahead.
Tzeentch was no mortal, and unlike some of those who deemed themselves his equal, had never been. For him time was something malleable, not a single road one must follow, but a city map with many ways and full of opportunities.

How he loved following those ways, how much he delighted in leading others down this road or the other one. Some he brought to a ruin that might lead their scarred remains to greatness, other to glorious triumphs that laid the foundations of their downfall.
And like anybody who has strolled down a maze he became lost himself at times. Not that he did no longer knew where he was, he sometimes lost his original goals and other appeared in his path.
The Weltensprung had upset so many plans, changed others into unrecognizable shapes and had nearly led to his downfall. Tzeentch had to admit that this had not been his finest hour. Instead of taking the long view, instead of enticing these new humans with opportunities down a path of his choosing he had dabbled in direct control and brute power.

The idea to use that desperate Beastman shaman as a focus to open another Chaos gate had been such a delightful prospect. It would have started the End Times, the times when the Chaos Gods would enter what mortals called reality. It would have been at a time of his choosing, so he would have profited most. Instead his chosen vessel had been killed by a weapon inhabited by the remains of a god just when he had been in direct control.
At first, he had counted himself lucky having survived that disaster, just to find that his fate, his very being had been coupled directly to Gotrek. He had learned about that the hard way when he murdered the Dwarf and was hurt himself. Only the fact that he was the avatar of magic, the search of all kinds of knowledge and so much else allowed him to resurrect himself and that pesky dwarf at the same time.

He had undergone this indignity not once, but twice and that was far too much. From disaster sprung inspiration, from threat motivation and change was always playing into Tzeentch's hand. When the tree demigods emerged from the orgy that was the looting of the Horned Rat's remains he had used them, vision he sent through time to Lord Mazdamundi's soul and much else to one end and one end only: Remove Gotrek from this universe. And he succeeded, just as planned.

He had learned the hard way that the dwarf was still connected to him, but the effect was mitigated by the vast difference between the two. Life was good, until now.
With something between desperation and shock he found Gotrek in the same universe as the part of the Warp he inhabited. Found him in dire straits in a place he dared not intrude to this very day so as not to become visible to beings of unfathomable might.

This was not going according to any plan he ever had. What could he possibly do?

Cavern

Andrea Hermann watched the combat medic take care of the geologist. Saw him nodding briefly at the tourniquet, saw him inject something that she guessed to be morphine and apply an infusion.

"Good job Dr. Hermanns, we'll make a medic out of you yet. We will make our breakout soon, down that way towards the sub. A team from there should meet us half-way. Can you take care till there? I have to take care of them..."

Andrea Hermanns was about to say yes automatically when the thought hit her what that would mean. She would be slowed down, she would be unable to see ahead, she would not be able to defend herself. And if she did not do all of that Herbert Lammert would die in a place that gave her the creeps. There could be only one answer.

"I'll do my best."
"Can't ask for more. I'll put a Guedel tube in him, please push it back in if it wants to get out. It is important, otherwise he will suffocate on his own tongue."
"That would be a shame."

She watched the drones as they drove and flew through the entrance. Everybody was watching with baited breath for what was going to happen. And they watched them until they were nearly out of sight.

There was another crack and a quadcopter vanished in a fireball. The tracked drone swiveled its machine gun about and opened fire on something. It managed three bursts at two unseen targets before another nearly invisible line connected it to something out of Andrea's view. It removed two wheels and dropped the drone to the side. Whatever had shot it made the mistake to shift targets only to learn that the damaged drone could no longer move, but could still fire its armament. Another burst hit something and there was a pause in the fire.

Two soldiers and another drone made their way through the entrance, vanishing into the darkness.

"Go go go"

Andrea Hermanns heaved the geologist on her shoulders, grabbing one arm and one leg in a fireman's carry. She was in her prime, rather fit for her occupation and she nearly dropped. Nearly, as failure was not an option. Waddling along with all the grace of the terminally drunk she tried her best to keep pace with the others.
She was probably the only one whose shoulders did not pull themselves in when she left the old building as they were loaded down too much. She could just see the ground before her and all her thoughts were on making the next step, on getting enough air into lungs which already burned and above all not to stumble.

She heard some cracks and the heavy hammer of the grenade launcher mounted on their remaining drone. There were three-round bursts from the soldiers and cracks. From time to time she saw an off-white thing that moved far too fast in and out of her vision. Wherever it went there were sounds that reminded her of a smithy and that left mechanical tentacles in her path.

She made her way down the pools that had shown naval battles such a short time before, she passed statues of things that her brain refused to parse and she witnessed the death of two more humans.
Friedel Bauer's broad back appeared in her vision and she could not stop in time. The two struggled to keep their footing for a second.

"Put him here for a second Dr. Hermanns, we need to get our bearings anyway."

Andrea found a structure that might have been a wall and lowered her charge on it. For the first time in a couple of minutes she was able to see more than a few meters ahead of her. She was surrounded by several edifices which dwarfed her on all sides. The glowing cyphers on their walls seemed to have increased in brightness and pulsed in a nauseating rhythm.
The medic had another look at Herbert Lammert.

"You did well so far, can you continue?"
"If it is not that far, yes."
"We have to cross this plaza, down that road and then the next right. We reach that we are good, the quay is at its end. A bit farther than you managed so far, but not by much."
"Can do."
"Very good. Catch your breath, we are just picking out the route."

The light in the cavern had become noticeably brighter ever since the shooting started. That allowed Andrea Hermanns to see the waving outline of the buildings on the other side of the plaza. She was still wondering what this was when the shapes resolved themselves into a great lot of tentacle beings, just like the ones coming from both roads leading to it.

"Scheiße. Get down, now."

Andrea managed to take the geologist down with her without causing too much additional damage.
She could not see what happened from her position, just hear.

And there was a lot to hear. There was the sound of a starting motorcycle she knew to be the grenade launcher on their drone, she heard a machine gun, the deeper rumble of the baseball-sized rocket driven weapons used by their soldiers. She heard commands, the exclamations of satisfaction, the crackle of whatever weapon the enemy used, explosions groans and cries for help.

Above all she head the battle-cry of a Dwarf, one that was getting quieter as he charged.

When she lifted her head for a second she saw that things had gotten seriously bad in a hurry. There were parts which might be the remains of their last drone, there was at least one prone soldier laying terribly still and far too many enemies closing on their position.
Between her and them were two figures who charged the tentacled beings. Andrea knew that these were their last moments on this world and she suspected that she would not be far behind.

The light in the cave had improved, but was still far below the comfort zone. It took the biologist a second to realize that the air before her was rippling like a heat wave. A long rip of purest blackness appeared in the middle of that and was quickly replaced by a view into something she could not describe and certainly did not want any knowledge of. She ducked behind the barrier again barely in time to avoid a blinding flash and a thunderclap.

Her ears were still ringing when she heard the new sounds. They were different from anything she had ever heard, dissonant, shrill, extremely loud and full of the promise they would reveal such secrets if one would just listen a bit more closely.
She did not have to raise her head much to see what had stepped through the gap into madness, it was that big. There were three beings who looked nearly the size of the closest edifices. All were very different and yet seemed to be assembled from the same parts bin by a mad tinkerer who had painted them all the colors of the rainbow. They looked like naked vultures the size of a major crane, having eyes like insects or kaleidoscopes, to be avoided at all costs.

Andrea Hermanns had heard about these, had seen a video of the Reiksbund Paladins taking one down after a hard fight, these were Lords of Change, the Great Demons of Tzeentch. Here there were three of them and a horde of lesser demons running between their feet like hyperactive malevolent children. And then they turned towards the enemy as one. Opening their beaks they breathed multicolored flame that bathed the nearest of tentacles for a moment. When they directed their attention elsewhere they left ashes and malformed remains behind. The demons ran down the roads, their mass dividing to pass the frozen figures of Gotrek and Felix. The Lords of Change followed them with an ungainly stumble that swallowed the distance in a great hurry.

"Form up people, form up and go for the sub. Now."

It was a good thing that one of their number still had his wits about him and it figured that this would be Captain Bauer.

Andrea managed to shift Lammert back on her shoulders and started to make her way down the road. Behind her there was a crescendo of shrieks and cracks, of sounds that reached her mind, but not her ears and the ground reflected a multicolored light-show that she left behind.
She could not see but a few meters ahead, she could only walk as fast as her grandmother due to her load and every second she feared that a beam would strike her down. Her legs became rubbery and burned and her lungs protested. And still she would not let go.

Andrea nearly bumped into a soldier when they made the turn down the next way and now she could see the submarine at the quay. She tried to run faster only to learn that she would surely stumble that way and returned to her trot.
That was the moment when more tentacled balls emerged between two edifices and made their way down the road at a speed far faster than the German could manage. Andrea saw Gotrek and Felix making their way to the rear, saw that their diminished firepower would never be enough and she knew the second time that she would die.

She heard the "down" at the same time a hand pushed her. With the heavy load on her back she could not break her fall and all wind was knocked from her. It was in this state that she saw the first enemies explode. Something hammered short salvos of explosive projectiles into the strange beings. She saw some beams going overhead but whatever attacked them seemed immune to them. The few surviving soldiers joined the attack and managed to take down a few tentacles by their own.

And then there were no more of them, nothing was following them or blocked their way. Andrea had a hard time getting up and several hands helped her and the geologist was loaded on other shoulders now.

"What the fuck was that Captain."
"The thing that I thought a nasty folly when it was installed on U40. We have a mast with a recoil-less 30 mm cannon. Normally I don't like to give such an obvious datum, but that thing obviously has its uses."
"I'd say so."

The Germans made their way to the submarine as fast as they could and U 40 left the cavern less than 30 minutes later. Ten minutes before the last Lord of Change had left the real to his chosen domain.

The Shoggoth was livid, it had aimed to eradicate the pests that intruded into his domain. They might come back with reinforcements and while they were rather primitive they had proven to be able to fend his drones off. They had been made for crowd control, not serious combat. If the Shoggoth applied the will he was able to produce much more capable guardians. He would do that and once he was secure he would see where these intruders came from and do something about them. Yes, that sounded like something he would enjoy and what would give his existence some meaning.

He checked his oldest memories for the plans for more capable engines of war when his subroutines found the first errors. Making the same calculation twice gave different results. Data he had stored in distributed media no longer agreed with itself. Priorities which had governed his life for more than 100.000 years were overwritten before his very eyes.

It was then that he remembered the drones that had been destroyed by flames of raw warp energy, remembered the gates to the Empyrean that had opened inside himself. A hundred millenia ago he had been shielded against such things, but that had obviously degraded with the years. The Shoggoth was about to mutate, to become something different and maybe obey new masters. It could not be.
He had planned to burn out those parts of himself which had become faulty and restore himself from secure storage. It was just that fewer parts of it were hale with every second and that secure storage was now highly suspect. The Shoggoth still had the capability to regret what he had to do, he never had the option to do anything different, the Ancient Ones had seen to that.

Glands ejected copious amounts of chemicals that ran through its body erasing the data stored in various forms before changing the chemistry into things that reacted violently with each other. Energy stored for later use was released in an orgy of destruction and the collapse of the Shoggoth's body made the edifices of the cave collapse into themselves. Without the stabilization provided by the Shoggoth the cavern lost its capability to support itself and millions of tons of granite filled the void, causing an earthquake felt in far-off Germany.

Among the last sets of data deleted by the cataclysm were the ratings and the betting averages about the many battles that the Shoggoth had arranged in its heyday. While he had been so instrumental in them he had not been made with the capability to understand them or even enjoy the proceedings as his masters had done so long ago.