Post by Arguleon Veq on Oct 22, 2010 15:42:40 GMT -5
Over a thousand years ago, in the north of what has now become known as the Dark Lands, east of the realm now known as Kislev, the Gospadors were not the only realm of noble man. There are whispers of a long forgotten civilisation. A civilisation brought low by disaster and Chaos, a civilisation that hung on to this world with every ounce of its dying breath. For better or for worse. They are now known only, as the Tunnel Dwellers.
History tells us that around the Imperial year 950 [ Year - 45 in the Gospadorian Calendar ] the Gospador Tribe began their migration west due to increasing expansion by the tribes of the Chaos Wastes. Why though, had these attacks increased in such numbers as to cause the Gospadors, a hardy tribe who had endured for centuries, to embark on a mass migration west?.
The nomadic Kurgan and Hung, the main sources of attacks on the Gospador homelands were not in fact trying to expand their realms or spheres of control. They were fleeing from a threat that threatened to wipe their people out. Brutal storms of magical energy washed over the northern landscape, mutating all in its path. Even for the Kurgan and Hung, foul worshippers of Chaos both, this was too much. Whole tribes were mutated into mewling messes in single storm wracked nights. They sought the ‘gifts’ of their foul gods but storms of such power were seen only as punishment for whatever they had done to offend the powers of Chaos. Their nomadic nature allowed them to flee south for a time, in order to escape the hellish storms of change. In doing so, driving the proud Gospador west, unable to cope with the waves upon waves of brutal northmen that now swept over their lands.
The story would end there but for one small fact. The Gospador were not the only realm of noble men in that region. The Gospador could not even claim to be the most powerful. This realm, who’s name is now lost to antiquity had built mighty cities. They were not prepared to give up their homes. Their vast armies of sturdy scythe and sickle armed militia marching out to meet the northern hordes, supported by their trusted battle hounds. Time and time again they defeated the northmen until the barbarians battled them no more. The Kurgan and Hung left the realm intact and continued their migration south.
The land rejoiced. They had defeated the greatest threat their land had ever faced and the now abandoned Gospador realms were free for the taking. A new age of expansion and progress beckoned them.
This people prospered, for a while at least. Little did they know that the inexorable storms of the North, some of the most destructive ever to occur on the face of this world, shifted insidiously further south with every passing day.
Scouts reported the storms, but they had endured northern storms before. They hunkered down inside their cities and prepared to wait it out. Night after night the relentless storms battered their realms. It was apparent in the first week alone that this was nothing like the storms they had endured in the past, whole towns were turned into gibbering wrecks. Women bloated and gave birth to giant magic spewing slugs. Hysteria could have gripped the land and torn them apart, perhaps it would have been better if it had. Ending them there and then.
Rather than give up hope, the people mobilised. Creating vast networks of tunnels under their cities, expanding on their sewer systems. Reasoning that being under ground would offer them a measure of protection from the relentless storms. The whole population, starving and withered, their crops having rotted in the foul rains of the storms, began to dig. A ruthless determination born out of desperation saw the impossible achieved. In a few short months, vast tunnel networks were completed. Many thousands starved or succumbed to mutations. Those that survived were transformed from an optimistic open people to a nation of grim, heavy eyed skeletal wraiths. They hunkered down, deep wells offering them foul but drinkable water. The main source of food bugs and fungus and whatever else they could scavenge and scrounge beneath the earth.
They endured like this for months but the storms did not stop and with a grim realisation, they knew they were doomed. They resigned themselves to death and waited for the inevitable. Too proud to form pacts with the gods that had struck them down.
They did not die though. The storms become even more ferocious as the foul gods of the realms of chaos played their final trick on this blighted people. Their resistance an insult. The stinking underground realm was turned into a place of evil as the powers of the storm seeped through the earth. The tunnels becoming like the intestinal tracts of some foul bloated monster. The people continued to starve and with nothing else to live for turned on each other, turned to wickedness and evil. Their water pools and wells become foul stinking pits or dark energy, forced to consume it, the people were granted resilience and hardiness that they never thought possible. Their rotting withered bodies capable of taking punishment that would fell an Orc three times over. Their loyal hounds began to sprout horns and wicked teeth, their fur turning to slimy stinking scales. The women birthed the horrific warp slugs in even greater numbers. The great king of this people, the man who had led them to their greatest deeds, seeing his subjects finally brought to ruin. Cast himself into one of the foul mutating water pools not wishing to see his people fall further into degredation.
The king was not allowed to escape the clutches of chaos so easily, the gods laughed at his futile attempts and cast him back into the world. Rising from the pool in which he had thrown himself, the king re-emerged. A monstrous half slug half man, foul energies flickering across his clawed hands, he had re-merged as a god to this new people. He had re-emerged, The Tunnel Dweller.
The transformation of the realm complete, the storms finally abated and the Tunnel Dweller led his armies above ground. The twisted starved parodies of the proud men that had once built a great nation above ground, were his elite guard. Their unnatural warp spawned resilience and callous evil intent coupled with their already lethal skills with scythe and sickle making them even more deadly warriors than before. Any that fell re-emerged after a time from the stinking slime pits in their deepest tunnels, providing an army that could time and time again march upon the mortal world. Bringing ruin and misery on others. The foul giant slugs, birthed in greater and greater numbers also marched with them. Burning down their foes in blasts of sorcerous energy. The men that had gone insane in their dark, foul realm had become known as Lurkers. Transformed into lethal taloned beasts that could rip even a Tunnel Guard to shreds if they dared stray down long forgotten tunnels alone, although not a worry to the Guard who could re-birth in their slime pits. On the field of battle they could rip an enemy limb from limb. Their once loyal hounds were now cruel warp beasts, part reptile, part dog, part toad.
Emerging from their tunnels they found the Kurgan and Hung, returning North, the wrath of their gods having abated. The Tunnel Dwellers butchered any they come across, a hatred still burning inside them for the worshippers of the gods that had d**ned them so. Myths and legends from the Kurgan and Hung tribes still endure of these ‘Slime People’, these ‘Tunnel Dwellers’ to this day.
Now they cared not who they killed though, they had become a wicked and evil people twisted by chaos, reviling the powers that had created them and the rest of the world in equal measure. A Daemonic realm in the mortal world.
It is rumoured that the lost hold of Karak Dum was undone by the spiteful and twisted Tunnel Dwellers. Bitter that the Dwarfs had survived the brutal storms of the north in their deep mines. Many Ogre Tribes have simply vanished when migrating west over the more northern rout. Clan Moulder wages an ongoing underground war from their lair in hell-pit. An eternal war thanks to the countless hordes of rat men and the re-spawning daemonic nature of their adversaries.
The forces of the Old World are slowly becoming aware of this malicious threat from the north east, at a time when they can’t afford new enemies. With the Old World reeling from the Storm of Chaos these foul ‘Tunnel Dwellers’ are now striking west, bitterly eying up the lands of the Gospadors.
History tells us that around the Imperial year 950 [ Year - 45 in the Gospadorian Calendar ] the Gospador Tribe began their migration west due to increasing expansion by the tribes of the Chaos Wastes. Why though, had these attacks increased in such numbers as to cause the Gospadors, a hardy tribe who had endured for centuries, to embark on a mass migration west?.
The nomadic Kurgan and Hung, the main sources of attacks on the Gospador homelands were not in fact trying to expand their realms or spheres of control. They were fleeing from a threat that threatened to wipe their people out. Brutal storms of magical energy washed over the northern landscape, mutating all in its path. Even for the Kurgan and Hung, foul worshippers of Chaos both, this was too much. Whole tribes were mutated into mewling messes in single storm wracked nights. They sought the ‘gifts’ of their foul gods but storms of such power were seen only as punishment for whatever they had done to offend the powers of Chaos. Their nomadic nature allowed them to flee south for a time, in order to escape the hellish storms of change. In doing so, driving the proud Gospador west, unable to cope with the waves upon waves of brutal northmen that now swept over their lands.
The story would end there but for one small fact. The Gospador were not the only realm of noble men in that region. The Gospador could not even claim to be the most powerful. This realm, who’s name is now lost to antiquity had built mighty cities. They were not prepared to give up their homes. Their vast armies of sturdy scythe and sickle armed militia marching out to meet the northern hordes, supported by their trusted battle hounds. Time and time again they defeated the northmen until the barbarians battled them no more. The Kurgan and Hung left the realm intact and continued their migration south.
The land rejoiced. They had defeated the greatest threat their land had ever faced and the now abandoned Gospador realms were free for the taking. A new age of expansion and progress beckoned them.
This people prospered, for a while at least. Little did they know that the inexorable storms of the North, some of the most destructive ever to occur on the face of this world, shifted insidiously further south with every passing day.
Scouts reported the storms, but they had endured northern storms before. They hunkered down inside their cities and prepared to wait it out. Night after night the relentless storms battered their realms. It was apparent in the first week alone that this was nothing like the storms they had endured in the past, whole towns were turned into gibbering wrecks. Women bloated and gave birth to giant magic spewing slugs. Hysteria could have gripped the land and torn them apart, perhaps it would have been better if it had. Ending them there and then.
Rather than give up hope, the people mobilised. Creating vast networks of tunnels under their cities, expanding on their sewer systems. Reasoning that being under ground would offer them a measure of protection from the relentless storms. The whole population, starving and withered, their crops having rotted in the foul rains of the storms, began to dig. A ruthless determination born out of desperation saw the impossible achieved. In a few short months, vast tunnel networks were completed. Many thousands starved or succumbed to mutations. Those that survived were transformed from an optimistic open people to a nation of grim, heavy eyed skeletal wraiths. They hunkered down, deep wells offering them foul but drinkable water. The main source of food bugs and fungus and whatever else they could scavenge and scrounge beneath the earth.
They endured like this for months but the storms did not stop and with a grim realisation, they knew they were doomed. They resigned themselves to death and waited for the inevitable. Too proud to form pacts with the gods that had struck them down.
They did not die though. The storms become even more ferocious as the foul gods of the realms of chaos played their final trick on this blighted people. Their resistance an insult. The stinking underground realm was turned into a place of evil as the powers of the storm seeped through the earth. The tunnels becoming like the intestinal tracts of some foul bloated monster. The people continued to starve and with nothing else to live for turned on each other, turned to wickedness and evil. Their water pools and wells become foul stinking pits or dark energy, forced to consume it, the people were granted resilience and hardiness that they never thought possible. Their rotting withered bodies capable of taking punishment that would fell an Orc three times over. Their loyal hounds began to sprout horns and wicked teeth, their fur turning to slimy stinking scales. The women birthed the horrific warp slugs in even greater numbers. The great king of this people, the man who had led them to their greatest deeds, seeing his subjects finally brought to ruin. Cast himself into one of the foul mutating water pools not wishing to see his people fall further into degredation.
The king was not allowed to escape the clutches of chaos so easily, the gods laughed at his futile attempts and cast him back into the world. Rising from the pool in which he had thrown himself, the king re-emerged. A monstrous half slug half man, foul energies flickering across his clawed hands, he had re-merged as a god to this new people. He had re-emerged, The Tunnel Dweller.
The transformation of the realm complete, the storms finally abated and the Tunnel Dweller led his armies above ground. The twisted starved parodies of the proud men that had once built a great nation above ground, were his elite guard. Their unnatural warp spawned resilience and callous evil intent coupled with their already lethal skills with scythe and sickle making them even more deadly warriors than before. Any that fell re-emerged after a time from the stinking slime pits in their deepest tunnels, providing an army that could time and time again march upon the mortal world. Bringing ruin and misery on others. The foul giant slugs, birthed in greater and greater numbers also marched with them. Burning down their foes in blasts of sorcerous energy. The men that had gone insane in their dark, foul realm had become known as Lurkers. Transformed into lethal taloned beasts that could rip even a Tunnel Guard to shreds if they dared stray down long forgotten tunnels alone, although not a worry to the Guard who could re-birth in their slime pits. On the field of battle they could rip an enemy limb from limb. Their once loyal hounds were now cruel warp beasts, part reptile, part dog, part toad.
Emerging from their tunnels they found the Kurgan and Hung, returning North, the wrath of their gods having abated. The Tunnel Dwellers butchered any they come across, a hatred still burning inside them for the worshippers of the gods that had d**ned them so. Myths and legends from the Kurgan and Hung tribes still endure of these ‘Slime People’, these ‘Tunnel Dwellers’ to this day.
Now they cared not who they killed though, they had become a wicked and evil people twisted by chaos, reviling the powers that had created them and the rest of the world in equal measure. A Daemonic realm in the mortal world.
It is rumoured that the lost hold of Karak Dum was undone by the spiteful and twisted Tunnel Dwellers. Bitter that the Dwarfs had survived the brutal storms of the north in their deep mines. Many Ogre Tribes have simply vanished when migrating west over the more northern rout. Clan Moulder wages an ongoing underground war from their lair in hell-pit. An eternal war thanks to the countless hordes of rat men and the re-spawning daemonic nature of their adversaries.
The forces of the Old World are slowly becoming aware of this malicious threat from the north east, at a time when they can’t afford new enemies. With the Old World reeling from the Storm of Chaos these foul ‘Tunnel Dwellers’ are now striking west, bitterly eying up the lands of the Gospadors.