#94 Roses of Barfunweltz
Today is the second anniversary of me starting my hobby blog, in which I created the massive cemetery of Barfunweltz as the background setting for my modelling projects. Having read more about the nature of Shyish in the new Nighthaunt battletome, it seemed fitting to explore why Barfunweltz is how it is…
For so many inhabitants of the Mortal Realms, death is not the end. Pantheons of gods stand ready to snatch the souls of the dying to employ them for their own devices: from Sigmar recruiting Stormcast Eternals, to the Ruinous Powers fuelling their hells, to Nagash claiming his right to unite all the dead in him. The end of life is rarely the end of existence. And yet, many mortals wish it could be so.
This is why, in every Realm, there are millions of mortals who quietly but fervently practice the belief that when they die, they will, quite simply, remain dead. They long for peace, for eternal rest, for a quiet end. For nothingness, for sweet extinction.
When such souls die, they pass quietly into Shyish, the Realm of Death. But not to enter anything that might be called an ‘afterlife’; not for them the heavens and hells of other religious adherents. Rather, their souls rest – as their bodies may be resting back in the Realm where they lived – in a grave or tomb. Here, in silence, their experience of death is one of quiet, undisturbed oblivion.
Barfunweltz Cemetery is one of the vast Shyishian graveyards that harbour such as these, a continent-sized labyrinth of tombs and sepulchres, the resting place of a billion souls who simply wish to be left undisturbed.
But death is as cruel as life, and there are many in Shyish who refuse to respect the wishes of the silent dead. Necromancers and vampires stalk the gravesites, weaving their amethyst magics and recruiting the dead to their service. Incensed that their rest has been disturbed, there are few spirits as bitter, hate-filled and vengeful as those who have been cheated of their longed-for oblivion. Fools who stray among the tombs rarely return alive. Nonetheless, experienced visitors to Barfunweltz know where they need to tread quietly, for wherever necromancy has left its traces, the Blood Roses bloom, dripping sanguine dew from their scarlet petals.
The Society of the Sanguine Rose was a Shyishian cult led by a vampire known as the False Apostle. Based in Barfunweltz itself, it offered to mortals the peace of True Rest in death, if only they would follow the Way of the Rose in life. Their hope was for a genuinely final end when they died, just like the silent souls that filled the vast graveyards surrounding their cathedral.
Perhaps inevitably, this hope was utterly misguided: When the False Apostle was unmasked by the Gravewalkers, the deceased adherents of Society of the Sanguine Rose became the Nighthaunt Procession of the Foolish Martyrs. Those who survived the persecution became mordants of the Raptured Court, and the subsequent power vacuum attracted various Soulblight factions seeking to replace the False Apostle as the new lords of Barfunweltz.
And so, Barfunweltz is now contested territory: Lady Olynder’s procession appears to be in ascendency, but the flesh-eating followers of the Baby-Eating Bishop continue to infest the crypts. The Legion of Blood has spies everywhere, but so has the Legion of Night, for both claim to be the dynasty of the False Apostle himself. The Kastellai and Avengorii are not without representation either. Meanwhile, the ancient Vyrkos who have inhabited Barfun Moor for eons are preparing to regain their rightful status. Their ancient enemies the Children of Chaos still stalk the hidden places, while Kharadron Overlords surreptitiously mine the cloudy skies. And of course the Gravewalkers, the interfering servants of Sigmar, always seek to subdue and control all.
One thing is certain: the dead of Barfunwletz will still be denied the rest they sought.
#95 THE NOBLE HOUSE OF HEISENBERG
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