#106 Battle XXIV - The City of Gheists
The city of Salas Nova, founded by a Dawnbringer Crusade out of Glymmsforge, was supposed to have been an island of Sigmarite hope in the Shyishian misery of Barfunweltz. Yet it had ultimately been destroyed by the very Stormcast Eternals who had protected its once faithful founders.
Initially infiltrated by Anya Sorrowkin of the Bloody Pilgrims, the city had rapidly become utterly corrupted and enthralled to the Soulblight Gravelords. It was on the verge of being transformed into Lady Beauvoir's own personal power base, a Soulblight City of mortal slaves who lived only to be slaughtered and raised as whatever undead minions the Bloody Pilgrims required.
Such was its corruption that the Gravewalkers had grimly decided that the only way to stop the cancer was to destroy Salas Nova and its inhabitants. And so the wrath of the Stormcast had rained down upon the blighted city. An enraged Lady Beauvoir gathered a relief force of vampiric knights who drove off the Gravewalkers, but they were too late to prevent most of the city being razed to the ground.
Salas Nova would never be the Soulblight City that the Bloody Pilgrims had planned, but it was certainly now a city of the undead. Thousands of corpses lay beneath the rubble, silently waiting to be raised as deadwalkers or deathrattle - or to become the food of scavenging ghouls. A few Disciples of the Red Redemption, mortals still enthralled to the Bloody Pilgrims, still scratched a living from the debris. But the true lords of Salas Nova were now the Nighthaunt, for the Stormcast's actions had swelled the Procession of the Foolish Martyrs by many thousands. So many thousands that Our Lady of the Rose herself had deigned to visit the ruined city.
As they withdrew, Lord-Imperitant Caelon the Grey led a small force, known as 'The Specials', back to the city. A veteran Nighthaunt fighter, his task was to investigate the level of destruction and assess what sort of threat Salas Nova might present in the future...
A host of ghiests coalesced into hazy reality not far in front of the advancing Gravewalkers. Banshees, revenants, spirits and reapers swirled around greater spectres like a castle of mist. Lord-Imperitant Caelon peered through the gloom and spotted not only Lady Olynder herself, but her consort Kurdoss Valentian.
There was no advantage in delaying so he ordered his troops to attack without hesitation or restraint. Crossbow bolts hammered into the Procession of the Foolish Martyrs, even as the Light of Eltharion charged in and Yndrasta led Annihilators crashing down with lightening from the sky. In an instant, a full three quarters of the ghostly Procession had been returned to the underworld! Caelan smiled. It would not take long to banish these spirits.
But then Lady Olynder raised her hands to summon back her minions, while eldritch lights emanated from the Guardian of Souls at her side. A moment later, almost all of the banished gheists were back. It was as if the Stormcast assault had achieved nothing.
And then the Nighthaunt attacked back. Swirling away and then charging back in, the phantasms' spells and shrieks stunned even the mighty Stormcast and cut them down before they could regather their wits. Bewildered and dispirited, the Gravewalkers tried to counter attack but too many had already returned to the Anvil of Apotheosis. One by one their comrades went to join them, including the mighty Yndrasta, dragged to earth in a wave of ectoplasm led by Kurdoss Valentian himself.
Suddenly the Lord-Imperitant realised that only he and the Vanguard-Raptors remained, while Olynder's almost undiminished host swept towards them across the battlefield...
* * *
Owen conceded at the end of turn two. This was a three objective game and it was clear his two remaining Stormcast units could not win against so many fast-moving enemies. A great game, but I was starting to feel a bit bad about the sheer brutality of multiple Nighthaunt charges - and the number of models I was able to bring back again after he’d killed them!
"This town," sighed Caelon the Grey, "has become a ghost town."
"But all the cults have been closed down?" the Raptor Prime offered optimistically.
The Lord-Imperitant snorted derisively. "I doubt that," he said, "there will have been some survivors, and even if they weren't slaves to Nagash before, they will be now."
He cast his eye one more time over the ruins of Salas Nova, and left.
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