Assault on the Eater's Lair

Assault on Eater's Lair is a conflict fought between the Seraphon and Chaos forces under the Gaunt Summoner known as the Eater of Tomes as the Seraphon assaulted his Silver Tower known as the Eater's Lair with the goal of destroying the tower and the Gaunt Summoner due to the danger posed by his research into corrupting Realmgates.

Background

Archaon in his quest to lay siege to Azyr had ordered his Gaunt Summoners to find a method to corrupt the realmgates. Thus they began research into varanite, molten realmstone of the Eightpoints redolent with the mutative properties of Chaos that could also unmake the aeons-old frameworks that contained each realmgate portal, in particular the Meteoric Gate, the gigantic Arcway leading from the Eightpoints to the heart of Azyr that had been sealed by Sigmar upon his retreat from the other realms. Within the Skullpike Mountains of the Eightpoints, the Gaunt Summoner known as the Eater of Tomes oversaw the processing of of varanite to corrupt the Meteoric Gate but was thwarted during the Battle of Varanthax’s Maw. ^[1a]

The Slann observed these disturbances including those committed by the followers of Nagash with mounting concern. They alone knew the true significance of the geomantic ley lines upon which each realmgate was situated, and the catastrophic chain reaction that might result if enough were to be corrupted. The greatest of the slann, the mummified husk known as Lord Kroak had seen visions of cities and empires being swallowed up by a rising storm of sorcery and savagery that would cause the Old Ones’ great plan to unravel. Assembling his Seraphon hosts, Kroak began his own preparations. Judging that the Gaunt Summoners were the greatest threat Lord Kroak aimed to put an end to the Summoners’ schemes and ensure their dark science was not taken one step further. His wrath would first be directed at the lair of the Eater of Tomes, for that being above all had wrought the greatest damage upon the Astromatrix. While the Slann made their plans the Daemon Prince Be’lakor , known as the Dark Master, had his own plans for the realmgates and from his stronghold was plotting to ensure that his foes would clear the path for his glorious ascension.^[1a]

March of the Cosmic Host

The Eater of Tomes’ lair was hidden in a valley known as the Vale of Screams, located amidst the eastern reaches of the Skullpike Mountains that stretched along the northernmost edge of the Bloodwind Spoil, one of the deadliest regions in all the Eightpoints. The armies of Azyr had suffered a grievous defeat in these very lands and the Seraphon foresaw that the desperate retreat of the Stormcasts’ remaining forces would provide a distraction that would allow them to reach their quarry before the hosts of Chaos descended upon them in great numbers. The Genesis Gate from Ghyran to the Eightpoints was defended by two chambers of the Hallowed Knights, commanded by Gardus Steel Soul but was being attacked by a massive army of Nurgle who had begun to overrun the Stormcast Eternals. Just as defeat was imminent Seraphon spilled from the undergrowth to the east of the gate who marched in lockstep, stone-headed spears punching out to skewer daemons and bloated Chaos-worshippers and smashed into the flank of the Chaos position with the force of a crashing meteor. More appeared at the very foot of the Genesis Gate, manifesting out of thin air in bursts of starlight. However just as the Stormcasts rejoiced in their newfound allies, the Seraphon drove past the Hallowed Knights’ position, plunging into the shimmering depths of the Genesis Gate without pause leaving the Hallowed Knights to their fate.^[1b][1c]

The Sraphon hosts of the Dracothion’s Tail surged across the blasted plains of the Eightpoints bolstered by the power of the Slann Kuoteq. While the Slann could have simply summoned his warriors directly from his constellation’s temple-ships, unleashing them upon the enemy at the appointed time in an eruption of blinding light. Such precision was not possible in the Everchosen’s domain due to the pall of Chaos energies that lay over it. Thus, Lord Kroak had bid Kuoteq make his attack through the Genesis Gate. As beings highly attuned to the natural order of the cosmos, each second in this twisted and Chaos-saturated place was agony to the Seraphon and worse the Slann could feel his own flesh withering and blistering; as it was a being intimately connected to the purifying energies of Azyr, every moment that the Starmaster lingered in this nightmarish land was one of profound torment but none shied from their sacred duty. The vanguard of the host consisted of masses of skink skirmishers and Terradon-mounted hunters who surged ahead, guiding the winding body of Dracothion’s Tail across soul-flaying wastelands and toxic rivers of blood and hundreds of them would fall prey to the sentient wilds of the Eightpoints. In turn the cursed land recoiled at the presence of the Seraphon, whose collective auras burned like a newborn star which enraged the Eightpoints which vomited forth its unnatural denizens against these interlopers. Yet whenever the Seraphon encountered monsters that could not be felled by the sacred poisons coating the skinks’ missiles, up came formations of gargantuan reptilian warbeasts and mounted Saurus Knights to drive away each new threat, their talons and lances tearing through warped hides and hell-forged armour.^[1d]

The Eater of Tomes was distracted by his hunt of the Stormcast Eternals retreating to the Genesis Gate and congregations of skink Starpriests had worked complex star-rituals as the Seraphon advanced, cutting off the Gaunt Summoner’s network of augur-towers and arcane spying devices with pulses of cosmic energy. When the Gaunt Summoner became aware of this new enemy, the Seraphon had almost reached the forest of silvered impaled corpses that served as the gateway to the Vale of Screams. When avian messenger-daemons brought the warning of the enormous army bearing down upon the Silver Tower the Eater of Tomes was first overcome with anger followed by self-pitying outrage. Letting his mortal underlings deal with the remaining Stormcast Eternals, the Eater of Tomes uttered a spell of translocation. While the majority of his mortal thralls were guarding the Varanthax’s Maw, the Vale of Screams is a valley of polished crystal, dotted with lakes of molten silver, was home to throngs of Tzaangors who had sworn allegiance to the Gaunt Summoner. Not only that, but should the enemy stray close to the Silver Tower, they would be set upon by hordes of capering daemons, for the arcane fortress was more than a mere stronghold; it was also a conduit to the roiling madness of the Realm of Chaos. Gaunt Summoner’s own wards and arcane defences, could flay the soul or melt the bones of a trespasser in an instant. ^[1d]

Battle of the Vale of Screams

Kuoteq and his saurian warriors, commanded by the fearsome Scar-Veteran Quar-Toc marched into the Vale expecting to be swarmed by enemies. The ground was pitted with swamps of bubbling mercury, and the horizon shrouded behind trees shaped from contorted bodies encased in silver, captured eternally in the moment of their agonising end. Bands of pink-skinned Tzaangors launched periodic raids against the skink vanguard, but each was driven back by flights of Terradon-riding skinks. Scar-Veteran Quar-Toc riding upon his his mighty Carnosaur, Kokatla noted something was amiss as the enemy while close avoided attacking in great numbers. But Starmaster Kuoteq seemed serene atop his floating palanquin, and so the battle-hardened saurus held his legendary rage in check. After hours of marching the lowlands narrowed into a valley where the air fizzled with the touch of magic. Geysers of cursed metal spat from the ground, and rained back down as drifting motes of silver and gold. At the far end of the valley rose the Silver Tower itself, its upper battlements thrusting out of the earth like some gleaming crystal blade.^[1e]

The Fateskimmer known as Atra’zan the Immolator a secret servent of the Dark Master watched the army and noted the threads of fate were showing that an event of great importance was soon to happen. The Herald led his Blazing Cavalcade causing a shimmering heat haze to surrounded the distant tower as thousands of rippling bodies spilled from its crystal gateways. The daemonic hosts of the Silver Tower swept down upon the Dracothion’s Tail. Flamers spewed gouts of iridescent fire that melted scales and sacred armour to liquid while screamers and skink beast-riders duelled in the skies above. Many skink riders were sent hurtling from their mounts, covered in arcane flames while flying daemons continued to spill forth from the upper spires of the Silver Tower replacing each fallen daemon with ten more. Then Starmaster Kuoteq with a mere flick of its fingers, summoned trails of celestial energy that limned Scar-Veteran Quar-Toc and his elite Saurus Knights in a silvery glow that undid gravity allowing them to ride their beasts into the sky and crash into the tide of flying daemons with devastating force. Squadrons of the aerial warriors dropped meteoric rocks upon the daemons on the ground that pulverised everything that they struck, or bolas that engulfed swathes of the enemy in purifying flames. Kuoteq himself summoned clusters of comets to fall down upon the enemies. While daemons continued pouring from the Silver Tower the momentum of the Seraphon assault did not slow. Kuoteq ordered his sacred Bastiladons to advance. Dozens of the these beasts lumbered forward the Solar Engines mounted atop their backs unleashing beams of light that blazed across the battlefield and slammed into the pillars of the Silver Tower. Hulking Kroxigors smashed and hacked their way to the walls of the structure, and there set their huge mauls against the crystal surface targetting the sections that had been weakened by the solar beams. ^[1e]

Then the Eater of Tomes returned to his domain unleashing a scream of rage and with him a vast number of Disc-riding Tzaangor champions and another great wave of Screamers. They fell upon the flank of Kuoteq’s army with the Gaunt Summoner screeching incantations turning hosts of saurus to obsidian statues or trapping lumbering warbeasts in pools of boiling metal. Yet the star-lizards were many and the Slann radiated a might that unnerved even the Gaunt Summoner. While the Eater of Tomes doubted the host could destroy the tower seeing the Silver Tower being hammered the daemon was concerned about them breaching the walls to reach the core where his personal chambers lay, along with his last reserves of processed varanite. Ordering his forces to advance the Eater of Tomes snapped his fingers and disappeared in an eruption of purplish flame.^[1e]

Battle in the Lightless Void

The Eater of Tomes appeared in the teleportation circle of his Silver Tower and recited incantations revealed to him by Tzeentch long ago. A thunderous tremor rippled across the battlefield causing the earth to crack apart, opening rifts up to swallow hundreds of saurus. With a thunderous roar, the Silver Tower emerged from the earth revealing its vast length as it broke free from the rocks of the Vale of Screams creating a storm of shrapnel that flew towards the battle. Shields of force summoned by the Starmaster protected its forces but the Silver Tower with its underside blazing with an intense blinding light raced towards the sky with an explosion that levelled trees and boiled rivers. The Seraphon army of many thousands was reduced to mere hundreds and the Vale of Screams reduced to a plateau of charred and melting stone. Scar-Veteran Quar-Toc was filled with primal fury but Kuoteq silenced the saurus noting the result was as prophesied by Lord Kroak.^[1f]

The Eater of Tomes fled into the Aetheric Void beleiving he had fled the attackers but just as he slumped back in his crystal throne the Silver Tower rocked and arcane sigils screamed. A dozen ziggurat-ships had encircled the Silver Tower the largest of which was the Itza-huitlan a many-tiered behemoth with a bow fashioned in the image of a golden serpent and had the honor of bearing Lord Kroak, the oldest of the Slann. Each of the vessels emitted a light which coalesced into a single beam of blinding white light that lanced into the Tzeentchian fortress. Then from the Itza-huitlan came dozens of golden barges, decorated with leering reptilian faces and glyphs in a tongue long ago forgotten. These screamed across the void to ram the Silver Tower, disgorging phalanxes of saurus and Kroxigor forces into the tower where they were met by the tower's daemonic garrison.^[1f]

The Silver Tower fought back with cascades of sorcerous fire that engulfed the nearest Seraphon temple-ship, melting through enchanted stone to open great gouges in the vessel from which hundreds of skinks and saurus were thrown into the void as the ship lost control. The Eater of Tomes used this gap in the Seraphon fleet to breakthrough but the shattered Silver Tower hurtled into the boiling chemical stratosphere of Chamon. The Tower crashed on the coast of the Rusted Wastes protected by its arcane enchantments. Chaotic energy leaked from its breaches and a raging tempest of magic roared and circled above the crash site. Aboard the Itza-huitlan Lord Kroak exerted his will, and with a thought he set the vast mass of the Itza-huitlan into motion beginning the next stage of the great work. ^[1f]

Stampede of Scales

The Eater of Tomes noted the three wyrdflame fonts that powered the Silver Tower’s arcane weapon-spires were exposed, the bulbous chambers cracked open by surgical blasts from the Seraphon temple-ships. While the wards containing the wyrdflame fonts still held they were sparking and groaning as they strained to suppress the sorcerous power leaking into reality. As the Gaunt Summoner began to work his sorcery upon the wreckage, the deep-throated roaring of reptilian beasts and the rolling thunder of stampeding bodies was heard from a distance.^[1g]

The Seraphon were led to war by Iq-To, an honoured skink elder of the Thunder Lizard, a Coalesced constellation from the outerlands of Chamon whose task for centuries had been to maintain the technology of the Old Ones. The Starwarden rode atop Talepotec, one of the most fearsome of the constellation’s Stegadon warbeasts, accompanied by a cadre of his most trusted warriors. Behind Talepotec came yet more gigantic Stegadons, and then a formation of lumbering plate-armoured Bastiladons carrying Solar Engines, weapons that radiated the fearsome power of a sun. The army thundered down the mountain slopes towards the crashed fortress like an avalanche. The Silver Tower had no shortage of daemons within its fractal interior, which obeyed no laws of physical reality. The Seraphon charge was answered by hordes of Pink Horrors and Flamers pouring out of every breach. Atra’zan the Immolator led them, his Burning Chariot blazing a path across the sky as the Herald unleashed a ball of unnatural fire that sent a Stegadon up in flames. ^[1g]

Leaving the slaughter to his saurus commanders, Starwarden Iq-To led his war machines to the foot of the stricken tower. Atop the beasts’ howdahs, skink retainers swarmed over the cosmic devices, aligning crystals and glyphs. The Old Ones’ relics were unpredictable in their workings, but Lord Kroak’s attendants had given Iq-To exacting instructions as to how they were to be attuned this day. Motes of golden light coalesced around each of the devices, so bright that even Talepotec growled and stamped in protest. The building energies focused into a single, brilliant beam that lanced towards the crown of the Silver Tower, where the Eater of Tomes stood observing the battle. The beam effortlessly pierced the arcane wards of the Gaunt Summoner causing his body to explode in a splatter of ichor and sorcerous discharge. The nearest wyrdflame font was also caught in the path of the beam, and it splintered releasing the contained arcane preassure in a blizzard of multicoloured shards. Its destruction initiated a violent chain reaction as the next font exploded, and then the next. ^[1g]

The world turned white as the Silver Tower detonated. Even those of distant lands who were gazing in the wrong direction were blinded by the flare of light. The shockwave shattered the nearest mountains and launched their peaks into the stratosphere. Lakes were turned to boiling mist and continental plates were shunted and the free city of Tansis with its fifty-thousand inhabitants was swallowed by a tsunami of liquid metal. When the vast clouds of dust and debris began to settle and dissipate the Rusted Wastes had been replaced by a glowing crater with a width greater than a thousand miles. The Silver Towers are arcane constructs directly linked to many of the primordial pathways between the realmsand when the Tower was destroyed, a magical blastwave issued forth from the site of its demise, a destructive tide that swept across the Aetheric Void, causing realmgate after realmgate to explode and turning others into howling vortices of Chaos magic, a side-effect that had been accurately predicted by Lord Kroak. The Seraphon host and Starwarden Iq-To was entirely wiped out. On the arc-bridge of the Itza-huitlan, Lord Kroak delved into his deeper consciousness, and manifested the image of Iq-To creating an echo of the Starwarden that would continue to serve the ancient Relic Priest.^[1g]

Aftermath

In reality the location of the Silver Tower had been revealed to the Seraphon by the machinations of Be’lakor while at the same time blinding the Slann to his own machines by ordering the Legion of the First Prince to smash the great prophetic engine of Tepok’s Eye. His agents had freed Lord-Veritant Keiser Ven Brecht from his imprisonment at the hands of the newly risen goddess Morathi, thus ensuring that word reached Azyr of Fall of Anvilgard while the gods Teclis and Nagash went to war with eachother. Thus the Dark Master's plans had reached its next stage.^[1i]

Endrinmaster Drongon Humboldsson of Barak-Zilfin was leading the Arkanaut Frigate, the Redoubtable, on its maiden voyage when the Rusted Wastes were annihilated in fire and fury. At the advice of Arkanaut Gromthi, an ancient Duardin, Humboldsson decided to investigate the incident. The ship passed multiple Kharadron outposts crippled by blast. At the heavily defended aether-mining outpost of Ghrum-Zunfar, above the Coast of Fine Barter, Humboldsson met Admiral Imoda Barrasdottr. Barrasdottr’s investigations had revealed the strife occurring across Chamon was not random and was affecting the skies above every major realmgate in the region. The Admiral immediately set a course for Barak-Zilfin to alert the Geldraad, the highest political body of the Kharadron empire. The Endrinmaster headed further west and seek answers. At the Grymmpeaks, on its way to dock at the skyport of Barak-Urbaz to refuel and renegotiate a bevy of aether-gold probing arrangements they sighted unnatural flames raging above the Vondite Pass, where stood the ancient realmgate of Kostarg’s Way. Here they found Gulgrymstok, a vassal lodge of the Vostarg ruined to a smoking ruin blanketed in ash with Duardon cropses charred by sorcery. The Kharadron saw a small band of Fyreslayers fighting on against a horde of pink-skinned daemons. The Redoubtable came down into the ruins, cannons blazing and dropped its Grundstok Thunderers using drop-lines. Endrinmaster Humboldsson himself made for the beleaguered Fyreslayers in his dirigible suit, unleashing the full fury of the tools built into his rig. Only a dozen of the Fyreslayers could be rescued before the daemons overran their location with the rest sacrificing themselves to buy time for the kin to escape onto the ship. Fyreslayers recalled how the army led by three Lords of Change destroyed the Realmgate and Gromthi realised a greater plan was in motion. The Redoubtable immediately turned towards Barak-Urbaz, at full speed. The resulting events would lead to the Second Conference of Madralta.^[1h][1j]

Sources

• 1: Broken Realms: Be'lakor
  • 1a: The Realmgates Under Threat, pg.6-7
  • 1b: The Bloodwind Spoil, pg.10
  • 1c Defenders of the Genesis Gate, pg.14-15
  • 1d: March of the Cosmic Host, pg. 16-17
  • 1e: Cold-Blooded War, pg.18-19
  • 1f: Flight of the Tower, pg.20-21
  • 1g: Stampede of Scales, pg.22-23
  • 1h: Amongst the Ruins, pg.24-25
  • 1i: Be'lakor, The Dark Master, pg.30-31
  • 1j: A Malign Pattern, pg.38-39