Hoffenland Burns

Count Toumas von Schaffernacker had retreated to the safety of Sudhafen following the Battle of the Chapel. In spite of the set-back his people remained stubbornly loyal to the imperial cause and new soldiers were soon recruited to fight beneath the von Shaffernacker banners.

The Steel Count girded his forces with every intention of surging back westward to liberate Gross Dortbeck from the vampiric stranglehold. Yet within two days the army was forced to turn back to counter a new threat in Hoffenland, the southern-most province of the empire. Though messages were confused and piece-meal at first, increasingly the scouts and outposts reported the same news: the Skaven had landed an attack force in Hoffenland.

Carried over the waves by their mind-boggling dirigibles, the loathsome Skaven descended upon the coastal villages of Hoffenland as a verminous thunderstorm. They plundered without check, kidnapping many peasants to be carried back as slave labour.

Count Toumas made his way to Hoffenland with all haste, meeting the Skaven marauders on the field of battle outside the town of Eichenwald even as the ratmen assembled their legions to launch an assault upon the town itself. Bloody battle was met as the resplendent Sudhafen Greatswords clashed with the rusty, furry tide of rat-soldiers. The Skaven inflicted heavy losses, their rocket artillery blasting gaping holes in the imperial lines. In answer, the Count’s own cavalry rode down swathes of ratmen, their terrified squeals drowned by the roar of a thousand hooves crashing against the sun-baked dirt.

Glorious charges and sweeping advances gave way to gruelling close-quarter bludgeoning as the two armies ground against one another, the dry earth churning to rancid mud beneath their feet as the soil ran red. Gradually the Skaven gained the upper hand, their vast numbers eventually telling in their favour. The scurrying tidal wave swept around and over Count Toumas’ army and consumed it, leaving few to escape.

Too late did the Elves of Mellvellon arrive to change the course of events. Even as Toumas fought toe to claw with the foe, the glittering host of the Elven allies crested the ridgeline of the hills overlooking the field of battle. The wrath of the Elves was terrible to behold, so fiercely did they fall upon their most hated and ancient foe. The Skaven, seeing the strength of the Elves arrayed before them and reeling from the day’s fighting, reverted to their basest instincts and turned tail. As water through a storm-drain, the Skaven multitudes slipped into the darkness of the Eichenwald Forest and dispersed.

Though chased from the field, the malice of the Skaven had seen the town of Eichenwald turned to a veritable bonfire, the coastal villages of Hoffenland ransacked and hundreds of innocents taken captive, damned to terrible fates of ceaseless toil in the appalling conditions of the Skaven tunnel and mines.