Hey, fellow gamers! Hold onto your aether-goggles because we’re about to dive into some high-flying action with the Kharadron Overlords Admiral Khrufin. We got a taste of this fearless sky captain in Dawnbringers Book 2 – Reign of the Brute, and now he’s back for more adventure in the Dawnbringer Chronicles. Check out this next narrative snippet from the Warhammer Community site!
‘Homeport-bound then, sir?’ asked Captain Thrummond.
Admiral Lokki Khrufin took a quick swig of hazkal. His last flask of pure Zilfin Amber. Damn right it was time to see the Windswept City again. And, more importantly, its alehouses.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘No more room for even a whiff of aether-gold, anyways. It’s been a profitable venture, Captain. I’ll be putting through my request for your commendation as soon as we dock.’
Thrummond’s moustache twitched ever so slightly, which was for him an extravagant gesture of delight. The Captain of the Grimmbar was not a gregarious sort, but then again Khrufin wasn’t paying him for his winning personality.
‘Won’t be sad to leave this place,’ said Thrummond, nodding down over the gunwale towards the settlement of Veldman’s Gap, twenty or so metres beneath the Arkanaut Ironclad’s gleaming hull.
The Sigmarite strongpoint was an unlovely hovel. Nestled between two flat-topped hills and surrounded by a palisade of solid ironoak, it was cramped and rainswept, its squat buildings semi-permanently obscured by a swirling, grey-blue mist that chilled to the bone.
‘No indeed,’ said Khrufin. ‘Though they’ve paid well for our help in mopping up those grobi raiders, you can’t deny. Cyclestone’s not aether-gold, to be sure, but it’ll sell well enough at Goldkeel Market. Should earn the crew a nice little windfall.’
Such pleasant thoughts were interrupted by a muted horn blaring far below. The sound was coming from one of the humans’ watchtowers. Khrufin could see soldiers rushing back and forth, waving their hands and gesturing.
‘Something out there?’ Thrummond muttered, squinting towards the valley that spread out ahead of the human settlement. As ever, the immediate terrain was masked beneath a thick carpet of fog, hanging low and heavy in the air. ‘Thought I saw…’
Admiral Khrufin thumbed down the magnoscope lens of his helmet and scanned the mist. At first, he saw nothing. Then something burst from the clouds, a chunk of rock the size of a main endrin. He briefly lost sight of the missile, flipping back his viewing lens in time to see it crunch down atop the perimeter wall of Veldman’s Gap. It left a red smear behind as it bounced into the settlement proper, before finally punching through the side of a house. More stones followed. More screams, and more thudding sounds of impact.
‘Beat to quarters!’ Khrufin roared. ‘Bring us about, Captain Thrummond. Clear the guns for action.’
The crew of the Grimmbar exploded into motion, Arkanauts dashing forward to detach mooring lines and load the Ironclad’s cannons. Khrufin glanced across the deck to see Gunnery Sergeant Boffelsson and a half-dozen of his Grundstok marines taking up firing positions, levelling sleek aethershot rifles and handheld mortars towards the source of the commotion.
‘Grungni’s balls,’ said Captain Thrummond as a half-dozen gigantic forms lumbered out of the mists, brandishing makeshift clubs and hollering drunkenly as they bore down upon Veldman’s Gap. ‘Karag-gronti! Karag-gronti!’’
Mega-Gargants. A storm of boulders and torn-up tree trunks hammered down on the settlement, crushing panicked human soldiers flat, or smearing them across the cobblestones. One of the gargants took an awkward run up and put his foot through the strongpoint’s main gate. Metal and wood crumpled, and the foolish brute staggered, cursing and grabbing at his bloodied toes – much to the whooping amusement of his fellows. Another wiped his hand across the battlements, snatching a pair of flailing humans and tossing them over his shoulder to their death.
A squadron of three single-engine Grundstok Gunhaulers came angling down from their patrol route. The escort ships’ fore-cannons blared, and puffs of red mist rippled along the gargants’ torsos. One vessel was caught by the edge of a gargant’s wildly swung warclub. Spiralling crazily, it struck the hillside and burst into flames.
Now the Grimmbar’s own heavy guns opened up in earnest. Zilfin-cast smoothbore cannons roared, unleashing a storm of superheated aethershot upon the advancing titans. One of the Mega-Gargants roared in agony, a hand reduced to bloody tatters. Another swayed, poking dumbly at a smoking hole in its skull through which brain matter could be glimpsed.
The brutes now turned their piggish eyes upon the Ironclad. The largest – a grizzled, one-eyed old devil whose head was enclosed in a beast’s skull – bellowed a command. Khrufin felt a queasy sensation as he met the greybeard’s stare. This was not the dull, bleary visage of your typical gargant. Those eyes betrayed cunning, and a bottomless well of hatred. Each of the alpha titan’s mob reached down to grasp a handful of debris or a loose stone. Tongues protruding ridiculously in concentration, they took aim at the Grimmbar.
‘Brace for impact!’ Khrufin cried.
At the rear of the Ironclad, Captain Thrummond cursed and strained as he hauled on the ship’s wheel, trying to reduce the Grimmbar’s profile to face the coming barrage. Metal groaned as the vessel yawed violently to the left.
Too late.
As the first projectile – the crumpled ruin of the strongpoint’s main gate – slammed into the Grimmbar’s hull, the deck tipped almost vertically. An Arkanaut flailed past Admiral Khrufin, screaming. More impacts, thud-thud-thud, crumpling bulkheads and pulverising gun turrets. Something exploded. A loose grudgesettler warhead below the keel, perhaps? Before he could lock his mag-boots in place, a scalding shockwave ripped the Admiral from his perch and sent him skidding across the deck in a shower of sparks.
The Grimmbar entered a lurching spin. Smoke spewed from a punctured endrin. Khrufin cursed, unable to halt his momentum as he slid towards empty air and a twenty-metre fall.
‘I’ve got you, sir.’
Strong hands seized him by the arm. Gunny Boffelsson and two of his marines had wrapped a tow chain around themselves and the larboard pump valve and were clinging desperately on as Captain Thrummond fought to wrestle the Ironclad level.
Somehow, he managed it, bringing the vessel to a halt just above ground level. But no sooner had the ship pulled out of its death spiral than a monstrous, leering face appeared at the bow, directly in front of the Grimmbar’s main sky cannon. Grabbing hold of the forerail with one gnarled hand, the Mega-Gargant snatched up the dazed Kharadron gunner strapped into the firing seat. It stuffed the poor wretch into its mouth, biting down with a sickening crunch.
‘Drammakuz!’ cursed Admiral Khrufin, and his volley pistol bucked in his hand, spitting aethershot into the brute’s eyes. He strode across the deck towards the gargant, still firing, as Boffelsson and his remaining marines opened up with their own fusillade. The gargant howled, raising a hand to fend off the storm of aethershot. A mortar shell struck its palm, splattering the Grimmbar’s deck with flesh and gore.
Khrufin reached the forward sky cannon, hardly thinking about the danger, so terrible was his rage. He heaved his suit-clad bulk into the seat and grabbed hold of the firing lever. A flashing rune told him there was a shell already nestled in the breach. The wounded gargant loomed over him, mouth open in a spittle-flecked roar, bits of duardin flesh stuck in its teeth. It raised its warclub overhead, ready to finish off the stricken Ironclad.
Khrufin pulled the lever. There was a blinding glare of light and a thunderous report.
The sky cannon’s high-yield Zumbrak-bore ammunition was designed to pierce several inches of reinforced steel. It easily punched through flesh and bone, detonating inside the target’s belly. The Mega-Gargant collapsed in two wet chunks.
Any satisfaction Khrufin found in the kill swiftly evaporated when he hauled himself out of the gunnery seat and took in the carnage of the Grimmbar’s main deck. One of the main endrins was gushing smoke and aether-gas. Rivets had torn loose, exposing the innards of the sky-ship. He could see fires raging in the hold. Corpses rolled back and forth gently as the Grimmbar rocked. Somewhere a klaxon blared pitifully.
Captain Thrummond was slumped against the ship’s wheel, wheezing, his salt-and-pepper beard streaked with blood.
‘Status, captain,’ Khrufin barked.
‘She’s about done for, Admiral,’ the old duardin gasped. ‘Both endrins breached, and the rear stabiliser’s shorn away. Can barely keep her in the air.’
The words sucked the heart out of Lokki Khrufin. Most of the crew dead. An entire wind-cycle of profit and progress snatched away in an instant. His grand dreams of returning to the Windswept City with a hold full of aethergold and a record of service that even the Admiral’s Council couldn’t ignore? All done for. An Admiral that lost an Ironclad was a pariah. He might never be trusted with a Fleetmaster’s commission again.
‘Get yourself to the ground, Admiral,’ said Thrummond, grimacing as he dragged himself upright. A sliver of metal as thick as a boarding hook had punctured his bodysuit just below the heart. ‘There’s nothin’ to be done about it now.’
‘Come with us, sir,’ Boffelsson said, in a voice that brooked no disagreement. ‘Time to go.’
The Admiral staggered after the Gunnery Sergeant and his marines in a daze, flinching as another gargant-hurled missile whooshed overhead, missing his skull by mere feet. Almost in a daze, he secured himself to the grav-ladder and hauled himself over the gunwale, then felt the stomach-twisting lurch as he dropped down to the earth a dozen metres below. His warsuit’s gyromatic stabilisers whirred as he struck hard rock, absorbing an impact that might otherwise have shattered both his legs.
The Grimmbar soared low overhead, trailing smoke. Captain Thrummond might not be able to operate full payload alone, but the grudgesettler ram mounted on the Ironclad’s prow was a more than potent weapon. The dying vessel ploughed straight into one of the gargants, crumpling its skull and sending it flying backwards. Somehow Thrummond kept it on a smooth bearing despite the impact, bringing the Grimmbar around and hurtling now towards the leader of the karag-gronti – the one-eyed killer with the skull helm.
‘Come on,’ muttered Admiral Khrufin. ‘Bring the wazzock down.’
But this Mega-Gargant was too savvy for that. He turned to the nearest building – a small Sigmarite chapel – and put his massive hands around the structure’s narrow spire. Muscles bulged and veins popped in the brute’s neck as he ripped the length of iron free, and hurled it like a javelin at the approaching airship. It struck the main endrin. There followed a terrible detonation as the super-compressed gases stored within the metal sphere detonated, sending the Grimmbar lurching to the side, in a slow, inevitable descent.
Admiral Khrufin watched, numb with despair, as the Ironclad came crashing down atop Veldman’s Gap. The Ironclad pulverised an entire row of squat buildings, crumpling under the terrible strain of the impact. The forward section of the vessel tore loose, rising up and flipping over before slamming down with tremendous force. So perished a proud flagship of the Barak-Zilfin shipyards – and with it died Lokki Khrufin’s hopes and dreams.
With the death of the Grimmbar, the Mega-Gargants turned their attention back to the strongpoint itself. Khrufin could hear their guffawing as they proceeded to smash the settlement flat, squashing buildings and fleeing townsfolk beneath their feet. Despair turned to cold rage as Khrufin heard the screams of the dying. Guilt, too. He had taken payment from these folks, on the promise that he would keep them safe. He slammed the butt of his skalfhammer down.
‘Boffelsson,’ he shouted, and the Gunnery Sergeant stepped forward. ‘Gather your marines. We’re going to get as many umgi out of that deathtrap as we can.’
Boffelsson hesitated. ‘Sir, it’s in our contract to keep you alive. Nothin’ else.’
‘I know, I wrote the damned thing. But I’m going in there, so if you want to get paid you’d best follow sharpish. These people hired me to defend ‘em, and I’ll be a land-lubbing firebeard before I break my word.’
After all, thought Khrufin: when an officer of the fleet failed so spectacularly, what was he left with but his honour?
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