[2021] Franz Lohner's Chronicle - The Damned Count

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An absent-minded man of mysteries, Franz Lohner relies on his bulging journal to keep track of occurrences, intrigues and arguments around Taal's Horn Keep. Sometimes his notes are even useful, believe it or not. The Franz Lohner Chronicles are extracts from that journal.

Franz Lohner's Chronicle - The Damned Count Saltzpyre’s preparations are proceeding apace, aided largely by a recent gift from one of my old mates back in Bergerac. He’s something of a … freelance acquisitions expert … and the item in question just happened to fall off the back of a wagon on the Grasgar-L’Anguille road after a brief storm of arrows. That happens a lot around my mate.

Anyway, it’s a map – or thereabouts – of the bit of the Chaos Wastes our plucky band will be traversing. Not the most useful of guides, at first blush. Take your eyes off it for a moment, and all the places start shuffling around. My contact said it’s because the Chaos Wastes are always changing, which ain’t half as reassuring as he thought. Still, Saltzpyre seemed glad to see it – though that smile still needs work – and he’s thrown himself into the upcoming pilgrimage like never before.

Truth be told, I’m glad Salty’s found something to keep himself busy. Bit quiet around here of late, what with Sienna and Kerillian having vanished to parts unknown. Kruber’s pestered Olesya into sending him to take a gander at what’s left of his ancestral castle, down in Parravon. And Bardin? Haven’t seen him for days, though with all the battering and clanging coming from that workshop of his, I’m reasonably sure he’s still breathing. Let ‘em enjoy the lull, says I. They’ll be busy soon enough.

But back to this map. Saltzpyre tells me that his Order’s been trying to destroy it for decades. Not for what it shows, oddly enough, though I guess “Ever-Changing Map of the Chaos Wastes” ain’t something to warm the hearts of heretic-seekers. It’s more for the poor sod who inked it in the first place. Fellow by the name of Marius Holseher, one-time Elector Count of Stirland. Oh, I know you might have heard that he was a simple scribe, but that was the family’s doing. Tried to hush it all up, you see.

But hush what up, exactly? Well, while crusading in Araby, Holseher stumbled on an enchanted mirror that whisked him away to the Realm of Chaos – the otherworldly land of the Dark Gods themselves. Now you might think that would be the end of his tale, what with the Realm of Chaos being a daemon-infested wasteland, full to the brim with madness.

Better throw an “allegedly” in there, just in case Saltzpyre has a peek at this journal. He’s not gone entirely soft, and I wouldn’t want him spoiling our friendship with pointed questions and needles under the fingernails.

Anyway, somehow or another, Holseher not only survived this allegedly daemon-haunted nightmare – he flourished. Came back to the mortal world with a journal crammed full of fantastical tales about rivers of nurglings, giggling horrors, harvest fields of screaming souls waiting for the scythe, a blood-slicked plain piled with skulls, a giant in silver armour who hurled blue flame … and that’s only scratching the surface. The whole tome – the Liber Malefic, as it’s commonly known – is hundreds upon hundreds of pages long, and a veritable bestiary of denizens daemonic. I’ve most of a copy somewhere, and it’s not the sort of thing to read if you’re a light sleeper, I can tell you.

Sigmar knows how the bugger survived. Maybe the Dark Gods intended it to be so. After all, they’re as egotistical as the next deity. (Allegedly, Saltzpyre, if you’re reading this.) Get their truth out into the world, and all that. Or maybe Holseher just had the luck of Ranald himself. If the latter’s true, he didn’t know when to stop pushing it.

Even when the priests reluctantly conceded Holseher was no more accursed than you or I, he couldn’t settle down. Kept revising his Liber Malefic, determined to make it perfect – which is why you’ll find so many contradictions associated with it, what with so many revisions floating around. When he got bored with that, he wandered north into the Chaos Wastes, searching for a way to reach the Realm of Chaos and start work on a new volume.

No one’s really sure what happened to Holseher after that. Maybe he’s still ticking. More likely he was eaten alive by the northlanders … but then again, the fellow was certainly touched by the Chaos Gods, one way or another, so for all I know he’s a king in the wastes, holding dismemberment at bay by telling tales about the world beyond the world.

Rather him than me. But at least we’ve got his map. Makes me dizzy just looking at it.