Age of Sigmar: Omnibus

The air smelled of worm. Not an unpleasant smell, by the standards of Vretch of the Red Bubo, but not altogether pleasing either. It was a coarse, acrid odour which clung tenaciously to everything here, living or otherwise. It filled the sprawling city of looming towers and swaying bridges which the skaven of the Clans Pestilens had, for the most part, occupied. It was even, regrettably, in his fur. It overlaid his natural pungency, subsuming the unique tang of his many and varied blessings, drowning them in worm-stink.

Chittering in annoyance, he scratched at a ripe blister until it burst, briefly releasing a revivifying aroma of pus and blood into the air. The plague priest’s thin nose twitched as the sickly-sweet smell faded, and was once more replaced by the dry stench of the monstrous enormity known as Shu’gohl, the Crawling City.

The great worm crawled ceaselessly across the Amber Steppes of the Ghurlands. Its segmented form stretched across the grasslands from sunrise to sunset, carrying the city and its people along with it. Shu’gohl crept slowly from horizon to horizon, day after day, devouring all in its path with remorseless hunger. It was not alone in this — to Vretch’s knowledge, there were at least ten of the immense worms remaining in the grasslands, driven to the surface in aeons past by great rains. Someday they might once more descend into the cavernous depths beneath the Amber Steppes, but for now they seemed content to squirm mindlessly across its surface, cracking the earth with their weight.

That suited Vretch just fine. The thought of all that amber-hued sky stretching far above was nothing less than terrifying to most skaven, but Vretch was not most skaven. And in any event, the Setaen Palisades were cramped enough to make any child of the Horned Rat feel at home. The great, bristle-like hairs which rose from the worm’s hide were as hard as stone, and thousands had been hollowed out in ages past to make the tiered towers which rose throughout the city.

Those hairs closest to the eternal lightning storm which wreathed Shu’gohl’s head had been made over into veritable citadels. They rose higher than any other structure in the city, and were connected by a vast network of bridges, nets and heavy palisades made from quarried worm-scale and frayed hairs culled from the worm’s dorsal forests. From the uppermost tiers, which Vretch had claimed for his own, one could see the entirety of the Crawling City. Not that there was much to look at. The man-things knew little of artisanry, preferring to stack stone rather than burrow through it.

His chambers were in the highest tiers of the Setaen Palisades, where the city’s noblest families had once resided. The former inhabitants now swung from makeshift gibbets and iron cages outside his windows, where they could be retrieved at any time he deemed necessary. Sometimes he rattled the chains, just to hear them moan. It had a soothing quality which he had come to appreciate in the weeks since his arrival.

The chamber at the heart of his domain was circular, and mostly open to the elements. The domed roof was supported by intricately carved pillars, and the floor was covered now by the tools of Vretch’s trade — ever-seething pox-cauldrons and bubbling alembics, piles of grimoires and heaps of parchment, and tottering stacks of cages, in which plague-rats and moaning man-things waited for his ministrations. Flayed hides, still dripping and streaked with rot, hung like curtains from the roof, and the signs most sacred to the Horned Rat had been carved onto every available surface. Plague monks clad in ragged robes moved back and forth through the chamber, their scrawny limbs bound in filthy bandages. They worked at various tasks, stirring his cauldrons and refining the battle-plagues they would inflict on the dwindling kernels of resistance within those areas of the Crawling City they controlled.

And then, and only then, it would be Kruk’s turn. Vretch’s claws tightened unconsciously as he thought of his brutal and foolish rival. Kruk, plague priest of Clan Festerlingus, had pursued Vretch to Shu’gohl like a bad smell. Then, that had always been Kruk’s way. Indeed, Vretch could almost admire such single-minded determination, were it not for Kruk’s blasphemous inclinations. Every skaven knows proper buboes are red, Vretch thought, grinding his teeth as the old anger surged through him. Red!

Both plague priests had followed a trail of stories whispered about the campfires of the savages who populated the Amber Steppes, racing to be the first to find their quarry. Vretch’s agents had spied upon the tribes of wild riders and nomads who fled before the approach of Shu’gohl. The worm-city crawled endlessly across the steppes and brought with it a strange plague, which afflicted all those caught in its shadow.