This is an account of the warband I brought to NEMO, the New England Mordheim Open, in May 2025. Part 1 is the text of a zine I brought with me to hand out to my opponents. It’s background lore to explain who my Marauders of chaos are and why they’re in Mordheim. Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 are a sort of narrative battle report of the three games I played at NEMO.
Days passed as they continued to scour Mordheim’s darkened warrens and labyrinthine streets. But they found no sign of the place of power which the Sorcerer described. Each day they searched, looting the ruins and interrogating challengers as they came upon them. And at night the Sorcerer retreated to his solitary corner of their camp to commune with the gods and meditate upon their will.
“The gods demand sacrifice.” the Sorcerer abruptly declared one evening. “We must spill blood in their name to gain their favor.”
Halgrim sat by the fire, eating some tough mystery meat he had looted from that day’s challengers. “What have we been doing this whole time?” he scoffed.
“We must erect monuments to the gods’ glory so that all who serve them in Mordheim can lay tribute to them. Each of the gods demands an altar dedicated in their own name. Only then will they reveal the way forward to the place of power we seek.”
And so they did. The Sorcerer, sensing the subtle winds of magic, guided them to the chosen locations of each of the four altars. There they set about their work, erecting monuments in the manner most pleasing to each of the gods of chaos. And then they slew any and all adventurers who strayed too close. They piled their heads and valuable goods around the altars until the Sorcerer determined that the gods were satisfied. When the final altar was complete, even Halgrim could sense that something had happened. They all felt a new sense of purpose, like a change in the air, drawing them forward, pulling them deeper into the city.
As they wandered, guided by that inner pull, they rounded a corner down a street they had passed many times. But this time they noticed an archway they had never seen before. It seemed so innocuous and yet so obvious now. They passed through the archway into a new darkened alley. According to Halgrims internal sense of direction, the alleyway didn’t make sense. They should have emerged onto the next block by now. As they walked, the ground became wet and sticky with black stagnant water. At last the alleyway opened up into a massive courtyard that definitely did not fit within his mental map of this part of the city. But that was the least strange thing about this courtyard.
photo by @sallet_hobby
In the light, they could see now that the sticky wetness they walked through was actually blood. Here in the courtyard there was so much blood that in some places it came up to their knees. Bodies, both rotten and fresh, floated in the blood. Several crooked towers lined the courtyard, but their eyes were drawn to the central tower. An enormous statue of a horned woman grew from the tower like a tumor. The stone of her chest was damaged and ripped open. Halgrim thought he could see glistening wet meat in the “wound.” But it was hard to be sure because his eye was immediately drawn upwards to her face. She was looking at him. Through him. Her flaming gaze was fixed on the archway they had entered through but Halgrim had the sense that she was staring through his armor, through his flesh, and into his heart. Judging his worthiness. He was utterly transfixed.
A soft guttural sound broke the spell. Looking across the courtyard he spied hunched and masked figures dragging more bodies into the bog of blood, and he realised the sound was their chanting.
“Servants of the Lady.” said the Sorcerer, reverently.
As the bodies splashed into the blood, Halgrim could see a swirling movement in the liquid around them. Looking down at the bodies near him, he saw pink glistening tendrils like tree roots branching out from the base of the statue and attaching themselves to the corpses. Looking down at his own feet, Halgrim saw fine pink filaments beginning to spiderweb up his boots.
“Gods!” he swore and kicked the webs from his boots.
Hearing the commotion, the cultists looked up from their work and then vanished into a side alleyway. But Halgrim knew they were still close because their chanting never ceased.
“If you are going to die on this quest, this would be the most useful place to do it. Your body would feed Our Lady of Carnage and hasten Her birth into the world.” said the Sorcerer over his shoulder.
Halgrim, his choler rising again, glared hotly at the back of the Sorcerer’s floating head. He wondered what it would take to kill a man who had already died once before.
“I must commune with the Lady.” the Sorcerer declared, interrupting Halgrim’s thoughts. “Stay here and guard the entrances to the courtyard. See that I am not interrupted.” With that he disappeared through a door in the building at the base of the statue.
“Spread out.” Halgrim commanded the Tong marauders.
Sword in hand, he began pacing around the courtyard, looking for valuables while avoiding spending too much time standing in the blood bog. Before long his mind wandered back to his distrust of the Sorcerer. He could feel that the eyes of the gods were on this warband. Both he and the Sorcerer knew that only one of them would return to Valkaati’s camp alive. Just then a chunk of cobblestones exploded a few feet from him as a bolt of black lightning struck the ground, instantly evaporating the stinking blood around the impact. So this was it. The Sorcerer was openly challenging him then!
“To arms you wastrels!” came the cry from above. High up on a tower at eye level with the grisly statue, Halgrim could see the Sorcerer locked in combat with another figure atop an adjacent tower. More black lightning exploded from the Sorcerer’s finger tips, ripping chunks of bricks from his enemy’s tower.
Around the courtyard, a battlecry rose up. “BARUK KHAZAD!”
Halgrim cursed himself for his lapse of awareness as a troop of dwarves erupted from multiple alleyways. He watched as the first of his Tong followers fell beneath the heavy strokes of their axes. With a wordless shout, Halgrim charged the nearest dwarf, but the little man took the impact without any difficulty. Halgrim had never seen a dwarf, but their toughness was legendary. As they exchanged blows, he found it difficult to strike such a small target. And even when he did land a clean blow, the armored dwarf absorbed it with a low grunt, the impact rattling Halgrim’s teeth. In contrast, the stout little warrior seemed to have no problem fighting the much larger Halgrim. In fact, he seemed well practiced at it. Seeing this, Halgrim tried a low upward swing which struck the dwarf from below. Something which he gambled the dwarf would not be ready for.
The gamble paid off. Halgrim felt his sword bite into flesh and his enemy stumbled backwards, lost his balance, and fell onto his back. As Halgrim raised his sword for the deathblow, the dwarf spat blood and laughed, cursing him in a language Halgrim couldn’t understand.
“KHAZAD AI-MENU!” came another voice from above.
Halgrim turned just in time to see another dwarf warrior plummeting from some high parapet; just in time for the axe to bury itself in his chest. Halgrim fell. Half submerged into the bog of gore, he tried to drag air into his ruined lungs but they were useless. As the world around him faded, he felt the dwarves rip his helmet from his head. He heard them laughing to each other, mocking him in their strange tongue as they took their trophy.
In his mind, he heard another voice deriding him with mocking laughter. He always believed that if he died in battle, the gods would receive him in glory. But he had failed the challenge they laid before him. There would be no glory for him.
In the blackness of his final moments, he felt the pulsating tendrils begin to encase his body. Entering through his wound, his mouth, his eyes, his ears. And he experienced a brief moment of connection with the spirit within the statue of Our Lady of Carnage. He felt its intentions. There would be no glory for any of them. A wet laugh sputtered from his lips. It was the last thing Halgrim Skullhammer ever did.
Kitbash Chaos 
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