Narrative Short, Legend of the City of Midnight
Born of Heaven…
Midnight has many legends surrounding it, of course such is to be expected for a city that slipped into myth some centuries past only to emerge renewed absent communique nor ai from the divine. One such legend however speaks to its origin, that on the darkest days of the calendar when Ulgu is high in ascendancy it was the man that would come to be its architect and a small excursion force of Ironweld Prospectors that ventured further off the map in this shadowed realm. Driven perhaps by greed, ambitions or some lesser ventures motives they had strayed far longer than their supplies could bear and in this ever shifting realm absent landmark nor sane guidance they could only become yet further lost. When all thoughts of hope, salvation or even a peaceful death surrounded by kinsmen had fled and the time in their mortal coil seemed to have come to a tragic end the darkness that had formed constant companion found itself abruptly pierced, a beacon of light ripped from the heavens themselves and racing toward the Ulgu as though driven by the hand of divinity.
In Darkest Night….
With no other course of action, eyes at once blinded by the truest light that had pierced the heavy shadow of the realm for the first time in months the Prospectors followed the will of the Noble they had only moments earlier been debating bludgeoning and eating as he spurred them on in pursuit of the fallen star. The long years spent in Ulgu had strained the mental resilience of their party, obsession and desperation coiling around what lingering remenants of their shattered psyche to reform atleast what could pass for a reasonable mindset their carts crashing over and through the rugged landscapes of the realm.
We are Cast out….
Beneath now radiant sky, across a shattered rock and broken shards of realmglass, over a litany of weather beaten bones at once all revealed by the newly found light they continued in haste. Only coming to screeching halt as the thunderous rapture of the stars impact with the Realmscape sent reverberations across its treacherous form, the stone itself buckling… twisting and dancing into the air even in a moment of sheer destruction seeking to defy expectation. For a moment cast skyward, seemingly retreating the site of impact the darkened rocks coiled and swirled in a cloud of debris, shifting at the last moment with seeming nefarious intellect the rock and dust instead moved to entomb the prize the prospectors thought.
Yet in the Light…
Ulgu itself is nearly a sentient landscape, seeking not to deny the prospectors their prize so entirely they would not be tempted to mortal fate the very land beneath their feet began to shift into a labyrinthian valley of mirrored obsidian, a serpentine path of glistening rock carving its way to the crated that held their prize. No sane man, woman nor beast could transverse such a mirrored canyon absent guide, the veneer of its mirrored surface seemingly attracting cloak of shadow and mist that not traveller could divine rock from endless void to oblivion. Yet as the prospectors descended not a man amongst them could be mistaken for sane, almost feral in obsession and on the very brink of starvation they clambered bestial across rock and void, some slipping beneath the veil and into the endless depths seemingly robbed from memory as swiftly as they had been from life.
We Shall Return…
By the time they reached their prize only a mere handful remained, digging through shattered rock and charred earth with bare hands, blind to the agony as flesh singed, nail broke and bone began to fracture at the rigors of their labours. Yet it was the noble that would ultimately find fruit to these labours, a solitary beam of piercing light emerging from its tomb and casting a beam unto the heavens themselves. Here, he would form his kingdom, here he would divine a city like no others.
Reborn in Death…
Artisans of Sigmar 