The Wind Borne Grudge

“Curse those damned elves, and all their kind,” spat Captain Throlt as he heaved the body of another of his former crew over the side.  The dwarf body still smoked and reeked of burnt hair as it plunged into the waters of the cove.  It would sink to the shallow floor beside too many others.

The night was clear overhead but dark clouds to the west suggested a storm was on its way.  Throlt's ship, the Ironclad named Craft's Pride, sheltered in the cove.  She was part of a dwarf armada that had numbered in the dozens, and now included only her.  The dark elves waited beyond the cove.  During this low tide their Black Arks and monsters could not enter.  That would change soon enough though.

The Craft's Pride had entered the cove badly damaged, with fires raging out of control in the bow.  Even now the ship listed a little to port and a thin trickle of smoke seeped from the forward hatches, the best that engineer Stoick could do.  It didn't matter.  

The Dark elf fleet took the Dwarves by surprise, attacking from cover of summoned fog banks.  Most of the monitors were damaged or destroyed in the first volley. The Black Arks had  released a tide of sea serpents.  The beasts had then surged through the crippled screen of monitors to crash into the Ironclads.  After the initial impact came the horror of seeing those great sepent's heads worm into the damage hulls to consume the stalwart dwarf crews.  

The great Dreadnoughts fared little better.  The Grudge Ender disappeared in a hail of black fire from the Dark Elf witches and warlocks.  The Dwarven flagship Firewalker was grappled by a low slung Witch Elf ship.  The naked elven bitches siezed the crew including the commodore and emptied their veins into a great cistern back on their ship.  The pride of the Dwarven navy offered as sacrifices to the dandelion-eater's god of murder.  The memory made Throlt's gut fill with bile.  

His own ignominious retreat was only made possible by the action of the brave Nautili crews.  They made good use of their torpedos, causing far more damage than the rest of the dwarven fleet combined.   But they had to soon surface and the Dark Elves spared no effort in repaying the submarines in kind.  While the beasts tore the little ships apart and ate their brave crews the Craft's Pride slipped away through waters littered with dwarven dead.  

The Ironclad was alone and soon to meet the same fate.  Even fully crewed and repaired it stood no chance against the Dark Elven armada alone.  

The sound of blades cutting air reminded Throlt that the Craft's pride wasn't entirely alone.  The Steel Wind gyocopter squadron and Steel Rain balloon squads had both survived as well.  The Dark elves had just had too many better targets.  Stoick had rigged places for the flyers to land on the Ironclad's deck.  The gyros and balloons had kept look out for the Dark Elf fleet.  Their reports indicated that the abominations were waiting with all the patience of a gallows.

One gyrocopter was landed at the fore and aft, the third member of the squadron still circling above while his fellows rested and refit for their turns.  Throlt was arguing with Stoick on the top deck when the rear Gyro tried to take off without remembering to detach the locks that held it on the deck.  The Gyrocopter's engine strained and the deck of the Craft's Pride began to tilt noticeably to fore.

Stoick and Throlt screamed at the pilot.  The pilot noticed and eased off on the engine power.

“What d'ye think you're doing,” screamed Stoick over the continuing whine of the gyrocopter's steam engine.

“You damn near lifted the whole hull from the water idiot,” yelled Captain Throlt.

The captain and engineer suddenly stopped yelling.  Throlt's eyes darted back and forth from one end of the ship's hull to the other.  Stoick's eyes closed as he began muttering sums.  The two looked at each other at the same time.

“Its madness,” Throlt said.

“Can't possibly work,” said Stoick.

“Even if you could do it it'd take days to fix,” said Throlt.

“12 hours absolute minimum,” admitted Stoick.

“I want it done in three,” said Throlt.

“Two, or I'll shave my beard,” Yelled Stoick even as he waved at the gyro and balloons above.

*

The Craft's Pride flew, one gyrocopter affixed to either end and three balloons amidships.  The last gyrocopter of the Steel Wind Squadron flew ahead of the ship and helped guide it via a drag line.  The dark elves could only stare as their prey escaped overland.

The Wind Borne Grudge

The Wind Borne Grudge is a unique dwarven airship.  Captain Throlt's experience with the Dark Elves and his unique escape fueled an obsession.  His family funded the work on a true airship, a vesselthat would dwarf the war balloons.  The only dwarven engineers that would be associated with such a mad endeavor were Stoick and his offspring.  Three generations of  dwarves come of age before a working design was found- an airship that could move and fight, packing substantial firepower and reasonable armor onto a dirigible.

Throlt lived just long enough to sit on the bridge of the Wind Borne Grudge's maiden flight.  Stoick had died many years earlier while testing a previous, failed, design.  Throlt's last words were “kill them all,” a reference to the Dark Elves he hated with undiminished passion in his dotage.

The Wind Borne Grudge is in may respects an ideal weapon against the Dark Elves.  From its high vantage point it negates a main tactic of the scions of Naggaroth- the use of monsters to consume the enemy crew.  This tactic is particularly dangerous to the lightly crewed dwarven ships, as Throlt witnessed first hand.  

Of course the airship can be targetted by reaper bolt thrower batteries and magic.  Because of this the airship is made as sturdy as possible, including multiple independent balloon subsections so a single hole won't sink the ship.  It's only when the frame superstructure holding the various parts together gets sufficiently damaged that whole ship shatters apart to rain in pieces onto the sea below.  This has happened several times but so far each time Throlt's family has managed to build a new Wind Borne Grudge.  Slowly the engineering guilds are starting to accept that the airship design is not a fluke.  Given another few score years there may be other designs, and more than one ship in the sky at the time.

In part due to the success of the Nautili at the Battle of Supplicant's Reef, the airship boasts a number of torpedos.  These are launched from a great height, which causes many of the torpedos to fail, either by breaking on impact with the water or by propelling themselves straight down into the depths.  To compensate the Wind Borne Grudge carries a full eight torpedo tubes to be launched at once.  The down side is that these tubes are on the underside of the stubby ventral wings.  This makes it impossible to reload the tubes while in flight.  As secondary weapons to the single shit torpedo barrage, the airship sports three broadside cannons.  It mounts no fore or aft weapons other than the torpedo tubes.   The heavy dependence on torpedos is one reason the airship is of little value for land warfare.

Unlike most dwarven ships the airship is strongly affected by winds.  This hampers it's mobility to some degree.  Like sailing ships it cannot fly into the wind, but it also gains a boost when the wind is dead astern.  It does not rely upon the wind though, four stout rotors affixed to the stern push the airship, they just can't move it directly into a strong blow.

Ship stats

0-1 Wind Borne Grudge
Dwarven Man O' War
150 pts

move 8” (10”) Special.  Use normal turn template.  Cannot move into wind like sails.  Extra speed when wind astern.

Crew 3
Hit locations
High:
3: Bow (1 damage).  No special effect.  No critical hits. Save 5+
4-5: Midship (3 damage).  Each hit removes one broadside canon.  No critical hits.  Save 4+
6: Stern (2 damage).  Each hit reduces speed by 2”.  No critical hits.  Save 5+

Low:
3: Bow (1 damage).  No special effect.  No critical hits.  Save 5+
4: Midship (3 damage). Each hit removes one crew.  No critical hits.  Save 4+
5: Wings (3 damage).  Each hit -2 to number of torpedos roll.  No critical hits.  Save 4+
6: Stern (2 damage).  Each hit reduces speed by 2”.  No critical hits.  Save 5+

Superstructure capacity: 6.  Airship does not have Below the Water Damage.  Any time any location is damaged remove one superstructure point.  When superstructure =0 ship is destroyed.  Once a site has sustained all the damage it can (for instance the wings can take three hits) further damage to that area is ignored.   
  
Weapons:
3 broadside cannons.

1 fore torpedo barrage.  The torpedo barrage is a one shot weapon, once fired it can no longer be used for the rest of the game.  When fired roll a d6 to see how many torpedos work correctly.  The result is the number of torpedos shots that should be resolved just as if a Nautilus had fired them (roll for distance and use the deviation template, placed at the front of the airship).

Special rules

Movement.
The airship may move over terrain without penalty.  It may also move over friendly and enemy surface ships without issue.  Surface ships may similarly move under the airship without penalty.  In no case can the airship be directly above another ship at the end of either of their moves.

Line of sight.
line of sight may be drawn from the airship to surface vessels, or vice versa, ignoring other surface vessels that are in the way.  Example a Bretonnian Corsair behind a screen of buccaneers may fire at, and be fired upon by, an airship even though the buccaneers would normally block the line of sight.

Repairs.
The engineers aboard the airship are far too busy keeping the thing in the air to try and effect repairs.  

Ramming.
The airship may not ram, nor may it be rammed by any ship.

Boarding action.
The airship can only board or be boarded by other flying units (including tzeentch vessels).  Monsters with ranged attacks (such as the sea dragon and Yeti) may attack the airship with their special attacks but cannot fight a normal boarding action.  Flyers such as griffon riders may use special attacks and board normally.