THE TURNSKIN’S TALE

Come in from the wastes, warrior of ruin. Sit by our fire. Drink from our spoils. Sharpen your blade, for though you are not amongst friends, our causes align. Hear now my tale.

I am Mortharg Tar. In the speech of thin-limbed mortals I am a chieftain of the gor-kin – beastmen, so we are named. My horns are sharp and thick. My arms are powerful. My axe-blades are keen. Many are the victories I have won, and the enemies I have devoured before the herdstones.

Not always was it so. Once I was like you. My skin was soft and pink. My fangs were blunt. My brow was uncrowned. Turnskin I am, mutant – no true Gor, but changed from weakling human stock. It is for this reason you yet live, for my full-blood kin would kill you on sight and be done with it. Yet I was strong enough to survive. Strong enough to rise, and to change. Ruin’s favour is with me.

Once I dwelt in the greenlands of Ghyran, fighting for your Dark Gods. When I was wounded, my tribe left me to die. This is as it should be. Long did I wander, until I reached the shadowed heart of Witherdwell. The horned darkness found me then, and I demanded it give me strength. The change took me. Day by day I swelled, nourished by the land’s hate. Fur bristled across my flesh. My horns grew. I was left some command of your kind’s tongue, better than most of my kind, but all else was a beast. I hunted my tribe. I butchered them. I ate their hearts and their marrow.

It is important to know these things. The realms speak to those who are strong. Only through the kill do we prove our worth.

Listen now to my triumphs. I travelled to the firelands. I hacked apart daemonspawn and craven wizards to seize the treasures of old shaman-kings – and then trampled them, for they offered power to the weak and so deserved destruction. When the lightning men came, I took up my blades against them, for they too were weak and I scented the storm-maggot upon them, he who once cast my kind from our hunting grounds. Years passed. My fur thickened. My horns sharpened. Later I slunk into the bonelands, fighting alongside great Ghosteater against the living and the dead, for those who cannot accept they have fallen are weak.

I do not know why I then returned to the life-realm. That the greenlands were my former home mattered nothing. I had shed my hated past. Though I was no trueborn Gor and loathed by my kin, through my might and blessings I had become warleader of a strong herd. My kind’s span is often short and brutish, yet I have endured a century or more. Maybe I wished to prove that the great cycles would bend to me. Maybe it was the Dirgehorn finding its droning voice once more that called me back. Maybe it was never my choice. I dreamt often those days. Dreams of the Shadowgave, the Beast who Devours. He has haunted these realms longer than your gods. He speaks to us more openly. Madness born of too much stolen grog, you say? Hah! Perhaps, false-horn. Perhaps.

We were expected. No sooner had my warriors passed the gate than more of our kin came to us. The herd of Ghorraghan Khai. I did not know him then. Fool I was. Destiny clings to that shaman like his cloak of stitched man-flesh. The Bullgors, our cousins, follow him and fear him, for it is said he was raised amongst them. They respect only strength, even more than us. My herd voiced the howl of challenge and prepared for bloodshed. Khai would not have it, said that the Shadowgave had told him of our coming. A chief who would talk rather than fight cannot survive for long amongst the gor-kin, yet Khai has gifts of his own. He speaks many cunning beast-tongues, and his words weigh heavy. He challenged us to equal his raids against the tree-folk. I accepted.

Little encouragement was needed. We have warred against the tree-folk since there were tree-folk to war against. All hate us, and we hate all, but we hate them most. Our howls muffle their vile song, breaking the wheel of nature. But I think our older claim on the greenlands also enrages them. The gor-kin were here before the first of their kind ever sprouted, forcing the rocks and the trees to accept savage change.

You laugh, false-horn? Do I surprise you? Yes. We are capable of thought beyond simple savagery and slaughter. Our appearance does not make us mindless, whatever those who cower behind pretty walls claim. It is true that few of us speak man’s tongues, though you begin to follow my words more clearly, I feel. Why should we bother to learn them? When the end comes, it will be our hooves stomping you into the muck, before we follow you down to the bonelands and butcher you one last time.

A target was easy to find. A shrine to their slain hunter god, still bearing the stink of corpse-men. You snort with approval? You have fought corpse-men before. All have, these days. The roots of the land withered from their touch. The tree-folk would not sense us coming. We watched as they struck down the weakling shamblers, waited for their bark-priests to begin chanting a mewling ritual. Only then did I signal the attack.

You have seen battle. You can imagine how we spilled into the grove, braying as we crashed into them. The blades of my Bestigors were sharp, and soon set about their king-trees. The rest of us pressed, pressed, roaring and hacking and biting and goring. War is simple. It is the struggle in the mud, the urge to cleave and despoil until all is crushed. We excel at it.

Even then, through the red rage, I sensed something was wrong. The land shivered in ways it had not since the realms quaked beneath the death-beast’s howl. Roots grasped for my warriors, wrapping around legs and sending them staggering onto blades. Rocks shuddered and burst. The air tasted too clean. I heard it humming. This was no display of feeble green magics. It was something else, or the beginning of something else. I felt its purity, and it was hateful to me.

I found my foe swiftly. Winged they were, bound to some frail deepwood spirit, bearing a spear and wearing false antlers. That enraged me. My Bestigors charged and died. Gorag’s heart was punched out by the spear. Mordurg’s head was sheared in twain. Khazlang’s belly was opened until he tripped on his own guts. Three gor-kin slain in as many heartbeats. I thought no more of them. Only the enemy mattered.

Our fight was brutal, if short. The tree-thing’s spear opened my limbs to the bone, and blood matted my fur, but I, Mortharg Tar, snapped its false antlers, tore its wings and sundered its shield. I see you salivate and grunt in battle-lust, hear you stomp the earth with your bone-fused feet in the need for slaughter. You see it now! You realise our strength!

I proved mightier. My hoof drove into the creature’s waist, breaking it almost in two. As it fell I stood over it, axe raised and ready to cut.

‘No.’

I do not know how long Khai had been stalking us. Likely ever since we joined his war. I felt his creeping magic seize my blade-arm, restraining the killing blow even as he savaged the fallen forest-thing with sorcery. In that moment I would have gored him dead for the insult, though he was shaman-breed and so touched by fate. Khai cared nothing for my anger. He crouched over the tree-thing, and grunted words I did not understand.

That was when the Sylvaneth began to sing. They sing all the time, but not like this. To false-horns, perhaps it would be unnerving. To us it was fire and pain. Our natures are opposed to theirs in ways outsiders cannot understand. What is sacred to them is foul to us. I saw Khai stagger and clamp his hands over his ears. I collapsed, senses burning, tearing at my own flesh to let out the murderous melody in my blood.

Visions flashed. A twisted oak, burning with green flame. A mountain cracking open, its maw widening to swallow a world. Crooked pipers cackling in shadows, and drakes of amber and starlight circling a horned god of stone. I heard them, then – the realms howling, as something shifted in their souls.

When sanity returned, the tree-folk were butchered. In our rush to silence them, we had torn them apart. Khai alone stood. Though he was hunched against his staff, I could not strike him, for what I had seen burned in his eyes also.

‘Time flees from us, chieftain,’ said the shaman then, in the true beast-tongue. ‘The tree-mother prepares her song. When she sings it, all will change. It will infest the realms with the energies of clean life. Even she may not know its full power. We must stop her. We must stop her before the song is sung, and all is pain.’

So that is where we go. As we travel, we draw more warriors to our banner, for all gor-kin know that the song must be silenced. Into the depths of the tree-mother’s domain we stampede, burning her forests and harrowing the groves of her servants. The Shadowgave moves within us, lending us speed and vigour, for he scents the schemes of his nemesis in motion.

But we do not go alone, do we? For I see the fur sprouting across your flesh, your clumsy feet hardening into hooves and the bone pushing at your brow. I told you I had blessings. I spoke of the power of tongues. It seems my tale has called to the beast within you. Your horns will grow nicely, I think. Drop your weapon, turnskin – for that is what you are now, like me. But even a turnskin may rise to glory, if they are strong.

Come with us, blood-kin. Come with the true children, as we trample these lands to ruin.

PRODUCED BY GAMES WORKSHOP IN NOTTINGHAM

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