Franz Lohner's Chronicle - An Unexpected Guest

An absent-minded man of mysteries, Franz Lohner relies on his bulging journal to keep track of occurrences, intrigues and arguments around Taal's Horn Keep. Sometimes his notes are even useful, believe it or not. The Franz Lohner Chronicles are extracts from that journal.

I’m not really sure where to start with this one, if I’m honest. That’s happening to me a lot these days. Too much stress, that’s the problem. Too much worrying over the Ubersreik Five and not enough plotting and scheming to do unspeakable things to the Pactsworn. Though it’s not polite to say, nothing anchors the soul so well as a little bit of malice. I suppose that’s why old Salty’s the way he is. Kerillian too, now I think about it. I guess they do have something in common after all.

But anyway, enough prevarication.

By chance, I had the keep all to myself last night. Bardin and Kruber - being the only pairing of the Five still speaking reliably - had wandered off with Hedda and Catrinne in search of a tavern to paint unspeakable colours. Kerillian was off up the mountain, giving the storm a staring contest no doubt. Saltzpyre was giving a sermon down in the village. And Sienna? Well, goodness knows these days. Probably trawling Morr’s Field for recruits or dance partners.

All told, that meant that when the call came in of a ratman ambush on the north road, I had to send the lads to sort it out. Olesya went with them - more to watch them work out a sweat than actually pitch in, I suspect - which left yours truly all alone.

Fine, thinks I, it might be a bit odd to have the place so quiet, but that’s a damn sight better than the resentful malaise that’s been hanging about of late. Maybe I can get caught up on these reports from my agents up north. 

Only, turns out I wasn’t quite as alone as I thought.

Right off the bat, let me tell you that I’ve no idea how she got in. Olesya has a whole raft of magical wards to prevent the ill-intentioned creeping about the place without being assailed by screaming shadow imps. All of them useless last night, it turns out. One moment I’m alone at my desk in the central keep, fussing over a particularly concerning note about Balthasar Gelt. The next, she’s there in the moonlight, fixing me with a mood that can’t make up its mind whether it wants to be disdainful or kindly. And the twitching of the hairs on the back of my neck said she was something more than mortal. 

Introduced herself as Lileath, she did, expecting me to be terrified and impressed. And I’ll grant you, most folk would be. Goddess of Prophecy, she is, a powerful figure in the elven pantheon - and one, I hear, who has her dainty fingers in all manner of business, light and dark. Didn’t have much reason to doubt her. Divinity reveals itself, as my old mother used to say, even if I couldn’t tell you exactly what I saw. You just can’t fake that, well, majesty. You just can’t.

Anyway, being made from a sterner run of stuff than most folk, I stood me ground without a whimper. If anyone tells you that I couldn’t speak for croaking and stared at her like a gaffed fish, you just ask them how they’d know that when there weren’t anyone else in the keep, do you hear? I was stalwart. Resolute. Maybe a little bit out of my depth - just a little, you understand - but I was as solid as the rock of Karaz a Karak, and as fearless as Sigmar with a blinding headache.

Anyway, after I’d picked myself up off the floor and poured a stiff drink or three, she starts talking. This … is where it gets a bit sticky. See, I remember the general sweep of her words but not the detail. If I’m honest, I don’t remember hearing a voice, but I definitely remember being told. Tone and mood, more than deeds and doings. Maybe it was the brandy. Maybe it was the bit of my brain that was screaming at me to run out into the darkness and throw myself off a cliff. Maybe it’s just that there’s some knowledge that the mortal mind - even a remarkable one like that belonging to yours truly - simply cannot retain.

Or maybe she wanted it that way. 

Just because she’s a goddess doesn’t mean she’s above parlour tricks.

Anyway, the broad strokes is that everything we’ve seen and heard lately - Clan Fester. The Rotbloods. The fall of Kislev and the Rise of Nagash? - it’s not just happenstance. We’re entering what she called a Nexus of Fate: what some seers and lunatics have prophesied as the End Times. Not exactly an encouraging name, that, when all’s said and done. That’s where the detail gets a bit fuzzy, but I’ll damned if she wasn’t convincing.

The good news is that she said that these End Times aren’t necessarily worthy of their billing. There’s a way through, seemingly, if we all pull together and do our bit. The “we” in this case includes us. Knew a lot about what the Ubersreik Five has been up to, she did, and in suspicious detail. You know, Ubersreik, Helmgart, Be’lakor, the Citadel of Eternity, Sofia … the lot. Especially Be’lakor. That part sounded personal.

Anyway, she says we ain’t done yet, not by a long shot. That our inclinations and her goals dovetail nicely. Not sure how I feel about that to be honest. Said she might call upon us from time to time, but that I’m not to mention any of this to the others - especially not Kerillian, bit of bad blood there lately, I reckon. 

I tried pointing out, in a suitably manful and confident tone, that the Ubersreik Five ain’t exactly on speaking terms with one another right now. Earned me a knowing smile and an assertion that nothing lasts forever.

And then she was gone, quick as she’d come, leaving me with a jumbled mess of thoughts and a powerful thirst for another brandy.

Thing is, even as I write this all down I’m starting to wonder if it ever really happened at all. 

And then I think on the future, and see only darkness. That’s how I know she was real.

Sigmar preserve us …