City of secret deals

Mutiny in Marienburg is a new campaign supplement for Mordheim. The greatest seaport in the Old World stages a maritime city setting in which rival gangs and warring cults contend with law enforcement constabularies and the forces of evil.

The port-city is home to the shady enterprises of racketeers who battle with cutthroat factions over fencing unfamiliar merchandise in multi-storey drug dens across the wharves of the South Dock. Swashbuckling smugglers antagonise stiff-lipped mariners around Elf Quarter before venturing into foreign ghettos to employ the mercenary muscle of outlanders from Knife Alley, Nippon Town and the Wine Sack.

Sunken rooms with private lagoons connect bolt-holes to the grand sewer network which leads nameless infiltrators in or outside of the city walls. Waterfront hovels in the Dead Canal slum district above is where conspiracies take shape as duplicitous heretics conspire in the shadows with agents of Chaos operating incognito out of the Silk Market.

Heroes set sail for Marienburg. A place of magic and miracles that stinks of fish! Bear your arms in the wake of citywide disaster or be plunged in a watery grave.

Old Swords on new contracts!

In this post I introduce you to a new way of promoting Hired Swords in your games of Mordheim and present a new massive article by the infamous Werekin.

What I like most about Mordheim is the diversity of the various warbands and the possibility to personalise your own band of shady adventurers. Aside from the character evolution of your Heroes and Henchmen one great way of adding character to your warband is by including Hired Swords. With these specialists the Mordheim rules set provides a flavourful way of not only adding depth to your warband but also to adjust it further to your own style of play. Thus you can choose the warband that fits your style of gameplay best and deepen this even further with the inclusion of one or two specialist Hired Swords. Unfortunately, as cool as this system is at first sight, it does have one major flaw: The upkeep costs for Hired Swords (with a few exceptions) are very prohibitive and often times you are better off investing in better gear or actual henchmen than in a pricey sell-sword. However, with what they add to campaign play it would be great to promote the use of these characterful individuals and encourage players to hire them more often. But fiddling with all upkeep costs or, even worse, re-writing the overall fine system for using Hired Swords is not an option. Instead, all it sometimes takes is a tiny additional rule on top to put things in balance and provide new possibilities.

Some time ago Werekin told me he was working on a compilation of all Hired Swords ever published, which I thought would be a wonderful thing as a convenient piece of reference - albeit a somewhat crazy task with all the stuff that has been published in past issues of Town Cryer and various supplemental materials. Yet, the idea went further: What he was mostly concerned with was the lack of use of Hired Swords in Mordheim campaigns as we have experienced it in our gaming groups. In his article "Swords of the Empire" he thus not only compiles all the Hired Swords you could ever want, he also introduces a system for tying them to the warbands, based on the allies rules in the bestiary of the Border Town Burning supplement. Also, some Hired Swords are categorised as Traders, which lends additional useful functions to their warband. Thus, the article takes a fresh perspective on the use of Hired Swords, provides a handy reference of the many different sell-swords and takes a peek at what awaits the players in the upcoming supplement.

Download the article: Swords of the Empire (PDF, ca. 3.2 MB)

All published resources from the Marienburg manifest can be downloaded here.

We'd love to hear your thoughts so feel free to leave a comment, get in touch or post in this thread on the Boring Mordheim Forum.

Raise your Swords!

Maritime massacre

Marienburg is reeling in the detritus of a massacre engineered by an all-powerful necromancer, a catastrophe that plunged the port city into turmoil. There has never been a better moment for crime and intrigue.

In a covertly launched attack on the seaport Farrak the necromancer turned most of the city into a realm of the living dead. Farrak was surprisingly vanquished by the watchmen of Three-Penny Bridge. His hold over the horde broken, the dead returned to watery graves and what creatures of the night remained became scattered. Pretentious inhabitants of the Elf Quarter did nothing to aid the city as it narrowly avoided oblivion before the squabbling elites from the Ten Great Families and the Directorate had a chance to reach any verdict.

The current state of upheaval means that Merchant Houses opulent stores are ripe for the picking. Looting has broken out while channel scavengers chase deals to smuggle their illicit cargoes out. Watch stations are snowed under with bleeding citizens teeming with resentment from the injustice of plenty and poverty that has the wards divided. Nobility and savagery engulf the canals, where clerical devotion to faith in pursuit of a miracle leaves feuding cults of the Empire blind to the dangerous proximity between enforcing the law and falling to Chaos.

A number of districts and vast ghettos thrived in a state of lawlessness prior to the invasion where crime bosses are now presented with a unique opportunity to strike against their closest rivals. With a gang war brewing watch patrols are left with the desperate task of restoring order around a minefield of inter-agency jurisdiction clashes. As the pressure escalates unofficial crime-fighting mavericks react decisively by cutting through the red tape, and not a moment before the citywide disaster permits clandestine infiltrators to penetrate Marienburg from within.

Enmity in the maritime metropolis is about to reach boiling point.

On to new shores

Hi, Mordheimers!

Having moved from a website-based form of representation to blogger you will now find updates and new Mordheim goodness on our new blog here. We plan to continually post tidbits of background for our upcoming unofficial(!) Mordheim supplement as well as new articles with rules to enhance campaign play. I have begun assembling bits for a new warband and the first scratch-built building is about 80% built, so I should be able to provide some eye candy (hopefully!) soonish as well.

Alright, just wanted to say a quick 'hi' and let you know what you can expect in the near future. Check back soon for the first full blown new article.

See you soon!

The Silk Road journal

Here it is then ladies and gentlemen. If you're curiously skimming this journal then you've thrown in your lot with followers of the Ruinous Powers once and for all! The influence of certain known heretics have led all of us down this dark path...

Fortune seekers one and all were first lured out of that thrice damned city and on through the wilderness of an Empire in flames. All thought of recovering precious splinters of warp-touched rock forgotten by those daredevils who joined a perilous quest through the wilds of Talabecland in a seemingly futile hunt for an artefact of unmeasured might, an unthought of relic of ancient origin. From here we turned east, along the Old Dwarf Road and were reckless enough to brave the harsh climes of the Northern Wastes and unforgiving Steppes in our fools errand to reach the fertile borderlands of Cathay. After learning of their trade, strange customs and something of shrewd business ways we journeyed along the Silk Road, crossing through the Ogre Kingdoms and the Dark Lands as we did so. The journey home.

The journey home to the maritime metropolis of Marienburg, the city sea-port sited at the mouth of the River Reik.

As we ply our exotic wares in the Craft Market, our very lives will be bargained against repulsive contraband in the Under-Empire. The exchange of illicit goods smuggled by those crime lords who rule the South Dock with an iron fist, for bizarre relics imported by cunning merchants to stem the morbid curiosity of nobles and theurgists alike. Actions will be scrutinized by not only the constabularies, but the warp-touched denizens of lawless slums like the Dead Canal, and altogether more sinister creatures along with glamored swains who have dedicated their very existence to serving the unholy forces of Old Night itself.

Mutiny in Marienburg, a city of islands, city of bridges, city of canals. A city of secret deals.