Warhammer Fantasy Strange Journey: Update 1: Introduction

                I feel like writing about Warhams more since I’m both running and playing it, so you know what? It’s time to start the Neutral Campaign. If Joan is the Rebel storyline and when you see her later, Simone is the Loyalist (Amazon) in the Old One plot, Strange Journey is the Neutral story. Uninvolved adventurers who had no idea what they were getting into stumbled across some of the consequences of what Joan and Kari did, and unbeknownst to either, dealt with serious unforeseen problems and the machinations of Patient Zero, Morghur the Mutator. Strange Journey is interesting for being the perspective of a group of ‘ordinary’ Industrial era Norse and Imperials slowly discovering something is stirring in the Chaos Wastes. Unlike Joan, they didn’t march in as Champions on the progress to the north. They had to go through the strangest and most terrible places in the world, witnessing strange wonders and improvising their way through, seeing sights that no Creation had for ten thousand years as they rushed to stop a series of mysterious and powerful magical towers. Also, yes, the name is very intentionally taken from Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey. After all, it’s a polar voyage into madness! What’s not to love?

                Two years after Joan’s Awakening of Slaanesh, strange things stirred in the north. Rebooting and modifying that system had worked exactly as Joan and Kari had hoped (aside from Joan being unaware it put Kari on a timer) and freed their Goddess from the Great Beast, creating a self-aware Slaanesh that could separate herself from Chaos. Joan had been busy with the crusade against the Lady of the Lake and with settling her people and fulfilling her promises to them afterwards, while Kari helped to try to clean up the Realm of Slaanesh and promote the new ways among the Damned. Slaanesh herself was busy with the incoming schism in Her cult. Also, when Joan had done the reboot sequence, she’d been on the verge of death after facing the Guardian of Heaven in the most draining and brutal battle of her life. She hadn’t noticed a few other systems that had rebooted as a result. Ancient things long forgotten began to stir in the North. And someone else noticed: The vessel of the Great Beast, the first of all infected, Morghur the Mutator. The shambling horror turned his attention to the fluctuations of energy far to the north and began to make his way there, to see if what had been lost could be replaced.

                But that was completely unknown to four new heroes. Ilsa Schneider was a rougher Shallyan, a woman of immense stature who had grown up in one of the orphanages and dedicated herself to the cult. As a result of her stature and strength, she was deemed a perfect candidate to go and spread word of the Goddess to the northern Norse holds. This being an unsafe venture, a veteran Imperial soldier, Horst Eisenhaur, was tasked to watch over her and help carry the food as was custom. They also hired on a Norse outrider and roadwarden, Astrid Torstendottir, and a Norse guide, Myrun Isaksdottir, a soothsayer and woodswoman who was intended to engage with the Witchcraft rules. Witchcraft turned out to be really fun, if a little awkward, as a method of building your own hodgepodge Lore. By blade, bullet, spell, and staff, they would make their way into the harshest lands in the world and beyond.