As the lights go down ...and as the rain pours down...and as he sleeps ...he hears a distant whistling ...then he gazes as the stars

Well as the sun goes down i...As the old men cry ...Now as I near the light a ...I see a distant light ...The stars are burning bright

make wanna measure stars in the backyard wit...will lead me to the distant place that you will...As I look out...The stars align... make wanna measure stars in the backyard wit...will lead me to the distant place that you will... make wanna measure stars in the backyard wit...will lead me to the distant place that you will... make wanna measure stars in the backyard wit...will lead me to the distant place that you will

ver reaches ears on distant stars. ...isturb the peace on distant stars. ...t upset the pace on distant stars. ...f our lives stumble as the moments pass.

is dark enuf to see stars ... to the swishing of distant cars ...as i go deeper and dee...as i go deeper and dee...is dark enuf to see stars ... to the swishing of distant cars

Distant cows lowing. ...We'll dream as lovers under the stars ...As you walk home cold ...Distant cows lowing.

She's as close to perfect ...As I am far away ...I hear distant voices singing glor...Get higher than the stars in the sky ...I hear distant voices singing glor

As dreams within each ...From a distant city tower ...e wondered if these stars ...om somewhere in the distant past ...As their own starlight

Distant cows lowing....We'll dream as lovers under the stars...As you walk home cold ...Distant cows lowing.

Distant times in distant lands ...As in the dust the jet...you like I need the stars above

as men began to feed o...y way out among the stars... ...as in the heaven so be...as light grows dim, I ...the stars are calling me now

as men began to feed o...y way out among the stars... ...as in the heaven so be...as light grows dim, I ...the stars are calling me now

imately dissipating as the shadows of dusk descended. With nightfall, the imperial army's countless torches, braziers and cookfires illumined the dark plain before the fortress like a coruscating sea, painting the stygian heavens the colour of flame. And the high summer's night passed swiftly. At length, the dawn approached tentatively, and with the first signs of the newborn sun etching its promise upon the skies, the martial preparations commenced in earnest. A brief and perfunctory exchange between the Imperial Herald and the fortification's Watch Commander held no surprises, and the Emperor's banner was duly driven into the seared earth before Gul-Kothoth with a chilling finality. Vast siege engines and powerful ballistae were hauled inexorably into position, alongside a battery of katapelte and petrobolos. The one hundred thousand strong Imperial Frontier Army, having planted their regimental blazons into the arid soil, waited with a disciplined patience born of never having met defeat in pitched battle or siege, the dreaded Imperial War-Leopards straining noisily against their iron-link leashes to the rear of the cohorts of conscripts and auxillieries. The pitiless Iron Phalanx and their Lord Militant Commander had assumed position at the head of the army's Alpha Wing, polished swords, spears and poll-axes reflecting the glow from the myriad torches and braziers which still burned about the Imperial Host. And behind them were drawn up the legendary Legion of the Ebon Tiger, Pride of the Emperor, the infantry and cavalry famed throughout the Great Northern Continent, personal regiment of the feared general Baalthus Vane. True to their martial reputation, the six thousand strong Legion were inscrutible in their jet black armour, their sable banner billowing in the chill breeze which skittered over the plain. And finally, astride his azure-shaffroned warhorse and surrounded by his elite guard, the silvern-armoured Emperor Koord himself studied the precipitious gates with a disdainful scrutiny. At the Emperor's right hand was the renowned Swordmaster of Kyrman'ku, an eastern bladesman of preternatural skill and the most revered and expensive mercenary in the Imperium. At his left, the infamous Ogre-Mage of the Black Lake brooded silently, swathed in a stygian cloak and fuliginous cowl and exuding an aura of implacable malevolence which unerved even the bravest of the Imperial troops. The Emperor had deemed the services of these two nefarious renegades pivotal to the execution of the Final Campaign, for they alone had knowledge of the mysterious arcane rite known as The Words Which Unf...yet I am vexed, for as you well know, the sorcerous emmisary I despatched to the Court of the Over-King has warned that the Vyrgothians may have recovered one of the artefacts comprising the fabled Trinity of Might; the legendary Obsidian Crown itself! In the hands of a skilled thaumaturgist, it is said that the Crown may be used as a weapon of unparal...arning issued to me as I stood before Vyrg...PEROR KOORD: It is as I have forseen! Be ...n the foe. And even as this transpired, th...nt ere the gleaming stars shifted upon the fathomless countenance of the distant heavens, words which in truth were not words, but rather a resonant key which would aspire to unlock a dire power which had reposed shackled since the fall of the legendary Shadow King himself, whose ebon circlet's power they even now sought to thwart. The incantation they gave voice to in the midst of that sanguineous turmoil which engulfed them was not so much heard by those within earshot as perceived, sensed as a vague disturbance in the fabric of reality, as fuliginous ripples on the surface of a hitherto still and placid pool, growing ever larger and more far reaching; an unnerving and unnamable sense of change which insinuated itself into the mind of the listener and suggested with a cold and disturbing quasi-certainty that something of preternaturally ineffable magnitude was transpiring, as surely as a festering and gangrenous corpse would split to spill its noisome gore. And as that maddeningly implacable incantation reached its resounding climax, a momentary silence enshrouded the battlefield, swathing the vista of chaos in an aura of noiselessness more pure and untainted than the tranquility of the boundless and stygian void. It was as if time itself had

d darkness, beneath distant pallid stars, I bri...nsion of the night, as if their misshapen ...rkness itself. Even as I gazed directly at...t spent... and now, as night ...which stands as a mute sentinel bef...long. As the darkness massed...ever again stumbles as close as I to those cryptic ...e unheeding cosmos. As I scrawl this

Drive you to a distant shore ...The twinkle of the stars shall be our semaph...e engine shall purr as if metal were fur ...me awaits us in the stars