The mystic soul and lions heart ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Punisher and swordsman ...Black Wind always follows ...Where my black horse rides ...Fire's in my soul ...Steel is on my side ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Born of Black wind fire and steel ...Born of Black wind fire and steel

And so it was written, ...The Black Mariner: ... my blackened, grim and gory axe, the searing glow of trenchant steel. ...r widow to my haft, and wreak red vengeance...Tales of black-sailed argosies, be...The Black Mariner: ...And one night, there ca...Fire and steel rode within it, and vengeance writ in thunder and blood! ...The Black Mariner:

words of vengeance and revenge ...ave watched him day and night ...hair blowing in the wind ...A sword in his hand.And his eyes they burn ...Through the woods and snow ...I have steel at side.Powers of t...Black as night swift as l...tallion.Born by the wind ...ere this world ends and the shadows begins ... my Sword.Forget in fire and ice ...word rest until its steel ...And watch your four eye...almost can hear the black blood ...And the dead beast`s wo

Crave to feel and throw the dice ...Come wind, rise fire ...Cool wind, warm fire ...And the story will be t...And I'm back in the bur...You must be strong and prepare for a chang...And create his soaring ...And create his soaring ...We crave to feel and throw the dice ...Black in the burn ...Turning black in the burn

Episode VIII: And Lo, When The Imperi...he Great Rebellions and the Dissolution of ...And so the mighty and resplendent armies of the Imperium assembled before the towering cyclopean walls of ancient Gul-Kothoth. It was some time before the billowing dust cloud raised by the massed arrival of the vast imperial host settled, ultimately 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 ...ranged against them and shuddered, not with fear, but with an awful and night-cold anticipa...The Imperium's last and most glorious victory is at hand. The procrastinating sybarites of the bureaucracy have been threatened and bribed into compliance over this venture. This more than anything else is why I have deigned to grace this final battle with my Imperial presence, even against the advice of the Grand Vizier and the sage counsel of...Today, the precepts and maxims of the Imperium shall be tested, and we shall see whethe...THE EMPEROR KOORD: And yet I am vexed, for...e Legion, sire. Our steel is proof against such diabolism! Behold! Gul-Tryarch has fallen, Gul-Azlaan has been given to the earth, Gul-Nomedes is naught but smouldering rubble, and soon we shall surge over the shattered remnants of Gul-Kothoth's renowned walls! The Vyrgothian Alliance shall crumble when these gates are breached, and the Over-King himse... age of fire, sword and shield, ... Sceptre, the Sword and the Ring! ...And so it was that a terrible and inestimable carnage was unleashed upon the field of battle. Colossal stones, firebrands and howling iron-tipped missiles rained pitilessly down upon the hero-hewn walls of Gul-Kothoth. Vast and serpentine cracks appeared in the ancient cyclopean edifice, and hundreds of warriors, both attackers and defenders, perished in the fray, either crushed beneath the ceaselessly assailed testudo, hammered to crimson pulp by the merciless storm of unforgiving stone, or burned to blackened husks by the nightmare onslaught of flaming quicklime and saltpetre. Scaling ladders raised and repulsed in turn, storms of razor tipped shafts exchanged by the combatants, isolated skirmishes raging upon the ramparts, men blade to blade and clarions bellowing embattled defiance. For seemingly inumerable hours the sanguineous battle raged, with no quarter asked nor given between the bitter ancestral foes. And the gates held firm...y of shattering oak and iron louder than any storm-born thunderclap. With the rending of the mighty gate, and vast fragments of the ancient walls yielding, buckling and crashing to the blood-sodden earth, the Imperium's forces breached the defenses of Gul-Kothoth and surged into the Vyrgothian Alliance's last and most renowned stron...And it was at that fate-steeped instant that an army of five score and ten, bearing the Ob...ER: By Klatrymadon and Zuranthus! They come! They come, weilding the Circlet of Night! The dire warning issued to me as I stood before Vyrgothia's Master Wizard has been proved no idle boast! The citadel's spells of containment breached... the Black Crown is upon us! ...nce, the far-feared and martially renowned Iron Phalanx wheeled to face the newcomers, and at the command of a decurion, a volley of armour-piercing shafts screamed skywards to rain down mercilessly upon the foe. And even as this transpired, the Emperor's Prime Sorcerer, emissary of the Imperial Court and master of those arts which speak to man in narcotic dreams from the darkest and most silent places, summoned forth that black potency which lay entwined in stygian tendrils within his mind... an ireful power born of they who writhed upon the shores of Pangaea before man's progenitors ever erected their lofty spires to the restless skies. And yet Vyrgothia's Master Wizard, unrivalled Arch-Mage and adept of that lost Eastern order who journey beyond the boundaries of time and space upon those nebulous wings born of the sacred Azure Lotus, rose to meet this power which lapped at the periphery of his mind like a midnight tide, and stood firm against ...And upon that arid field of war, the sentinels of light and shadow spoke to eachother in tongues dormant since the Third Moon fell burning from the heavens, and not sweet were the ...es poised to clash, and with dusk painting the sky a deep crimson exceeded in its vibrancy only by that bloody rubicund hue which stained the battlefield below it, the Emperor's mage fell, and the aeons-old might...And lo, there and army of five score and ten, ...Dark magicks and havoc, now red carn... from the legendary black circlet locked tight within the gnarled hand of the Master Wizard, and clove mercilessly into the glorious ranks of the Imperium. And all who were touched by this ruinous arc of coruscating radiance knew no more... Men and beasts reduced to blackened husks, charred shells of smouldering ash, lifeless effigies which toppled to the seared earth to be dissipated by the whispering breath of the wind. Again and again the ravaging ...erium! 'Tis true... steel is no use against t... enough to riposte! And General Vane's mettle may yet turn the tide of war back in our favour. Now, let the final act be played out! I call thee forth, Ogre-Mage of the Black Lake! I call thee f...And so, it began... the...The Ogre-Mage and the Swordmaster began to utter fearsome words in a tongue which was ancient 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 wa...And it was in that oddly immeasurable instant that the dark and peerless power unfe

Lightning and rain ...Black winds and thunder ...o rides deaths cold wind ...And walks disguised amo...False prophets and deceivers ...And bronze horns shall ...To a cloudy black sky ...Bonds and chains fall to the ...Stand united and proud ...And live by the sign of...Blood Fire Death ...And fall in the line ...And follow the sign ...And Fire for hate ...And the day has just be...Bonds and chains fallen to th...Now united and proud ...And live by the sign of...Blood Fire Death ...ise out of darkness and pain ... chariot of thunder and gold ...And a warrior of thunder and rain ...Hammer of steel ...And to lead you all ...And the souls of the an

And I kissed my girl by... light the night on fire...spring on the smoky wind...Shining steel tempered in the fire...And I'll cut you down l

I hear a gang fire on a human factory ... knife of Sheffield steel ...And we're never gonna c...Black shadow of the Vince...South Atlantic wind blows ...Out came the batons and ... knife of Sheffield steel

emerald weapon, the steel of the heroes ...Flow the black tears of dark angel...FIRE IS BLAZING FAST ACR...Now close your eyes and fight blind ...FIRE IS BLAZING FAST ACR...And soon the snakes of ...FIRE IS BLAZING FAST ACR

ering the land with black thunder clouds ...So dark and silent it stands th...So grim and fearful in might ...With the wind in their backs they...weapons so fearsome and sharp in their hand...And shields of oak wood and steel ... slit open stomachs and split skulls to the...northmen have power and guts ...Arrows with fire fly through the air...Torching houses and shields ...A gust of wind blows in from the n...As twilight falls and the stars come fort...And the seawolves retur

And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels,...And you've got to make ...Get down, and obey every word....And no one make a move,...Hear us now, clear and tall...Wretches and kings, we come for ...Talk a lotta shit, and yet you don't know....Fire on the wind, makes ...The people up top and the people down low...Get down, and I'm runnin' it like...in between the kick and the hi-hat...The pen and the contract, the pitch and the contact...Hear us now, clear and tall...Wretches and kings, we come for ...Steel and bone, black and blue...e front to the back and to side to side...Front to the back and the side to side...Front to the back and the side to side...Front to the back and the side to side...Front to the back and the side to side...Front to the back and the side to side...And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels,... all the apparatus, and you've got to make ...And you've got to indic...And unless you're free,

at's written on the wind. ...We come to kill and kill again. ...rk - spreading fear and pain. ...Black shield and weapons, black our chain. ...harm us - not their fire - ...Iron or steel - for we have the ...And the curse of weapon

at's written on the wind. ...We come to kill and kill again. ...serk-spreading fear and pain ...Black shield and weapons, black our chain. ...n harm us-not their fire- ...Iron or steel-for we have the ...And the curse of weapon

at's written on the wind....We come to kill and kill again....rk - spreading fear and pain....Black shield and weapons, black our chain....harm us - not their fire -...Iron or steel - for we have the...And the curse of weapon

onna set my soul on fire ...And they're all livin' ...And I'm just the devil ...Oh, there's black jack and poker and the roulette wheel ...A fortune won and lost on ev'ry deal ...ed's a strong heart and a nerve of steel ...And your one armbandits...If I wind up broke up well