The ground was shuddering.
A massive green tide of a WAAAAAGH! was advancing!
A colossal, hideous idol moved among them, its face grotesque and its limbs twisted into disproportionate shapes.
It radiated a primal, savage aura of raw violence.
A Rogue Idol of Gork and Mork!
Constructed from piles of battlefield stone, decorated with scrap metal and garbage, and smeared with lewd symbols and crude slogans.
Some were barely taller than a temple door, but when the tribes under a Warlord gathered into a true WAAAAAGH!,
these hideous works—which made one wonder if the Greenskins were just mocking themselves—would be built up to the height of Giants.
As if Gork and Mork themselves had descended.
Once activated by the channeling of a Shaman, they became living things!
Moving across the land as true behemoths!
The Greenskin Boyz who witnessed their awakening and movement would fall into an ecstatic killing frenzy.
In war, almost all Rogue Idols swung their trunk-sized limbs without hesitation, striding forward with that wicked, treacherous Greenskin smirk etched onto their stone faces.
Needing neither food nor rest, they tirelessly pursued and slaughtered any enemy within their sight.
They crushed city walls, leveled fortresses, and then moved on to the next victim, and the next, until every enemy was dead or the idol itself was reduced to rubble.
During Grimgor Ironhide's final, cataclysmic WAAAAAGH! in the Old World, his Shamans—at the cost of their own heads exploding en masse—activated one hundred and eight Rogue Idols at once.
They rampaged across the battlefield, their terrifying weight causing the very earth to cave in.
Since Grimgor's failure, such idols had rarely appeared in wars between Greenskins and other factions.
During the Fourth Battle of Black Fire Pass, the Dwarfs, after demolishing the last Rogue Idol with cannon fire, had wept with joy, declaring:
"From this day forth, the mountains shall never again be plagued by these mindless foes, for their most cunning and detestable savage gods have died along with these hideous stone puppets!"
Of course, the Estalians were now proving with their tragic reality:
Even after a long period of decline, once a powerful Great Warboss rises, these brainless Greenskins remain a nightmare of an enemy!
A total of three Rogue Idols advanced at the periphery of the Greenskin army.
A fanatical battle-lust spread through the entire horde.
In the eyes of both the Boyz and the Big 'Uns, the Rogue Idols were undoubtedly the physical avatars of Gork and Mork!
This WAAAAAGH! was being led by the two Big Brothers themselves!
"Is there any WAAAAAGH! more WAAAAAGH! than this, Boyz?!"
The Great Warboss had mobilized every Shaman under his command.
Using the manpower and resources of Magritta—which was under a "ceasefire" rather than a total surrender—he built nine colossal idols outside the fallen Port of Bermoz.
At the cost of half his Shamans fainting and needing long-term spiritual recovery, he activated and controlled nine terrifying behemoths.
Then, under the personal command of the Great Warboss, the Greenskin army wiped out the resistance in the Miramar Hills of southwestern Estalia in a single stroke.
The nine idols easily trampled over rough terrain and crushed fortresses, hurling massive boulders with the speed and destructive power of bolt-throwers to shatter city walls.
The southwestern forces, which had held out for over a year, were broken and swept away by the Greenskins.
The remnants could only retreat deeper into the wilds.
The Warboss himself saw no point in completely exterminating every last soul; there had to be a constant supply of fighting for the Boyz to stay happy.
So, he drove a large number of survivors toward the Tombs of the Ancient Kings—an area surrounded by hills where the graves themselves were massive caverns and tunnels.
There, the Warboss forced a portion of the routed soldiers to kneel before their green ruler.
The rest, those who refused to submit, were driven into the tombs, and the cave exits were sealed.
He declared that if those inside could stay alive, they were safe—as long as they didn't step out of the necropolis before his ultimate Great WAAAAAGH! ended, he wouldn't care about these stubborn human "stunties."
He then took his legion north to recuperate.
At the same time, Al was busy manufacturing conflict between the Vanguard, the council elites, and the refugees, buying hearts in the process.
By the time the Great Warboss, Gorkamorka Wyvern, entered Magus with his massive, terrifying, and high-morale personal guard,
the Greenskin vanguard heading north had already brought Demontrei to the brink of collapse.
Being near the coast with no natural defenses, and with the Safro Hills to the north still a considerable distance away, the pirate and Greenskin forces could land anywhere and join the siege of Demontrei.
The defenders were jumped at every shadow, their morale shaky, held together only by the conviction of defending their homes and the promise of high military pay.
It was no secret that the Northern Council was evacuating civilians and building a new fortress, the "Bulwark of Saint Monna," over a hundred kilometers to the east.
The soldiers knew that if they retreated, that would be their next graveyard.
The problem was that the Greenskin and pirate assaults grew stronger every day, while reinforcements arrived fewer and later.
With every attack, it felt as though the city was teetering on the edge of falling.
This environment was a brutal test of a warrior's resolve. Everyone knew they would eventually retreat, but everyone was terrified.
What if—just what if—the damn Greenskins broke the city faster than the order to retreat arrived?
They wouldn't have time to run.
The inhuman council representatives could grit their teeth and make the frontline soldiers suffer, telling them to "hold on a bit longer" to buy time for the rear.
But in Demontrei, every single day meant stacking the defensive lines with human corpses.
The pirate fleets flaunted their power along the coastline all day.
These despicable salt-rats even captured Southern refugees, drove them onto the beaches, and slaughtered them with muskets and cannons.
They forced them to run toward the city walls; usually, out of a hundred, fewer than ten reached the protection of the fortifications.
They treated it as a game, designed to terrorize and humiliate the city's defenders.
And the Estalians, having lost their pride—the Invincible Armada—and control of the Great Ocean,
could only watch in fury and humiliation as their compatriots were abused like dogs by a pack of pirate scum they previously wouldn't have even considered a threat.
Facing an enemy with hatred is useful for a brief morale boost, but in a scenario of passive defense with no power to counterattack,
such a dynamic will inevitably lead to the wavering and collapse of the people's spirit...
However, something had recently occurred in Demontrei, though no one knew if it was good or bad.
The enemy's offensive had weakened.
If previously there was a skirmish every two days and a major battle every three, it had now slowed to a frequency of one skirmish every five days.
The defenders in the city gained more time to rest.
A group of radical, capable young officers even devised a bold plan: they dragged a batch of newly arrived cannons and city defense guns behind the sand dunes of the coastline, setting an ambush using the terrain.
The next day, when the pirates came back for their shameless "hunting" game, the hidden soldiers rolled out the cannons and fired in unison.
The pirates were caught completely off guard, and several warships were sent to the bottom.
But the commanders dared not relax or feel lucky.
They all pondered one question:
What are the Greenskins doing?
Without a doubt, they hadn't lost their appetite for war.
The question was: where had they set their sights for the next slaughter...
Inside the grand tent, Great Warboss Gorkamorka Wyvern looked down at a sand table.
A human officer, mustering the courage to stand beside the Greenskin Warlord, was marking the map to correspond with actual conditions.
"You live on this land, you surround this forest, you live here for hundreds of years, and you tell me you know almost nothing about it?"
The Warboss was displeased. "Gork and Mork said: know how hard you hit, know how hard they hit, a hundred WAAAAAGH!s and you win a hundred times."
The officer swallowed hard, his body frozen, not knowing what to say.
He could only stammer that he would find more information regarding the Piña Forest to present to the Warboss later.
The Warboss thought about it and let it go. Humans who had the courage to stand before him, the ability to serve him, and the right balance of not being too smart or too brave were rare.
He couldn't be bothered to find another one.
Once he moved north to break the Estalians' last stronghold and completely conquered this land, he could consider finding more "umgi" talent...
Hmm, he couldn't let them mix with the Greenskins. He needed a separate setup.
He had heard there was something in the East that helped the Bosses, made of many people, called a "Bakufu" [Shogunate].
When the time came, he would build one for the umgi to serve him—the "Wyvern Shogunate"!