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| - In the wake of every raid, every incursion, and every battle, inevitably there are those who pay a greater price than the rest. Sure, it is something to die slowly as the poison from a gut wound takes its time coursing through the body, leaving a victim to die slowly over many days, but it’s the children and the wives who are cast into poverty and destitution who must face untold hardships without the coin earned from soldiering or taking on a trade. Many women give up children to orphanages so they can feed the rest, whilst others offer the only commodity they have, their bodies, to make ends meet. But a few refuse to lie down and die, to face each day pinched with hunger, watching as their children perish from disease or starvation. A few fight back.[1a]
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| abstract
| - In the wake of every raid, every incursion, and every battle, inevitably there are those who pay a greater price than the rest. Sure, it is something to die slowly as the poison from a gut wound takes its time coursing through the body, leaving a victim to die slowly over many days, but it’s the children and the wives who are cast into poverty and destitution who must face untold hardships without the coin earned from soldiering or taking on a trade. Many women give up children to orphanages so they can feed the rest, whilst others offer the only commodity they have, their bodies, to make ends meet. But a few refuse to lie down and die, to face each day pinched with hunger, watching as their children perish from disease or starvation. A few fight back.[1a] In the days following Chaos's withdrawal, one sacked village behind enemy lines refused to surrender to the destitution promised to them by their community’s destruction. One woman, whose husband died fighting Daemons, rallied the rest, claiming there was no need to abandon what remained of their homes to begin the struggle of survival that faced so many in the north. No, to flee their lives meant Chaos had won. Instead, she called upon the women to scour the battlefields, find swords and weapons, and learn to use them, lest the Beastmen feast upon their children and the women themselves become whores to the fat merchants and nobles in weak and crippled Middenheim.[1a] Maegin, the strong voice in the village, was the widowed wife of the town’s constable. While her husband lived, she pressed him to teach her to fight, so that if war ever broke out, she would be able to defend her home. Teach her he did, and as she feared, war broke out. In the end, she lost her home, husband, and all of her sons. The losses filled her heart with hatred and rage. Instead of turning that hate towards the forces of Chaos, she looked back on the politicians, the merchants, and the decadent nobility who had made no sacrifice to save the Empire and directed her venom against them, those she believed had wronged her and her own.[1a][1b] Through sheer force of will, she constructed a group of like-minded women who had lost as much as she. Maegin taught the women to fight, to kill with passion, and to hate. So effective has she been that when a patrol of soldiers from Middenheim came through the area, Maegin and her force butchered the soldiers, and consumed by their hatred, drank their blood and ate the flesh of the dying. A few of the women were ashamed and fled, but the rest felt the power to be had and saw Maegin as their spiritual leader. In the days that followed, Maegin’s force has raided isolated communities in the north, killing man, woman, and child, all under the pretense of weeding out the weak, but after four such massacres, the band has fallen fully under the sway of Chaos, becoming no better than the rampaging Chaos Marauders that first created it.[1a]
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