Whelps of the Warp

 "In the Autumn of that year, the Mad Hunt came for the first time.  In the nights leading up to All Hallows Eve, men heard unearthly howls and wailings drifting across the Black river...sounds that chilled them to their very marrow.  The Sheriffs and militia stood double watches through the night.  On the night of Sam Hain, the Mad Hunt swam the river just to the north of the point where the Snake River flows into the Black, and swept howling up through the hilly country north of the Snake.  Directly in their path lay the little hamlet in Frog Hollow.  Frog Hollow had been founded in the summer of that year by a little group of newly arrived immigrants, many of them Tileans, and some of the houses of the little settlement were as yet but half-builded.

 Despite the Baron Von Refn's explicit instructions to all settlers to build Palisade walls before all other considerations, the settlers had neglected to fortify their new homes. The reason later given was that the colonists had arrived late in the year, and considered the certain impending assault of winter to be a more immediate threat than the possibility of attack by monsters.  Thus when the shrieks and bellows of hideous chaos hounds shook them from their beds, they were quite unshielded.  The little town's militia were outmatched by the horrid beasts of chaos, and they were soon scattered with great loss into small bands fighting desperately in isolated houses.  For a time it seemed that there might be hope, for the stout, barred doors of the houses kept the hounds at bay, but then a troop of evil men with hair dyed the color of blood arrived bearing bows and fire, and shot burning arrows and into the shingle and thatch of the roofs.  The poor folk huddled inside were thus left with a choice between burning alive in their homes, or being torn apart in the open by the fanged terrors of the hunt...

 ...Some thirty innocents died in the disaster, but many others fled up the road to the bridge at Plum Creek, their retreat shielded by the gallant stands of a few brave militiamen.  The Hunt put the whole Hamlet of Frog Hollow to the torch, and, after taking time to torture and devour a few captives, made their way up the river toward Plum Creek.  Here, they were halted by a valiant defense of Plum Creek's militia spearmen on the bridge itself, supported by archers firing from the riverbanks behind them.  A number of beasts were wounded, yet things might have gone poorly had not the Rangers and Sheriffs of the North Mark appeared suddenly on the far bank and attacked the Hunt in the flank.  There was wild fighting and some loss there on both sides before the Hunt at last withdrew...stopping briefly to gloat and offer prayers to their filthy God in the blazing ruin of Frog Hollow, they passed back down to the Black River, hurled themselves into it's dark waters and vanished into the night.

 The Rangers tracked the Hunt to the Banks of the Black River.  Here they found a hound and a huntsman who, too sorely wounded by Rangers' arrows to cross, had been left behind, and these they put to the sword.  Thus they Children of the Dark Gods did not escape without paying a price, though the losses our dear and innocent folk were by far the more grievous.

 Many of the Frog Hollow settlers wished to leave the Black River country following the disaster, but the Baron convinced them to stay.  He bade them build their houses close together on high ground, and sent men to help the survivors enclose their community within a wall of stout logs, strengthened with towers, and lent some of his own men to serve there as a garrison...
                                                                                    - Olorrin, The Black River Chronicles

This nasty bunch are the first wave of  my chaos hounds for the Mad Hunt.  3 more groups are sitting around on my desk, waiting for me to sling paint on 'em...Great old figures....the handler is one of the greatest Chaos warrior figures GW ever produced, I think...although, if you look at the army list entry, animal handlers are supposed to be Beastmen, not Chaos warriors...oh, well...