An orc shaman has captured a bunch of human women and are sacrificing them to cast a really nasty ritual. And I'm beginning to suspect that my players are not going to be able to stop him. It didn't really occur to me that he might cast the spell and so I never thought through what it would do. Something awful, I know that. And there have been increased greenskin raids over the Grey Mountains and it might be nice to tie into that.

I mean, they may pull it off, but I probably should be ready just in case.

Let him call a WAAAGH! I say!

Let's free form, but first, here's what I found in Warhammer Armies - Orcs & Goblins 2006:

So this is what a WAAAGH! is in narration:

• The Power of the WAAAGH! (p.4 -5)
  Commonly, a warband will sweep into a village, slaughter the inhabitants and charge on, pausing just long enough for the warlord to make a really big pile of severed heads to sit on. Terrifying and brutal as this is, it when a Waaagh! is called that Orcs become a truly dangerous force.
  A Waaagh! is akin to a migrating invasion, when some successful Warboss throws everything he's got against his chosen enemy and all the other Orcs and Goblins flock to join him.
  The nature of the Waaagh! means that the history of Orcs and Goblins, as passed down by word of mouth through the tribes, is rather fragmented.Greenskin history is generally an account of the rise and fall of huge Waaaghs! and their glorious leaders. (…)

This is how the shaman would go ahead and call the WAAAGH!:

• The Power of the WAAAGH! (p. 39)
  Where Orc and Goblins Shamans differ from ordinary Wizards is that their magical power is focussed by the mental energy generated by the greenskins around and about them. Every Shaman can access energy through the Great Green, but localized energy makes a difference too. If the Orcs are fighting, a Shaman's powers are increased as he picks up the Orcish vibes from his comrades. This is normally a good thing, though it can be a bad thing if those vibes come from fleeing Orcs whose minds are panicked and confused.

And finally, here is what the WAAAGH! is in terms of WFB game mechanics (Spells of the Big WAAAGH!p. 41):

• WAAAGH!, Cast on 12+
  Each unbroken friendly unit immediately moves 2D6" towards the nearest enemy unit - if it can see no enemy unit it moves 2D6" directly forward - war machine crews abandon their machines. If this move takes it into contact with an enemy, it is counted as a charge - the moving unit need not take any Psychology test that would normally be incurred for such a charge. An enemy unit charged in this way may only hold or flee as a charge reaction.
  In addition, all friendly units strike first in the next phase of close combat and can re-roll any misses that phase.

Alright, that was quite a bit but now we have the material to free form on!

I'd say that once the Shaman is done, all the scattered warbands that have been raiding by themselves and retreating into the mountains afterwards are invirogated and the suddently flock to the same call, be it of the shaman who had been casting the spell of his warchief. Howls and warcries can be heard echoing through the mountain sides all night, as the warbands break up camp and prepare for battle. Soon, they'll unify and swarm into the fertile farmlands below, only this time they keep pressing on, leaving a trail of utter destruction. Eventually, troops rallied hastily by the count or a Knight's Order will put a stop to this and once the spell has been broken, the warband quickly fall apart again.

For the province, though, this WAAAGH! has pelled doom and gloom and it will mark yet another dark annual entry in the chronicles of a province so dreadfully close to the Grey Mountains. As for our shaman, he can meet an untimely death, once the energy of fleeing Orcs back-channel into his green skull.

On a last note, you can also save the province from the WAAAGH! if you feel like it. Shamans can bit more than they can chew with their magic and here's an excerpt from their miscast table (p. 39):

• WAAAGH! Miscast table
  2D6 Result
  2 The WAAAGH! power courses through the greenskin's tortured brain and explodes, unleashing roiling green energy. The caster is killed outright. Each model in base contact suffers 1 strength 10 hit. All friendly units on the tabletop suffer D6 Strength 3 hits.

Once the WAAAGH! gets going and the warcries echo through the mountain side, the energies coming in and it all becomes too much for our greedy shaman. Yet Somehow, letting him go ahead with the WAAAGH! is more promising in terms of narration. ;-)

I have nothing to add. That was a brilliant suggestion by Johannes.

Phil

It may need to include desecrating an abandoned dwarf shrine or marker or something.

RARodger said:

I reckon he's trying to figure out permanent levitation so he doesn't have to walk long distances any more. Earth shattering consequences indeed.

All the farm animals within 100 leagues are flash cooked and sent hurtling through the air toward the shaman's location. Meat rain. The PC's may want to take cover. Now there is going to be a food shortage….just as the Waagh comes rolling down out of the mountains.

Gork would be proud and Mork would be hungry…or maybe Mork would be proud and Gork would be hungry…

Callidon said:

awesome!!! mind if i steal that from you?

Callidon said:

Our ogre probably wouldn't mind that too much.

If anything, the party would be free of feeding the Ogre for a while. Quite the blessing in da-skies (I crack me up).

Everyone has their own style and flair for Warhammer, but I've always liked to make Greenskin 'plans' seem goofy or comedic on the surface and then have some sort of cunning reprocussion or followup that wipes the smiles right off the players' faces.

You get to start off with: 'hahahah it's like the cow scene from Monty Python's Holy Grail! Brilliant! Whoever said Warhammer was grim and perilous clearly didn't meet up with our GM beforehand…hahahaha…raining farm animals…capital!" and then the warboss and his boyz descend from the moutnains and lay siege to the local fastness/redoubt/citadel/etc and watch as everyone starves and the since the horses are all gone, everyone is hoofing it (pun intended)…slower than your average ork. Also…those reinforcements are going to be a while in coming on foot. Besides, it's not like the greenskins need to worry much about foraging. When you are a goblin or an ork, the whole world is a breakfast buffet.

So the players, after returning to town to help with the defenses, start going: "…aw crap…really dude? A spoiled, half chewed mutton joint is 1 bloody karl ?! Highway robbery!!…and now we're being robbed for our food? What's next? A blizzard?! *snowflakes tickle the ends of their noses*…f--- you dude…we quit. Raining animals, making us walk back to town, and then starving us to death in winter whilst the orks burn the countryside….what an a---ole."

Well, turns out they spoiled the spell after all. They went into the preceding battle pretty beat up and the Black Ork was able to KO the Ogre Maneater (my first PC knocked out!), but they were able to defeat the orc encampent. (Of course, if they didn't have a dwarf in the party some of the orcs would have fled when the Black Ork went down.)

While the group recovered their wizard went up the hill to check in on the casting. I decided since I didn't send reinforcements down from the hill in response to the noise of the battle there weren't many guards protecting the shaman. The wizard tossed a shooting star or whatever at the shaman, spending the rest of his various bennies, dealing a healthy bit of damage.

I wasn't sure what the actuall effects should be, but the shaman failed a discipline roll, so he blew up, having basically maintained a crapload of power from his human sacrifices and then venting it all at once.

In other news, it turns out the Black Ork had a magic warhammer. (When the wizard used Magic Sight he got a chaos star; I decided the hammer was magical and the wizard was fascinated by it.) The Maneater (slighly recovered from the fight) took the hammer as a spoil of war.

So, any suggestions on a cool power/curse for an orc hammer?

Simply having the thing be "Fascinating" could be both a blessing and a curse. It's hard to fight someone when all you can do is stare at their warhammer. Then again it's hard to fight someone when all you can do is stare at your warhammer. Add in a slight obsession with needing to touch the warhammer to those it fascinates…and you've suddenly got people trying to buy it, steal it, rub up against it wherever you go (in and out of the party).

Voila…Catnip!

In combat…superior warhammer…and awesome to look at. Like something the guys from Gwar would bring to the table..or something a model from WFB might swing around.