They had fled from the World’s Edge Mountains when their lands had become too dangerous. They had come to the human lands bringing a great store of engineering knowledge and a tremendous nostalgia for their ancestral homes under the mountains.

The then-Elector of Nuln had been an enlightened man. He put their knowledge and skills to good use, improving the sanitation of his fast-growing city. They had responded to the challenge by creating places that resembled great temples rather than sewers. Mighty arches supported masonry that had lasted nearly a thousand years. Intricate carved stonework adorned the arches, revealing the traditional dwarf hammer and shield designs. The work had been made beautiful in its way, as well as functional. Of course, time had eroded much of it. Coarse patchworks of plaster and brick filled gaps where human repair teams less skilled than the original builders had been at work. But this place almost directly below the elector’s palace was a sewer fit for an emperor.

Then suddenly Felix saw it. He saw how vulnerable those ancient master builders had made the city. He remembered Gotrek’s tale of how the skaven had attacked Karak Eight Peaks from the direction least expected: from below.

The sewers provided a means of access to below any place of importance in the city. Teams of assassins or shock troops could be moved through them by a foe adapted to the darkness. They were a perfect highway for a skaven invasion. The great walls of Nuln would prove no barrier to them. The watchers on the roof of the temple of Myrmidia would notice nothing.

The peril to the city was even greater if its own chief magistrate were in league with the rat-men! The pieces clicked. He knew how von Halstadt’s foes disappeared. They were dragged down into the depths by the skaven. He would bet anything that a web of access tunnels existed which gave access to the palaces and walled houses above. If nothing else, a small enough assassin could gain access through the sewage channels, gross as that thought was.

The question now was why? Why was von Halstadt doing it? What did he stand to gain? The demise of his enemies? Perhaps he was a mutant in league with the forces of darkness. Perhaps he was mad. Felix asked himself whether he could walk away now, knowing what he did. Could he take the offer of a safe job alongside his brothers and leave the second greatest city of the Empire in the hands of its enemies?

It was infuriating; there was nothing he could do. No one would believe him if he accused the chief magistrate. The word of a sewerjack against that of the most influential man in the city? And if he revealed who he really was, that would only get him into deeper trouble. He was a known revolutionary and an associate of the dwarf who had slaughtered ten of the Emperor’s own elite household cavalry. No one would be too bothered if the pair of them disappeared. Perhaps it would be best to let things be. It was only then, as he came to his decision, that he noticed that the rats had vanished and the sound of soft padding could be heard behind him.

“We’re being followed, manling,” Gotrek said quietly. “Several groups.