Kitbash challenge - Vermintide

The name was just conjured from googling through old names and Malleus is the title of a 40k Inquisitor story I like. Malleus is also “the hammer” in the arrangement of small bones in your inner ear. It was a sneaky way of calling him Von Hammer. ?

Mordecai hasn’t always been Mordecai. He had a chance meeting with a Templar of the Cult of Sigmar that saved his life and he found his calling.

Henry Crun had been a stagecoach driver. This perhaps showed an intention to see new horizons and certainly demonstrated that he was not scared of long hours and facing threats and danger, but Henry to this day doesn’t know why the witch hunter took pity on him that fateful day.

Henry had ridden for two days with a lone female passenger and their belongings. With his keen eyes scanning the road ahead he had spotted a glint of metal. Maybe it was armour or a spear tip, but it was definitely danger. Unbeknownst to him his actions had avoided being ambushed by goblins. He took a longer road on an alternative route, but this had not been uneventful either. He had shot a brigand who tried to hold up the carriage and it had rained long and hard ever since. Finally at his destination his road weary passenger thanks him, kisses him on the cheek, knees him in the crotch and grabs his money purse and runs off down the main street of the small town. Henry cursed out loud, got back into the drivers seat and forced the horses on to give chase. He had worked too hard, on that journey alone, to be left penniless now. He was desperate, full of adrenaline and blocked out the pain in his nethers as best he could as he took the reins. The woman had clearly hoped there would be an alley to dive down and lose him but there was no obvious escape route as Henry gave pursuit. Henry was gaining on her. The tired horses whinny in protest as they gain momentum. Henry began thinking how he would get down quickly and safely enough to give chase on foot … When a local woman crossed the road and his horses ploughed into her. Killing her almost instantly. The thief ran on into the dark and Henry scrambled down from the coach, shaken and horrified as he tearfully dragged the woman from beneath the flailing hooves. Henry fell to the wooden sidewalk and rested the poor lifeless young woman down and sobbed uncontrollably. Even in the failing light the street was remarkably busy. Torches were brought forth and cries of sorrow and anguish in the gathering crowd turned to cries for explanation and justice. The crowd had seen a reckless speeding coach kill one of their own and Henry had been too traumatised to offer any words of defense. Just feeling sick and staring at blood and mud fouled hands. A huge burley aproned man put their huge hand on Henry’s shoulder and hoisted up to his feet. The move shook Henry from his shock for a moment. It was dawning on Henry what trouble he was in when this was punctuated with a huge punch from the huge aproned blacksmith and a cry of “That was my daughter!!!” Henry scrambled away from the furious man, bleary-eyed with tears and nursing a broken nose. The huge man reached for a knife at this hip when a shot rang out in the street.

All eyes swung to the man in his wide brimmed hat and long flowing black cloak. He stood between the crowd and Henry and told them what he had seen. He had witnessed it all and said that Henry would face judgement, but as a servant of the Empire the witch hunter would not condone the linching the mob was crying out for.

By shear presence, bearing and a fine command of words the Witch hunter calmed things enough to get a shacking Henry into the coach and assured them he would be tried in the morning.

In the morning the town folk awoke to find no stagecoach driver, no stagecoach and no witch hunter; only a dead horse, put out of its misery after breaking it’s legs.

The witch hunter told Henry that the thieving passenger had actually been a witch he had been hunting. Sadly the young woman Henry had killed with his horse team had been susceptible to a cantrip that the witch had been chanting as she ran down the sidewalk. Sadly it was only her with her young ears that heard all of the breathlessly spluttered spell and she obediently walked out into the path of the horses without question.

The witch hunter told Henry all about himself and offered him a chance to join him in catching the witch and felt it would help Henry get over his guilt and grief from that muddy bloody evening.

Henry accepted and began a long and arduous apprenticeship into the world of purification and fire that only a witch hunter can attest to and understand.

The name changes to Mordecai Von Malleüs, just to give him more mystique and authority, but he has not taken on all the buckled and guilded trappings of the witch hunter colleges. He travels light and uses his inherent skill for sniffing out danger to hunt out the enemies of the Empire. He finds himself in a sewer, his senses tingling as he draws his sword. This time there’s no long road to take, this ambush will be sprung and bloodily put to the sword on his terms not their’s. He wondered what the slightly timid Henry Crun would make of the determined, skillful hunter Mordecai if he could introduce the two somehow. He gulps, smiles and continues into the darkness…