The Battle of Nagashizzar

At the amethyst heart of Shyish rose the black fortress-city of the Great Necromancer, and when the Dark Gods sent their legions to cast it down, the slaughter that followed was named The Battle of Nagashizzar. To assail it was to march into the very seat of Death's power, where the dead outnumbered the living beyond all counting and the ground itself drank the souls of the fallen.

The Ossiarch Bonereapers formed the bulwark of the defence, legions of bone assembled with cold precision from the tithe of a thousand conquered peoples, each warrior a masterwork of the Undying King's grim artifice. Behind them the Nighthaunt drifted in shrieking reserve, and above all loomed the will of the god who ruled them, for whom the loss of an army was merely an accounting error to be corrected before dawn.

Against this the Slaves to Darkness hurled themselves in wave upon wave, seeking to plant the banners of the Ruinous Powers in the one realm that had ever defied them. They broke upon the bone-walls like surf upon a cliff. Each daemon banished, each champion slain, was simply gone, but each bone-legionary shattered was gathered up in the night and rebuilt, so that the defenders grew no weaker while the attackers bled themselves white.

The Battle of Nagashizzar ended as the Undying King intended: with the assault broken and the black spires untouched. It was a lesson written in the ruin of a Chaos host: that in the Realm of Death, patience is a weapon, and no war of attrition can be won against a foe who counts his dead only to raise them once more.