The Battle of La Maisontaal Abbey

The remote abbey of La Maisontaal in western Bretonnia guarded a secret its monks scarcely understood: a staff of terrible power, forged in the dark arts of Nagash. When the liche Arkhan the Black divined its location, he marched an army of the dead across half the world to claim it, and so began The Battle of La Maisontaal Abbey, a three-cornered massacre for a prize few present truly comprehended.

Arkhan's vampire-counts legions were not alone in their hunger. A great host of ratmen boiled up from beneath the earth, drawn by the promise of forbidden power, and the two dark armies fell upon the abbey and upon each other. Into this horror rode the knights of the kingdom-of-bretonnia, answering their duty to defend the holy site, though they knew nothing of what lay beneath its stones.

The fighting was a chaos of overlapping slaughter. Chivalry's lances shattered against skeletal ranks, warpstone weapons choked the air with green fire, and the dead rose again as fast as they were felled. In the end the knights fought with matchless valour and still could not hold. Arkhan claimed the Staff of Nagash and departed with his prize, leaving the abbey a smoking ruin. Bretonnia counted it a defeat measured in dead paladins, and never learned how close the world had come to feeding the return of the Great Necromancer.