Coffee, Code, and Chronicles

I'm honored to be picked as an A to Z Blogging Challenge Winner for 2026. As a decade-plus participant, I've won a couple of awards, but this recognition is equally as special. The first award I won was in 2011 from The Altdorf Correspondent .  The TAC  was the Warhammer blog of Magnus Seter, I won the 2011 Best of Fans award for my A to Z participation on my old blog, Another Caffeinated Day (archived, but not live). I often would say in many online profiles after that recognition, “I may introduce myself as ‘Award Winning Blogger and Gamemaster...'."  With this, I may again add it to my bio. For 2016, I started my journey with one goal and quickly pivoted to working from different source material. This was mostly to maintain a “work-life-blogging" balance. It was a struggle a few times as I did not pre-write or schedule posts. Many of my entries would be after 8 p.m. Some may have noticed. It was just much easier to dip into the well of active play rather than ...

Zharr-Naggrund, “City of Fire and Desolation," is the heart of the Chaos Dwarves Empire on the Plain of Zharr in the western Dark Lands beyond the Black Mountains. Scholars state that no chronicle of Zharr-Naggrund is reliable as the Chaos Dwarves are ruthless slavers and all outsiders would die in the furnaces and forges of the Chaos Dwarves. Only servants of the Ruinous Powers and the warriors of the chaos gods themselves would be given audience in the city and permitted to leave. Any accounts of the city are from slaves left for dead on battle fields, unreliable statements by chaos sorcerers tortured by witch hunters, from the heretical books and accounts of the same in their dealings with the Chaos Dwarves, or from last testments of often mad and blasphemous members of chaos cults seeking weapons and spells for the Chaos Dwarves. Atop the ziggurat of Zharr-Naggrund is the great Temple of Hashut, the bull headed “Father of Darkness", worshipped by all Chaos Dwarves and sou...

The Ynyr is not a singular thing, but possibly a dark honorarium given to the fodder of Chaos hordes from the Chaos wastes and frozen mountains of Norsca. The Ynyr are often mentioned in "heroic poems" spoken, and sometimes found in scholarly texts written about such oral histories. In all theso poems, the faceless Ynyr march first into battle, on the shieldwalls or in waves of sword, club, and pike wielding men, screaming oaths to their dark gods. Each seeks to find favor though the bravery of such charges and the death delivered for the gods and the mortal generals at the head of the hordes. To live with no kills is dishonorable, Ynyr will cast themselves on their swords or the sword of their leader to reclaim honor. 

Xhotl is a fallen Temple-City in Lustria. Lustria is largely spoken in the Empire and the wider Old World as a mythical place beyond the horizon of the coastlines. Only fools chase the legend of great jungle bound ruins filled with gold and gems. As the gods are manifest, so to are many legends and myths. Finding the truth of these one must muster bravery, folly, and coin for ships, rations, and loyalty (for mutiny often befalls these expeditions!).  In Xhotl, the Slann Mage-Priests, an ancient race of reptile-like beings that worship and wield magic itself, can feel the shifting of the winds of magic caused by imbalances between Law and Chaos. The ruins of Xhotl are often the site of desperate defenses against Skaven, a mad race of rat-like creatures that infest the sewers of the Old World, or Chaos invasions seeking to steal ancient “Old One" artifacts of the Slann while the world’s attention is turned north to the Chaos gates in the expansive Chaos Wastes.

While Karl Franz holds the throne in Altdorf, the “Wolf of the North," Graf Boris Todbringer of Middenheim is the undisputed ruler of the “City of the White Wolf," Middenheim, the Duchy of Middenland, and protector of the non-electoral province of Nordland, Boris represents the fierce, Ulrican spirit of the northern Empire: shaggy, grizzled, and perpetually addressing the grievances of the Cult of Ulric regarding the Cult of Sigmar. Boris is recently a widower. With two sons, a bastard, and the eldest, Heinrich, and the younger, a literal drooling idiot, and “the Princess." Boris dotes on his daughter Katarina.  His state functions are strained by his relationship with the Emperor in Altdorf and the Emperor's ties to the Cult of Sigmar. As an adherent of Ulric, though possibly mostly ceremonial, the Graf has taken particularly visible and vocal positions in direct opposition to the Emperor, such as the Emperor's recent declaration: There are no such things as mut...

Lying above the delta of the Howling River in the Border Princes are the Varenka Hills. The Varenka Hills are north of the Dwarf Karak ("Hold") of Barak Varr, an elaborate trading port literally embedded in elaborate and highly secure cave system. The hills have become something of a refuge (depending on the Old World timeline).  In the years leading up to and during the Storm of Chaos c. 2522 IC, many fleeing the invasion from the Chaos Wastes, fled over the Black Mountains through Winter's Teeth Pass or Black Fire Pass. The Varenka Hills were a heaven compared to the Greenskin raiders of the mountain passes, the hordes of horrors in the Hvargir Forest, or still more Greenskin hordes on the tundra between the Khyprian Road and the Old Silk Road. The River Treblecz offers no refuge, only shoals, rapids, and falls. The refugees trade extensively with Barak Varr and the Dwarves are known to provide arms and training for defending and defeating the goblin and orc tribes that...