First published within the Fyreslayers anthology before getting the standalone ebook treatment, Guy Haley’s Age of Sigmar short story The Volturung Road has one foot in the Mortal Realms and the other back in the World That Was. As the Slaanesh-worshippers’ siege of his family’s hold approaches its one hundred and first year, runeson Ulgathern grows increasingly concerned, fearing that a prophecy deemed unreliable by most is coming to fruition. When tragedy strikes and his personal circumstances change, he sets out towards the Volturung lodge to reach his people’s ancestral home and escape the fate he sees approaching.
Ostensibly this is all about introducing this new(ish) faction and providing detail on how Fyreslayer lodges are organised, and it does that nicely with a range of (admittedly confusingly-named) characters from bickering brothers to mystical rune-workers. If that all sounds strangely familiar, it’s because it really is – take the visual theme (lots of fire) away and replace the Slaaneshi hordes with greenskins or skaven (who we see later, anyway) and this could easily be a dwarf tale from the Old World…which is a good thing! It’s unexpectedly long for a short story, split into two sections which could almost be individual stories, but it’s largely well paced and offers a nice balance of action and atmosphere. If you like Old World dwarfs, this is the Age of Sigmar story for you.