Dearest sister,

thank you for your package. The delicacies you sent me from Marienburg are most welcome, especially your delicious zucchini quiche. Finding any sort of vegetable here in the desolate wastes has proven to be inordinately difficult, as I expected, but none of the more human staff on the team has been of any help in that regard. Even coach Windhelm, which is by far the less removed from imperial society, displayed a great amount of confusion at the concept of eating something different from meat and sausages.
The bottle of Pavona Red is also a very welcome gift, since, while beer and spirits are never in short supply, wine is exceedingly rare in these lands – and I’m quite certain that what few I did find wasn’t made starting from standard grapes. I’ll ward this boon jealously, and I’ll toast to you every night for sending me this blessing. Sigmar knows how much I’ve missed the finer tastes of my fatherland.
With this message, I’ve also sent a couple of presents for your sons. As promised, a jersey of the Coven signed by all my team-mates (Harbinger included) for young Rudolph; it fills my heart with pride knowing that my nephew has chosen to support us instead of your hometown team, the Kicking Mules. Tell him I also managed to make Yibb scrawl something on the collar, before last game – but he might as well have puked on it, I’m not sure and the thing it’s too dead now to tell.
For Sabrine, since I’m now in Cathay before next game, I’ve bought a nice dress of the finest silk I could find here. For your husband, a cowl of yak skin with a chainmail inset. Wash the cowl very carefully before giving it to him, it comes from the Wastelands and who knows what filthy nurglite might have put his grubby hands on it before.
As for me, life here keeps going like it always does – which means that every day is a new bizarre experience. I haven’t gelled too much with most of my team-mates, the warriors are too aloof or insane to mix with us gors and the others are kind, in their own barbaric ways, but are not exactly friendly. And the less we speak about the familiars, the better. Unexpectedly, I did make a couple of friends here. Horok is one of my beastman kin but is much less aggressive than usual. He’s not particularly bright, but he’s honest and likes to help the others. Coach Windhelm is also a positive presence, and a veritable well of knowledge regarding the Blood Bowl of past times. I can spend literally hours listening to him recollecting his playing days.
Coach Auto is another matter entirely. He has never struck me as a particularly balanced man, but the last few months he’s shown a much more callous and sinister nature; he and Horok, and to a lesser extent me and coach Windhelm, are one of the few staff members that he seems to openly trust, even though he has started to have private meetings with all the players – well, not the familiars, but they’re pretty much interchangeable and talking with them is a challenge for any sane mind. He might be scheming something, but the nature of his plot is a mystery. He also keeps drinking like a regiment and aside from that episode almost a year ago I swear I have never seen him sleeping. I wonder what this development might bring in the future.

As for Her Majesty our brother, I will fulfil your wish and write to him to let him know I am well, even though his sudden repentance and care for me is suspicious AND hypocritical at the same time. Keep in mind, though, that he still has to do much more than this tenuous reconciliation attempt to earn my forgiveness. I will not be the bigger man, and if he decides it is fit for him to whine about my uncouth behaviour, I trust you will at least try to make him understand that this is only the rightful response to the man that exiled me from my home.

Best wishes to you and your family,
Neron.


“Ok, and this is done” murmured the tzaangor in his gloomy apartment. Lighting a second candle, he picked up a second sheet of paper and started writing again. "Now for the best part..."

Karl-Heinrich,

Thanks for asking me how I’m doing. Of course, you being you, sending a half-hearted request for information through Griselle in the most pompous and insulting way imaginable must have seemed completely normal. Rest well, I’m not soiling the name of OUR father by falling into Chaos worshipping or whatever you think ‘consorting with heretical cultists’ means. And that means that I will keep MY name, as a von Hexenberg, ‘til the day I die on the pitch or get so filthy rich that I will see no point in risking my life ever again. Heck, if it’s Sigmar’s will that I live long enough I will personally come to father’s castle and force-buy the title you are so desperate to keep and identify with just to spite you.
So yes, I’m doing exceedingly well. Thanks again for asking. I send my best regards to your wife and children and hope they keep in good health, you however can kiss my hairy butt.

Your brother,
Neron von Hexenberg