Hackelberg

He'll let you know he's coming for you.

Written by Francesco Lanza.

General Information

Hackelberg is a Coven Model, and belongs to the Creature type. Creatures are always Summoned, but each is unique and cannot return on the Game Board after being Removed. Well, Hackelberg is special: this damed soul can withstand being "killed" once, and remain fighting after the first unlucky Casualty Roll. This is terrible news for the Witch Hunters, since Hackelberg, together with the Krampus, is the heaviest hitter in the game. Hackelberg can attack anybody in a Region, and is pretty much lethal for even a well-equipped adversary. Count Hackelberg was once human, but has been granted a great deal of power and devilry. With power comes also a certain kind of tangibility that makes him ultimately vulnerable to mortal weapons, should a mortal adversary manage to steady the frantic fear caused by his mere presence, and face bravely the fight of his life.
Besides being a veriitable beast in Combat, Hackelberg helps when Summoning other Creatures, making them cheaper. This might matter a lot when defending Witches from pointy, sharp swords and booming muskets. The Coven player, as always, needs to decide on the best course, and the Hunters will have to reason very attentively on how to deal with a problematic, very lethal creature that can put any character to the test, and shouldn't be left roaming around.

The Legend

Count Hackelberg is a legendary evil nobleman cursed to an eternity as a ghost. Some folk tales say that when he died, he petitioned God himself to be left outside of Heaven, if it meant that he could hunt freely in his forest until Judgement Day. Other tales name him the leader of the Wild Hunt, ghostly hounds baying into the night his only companions. In ancient times, such a role was reserved for a god like Odin, but in the times of Hexerei the folk murmurs about a damned soul no man can withstand, who will harry you unto the time of your sad demise. They are wrong: he can be destroyed, if luck is on your side...

Portrait

by Igor Krstic

by Alessandro Depaoli

Gifts

The Devil's boon manifests according to the nature of each minion.

Astral Projection

Being a spectre, Hackelberg can appear everywhere and attack lone Hunters and Patrols, crossing entire leagues from his current haunt like they were but a single step.

Wild Hunt

The mere presence of Hackelberg is a beckon for other demons. Summoning Creatures is less costly for the Coven.

Tactics

A Coven Model is always frightening and useful in a fight.

Revenant

You literally have to cut Hackelberg down twice to dispel his soul.

Critical Hit

Hackelberg wounds you twice as grievously when a Critical Result occurs.

Waylaid

Wolfram found each day to be fleeting, like those in the depths of winter. Nights felt all-encompassing but hard to fathom, surrounded as they were by an endless twilight that polluted his dreams. It was the End Time, and the world was upturned, but what haunted Wolfram the most was his own inability to discern folly from truth. Was it true for all men that the day was sudden and blinding? That over the horizon writhed dark clouds that reminisced a tangle of human limbs? That the Dead often came unto the Quick as visitors, standing pale and silent?

His sword had laid low the nightmare-Witch, Zauberin, but still She kept coming to him in his sleep, and slathered on his unresisting brow a foul unguent that reeked of blood, goat urine and noxious herbs. Wolfram had become a tenant in his own mind. The vicious owner of the land was the Devil himself. Yet Wolfram was not one to wait for death and decay resignedly. Death and Decay! He would search those two great Ladies and root them out with his bared sword. He was rendered a lunatic, maybe, but still he cast an ominous shadow over the Devil’s plan, and his trail was drenched in the blood of monsters and worshippers.

The dry air turned suddendly into a dank, cold and viscid pall. Fog surrounded him, thick as the steam from a pot, but so chilly that breastplate, buffcoat and woolen doublet could do naught to stave it off. Each breath from Wolfram’s lips betrayed him and joined the murk. The Devil had already tried to smother him at times, both while he slept and when he was awake.

by Matteo Weber

“Your tricks get stale!” he shouted bitterly, hoping to be heard unto the depths of Hell. But the fog swallowed his challenge. The silence got so suffocating that when it was broken by a growl, Wolfram felt actually better. His sword was ready: he knew how to fight the dark hounds swarming from the Abyss, but he had thought them all slaughtered and gone. All he saw was mist, but then mist itself became flesh, jaws and coarse fur: a doglike, evanescent beast. Wolfram laughed aloud, shrugging off the tension. “Yet again you send me visions and phantasms! Yea, you bother me daily with them. Foolish Witch, this hound of yours is light indeed: is it fashioned from cloud-flesh?”

The beast charged at him with a warlike howl, and Wolfram reflexively interposed his arm. Brutish jaws yanked at it so savagely that he was afraid to feel it tearing away. He was flabbergasted, but his body did not need any cue to act, not anymore. He just found the right spot — precise as a butcher — and sank his blade in the dog-creature’s neck, traversing the vaporous substance of it. He met the same kind of resistance he would have expected from vulnerable flesh, splitting around a heavy, sharp point. A real mastiff would have torn a gaping wound with its own thrashing, and blood would have gushed copiously, but the ghostly hound disappeared with a yowl.

Wolfram was sure he had lost the last vestige of sanity. He didn’t bother with the painful mess of his left arm. He could hear the blood pattering on the ground. He realized that he had never stopped laughing. The Devil had pulled him one great prank! A dog made of mist that could still mangle him. The fog now was alive with whining and barking, and Wolfram knew he was surrounded by a whole pack — but they were not threathening, they felt joyful and abject.

“’Tis not a pack, but a mute of hounds,” said Wolfram, to himself. “Is there a hunter, then, which is their master?”

And from the fog such Master came. His visage was terrible, free from human concern, and his hatred was bare and overwhelming. His demeanor was haughty, and he was dressed in old-fashioned garb. He stood there unflinching, wielding a fearsome crossbow, proud and surrounded by the boiling adoration of his hounds, almost scattering and coalescing with them in their etherealness. His presence was felt, but it was clear he still dwelt in Hell, a terrible parody of the power of bilocation that marked some saints. Wolfram’s laugh sounded crazy to his own ears, and he let it die.

“I see you for a Hunter, like me,” he said to the damned soul. “Am I so feared in the Realm of the Devil that he seeks to imitate my virtues?”

His enemy stood aloof, silent.

But it did not make any difference, thought Wolfram. To be sane, or mad, or that this ghostly lord was real or imaginary. His arm could be mangled, and the hounds slaughtered: likely, the spectre could taste his dented blade. He lunged forward.

Wolfram died astonished. He died standing, well before his body hit the ground. He never felt the bolt shattering both armour and heart. His ability to distinguish reality from nightmare was gone for good.