Gerald Pemberton-Fitzroy, twenty-third marquis of Bogart, is a man in need of money. He came into a small sum, along with control of his family holdings, at the age of majority, but now the money is all spent and his lands all mortgaged. Even the local money lenders are refusing to extend him further credit and he fears that the only thing between him and the loan shark’s hobbling block is the rapidly fading sense of respect held for his family name.

You may well ask, what could cause such a reversal in fortune, for Gerald Pemberton-Fitzroy is no socialite fond of throwing elaborate balls, he isn’t known to gamble or engage expensive courtesans and he is rarely seen to drink to excess or dabble in any other common drug. To all appearance the twenty-third marquis of Bogart is as prudent as the Emperor’s Master of Coin, as virtuous as a Priest of Sigmar and as reserved as a teenage boy on his first visit to a brothel. No, to a casual observer the reversal in fortune of the Pemberton-Fitzroy family is completely unexplained.

However, Gerald has a secret, one that has long distracted his attention from the effective management of his accounts, one that has drained dry every source of funds available to him and led him to ever more desperate measures to acquire cash, for Gerald Pemberton-Fitzroy, twenty-third marquis of Bogart, is a warpstone scientist.

Now as everyone knows warpstone is a rare and volatile mineral formed from the very stuff of chaos, much beloved of skaven and all denizens of the chaos wastes for its mutative powers. Warpstone is also highly illegal in the civilized world where it is viewed as the solidified manifestation of all that is wrong with the universe. Thus acquiring samples of the material for use in experiments, along with subjects upon whom to test the products, is an expensive business involving shady characters who require regular and significant cash inducements to not slit your throat with a rusty blade.

This then is the source of the Pemberton-Fitzroy’s ruin, for Gerald has become obsessed with his warpstone research, erroneously believing that he can harness and direct the power of the stone to create wonderful and goodly creatures willing to protect the lands of man against the increasing predation of the evil chaos spawned races. It is to this end that Gerald strives on a nightly basis, concocting salves, compresses and potions to feed to captured goblins and skaven, mutating and twisting their forms to his will.

Gerald’s obsession with warpstone began in early childhood when rummaging through the assorted bric-a-brac and mementos of his families past which were piled up deep in the basements under their hereditary seat, Bogart Hill House. He came across a medallion of green ore among the possessions of the eighteenth marquis, a famous general who fought many battles against a skaven warlord to bring the lands of Ryedale under the Empire’s control. As Gerald moved the amulet he disturbed a nest of rats, to his amazement one of the rats unfurled a pair of pigeon wings and flew away, another had as many legs as a spider and a third heads at both ends of its body. In the following months Gerald visited the nest of chimera regularly, studying the strange and wonderful creatures he found there, trying to discern the cause of their mutations.

He soon realise the link between the mysterious pendant and the mutated rats, and found that he could trigger other creatures to mutate by exposing them to the radiations from the medallion. He quickly amassed a menagerie of bizarre creatures from giant moths to garden snakes with metallic scales. His investigations seemed to have no negative effects, he himself appeared immune to the distorting powers of the green ore, there was one unfortunate accident involving the stable boy and Fezzy the cat but nothing that impacted on anyone of rank. Or at least so he believed, but the power of warp is subtler than he realised and unseen changes were being wrought, not on his body, but to his mind as the insidious powers of chaos twisted his desires and fed his obsession with the warpstone, driving him on the self destructive downwards spiral that typified his life.

As the years progressed Gerald’s experiments into the effects of warpstone became more extreme, they progressed onto larger creatures and eventually onto the abhumans and greenskin orcoids occasionally captured by local militiamen, inflicting increasingly drastic and physically devastating changes to his subjects. As the experiments became more complex so his requirements for more warpstone increased until his entire family wealth had been squandered on the pursuit. A once powerful family lineage had been brought to its knees by the dark and malevolent power of chaos.

So now Gerald, twenty-third, and probably last, marquis of Bogart, finds himself on the verge of destitution with his only asset a stable full of some sixteen twisted and mutated creatures, the end product of his investigations.

But, as if it were a sign from Sigmar himself, on the very day when his debts are due to be paid an open Blood Bowl tournament is advertised to happen in the neighbouring parish. Insane hope flares inside the addled mind of Gerald, if he enters his creations in the tournament, which they are sure to win, and if he bets all his remaining cash on them winning, which they must surely do, he would have enough to pay his creditors and continue his experiments far into the future.

Gerald equips the monstrous creatures with rusty armour scavenged from the detritus left in his family armoury and explains the concept of ‘ball’ as best he can to the howling, quivering, pain addled masses of flesh and bone of his creations. He transports them to the tournament, bets all his gold on them to win the trophy and watches as they are reduced to smears of gore on the pitch in the first round.

Destitute, defeated and feeling somewhat out of sorts with life, Gerald returns with the battered and broken remnants of his team to Boggart Hill Hall, there to be greeted by a mob of peasantry, who, having witnessed the abominations fielded by Gerald and realising the horrors perpetrated by their liege lord had risen up in rebellion to drive him from their lands.

That night Boggart Hill Hall burned as Gerald fled clutching only one final sample of refined and purified warpstone powder and accompanied by the surviving players of his nascent Blood Bowl team. Wracked by bitter depression, his mind warped by failure, Gerald, in a fit of madness, swallows the whole vial of refined warpstone powder, a dose orders of magnitude higher than he had ever dared give to any of his test subjects in the sure and certain belief that such an exposure would cause catastrophic and fatal changes ending his life in a manner consistent with how he had lived. That night Gerald’s body swells, twists into something new, something terrible, something… Trollish.

Led by the newly created Warpstone Troll that was once Gerald Pemberton-Fitzroy and bolstered by denizens of the dank tunnels of the long abandoned Six Feet mine, now occupied by the surviving mutants, a new team emerges to contest the minor leagues of the Old World - the ‘Six Feet Underdogs’ are born.

The Story Continues:

Six Feet Underdogs reach a half century - and Gerald calls a team meeting
A lament for a fallen (anti-) hero
The Underdogs reach their next mile stone - but has their star player lost his nerve?
Six Feet Underdogs' 100th game celebration
An Ironic Death
Gerald Makes Legend and the Underdogs get a New Arrival
The Underdogs Suffer a Pruning
Gerald enjoys the Spring Sunshine and Sets the Underdogs a Challenge
Six Feet Underdogs get a surprise guest
Ba'rat goes on a monster hunt and Gerald mourns the loss of one of his creations
Gerald reaches the quarter-millennium and thinks of retirement