Not massively happy with this but it'll do to get back into things.
Lordaeron Turn 3 Results
Training in rough terrain
Training = 58
Attract attention? = 36
"We're being watched." Vark says.
You both stand in the middle of a large clearing while the warband trains.
The plains of the Barrens and the dusty canyons of Durotar are much different from the forests of Tirasfal and you've set your warriors to training in how to fight in forests where trees and even dense brush will impede a proper formation. While you're confident that if your small army gets emplaced in a defensive position, or really even just gets a shieldwall up, you'll be able to fend off even a large horde of a thousand undead, you know if small pockets of warriors get split up from the main force they could be overwhelmed and destroyed by the slavering monstrosities in the woods.
"Who watches?" you ask.
"Something big." the warrior replies, "Red eyes in the darkness, big as an ogre, wings too."
"We know there are bats in the Vale, Vok'fon's said so when he went off with the scouts."
"It'll be a big bat then." The Son of Nath grunts, "It's only watching for now, go back to the others, I'll keep an eye on it."
While you're certainly the most skilled fighter of the warband, Vark is perhaps the only one who could match you in open battle, primarily because of his incredible reach and power. If there is such a creature out there you trust him to handle it.
Over days you train the warriors, calling on your officers and relying on your previous experience to embed the commands that no warrior should charge off without orders, but you still see Scorn cuffing a few of those who talk back. In the end though it goes well and you have greater confidence in your band.
Warband better trained to fight in difficult terrain.
Minor bonuses to Tactics and Leadership.
Warband vs Encounters
5 vs 65
36 vs 80
44 vs 72
Ressan the Needler 50 vs 23
Recalling previous discussion you intend to go into the woods the humans call the 'Nightmare Vale'. You first intend to clear the trees of whatever horrors make their homes in the place, and if possible, haul off the carcasses of beasts to feed the people of the Solliden Farmstead.
The Vale itself is a gloomy place, a line of hills coming down from the west which form the border between Torasfal and Silverpine forest, a region you know has been disputed previously between Gilneas and Lordaeron. There are no settlements, at least none intact, though you discover a small abandoned village.
The place is troubled, either haunted by the spirits of the dead or perhaps ismply by the evil of the land and the events that have taken place here. There's no birdsong, none of the animal calls you've heard previously, yet you still feel like you're being watched.
"It's still following us, flying over…" Vark says one night.
"A bat then? I know the trolls ride them sometimes, or at least they did, has this one escaped?" you reply.
Vark shrugs, "We should camp in dense woodland, that should stop it swooping over us one night and carrying someone off."
"You think it's big enough for that?"
The Warsong grins and gives you a thump on the shoulder, "Maybe you, little brother."
You go onward, further into the forest. You've noticed the eyes now, red eyes, four feet or so from the ground, all around the column as you march. After several days marching you're surrounded by them, unflinching, unblinking orbs in the darkness of the woods, and you're little inclined to send out any scouts to see what it is.
The days pass and your warriors grow tense. The weather is oppressive, mist comes down and blankets the Vale, strange things are seen in the gloom and it's as if you've passed into a place of perpetual twilight.
Then a single howl goes up, an unearthly wail, more akin to a person than a beast. Hands on weapons tighten as the howl goes on, echoing in the mist.
"Form up." you order, and Scorn sets to work bellowing orders. The warband forms a square, three ranks on each side and a hollow space in the middle where Sorek and the aspirants stand ready as the reserve.
More howls go up and you see red eyes in the forest, creatures of darkness bounding toward your warband. You draw breath to shout but then another call eclipses your own.
The scream comes from above, its only herald a whisper of leathern wings, then a stabbing pain in your head like needles through your brain.
You fall to one knee, panting, vision spinning, the Fireblade on the floor, only to have a great black shape as big as you are leap onto you, only your vambrace holding off snapping jaws.
The creature is a hound, some demonic dog, jaws slavering and snapping as it tries to find purchase on the steel. The Fireblade is too far, yet you draw your dagger, face harsh in your own snarl as you bring the blade up again and again into the thing's ribs till it finally slumps off you and you can take up your true weapon again.
The formation has maintained itself, the wall is intact, yet at least twice your own numbers in these black creatures are baying and swarming around the company, some of them having leapt clean over the warriors' heads, meeting the blades of the aspirants under Sorek.
"You were right, something commands them!" Sorek cries, seeing you stand, picking himself up from a similar position as you'd found yourself.
You make no reply, the shrill scream sounds again and the needles stab at your ears, sending you to the ground again, though this time you remain on one knee clutching your blade. Two black shapes fly at you and without a thought you cleave them apart, your sword burning with rage, and two bisected and burning bats fall to the floor.
All around you orcs are fighting, smaller bats menacing them, flapping in the faces of the warriors as the hounds bark and bite at their feet, dragging a few down.
"Watch your spacing!" you shout, noticing the eastern and northern lines have fallen back slightly from the ferocity of the charge, the warriors bunching up, endangering the cordon's integrity, especially the distance between the initial walls and the core of the reserve.
"Ya need spears." Vok'fon says, coming close, "Other weapons too."
The fighting has paused for the moment and you spare a thought for his words.
The orcish way of battle was primarily an individual one, the charge, then the melee being the main components. The Blackrock and subsequently the Warchief Blackhand had developed the first proper tactics and formations, and Doomhammer and others had developed them further, now though it was costing you. Spears would be good, but you knew you'd need to train your warband a lot more to get them ready to form a more complex array like the humans would.
But such considerations can wait. "Enough, how do we deal with that?"
The great bat swoops overhead again, the needle-cry sending a spike of pain through your head as you clutch the Fireblade.
Vok'fon looks up, but then you're both attracted by Vark rising above the fray to his full height, hurling a shield upward, the disk flying through the air and impacting with a sickening crunch against the enormous bat's wing, sending the creature tumbling down through the mist.
The beast falls toward you, landing a short distance from the lines and you charge forward as the thing rises. Vok'fon is with you, vaulting over the shieldwall as you dart through a gap, hurling one axe as he does which strikes the bat's other wing. In turn you bring the Fireblade down in a deadly arc, cleaving the creature in half as it stands screaming.
Without their leader and ally, the other bats and hounds fall quickly to the blades of your kin, and it doesn't take much to clear the remaining attackers up.
You're silent on the way back. Many were wounded, few died, yet still more than you should have lost. You'd been fighting animals…
Your lip curled as you walked back.
You'd lost too many.
Pyremaster
Morale effect = 77
You'd sat at the ruins of Dreadmist months ago, and the preparation of pyres for the fallen you remember your actions.
The living or the dead, that had been your question. Whether to seek for any others lost in the rubble of the mountain as you'd been, or to set off for the Crossroads to warn the Horde's leadership of the battle.
If you had stayed perhaps you might have found a few others of your previous warband who survived as you and Scorn did, but then again maybe you wouldn't have found anyone.
In turn, if you'd stayed your father would have found you and you suspect Forneus would have proceeded largely unchallenged to destroy Orgrimmar without your father's and your own intervention.
Here again you considered the question, the living or the dead?
The path of the Pyremaster was a tradition of your people stretching back to the first orcs to stand from Grond's flesh. In your clan in particular, as well as the Blackrock and a few others the pyremasters had thrived, leading the rites to guide the dead through purifying flame to the afterlife, burning away weakness so the naked spirits could conquer the elements.
As you lead the rites for the dead, anointing the fallen with oils and unguents as you'd been taught back in Orgrimmar you see the effect it has on your warband as the spirits of Air and Fire swirl around you. Those muses gather, drawn by the conflagration and though you don't feel their presence directly you see the flames turn in strange, unnatural ways.
A new respect comes into their eyes. No longer are you merely a warrior, no longer even a Blademaster, they see you as a shaman and the change is respect is clear. The warband is yours now and over the days you speak to them of respect, of your promises to those who serve you and the rewards they'll receive; valour with honour, oath-breaking with vengeance.
And in the ashes of the fallen you see a Light.
Social our bodyguards and the necromancer
Discerning, Sesk = 71, Ishi = 55, Keldran = 93
But before you greet the vision you must seek it's opposite.
Keldran is not an orc you've any great acquaintance with. The shadows seem to bend around his form and even as you speak with him he's indistinct to your sight, his own shadow seeming to flicker and turn in the distant firelight.
"Speak." you command, sitting down across from him.
It would be impossible to pin down such a figure, and though Keldran hasn't specifically hidden himself, you've certainly seen him far less than many of the others around the Manor and you instead listen as he speaks, waiting for him to give enough information to pin him down on any particular topic, rather than flailing about trying to capture a shadow.
Keldran appears to be an orc of about forty, though he has lived for fewer years than that. The necrolyte is one of the children of Draenor, the peers of Blackhand's children and others who were artificially aged to fill the Horde's ranks in the years before the Dark Portal opened. He, like your father, was too junior a sorcerer to have been purged in Doomhammer's coup, and in the years that followed he apparently worked closely with several of the Death Knights of the Horde, observing their shadow magic and experimenting on his own.
In time he came to join the Burning Blade, your father apparently proving a worthy patron to the orc and sufficient for his maintenance, yet for now you have a particular purpose:
"Explain the functions of the undead." you order.
Keldran sits in silence for a time, but then draws breath, "The undead are mortals who have died, but have had their spirits trapped between life and death. This applies not only to the common undead, but also to the more advanced forms which have been modified in various ways. The manner of binding dictates the temperament of the undead in question, and in turn their various abilities. Spirits which were sinful in a particular way will often carry these qualities into undeath. For Teron Gorefiend and the other death knights their sins were greed and their hunger joined them in undead, they sustained themselves through causing suffering to others. "
"How are they bound?"
Keldran draws a small stone from his robes. "This is a Scourgestone, each member of the Scourge has one, this allows the Lich King to direct his forces as you direct your own limbs. While I say every member of the Scourge, this doesn't necessarily mean every undead, and there are a variety of other binding methods. Gul'dan practiced them and I've set myself to rediscovering these different means."
"Such as?"
"A soul might be imperfectly attached to the body, drawn from its journey to the Shadowlands, the dark magic that sustains them a buffer preventing their souls from properly joining with their bodies. Alternatively though the soul might be bound more strongly to a particular object like a runeblade or, in the case of the liches, a phylactery."
You converse with Keldran more, drawing a greater understanding of the undead. You get a general read from him as he speaks, he's curious, yet uncertain of a great deal, having only the scraps of a separate tradition with which to form conclusions. You've no especial interest in shadow magic, but you wonder what you might learn from him regarding how to destroy the undead more effectively.
You have other business to attend to though and after a time speaking with Keldran you turn to your bodyguards.
The Blade Reborn
Training rolls, Sesk, Ishi, 52, 45
For days you spar, each day you wake with sore limbs and head outside to bout after bout with the pair, when one tires the other starting up. Despite the deep weariness that seeps into your limbs you have to admit you've learnt a lot, but after a time your bodyguards call a halt.
"You're not ready." Ishi says, breathing heavily after an acrobatic attack which knocked your sword from your hand and would have cut you in half if he hadn't stopped the strike.
You can't reply, you're too busy panting in the dirt.
"Akinos' teaching is plain in your way of battle." Sesk remarks, "But to become a Blademaster takes years of effort. You have the strength of will perhaps, but you lack the physical capacity, the maturity of skill, and naturally the strength that magic gives a warrior."
In the next few days you speak to them more about the issue, and in general socialise with the orcs who've been commanded to defend you.
Both are members of those battleseeking wanderers you'd previously identified, yet neither of the pair are as melancholy as your former teacher had been. Perhaps it's simply a matter of temperament, or even comradeship? The two are as close as brothers and have a suitable sparring partner in each other, though they're far far above your level of skill.
There's still a distance between you though. They occasionally disappear off together, or make themselves difficult to find, and to remedy this you decide to join them on their expedition to the Undercity.
The march isn't long, only a couple of days at a run which apparently tires them a little when they have to run around obstacles rather than sprinting through the treetops, dancing on leaves and branches.
Once again you're ready to fall by the end of the run, only keeping up with great effort as you trail behind them, your glaive in your hand.
"'The sword should be forgotten'." Ishi reminds you on the first night, a quote you'd heard before from Akinos' philosophy, one stating that a blademaster should be able to use their weapon without conscious thought as an extension of their body, and even with the unnatural lightness of the blade you're almost wishing you didn't have it with you on the next day through the punishing pace they set.
Sesk carries a small box in a bag over his shoulder, and as you reach a rise near the former capital of Lordaeron he stops. "This should do."
The Undercity isn't in sight. Nor even are the ruins. You know the Forsaken, those undead former citizens of the kingdom, had set up their own capital in the sewers and undercrofts of their destroyed capital after they broke free of the Lich King's control, yet now all you can see is a green fog and the occasional ghost of a white tower when the wind blows strong.
"What do you think it is?" you ask the pair, looking at the fog.
"Nothing good." Ishi remarks, "And I don't think it wise to get any closer. There's a reason the Crusaders haven't tried to take the city yet."
While you stand there you wonder whether there's anything left to actually take, but for now you simply wait. Apparently the blademasters have orders to deliver whatever's in the box to the Undercity, or at least it's vicinity, but you stand around for a good hour before you become curious and kneel beside the vessel. It's simply enough, just a small wooden box, and the hinges open easily to reveal rich cloth and a red crystal within, about the size of your fist.
There's power in the thing and as you stare into its depths you smell the scent of brimstone and fume, the stench of the demonic.
Within the crystal's depths you perceive blood and murder, you see the spirits of the dead within the stone, you see them writhe in their chains, you see fires and a bloody haze covering this seed of demonic power.
And then you sense another.
Great wings open from nothing and an enormous figure stands before you.
"Greetings, Blademasters of the Burning Blade."
You know enough to identify the figure, "Varimathras." you reply, gathering yourself quickly and standing, the crystal in hand and your blade in the other. "You live up to your name, thal'kituun."
The Nathrezim, the Dreadlords, were the most cunning demons in service of the Burning Legion, inferior in might to the great Pitlords, yet greater in subtlety, sorcerer and dark influence, and in their own tongue they were the 'Unseen Guests'.
During the Third War these demons had overseen the Scourging of Lordaeron and following the Banshee Queen's rebellion against the Lich King this one, Varimathras, had turned traitor, slaying his own brothers and pledging allegiance to the Forsaken, and in turn the Horde…
The demon cocks his horned head and bows, "It is my pleasure to be among such sophisticated, though unexpected, company."
His voice is deep and rich, coming to your ears perfectly with all the authority of the oldest and most learned chiefs and shaman. Yet that voice is also at odds with his appearance. The Dreadlord stands before you, looking down from at least twice your height, great black-purple wings drawn elegantly behind him, dark armour of a similar colour and elaborate runed robes covering the rest of his form apart from clawed hands and hoofed feet.
Though this one has apparently devoted himself to the support of the Forsaken and the Horde, the nathrezim are known deceivers and as much as you've mastered your surprise your still on the defensive and keen to get away from the situation.
"I, Grok'mash, have come to assist the Scarlet Crusade in their battles against Scourge." you say, "My father, Neeru Fireblade, sends this to you." and you toss the Demon Seed to the dreadlord, for who else could the thing be meant for? You knew after all that your father could scry faraway places and people, no doubt he saw the state of the Undercity, even from across the world.
Varimathras moves to catch the fire, the fel-light winking out as a cloak of shadow covers it and moves it to some secret place at the demon's command. "I thank you, young warrior." the demon replies cordially, "And in turn may you convey my gratitude to your father for his wisdom and resourcefulness."
The situation is tense, the hands of Sesk and Ishi are on their sword hilts despite the dreadlord's courtesy, but you see this as an opportunity to get some information, "What is the status of the Forsaken?"
"Living up to their name." Varimathras replies dryly, "When the Scarlet Onslaught set out from their fastnesses they brought ash to any force sent against them, Sylvanus Windrunner ordered her apothecaries to unleash their horrors and the results are as you see. The main part of the Forsaken are still beneath the city, yet nothing alive can breach the blight cloud, and the dead can endure a siege better than the living. The Banshee Queen sits on Terenas' throne, plotting and muttering to herself, I offer what advice and counsel I can, but for now the Forsaken remain Forsaken."
You have mixed feelings on the demon's words, and as the creature excuses itself, disappearing in another flap of its wings you ponder his words. You'd questioned whether you'd have to choose between defending the nominal allies of the Horde and aiding the Scarlet Crusade, yet it seemed that problem was solved.
It's with a more philosophical mindset that you consider the question you'd thought of before, the living or the dead? It seemed the dead were content to remain dead, buried underground with their apparently insane ruler. You didn't know a great deal about them, but for now you put them out of your mind, turning to the living.
Feast
"Only a few of my folk know your language." you report to Mirador, "How will they hear you if you intend to speak to all at once?"
"With the Light, many things are possible." the paladin replies, mounting the ladder up to one of the watchtowers of the village.
The gates have been opened, this time only requiring a brief oratory of the paladin before the Solliden headman accepts, and you now sit on crude tables and benches alongside the humans.
Mirador climbs to the platform of the tower and looks down at the assembles mass, humans and orcs, sitting side by side, the meat you'd brought along from the carcasses of the Nightmare Vale's denizens a welcome addition to the stores of the village, and now serving as part of the feast the farmers have laid out.
Then Mirador begins to speak and you know truly that a paladin is like unto a shaman, his green eyes glowing, his words carried to each party as if in their native language, his voice strident yet comforting, some ephemeral power more than simple rhetoric in his words:
Today I would like to touch on the three virtues of the Light.
These are dark and difficult times for us all. The armies of the Scourge amass all around us. Companions fall on the battlefield and rise to serve our enemy moments later. Many of you have experienced a betrayal of trust. Yet you persevere, as we all must. In these times, no one is a stranger to the virtue of tenacity. In the face of despair and hatred, we continue to stand true to our beliefs and fight on.
There can be no doubt as to your tenacity... but there are other virtues to consider.
Respect is the first virtue taught to those joining the path of the Light. Look across the aisle to those you would call enemy. Despite the hatred that separates you, there are qualities to respect in your opponent. Their prowess should be acknowledged. All of us gathered here have a concept of honourable combat. Conducting yourself with honour and treating your opponent as you wish to be treated shows respect. Respect your opponent on the field, whether he be your brother or your sworn enemy. No matter where your beliefs truly lie, such respect is acknowledging a connection...and in acknowledging those connections, you are closer to the Light.
There is one further step on the path of Light: compassion. Rivalries abound in this day and age. It is easy to see differences wherever you turn. The challenge is in looking beyond appearances and understanding our similarities. Through this understanding, you can feel compassion for the losses others have suffered...even if the victim bears another banner. By feeling and understanding compassion in enemy and ally alike, you reaffirm your connection with the world.
Acting on these tenets, these virtues, help make the world a place we all can appreciate. A world of honour and justice. Think on my words, friends. In the darkness that surrounds us all, the Light is needed more than ever.
Leadership +15% for another successful battle
Advanced Tactics 15% for fighting an unusual enemy and the successful implementation of training and strategy
Expert Weapon Competency +25% and locked.
Scholarship +15% for Light and Shadow learnings
Demonslaying merged with Demonology, new skill 'Slaying' created for fighting against unusual opponents, currently providing bonuses to demons and undead.
