Skaz the skaga led a simple life: follow the warlord's directives, forage food for the bigger goblins and orcs, and bravely take a few pot shots before scurrying away if a scrap breaks out. It had been a good life, kept stable by the balance between the various goblin and orc factions within Moria, a status quo that was now completely shattered. With two of the four biggest warbands completely gutted and multiple smaller groups scattered, alliances and territory fluctuated by the hour as hundreds of factions fought to be the one on top when the dust settled. Skaz had seen the signs of an 'enthusiastic debate on the leadership status of the tribe' about to erupt between chiefs Grug and Ikur the nasty, and had decided that now was a perfect time to volunteer for watch duty.
So there knelt Skaz, peering out across the cleft from which the group of dwarves with their fire-rocks and eternal lanterns had come from. His clan wasn't planning on staying long, just long enough to harvest the corpses from the latest spider attack-and wasn't that something. Most came up to his waist, but some were even as tall as a grown orc! He bundled his rags closer-why was it getting so cold? Distracted by the clashing sounds of lively orc meritocracy behind him, Skaz didn't even see the shadow that killed him.
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The time had come, the last of the six bridges of frozen web and stone now spanned the chasm, over which her children would swarm. Not the bands of weak outcast kin thrown against the defenses of the Dawi or trying to stake out their territory in the depths, this was the true skittering wave. With the scouts silenced, the invasion crept towards the raucous sounds from the enemy camp. There was no warning as the blinding offensive hit the outermost tents, goblins being devoured, stabbed, and crushed, with the most unlucky ones bound without a scratch for later drinking. The orcs and goblins formed a battle line quickly, with a trio of cave trolls roused from where they were feeding. Arrows flew at her children, some finding eyes or joints, but many merely notching their thick exoskeletons. Boluses flew in return, stones joined with a single frozen thread that ripped through the unarmoured skirmishers in the back as the battle reached its tipping point. Deciding on her first target, Aer-Enap surged out from the shadows towards the trolls, a spray of venom catching the first one in the face. Even as its flash-frozen head shattered on the stone floor she was on to the next one, punching through its torso and pinning it to the pillar behind it. Her sister-queen Cthil-Enap was the one who had first suggested binding shards of scavenged dwarven blades to their claws using ice-silk, and she almost purred upon seeing the shredded mess it had left of the troll's body.
The last troll was sticking by the apparent chieftain of the tribe, the survivors of which were maintaining a dense spear wall that had stalled the tide's advance even as the orc morale wavered. While it would be easy to charge in and shatter them, she decided on a different show of force. Chittering at her children for them to get clear, she opened herself up to the wind only she could feel. She had always been different from her sisters, the first to decipher the dwarven scout markings and later their writing, the first to unify their kind under the council of matriarchs, the one to declare the rotating system of which of the seven would be war-queens and which would be broodmothers. Part of the reason was that the ice which flowed through their veins had always sung loudest to her, the snow on the slopes always seemed to part to her, and her venom was so cold it caused stone to shriek and shatter. Of all the matriarchs, she was the most attuned to the whims of winter that buffeted her even now with spring on its way. With a rippling crack, icicles the size of a man formed and launched themselves at the orcs. There were few survivors, scampering off into holes and passages to spread the tale of her victory. Let them gather: scattered or united, all would fall before her.
Similar battles erupted at each of the six bridges, flanking and cutting off dozens of tribes, to be attacked and consumed at her leisure. Icy winds swept through Moria, stifling flames, icing stone, and darkening the hearth of every goblin and nameless thing in the depths. Winter had come to the Black Pit.
The Dawi would fall in good time, she could smell the warpstone calling to her even dozens of kilometers away. Their defences were too strong, though that wouldn't stop the occasional attack by the more bestial of her children. In a way she was almost thankful for the Dawi, weeding out the least intelligent and most impulsive of her brood for her. Fiyoth-Enap had some ideas concerning forging iron stone-tunnel-claws, but forging had proven to be beyond them for the moment with their predilection for ice.
Aer-Enap and her brood swept through the halls, herself leading two other war-queens while Cthil-Enap stayed to guard the broodmothers near the beachhead, guided by the wonderful directions given so freely by the Dawi ranger markings.
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Borik the Implacable motioned for his rangers to halt and dim the lanterns. There had been remarkeably little resistance to their travel, even though the tunnels seemed colder with each step. Peering around the corner, he froze. Not literally, but it was enough to put his fellow Dawi on edge. Between the pillars that marked the start of the bridge into the lost city hung a tapestry nearly seventy paces long. The silk was dark blue, but dawi and orc blood combined with what appeared to be various stone dusts had been used for color emphasis. Illuminated by glowing blue gems and depicting spiders vanquishing hordes of goblins, orcs, trolls, and beasts that looked suspiciously like demons, the banner placed a fear in his heart that he knew in an instant to be sorcery. Below it, in flawless Khazalid was written:
Behold Invader And Be Warned, You Enter The Domain of Aer-Enap, Matriarch Of Matriarchs, Entomber Of Rime And Web, She Who Quells The Rivers Of Stone.
Queen Under The Mountain.