GMFar to the north...
Lightning broke across the darkening sky and a howling wind brought sleet through the mountain peaks. In winter, the Frost Range was a white wilderness, but in summer it was wracked by gelid rain storms. To the south, the glassed waste of the Moonwreck was forever a deep, icy cold, created by terrible magic in ancient times. In the current age, that cold made madness of the weather.
Clad in furs and fleeces, a host of orcs thronged about at the feet of the mountains. The valley was littered with stone crofts and smoking chimneys. The clamour of industry was everywhere, farming, forging, the orcs were gearing for war. No crude iron here, it was gleaming steel, crafted with all the guile the orcs had stolen from dwarves, elves, and the giants. Plate and mail, and ferocious-looking helms for ferocious faces. They favoured boar spears and bearded axes, though some carried broadswords at their belts. Painted round shields hung from every wall or frame.
They said that orcs were spawned from the sins of the civilised races, and that those sins were written in the faces of each orc. Hence they differed greatly in coloration, features, but all were humanoid and most had some fur. Faces that ranged from elongated snouts to flat and broad, yet always they had impressive canines. Unlike goblinkind they had not been sundered from the Fey or anything so natural, they were the work of some cruel, malevolent curse, a creation of the Court of Stars.
Mud and filth splattered everything to waist height, the ground itself was a churned quagmire. Twisted icicles grew on every overhang or sill.
Above the multitude, one clan of orcs trudged its way up the slopes and into the woods, bearing torches that strained against the wind.
They assembled in a glade around an stone altar, where two crossed axes had been placed and a shaman sang to the mountains in a shrill, screaming voice.
"O Lord Dukagsh, come down! Come down from your mountain, we beseech thee! News we have, news of your beloved!"
The grass and evergreen trees were coated in lumpy, melting ice from the sleet, but the orc warriors stood tall and stoic in the storm.
The trees trembled with much crunching and cracking of wood. The shaman quailled in ecstacy, but the eyes of the orc warriors were wide with fright.
Something massive trod through the forest, purposefully towards them, and soon they saw its bulk above the trees.
Trees broke asunder and the Orc Lord Dukagsh came forth, stepping into the glade. He was larger than the largest orc or ogre, taller even than most giants.
Indeed, it was in these mountains that Dukagsh roamed after escaping giantkind, preying on his former captors and growing growing growing, a nightmare to them who became an icon to the orcs. This long-armed, massively-muscled monster orc, who could slay an axe-wielding huscarl of the frost giants with his bare hands.
It was said that the giants brought an end to the 1st Age, storming the Empire from the north, razing Axis. Dukagsh had learnt the giants' legends and their ways.
If a sin was twisted into the Orc Lord's face it was bestial, an act of violence and fury and revenge. His furred mane was silver, his leathery, scarred skin was brown-grey. A single, heavy brow and oblong muzzle framed eyes of brooding intelligence.
His nostrils flared, breathing in the scared scent of his followers, and his eyes glinted red in the torchlight. He wore neither armour or carried weapons. He didn't have to.
Puffs of steam shot from the Orc Lord's nose when he grunted. He did not appear to speak, but suddenly the orcs heard a deep voice, strangely soft like that of a father. It emanated from around them, or was it inside their heads?
"Why do you disturb me?" Said the voice of the Orc Lord.
The helmed leader of the orc warriors took a faltering step forward. He felt warmed by the voice, somehow encouraged or perhaps compelled.
"The Iron Skull reports that the woman has escaped again, O Lord. Our chieftain Lermoriach, he - he found her and tried to capture her himself...." Shouted the warrior, letting the outcome be lost in the storm.
"Lermoriach. Your chieftain." Dukagsh frowned, knowing the hearts of all orcs.
The warrior nodded, "Yes, O Lord. He was. But ordered by that dwarf-forged creature to follow the woman's trail like a hound!? Why shouldn't an orc rail against such service?"
The Orc Lord lent forward on his haunches, his knuckles touching the ground.
"The Iron Skull is not a creature, it is a weapon and mine to wield." He said, "Lermoriach did not serve it anymore than he could serve a spear. He served me."
As soon as the Ord Lord had spoken, the warrior realised he was right... and agreed wholeheartedly that his chieftain had been short-sighted, selfish even. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that the rest of his clan were like-minded.
Dukagsh stared up at the black sky, the sleet matting in his fur.
"Now draw your knives and slit your throats." He said.
The orc warriors nodded in unison, convinced in that moment that it was the wisest course of action. Together they unsheathed their knives, and with much sawing of tough flesh, slaughtered themselves where they stood.
"To disobey is weakness. Weakness shall be cut out." Muttered the orc shaman.
It was never the Orc Lord's intent to make an example of those who failed him. He simply removed them.
He sighed, breath misting in front of him. Perhaps he saw a face it in. All orcs were precious to him, but there was one who was precious above all others and she was not an orc. She was a human, a northern barbarian and her name was Seyja.
Dukagsh closed his eyes. He drew in a deep breath, and straightening up he withdrew into the solitude of the mountains once more.
Through the forest he dove, storm within, storm without, until he reached and climbed an outcrop of rock.
Lightning flashed, his eyes burned red as he gazed into the south. His fur was sodden but his lips drew back in anguish, revealing sharp canines as long as a man's arm.
The Orc Lord roared and the sky rumbled as if it was unnerved.
His beloved laid beyond his ken, beyond his reach, but she would be his, even if he had to rampage across the Dragon Empire to find her.
[Return to
HHE14: Victory of Life]
