Midnight RPG - Chapter 14.88

Kevin

[This recaps the visions/dreams that Durgaz had in the Laboratory of Vrolk, in the Obsidian Spire. I will try to capture all the information I noted to you in-person. Please NOTE if I miss something. You are WELCOME to ask questions, or try to "interact" with any of the visions to learn more as you have in the past. Just ask.]

As you pull your weery hide up to the open-sky chamber, the crown level on the Black Nail, you feed week. The others that may wish to sleep beneath the stars havenpt found their way up to the tip of the Spire as yet... Giving you time to breath, time to relax and let your guard down, if only for a few minutes.

You haven't been able to do so in weeks. The visions, they are coming outside of your dreams these days. It seems "the Vile" has found a way into your head. Only ONE OTHER has breeched your minds-armors, ...could this elf be compared to God? ...or rather, NOT "God" but "the Bain of All Mother"? For THAT "god" is not yours any longer... yet sometimes your tongue slips... a few dozen years beneath "the Shadow in the North" makes hard and fast habits no matter how far away from the Shadow-gaze you grow.

They (thinking down to your companions) know NOTHING of suffering! They know NOTHING of fear or hate or loathing... Eranon, the only friend you have save Walden is of elf-kind... He cannot know. He knows love, he knows the hearth, he knows kin, kith and kind. He may have offer sympathy for the chill you face nightly, but he does not know... The others, they are human. And though they have found their hearts long hidden from them by Shadow, they know nothing of lose. Their ancestors may know what they had that was taken when the Shadow fell, but that was before them, before their father's fathers... They fight for myth and legend. They donot even know what it is to live free... Nor can their hearts know what it is to have a home, to know your family or friends will not forsake you in the face of the Shadow... They cannot know the Shadow's volcanic embrace or how cold it is to be without it... They know nothing.

For all you have gained with freedom, you were a son of Orc... for all you have gained you gave up tenfold.

WHY?!?? Why did you do it?... Why did you believe that life beyond the Shadow would be a better one??

It has given nothing but pain and more lose. Why do you fight it brother? Why not go home?...

NO!

That is NOT who you are anymore.

You are among those the ShadowWall... Walden... called friend.

You are Durgaz, the mirror-breaker.

And you will have your vengance!

But not tonight. Not for these too few hours. These moments are yours. And to whatever god is out there you can but hold hope that Aryth doesn't ask for your allegiance... to...nigh...t.... [as you drift off to sleep]

As Durgaz head rests on the pack of the armor bits he has recently sequestered from the laboratory below. Your mind drifts into unconciousness. But your wish cannot come to pass... For all the torment that "the Vile" has twisted in your mind of late, the dreams still come. Aryth herself calls out to you. And with that you feel the hate recend, to be replaced with conviction. For in the times when your sleep is not interupted by constant images of fear and hate, the other moments are frought with a peace - but it is a peace that comes with great cost.

That COST is what drove you mad. It drove you to flee the Shadow's hold. It drove you to be alone. At the same time it comforts your sleep, giving you full rest - it requests something of you... What that is, must be your journey to uncover.

Go with the peace now as the cool breeze and cloud-cover fade, showing you scenes sometimes near, yet somethings far-away in both time and space.............

Durgaz

Fear and hate and madness are the shackles in which the Shadow binds us. But we are taught not to see the chains, just the layers of tempered steel that shield us from the Fey and the sons of Man, who would rise up and kill us all if given just half a chance.

I know all this, and it does not stop me from thinking this way on some nights when the stars disappear and I am left alone with only the dark to keep me company. I call these folk my friends and companions, and still sometimes I must fight the impulse to smash one across the face for raising his gaze to mine. There is still an ember of Shadow buried somewhere in my mind that cannot be extinguished, and it is my charge to make sure that it is forever kept free of the tinder that would make it a flame.

I believed that my visions were infallible, that they could not mislead. I was wrong. I may see where others cannot, and know the consequences of actions before they happen, but it is I who chooses what to do with that knowledge. My mistakes are my own, and that is both my weakness and my strength.

I am a weapon, turned back on he who forged it. I am a shield, protecting those who cannot protect themselves. But most of all, I am a free orc.

That is what separates me from my brothers. Someday, perhaps very soon, we will all die. They will die and be forgotten, a thousand faceless slaves conscripted to murder in the Shadow's name. But I will live forever as a part of every life I have helped to save, even though nobody will remember my name. Then I will have earned the right to rest.

the WHITE-WORM & his horde

[10 DAYS AGO]: A toad croaks sitting on a slippery rock amid the moor, given the name Worgren. It flows to a shallow from the Erenriver, at the base of the Eren River Valley. It is a place that you've marched through many times. The story was not more than a year ago this day that a lone Dwarf faced off with a Shadow-Clutch in that very spot. The foolish Dwarf had little hope against the giants, but it was his mantle to hold them so that dozens of villages would live. It is rumored he was envoy to the Witch Queen... But that is a fable for sure, perhaps Eranon would know this tale? No matter... In the night the toad has little time to flee when the foul muck-ridden heel of another such "Clutch" tramples its scaley hide into the moors.

On that night an army run across Worgren's Moor in Shadow's haste. The brutes are some 150 strong. Six dozen Orc-brothers, made up of seemingly as many tribes sprint in fear of being overtaken by their own battlegroup following on their heels behind! The proud pestilence of the Uruk stomp out all life that takes its time to slow before their mad march. The human mercenaries call them a "Shadow-Clutch", they are 75 motherless killers that hunt until their hunt is done...

At the front of the column rallying moreso that leading at this point is the orc called - Talûn-karkû, the White-Worm... He would eat your heart were he to find you. He calls out to the Clutch...

"YOU HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO SUFFER, YOU MOTHER-LESS DOGS! BEFORE YOU IS PAIN AND BEHIND YOU IS DEATH, CHOOSE AND IF YOUR MIND IS WISE YOU WILL DINE ON THE FLESH OF TRAITOR MY BROTHERS!!!

The haze of blood-soaked memory pulls over the marching of your orc brotherhood. For a moment you see the stars and then feel compelled to look back to Aryth...

VROLK the Vile & his Spire-Guard

[1 DAY OR LESS AGO]: As the cloud parts, you overlook a site that would be serene were you to not fully understand the inhabitants... A campsite, near a stone alter not unlike the one the human Thorton called "Satan Rock". You know this place. You passed by it when fleeing to save the human's life. At best recollection it is about 5-6 days travel (walking) into the swamps of the Dead Marshes, similarly some 5-6 days from the Worgren Moor.

But this time the swamp is infested with Shadow. Orc tents scatter across the area beyond the alter. Although the stars are not shining brightly in the skys on these recent nights, at best count their are 100-150 tents... 1-3 orc may reside in each, tents are not the custom of your orc brothers, but these are not brothers. These orc are of the Vile. You can see that from the strange bastardized holy symbols that you recall encroaching on the spot of the natural mirror that you destroyed not long ago. And the black tents remain. Some 3-4 of these, that you assume to be of higher station. Humans in dark robes walk about them. Women of human and halfling kind pleasure these dark Legates in the night. One of the three Legate men enjoys the company of male boys. Twisted is their natures... The one that is Kyuad's friend treats his women with pain, as screems of whip beating hate carene from his tent.

Apart from the smell of the orc horde their master meditates. The Vile sits in the center of the stone rock, that acts to focus his prayers. The elf appears veral and content, he awaits something. He shoots only a deathly glance as an orc troop has the audacity to question when the camp would move... Vrolk knows... they have found their place in the world and they would wait... For Jahzir has likely found him out by now. It would be on this place of power that he would commune with the Dark. If he be worthy his men would hold off the horde while his goal be achieved!!

Again the haze takes you. For another moment of relief you see the stars and then back to Aryth below...

the WHITE-WORM & his horde

[NOW]: The moon has been eaten by the sky this night! Talûn-karkû's "men" continue their march. Seven villages have met their makers as the band acts as much the part of ghouls or locust devourering the country-side. The Worm's orc troop have fared better than he expected... Less than two dozen have been evicerated at the hands of the Uruk that roar at their backs! THIS was the truth of things the White-Worm would say, on such marches... Those that made the final battle at the end of such a tear where those that deserved to find glory! It is as nature demands!!

"ONWARD BROTHERS, PUT SNOUT INTO THE WIND! CAN YOU SMELL IT?!?!! ELF-FLESH!! THE VILE GROWS NEARER WITH EVER STEP. WHEN WE STOP, WE WILL HAVE THE PRIEST'S FLESH, AND IT WILL BE GLORIOUS - ON THE FULL MOON BROTHERS WE DINE ON JAHZIR'S TRAITOR!!"

And for the first time in years the commander of Durgaz's youth smiles, his fangs stained with blood as his troop continue full bore into the hapless maelgral that wander the boundries of the City of Dead... For this is Cambrial's district that his Dafrum-Dâgalûr now plunge into! The orc and uruk alive make merry in the torturing of the dead, but they do not have the luxury of languishing in their kills... if you can call them that. This would be the practice the Worm feared his men would be lacking. With weeks behind them and nearly a week more in front - he may have wondered if his troop would be slow to act...

For wrath and ruin.

For fear of Shadow's dawn.

They are NOT.

The clouds cover your eyes... This time the fog lifts from behind the stalkers in the dark...

RADAGUG & his Dogs

[NOW]: And in the same instant that his commander tears across the Cambrial country-side, another orc makes his way to the point of his troop's mission. A goblin snicker swells up, but is beaten down before it can be heard in the camp beyond. The branching leaves of the jungle swamp give way as a dozen or more of the lowly servants of Izrador make their way through the muck and up next to the cold alabaster stone of the alter in the night.

Radagug, snorts - sounding more like a hedge hog than an orc. It is his way... He then lets free a fumey smell as he forces himself to vomit, holding the disgust in his mouth for a moment before lapping it back down into his gullet. The "sniffers" smell their orders and those that donot have that talent follow the grunt of their orcen master.

His fellow orc think him weak. But even Radagug is more than a match for the mongrels that make up the camp beyond the stone alter...

But that is not his goal. Is the Vile here? A dozen goblins creep around the alter watching the elf from the dark. They take comfort that the elf does not erupt to call his guards. They believe their scouting mission is a success... From behind Vrolk's spot of meditation they confirm their mission, then recede... They believe they have not been seen.

They are wrong.

And the Vile's lip curls. It would be only a short time before the Full Moon...

As Radagug's Dogs retreat to rejoin the White-Worm, you too pull back with them... Slowly floating into the mysts above the haze that Aryth has made for you. Finally a pillow on the land that you can now rest. Tomorrow you can reflect on what these images and dreams mean... Unless you want to go back for more tonight!!

(ie. you are welcome to ask questions or try to change the points of view of your Seer visions, if you like)

Questions

1) Here's a big one. The first time you told me about the fourth vision, it wasn't clear that Vrolk had actually SEEN Radagug and his dogs. Is that the case? Or is at least clear that he knows they're there?

2) In the second vision, I'd like to get as good a look at the Legates as I can. Do they have visible holy symbols anywhere on them? If so, are they traditiopnal symbols of Izrador, or Vrolk's weird new emblem?

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Midnight: North & South Portal