Midnight RPG - Chapter 21.666

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The sun hangs high in the sky this day and you’re chopping wood among a forest of illusionary trees, they Whisper and fade allowing you to see through them as ghosts - they are now only ash. The old ox-yoke from dreams in the past still have themselves locked around your neck, your feet now blistered from the heat. Yet still your Orc ears take comfort in the sounds of whips cracking and worg growls, the songs of the coming victory. Suddenly your vardatch makes a strange noise, and you look down to find blood welling up from the split in the log. At your side, the stack of wood becomes a pile of severed limbs, and the few remaining broken-burned trees around you begin to scream as they float south down the Felthera... a graveyard of the ash of old tree-shepards and the broken bones of decomposing fae corpses, the belly of the great albino Dire Gator rises amid the ashen river - dead.
You wade up to your neck in a river of burned bones, blood and ash that flows through this bare and grey landscape. Your veins begin to burn and writhe beneath your flesh as hundreds of worms burrow through them, occasionally piercing the skin. Scorched-barked thorn trees spill their jagged, leafless roots down into the black river, swelling and throbbing as though it simmers with hungry serpents. A massive giant man standing amid the river turns to smile as he says...


"In the Dark God’s frozen claws. Scores will be settle in blood. One king, one avatar to rule, amoung the five only one will survive to lead them all. Even the greatest amongst them, those that have called the claws their home from before the age of man, will bow to this one."
And in your dream-scape an old Orc mother-wife strides the crest of the river wake toward you with a needle and tread. She lands sitting you on a stump jutting up in mid-river and carefully stitches your mouth closed. For some reason, you find yourself unable to protest. Next, she sews shut your nostrils, then your right eye. When she finishes, she licks your cheek with a corse tongue and a maternal smile, her breath smells like rotten eggs and the last thing you see is her daggerlike claw on a crooked, withered finger as she gouges out your unstitched left eye.

"One has raised the banners of war, his generals march and One has brought his faithful like vermin, they will come in their hordes from the bowels of Aryth. With might and hated alliegence the coldest wood shall burn and the fortresses shall become as dust.
A sea will form in the Caraheen, a vast sea of fire. It will stretch as far as the eyes can see. From the east, along a roadway burning with flames a great beast of metal will come, lumbering over the bones of Aryth. It shall feed the sea like none other, belching fire and devastation. Even death will not be a refuge, as the dark spirit of this fire will allow no rest and no end to torment. On the coming of Autumn the Whisper-Wood WILL breach, there is no hope... She is Maugrim, she dances with life yet she sings only Death.


And then the sulferous-giant hangs his head as if in prayer to continue with glib... The people of Aryth have come to live on frozen fields as though on solid ground. Nothing reminds them anymore of that which lies below. And would they remember, it shall be hell that will set them free. The machine, she is built. The Enemy shall gain all sustenance from this harvest. They mention the Shadow's cold embrace, but they never mention its flame. Might by right. We wield two of the sharpest swords ever forged: Faith in our left hand, destiny in our right. Only vengeance matters now. They say a demon's tongue impales the spirit; his righteousness penetrates the soul. The great lose will come at the three tree's last stand, elves burn with the world a'fire as her Forest-Folk's bleeding from the Arteries, the Demonbane enacts his plan and strikes to cut the tongue from the forest. Wrath brings her companions of ruin and retribution joining in and driving a wedge unlike any yet seen, while the mirror of god is granted an Exonerated gift. Let the pyres of the unbelievers light the way. And with all the hate of the world only the Eye beholden remains to enact the fall of Wrath, Priests and Swords. You have many worries little Mirrorbreaker, what will be your next folly? Yet forget you not, when it is down and the sky's rain has turned to fire, what can put it out?
And the massive man wades to your side, his head only above the surface - snatching you with one hand he drags you beneath the wake of the river Felthera where your friends already sleep. There is no life beyond this fjord, there is the Burning Road.







The unblinking black-eyed gaze of the Witch Queen[edit]

This is the vision I gave you prior to recap.


The avatars she uses to spy all over Eredane are her undoing. Three of them give in to despair, all committing suicide while her consciousness is elsewhere. It is a terrible wound upon her psyche. When they rise from the noose, the poison, and the fall as undead, her corruption is complete. The shock of her avatars giving in to despair and then becoming the hungry dead destroys the benevolent queen, and something else is left in her flesh.
Her first move while under the thrall of the Shadow is to gather her cult. They become her new council, the Witch Council, but even that is not enough to make her people turn against her. When she calls her finest smiths to her Arbor and demand they create for her a new suit of armor and weapons so that she might war on their enemies from the front lines, her people cheer. When she announces that Arderin, once the greatest of the Caransil’s heroes, had turned to Shadow her people despair.
In is when she announces that she is taking the Night King as her husband that the revolt begins. The High Court rallies its forces and attacks the Witch Queen and her consort. They cry as they fight and wail as they die.
She decimates those who stand against her and turns Caradul into a charnel house. Blood runs down the trunk of the Elder Tree until all of the bark is red Caransil wildlanders disappear into the deep wood under the protection of the dire beasts. Most survivors bend their knees and pledge their allegiance to their queen and her consort. This Witch Queen and the Witch King of Erethor welcome Jahzir, the King of Erenland, and Sunulael, the First Legate, to their wedding. Sunulael himself marries them, consecrating their union in the name of Shadow. Zardrix gives her blessing, circling above the Elder Tree once for every year of the Last Age.
Even their wedding is doomed to blood and slaughter. Arderin and his new bride turn on the once-human Night Kings, Sunulael and Jahzir, lashing out at them with eldritch might not seen since the First Age. Zardrix finishes circling the tree and sides with the Witch Queen and King, knowing their might is stronger.
The newly crowned Witch King speaks before a mighty assemblage of orcs, ogres, and shadow-beasts spawned in the breeding pits. The Witch Queen then declares humanity’s time on Eredane finished and explains her plan to hunt them to extinction. Her speech is met with such adoration and bloodlust to fight under the Witch Queen’s leadership.