A Warlocks beginnings
#1
Beads of water, slithering through cracks of stone. The soft sound as a droplet sheds its grip upon a stalactite and falls down to disturb a collection of still water. The cool desert air rushing across bared, ashen-green skin as night descends over the length and breadth of Durotar. The sound of controlled breathing, rhythmic as a chest hewn from muscle and sinew expanded and contracted, overlain with thick braids, black and oiled. The Orc known as Damoxian sits cross legged in these confines, his hands clasping a thin metal needle, the tip of which was sliced through his skin now and again, drawing blood fresh from a wound before being placed over a thin sheet of vellum. This day, as every other, he stood on a daggers edge, wrestling for control of his soul.

He was a Warlock, a creature ill trusted by his own kind, cast to the winds by his own kin. When they looked upon him they saw one who wished to impose his unyielding will upon the world, who would barter his soul with hell itself for a chance at power. But for Damoxian, no demon in the burning legion could bedevil him half so much as the demons of his past. For Damoxian had already lived his personal hell, show to him by the humans who had interred him all those years ago.

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Strength and Honor, all that an Orc aspires to lie within these words, simple words but steeped in meaning beyond the obvious. In his youngest days they had meant something to Damoxian. Strength and Honor had meant something when a veteran warrior had brought his family through the foulness of the dark portal from a world that had started to die, to a new land that promised possibility once more. Strength and Honor meant something when the clans went to war with the humans, when wolves descended from the hills with the Horde upon their backs, cutting a swath through humanity.

Strength and Honor meant nothing, the day the beating heart of the Horde stopped, bereft of the demonic vigor. Strength and Honor died the day that steel clad humans had come upon the village of the Bloody Harvest tribe. An Orcish child watched with golden eyes, already hardened to life, as a father and brother threw down their axes and surrendered themselves and their family to a life of imprisonment. That child looked into the glazed red eyes of his father as an alliance soldier clasped the boy's wrists and violently jerked them behind the boy's back to be bound by a thick length of rope. In those glazed red eyes of his father, the boy saw nothing, the absence of meaning..

Days upon the road, days upon a trail of dust kicked up by warhorses parading a line of "savages" past peasants who were ready with stones and gibberish words to greet the line of Orcish captives. A young orc boy with golden eyes felt the raw emotion of hatred, mixed with the physical torment of muscles burning and aching from a walk into the maw of hell. When the boy's limbs failed and he fell to the ground, he heard a crack of bone as his own fathers leather clad heel came down upon his elbow, the oblivious warrior unknowing as he managed to mechanically place on of his feet before the other and listlessly shuffle forward. It was only a mother's care that spared this boy, arms still powered with feeling scooping the child from the dust and cradling him up to her chest as that now useless arm hung limply at his side.

Walls of wood, high walls of wood that to a boy seemed to dwarf the ancient forest trees for stature. Walls of wood that were bars of iron by another name. Walls of wood that crafted a life of despair. This is where a boy would watch the pride of the Horde wither and die with a final gasp. The smell of waste, the scavenging for food amongst the buckets of slop thrown carelessly upon the ground. The beatings received for showing anything that resembled sentience before those who had become the boy's keepers. These were the ways days passed. Eventually a boy's father would show some spark, enough that he managed to fasted his warriors harness into a shape more useful to his current status, the straps of it cinching tightly around a support beam on one end and around the fathers massive throat with the other. Guards looked on, vindictive grins upon their faces as coins were placed and fingers pointed, the low laughter interrupted only as one atrophied leg struck aside a crude table and the snapping of a boy's fathers neck was heard through the encampment. Other Orcs paid no attention, but a boy watched through golden eyes as his father died and a boy came to an understanding. The boy would not ever become his father. In the dark corners of a camp, old eyes watched a boy as he watched his father. In the dark corners an elderly orc nodded to himself as he came forth into the light. Even as listless as they were, other Orcs backed away from a elderly Orc who saw within a boy the promise of things to come.

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"This is not an ending. This is a beginning. To know an Orc is to know the History of an Orc. In these days, where I feel the slipping of my control, when I hear the path of damnation louder than the voices of my allies I commit this down. I will not surrender as my father did. I will not let it consume me and leave me a husk of what I truly am. I will not forget where I came from nor who I am. For I am Damoxian, Warlock in service to the Horde."
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