Where Death Seems to Dwell

[Sreng]

(I'm giving some serious thought to rolling a Troll Death Knight. Rather than go the whole anti-paladin route, I'm thinking of an Ice Troll's more shamanic, ancestor-worship approach to Necromancy: the wayward dead are to be controlled, coerced, and negotiated with. While a human or orc might take an arcane, ceremonial approach to the path of the Death Knight, I imagine that a savage Ice Troll might be more inclined to approach it in a religious way. So here's what I've come up with)


I speak now of the time when a God fell to the earth.

So few of us recognized that night for what it was. For all that we sacrifice to them, worship them, and give them praise, few of us have the vision to recognize when Gods come among us.

That first night, so little was different. The winds blew cold, the fires burned hot, the lodges were full of our warriors and our women and our young. The sky rippled and burned with the spirit-fires of the North, and our enemies roasted over the cookfires.

Then the sky split, and the Dark Terrible One was cast down among us. We saw his prison hurtling from the sky, and we could hear it shattering Icecrown Glacier from miles and miles away.

The priests did not understand at first, and feared that the ancestors were displeased with us. We learned soon that this was not the case, when the ancestors themselves rose from the burial mounds and marched northward.

We took up our spears and bows and followed them. The dead rose up in droves, flowing ever northward. We met other troll tribes following their dead as well. Some took up arms against us, or against the dead honored ancestors. Some decried us as heretics against the ancestors or the great Primal Gods. We cut them down, clearing the road to the God of the Dead.

It was a time of great strife, and we served the Dark One well. Our armies were unstoppable, for Death loved us so well that the fallen, friends and foes, took up spear to our cause. The Spider Kingdoms were the first to fall, and their arrogant warriors were bound to our cause. The many bones on the plains of the Dragonblight rose up before our master, and the brood of Malygos the Sky-Tyrant cowered.

We drove the heretics into hiding. In Zul'drak, they made awful sacrifices to escape our wrath.

Many years of this, and the Great Dark One rewarded my faithful service with a great murmuring sword, marked with the signs of the ancestors. So honored was I that the spirits of the fallen will gladly do my bidding. Many came to serve the Master: trolls, men, and elves. The most honored were gifted with whispering blades of their own.

The human-boy was. He came, proud, to defy the Master. He left, humbled, a servant.

Now, the boy sits on the King's throne. His arrogant, human mind has poisoned the deathless one, and the Empire of the Dead has turned from its sacred task of binding and shepherding the wayward spirits of the ancestors. Now, he builds shrines to his honor and turns the Master's eye from his favored servants. His empire is one of betrayal and heresy. The armies of the Southern Nations have risen up against him, including the great tribe of the deathless Forsaken. Their allies, the orcs, are the very same people that descended from the Sky-Realm of the Great Dark Master, and surely they must seek to free their kinsman from the God-boy.

We will rise up with the soft southern Tribes, and show them our strength. Together, we will cast down the Frozen Throne, and free our ancestors to roam the earth as the Forsaken do. Boy-King slain, the Master will be freed of his prison, to ascend to the Sky-realms once more.

[Cloudjumper]

I am still unsure how they are going to explain the release of the Death Knights. I guess something similar to how the Forsaken have freed themselves yet still remained undead.

Really good outline.