Hrmmph. Wut use be a troll wit' a broken soul?, the white-haired warrior ruminated bitterly as he glanced at himself in the sheet of polished steel that served as his mirror. Running his fingers over the jagged splinters of bone at the tip of his right tusk, he snorted and sat down, heavily, on his cot. Some of the less pious of his species might think next to nothing of such a disfiguration, but as a troll of the old school, Leyu'jin knew better. The body was naught but a simulcram, a hologram, projected from the mind, and the mind was but the impure, worldly mirror of the soul.
Tusks were what made trolls trolls, and separated them from the hollow, long-eyebrowed abominations which were the sad result of his race's ill-conceived misadventure with the Well of Eternity. Or so the historians said. Leyu'jin believed them; there were similarities between the so-called elven ones and his own people, the long-ears they shared but one of those shared traits, and having elves being the impure descendants of their great race was not unimaginable. Sumtimes da children be less den da parents, he mused mildly, not a trace of cognitive dissonance in his inner voice. The elven people, both Kal'dorei and Sin'dorei, were more powerful, he had no doubt of that, but each lacked the wisdom of the ancients that had contributed to his people's longevity of presence on Azeroth.
It had been the elves after all who had almost doomed their own people, and once or twice the entire world, in their hubris and their lust for power. Leyu'jin considered them as radiation, if he had known what that concept meant, or a wildfire, mighty and tempestuous and full of youthful vigor, but doomed to burn themselves out, inherently unstable and always one sliver's edge away from self-destruction. Not that he hadn't grown to be fond of them, or even love them. There were not a few among the Sin'dorei that he considered as brotha or sistah, and in the same way he tolerated the rest of his dysfunctional family, the Horde, so too did he bear their antics and craziness with the forbearance and patience of a father. Even when they ended up mangling his immortal soul.
"Wut ta do, wut ta do," Leyu'jin spoke out loud to himself, his quiet words, etched with a wry tone echoing in the confines of his quarters. He heaved himself to his feet and paced back and forth across the floor. Morinth. That single name cut through his doldrums like a searing blade through flesh. A snarl puckered his lips, and rippled backwards, drawing his features into a fearful grimace, like a roaring tiger.
The state of his soul was irrelevant; so long as the warrior lived, he would serve as a tool of the Mandate, in particular if need be the sacrificial blade that would tear out this enemy's vital organs. Cobrak. Lilliana. Xaraphyne. We mus' hav dem back. The troll spun around, catching a glimpse of himself in the dull gleaming of his steel mirror. But ah canna go out like dis ta meet 'er. It jus' not propah. As Leyu'jin pondered his reflection for a moment, a light, like the glinting edge of a blade in the dark, went off in his mind.
"Per'aps ma broken soul kin yet serve as ma redemption," he whispered softly. Padding to his desk, he sat down and began drawing on a sheet of paper, rough sketches being brought forth from a piece of writing charcoal. After an hour, he was satisfied, and pulled a piece of hide towards him. To this he committed a brief note, scribbled neatly. It would shortly afterwards be found posted up in the guild halls.