Dark Star Rising

The stories and lives of the Grim. ((Roleplaying Stories and In Character Interactions))
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Khorvis
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Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Khorvis »

Khorvis was used to spirits.

The ancestors of his lost Clan, the elements of Azeroth, the souls of Grim who had passed. They all behaved according to principles known to the orc. Praise their memory, honor their work, do well by your people. Follow these tenets and the spirits would aid you in the quest for Peace. Excel and they would welcome you among them.

These spirits were different.

Clutching the hem of his fur-blanket to his lower lip, Khorvis cowered in the darkness of his chambers as he lay on his mound. His biological eye adjusted to the lightless stone as his engineered oculus scanned for heat signatures. It found none. What he could make out in the void of the small hours both competed with and complimented the abyss of his imagination.

Twisted forms of shadow contorted as they pressed through the hewn granite walls. While vaguely humanoid, they betrayed the bilateral symmetry of familiarity. Instead, some aroused the primeval disgust of evolutionary dead-ends: grotesque abominations abandoned by the future to short-lived three-headed existences, or painful splinterings into multi-spined miseries. And yet away these shades would not fade.

Frantically rubbing his eye, Khorvis watched as spidery limbed nightmares peeled themselves from stone and skittered their shadowy horror across the vaulted ceilings until they hung over his place of unrest. In what felt like a slow-motion reel, the thing painstakingly gaped its tenebrous maw until it had unhinged both its own inorganic body and space itself. An abyss of starless eternity opened above the disturbed Inquisitor, sucking in every last shred of luminescence from the chambers. Even hope seemed torn from Khorvis's heart as he stared up into the eventual nothingness that awaited him.

No, not nothingness. Something lurked out there in the void. Just beyond the periphery of everything. Something terrible and unknown, all-devouring and all-hating. Khorvis summoned the bottom of his reservoir of willpower and tore his gaze away from the ceiling to his side.

A shadow stared from empty black sockets into his eyes a mere inch from his face.

Khorvis screamed and swung a metallic fist through the cold air where the shadow had resided. As a single organism, the dark monstrosities swarmed over the stones and sent the High Inquisitor into a flight. Howling and cursing, Khorvis burst from his chambers and charged downed the passageway towards the Great Hall. He could feel the terrors giving chase, despite his refusal to turn his head as he ran.

"BLOODY! FEL!!!"

Huffing and panting, he snatched a torch from a wall sconce and crashed through the oaken double doors of the Great Hall. Khorvis caught sight of the illuminated Tome of Abendicus and ended his mad dash beside the pedestal. He spun and swung the torch like a troll berserker defending Hakkar. The warm light of the earthly flame spread across the orc's rampage.

There were no spirits. The only shadows cast were by patronless ale steins and overturned barstools. No hundred-limbed evils. No expansive maws spreading to swallow up all of life. Only mundane and ordinary shadows.

Khorvis turned again and glared at the Tome. He had doubted himself, at first. May be the war had finally taken the bite from his bark. Sanity was ever in short supply among the Grim - may be the Madness was spreading...

He would have questioned his dreams, were this not the third time in as many nights that the Shadow had returned.

"MAI'KULL!!!" He bellowed down the hallway towards the Supplicant quarters. "LE'SARA!!!" He roared at the ceiling, spirits only knew where that mage laired.

The High Inquisitor, clad only in his leathers, stood with crossed arms before the illuminated tome, waiting for the counsel of his arcanists.
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Maikull
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Maikull »

The candles flickered dimly in the stone halls of the Grim’s Library. All the tables and chairs were put in their proper place, with the exception of one table. There sat an undead mage, Mai’Kull. Adorned in the purple Fireweaver Robes, his mask and hat were discarded for once and lay atop the table. There were very few, if any Grim who were active the hours he was, and felt no need to hide his face. The loss of his Sin’dorei Grace to undeath still shamed him, especially around other elves, however he was not one to openly admit it.

Various books and tomes, some open, ranging for various topics were also scattered about the table before him. Titans, Old Gods, Demons, The Chant of Light. Mai’kull rubbed his eyes, even undead his eyes grew tired of so much reading. He was still on edge of his discovery within the Tomb of Tyr, and wanted to not only identify what Old God was trapped there, but if it were truly dead or lurking about.

With a snap of his fingers, the empty goblet at his side filled with conjured glacier water, and once it reached the brim he reached down and took a long sip. Things didn’t taste quite the same, something he felt he would never get over. Setting the drink down he flipped through the pages citing the Church of Light before him.
"BLOODY! FEL!!!"
Mai’Kull perked up at the sound of the disturbance, ‘That didn’t sound good’. He sat there in silence, allowing his senses to take over and absorb every detail. The air, the pressure, the temperature, the sounds of stomping feet, then a crash as a door down the hallway was breached. Mai’Kull sprung from his seat and blinked across to the Library door. Clenching his fists a barrier of icy aura surrounded the mage, his eyes glowing with power as he emerged from the archway into the hall. He had just taken the first few steps towards the sound of the commotion when another roar echoed through the chamber.
"MAI'KULL!!!"

"LE'SARA!!!"

That was Khorvis, and he did not sound pleased. Something was wrong. Dashing down the hallway he rounded into the Great Hall and came to a stop. The hall was empty, save from the High Inquisitor himself in his basic leathers. His arms were crossed, but he looked out of breath, distressed. Which was not a sight you wished to see an Orc in.

“High Inquisito---“ he began to question, but his eyes glanced to the side taking note of the Tome of Abendicus upon the pedestal next to him. A look of sudden realization crossed the Mages face. He had read what was within the book many moons ago, now he understood why he was tasked to do so. Regaining his composure, he began approaching Khorvis, “It started for -you- then?” he inquired to the Orc.
Kiannis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Kiannis »

Kiannis shot upwards from his cot in a cold sweat. He had come to find his initial supplicants quarters to be more than adequate for his living situation, and decided that the space would serve well to keep the elf nearer his charges. A solemn reminder of his frivolous past, bad dreams were not an unusual occurrence to the man- however lately they had become darker- less bearable. He stands, stumbling several steps to his small writing desk, to open a drawer and pluck one of several dozen cigars.

Suddenly, as he turns, the room seems to expand to gargantuan proportions- Kiannis so incredibly small in the center of it all-- only to snap back to its original proportions after a moment that seemed an eternity. He holds his head and steadies himself on the door frame as he shoulders out into the hallways.

Vertigo.. unusual. He has trouble thinking the words as he slinks to the nearest ascending stairwell. Perhaps some fresh air..

He takes a deep, calming breath as he leans his back onto the stone fortifications atop the towering ramparts. Pressing a small pebble to the tip of his cigar, he begins to recall the morbid visions of his slumber.
The memories come fast. Blurry, ill defined and fragmented. The dreary horizon of northern Lordaeron- Four figures take cover inside of a rotten farmhouse as the flimsy door bows inwards under the assault of something savage outside. The focus changes involuntarily just as the door falls inwards, revealing a stuttering, twitching mass of rancid ghouls charging forward. A snow covered mountain rises to the right, the elf trudging down the slopes in a knee-high blizzard. Suddenly a shot rings out- Kiannis looks over his shoulder just in time to see a shadowy silhouette indent the snow. The grassy basin of Arathi- Immensely tall stonework palisades loom in the distance. Kiannis kneels in the dirt, holding a lifeless form. The body turns in his arms, a female elf, snarling and snapping as her face decays nearly before his eyes- It lunges out and sinks her teeth into his exposed neck.
A minute or so passes as Kiannis furrows his brow intensely. These were not quite the memories he had ruinated on for so long- and yet somehow they did not seem wrong. His pondering is cut short as he hears a familiar voice bellowing from below. He would saunter in just about the same time Mai'kull entered, staying near the door in the flickering shadows of nearby torchlight. He looks between Khorvis and the Forsaken, still drawing on his acrid cigar, offering a short nod.
Marrgot
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Marrgot »

((Sorry if this is a little late, I had tech problems and didn't check the forums till today))
The shaman known as Marrgot stared blankly at the jumbled characters in front of him, and ever so slowly raising his pen, striked them out. Groaning with more than a little bit of frustration, he flipped open the journal next to him, trying to make heads or tails of the writing. His writing. Marrgot couldn't even read his own words now. This infernal... condition... is getting worse, he thought.

It had started... about a day ago, if he remembered correctly. He had been translating some anceint texts when he realized that at some point, the letters started... changing, like their component parts were being rearanged. At the time, he had dismissed it as a misconception born from his unfimilliarity with the language in question, but then the problem started expanding. Soon enough, Marrgot had stopped being able to read even Orcish. He had thought it was simply sleep deprivation, but he soon found that presented it's own problems, as the constant sounds of wind and rustling paper, not to mention C.I.L's[*] constant clicks and mutters as they organized everything, always lulled Marrgot into sleep. Now they were more irritating than anything he could possibly imagine. Making it worse was that the darkness started to move like the letters, with silloutes of bookshelves and totems becoming shadows of monsters and assasins.

Maybe I should talk to a healer... He thought tiredly, putting the journal back on the shelf. As he wandered slowly twoards his bed, his lethargy was suddenly dispelled by a loud cry coming from the main hall. Even more suprising, the voice sounded familliar. Was that... Khorvis? Marrgot shook his head.


Then it happend AGAIN, and yes, that was Khorvis. Even more intriuging was the contents of the words themselves. The High inquisitor was calling for the two mages, Maikull and Le'sara. Sighing, Marrgot grabbed a pen and parchment, for whatever good they would do, and rushed out of his quarters[*]. Something might be going on here, and he did NOT want to miss a chance at live documentation.

Soon enough, he found Khorvis, noting Maikull and... Kiannis, for some reason, had also found their way here. He had just regained his thoughts when the Forsaken spoke.

"It started for -you- then?" Maikull asked.

Marrgot, bieng qutie confused at this point, sat back into a shadowy corner and watched proccedings, for now.


[*]((C.I.L is a person... sort of. they're kinda like Marrgot's assistant, but I'm not finished with the character so I won't go into too much detail))

[*]((I added a bit here because it did NOT sound right.))
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Khorvis »

"IT?!"

Usually focused and collected in the heat of battle, Khorvis appeared out of sorts now having been confronted with what might be the beginnings of madness. The forked braids of his beard were loose and askew, grey whiskers sticking out in random whisps, and his hazel eyes were bloodshot from stress and lack of sleep.

"If by 'it' you do mean the attempt on my life by the very shadows of my chambers! A chase by black spirits through the Halls! Then aye, 'it' has bloody well started!"

The orc gesticulated wildly as he yelled. Nearly slapping Kiannis as the elf entered, Khorvis grunted at the Inquisitor a terse greeting. "You do be up early, before the sun, ranger."

He then returned his attention to the mage Mai'kull and the tome of Abendicus while failing to notice Marrgot's quiet hiding. Glancing between the open book and the arcanist, a solid thought congealed within Khorvis's skull.

"Then you have had the chance to read Le'Sara's translation of this old text? Have you distilled its intent?" Leveling a foul glare at the book, he could have burnt a hole through the binding if the heat of his stare were to manifest. "I do swear that I will feed that rotten tome to the corehounds if it has brought some curse into our Halls..."
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Maikull
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Maikull »

Mai’kull walked around to the proper side of the podium, and began flipping through pages of the Tome of Abendictus. Finding the passage he was looking for he began to recite;
“Some of our order have begun recounting visions, received both in slumber…”
He paused for a moment as he read ahead to the next words, he gave a brief sigh before continuing,
“…and in waking.”
He looked about the hall. To judge everyone’s reaction to these words. He knew something was wrong with him, but not while he slept. The mounting anxiety, the subtle whispers in the back of his mind. Sleep was the only time he was at peace. There was being cautious, but he was feeling down right paranoid. Maybe this explained why. He knew Khorvis was affected the worse, but they could not be the only ones to feel the madness descending, they too must be concealing it as he was.

“These text’s read of the fate of the Priest Abendictus and his followers. It’s a warning. It started subtle; night terror, visions, hallucinations, whispers: things we could dismiss…sound familiar?” He closed the Tome, still watching those in attendance. “Next thing you know, you have kinsmen losing their damned minds and murdering each other in the middle of the night.” He could see Khorvis was unnerved, shaken but still together, for now. Orcs were never fun to fight when they were frenzied.

“It all started for them after the discovery of this ‘Penumbra’, whatever the Fel it is…and started for us, when we started to examine this tome and relics of Maledictus, items I am assuming are connected in some way to Penumbra.”

“Destroying the tome will do us no good…” he said in reference to Khorvis’ malevolent glare. “If your plagued by a demon, you kill the thing that summoned it, and shatter its link to this world, else you’ll only end up facing another later on. And the secret to discover that is right here.” He said, motioning his hand, as to display the book which lay before him.

Reciting this time from memory;
“The timid priests of the Cathedral of Light do not even know what decays in their hallowed catacombs. The essense of Penumbra will always be a threat to the Human race. Perennial and lurking, the darkness will no doubt rear its many heads…”
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Khorvis »

[[ Some musical accompaniment, if that is your thing. ]]

"The Cathedral of Light."

Khorvis said the name of the institution aloud again. His gruff baritone registered along the ancient timbered crossbeams of the Great Hall with little sonic competition. The gloomy trio stared together at the Tome with the High Inquisitor's intonation echoing in their ears. The stirring of a shardling in Deepholm was more likely to break the silence than the Grim who contemplated Mai'kull's reckoning. In that void of interdiction, the Tome appeared to assume a more intimidating aura, now dismembered of its sensory impediments.

The wrought-iron sconces of the Great Hall flickered and hissed as a phantasmal wind whipped through its corridors. In a gale-force shear, all of the the torches were extinguished simultaneously, plunging the Grim into inky darkness. The gusts dissipated and in their wake lurked a foreboding silence.

Khorvis immediately dropped into a defensive crouch, moving his hand over one of the rough-hewn banquet tables and clutching a butter knife. He held the simple blade up in a combative stance designed for quick evasive reaction, leveled along the height of his neck. Scanning the unlit breadth of the Great Hall, Khorvis failed to identify any intruders with either his biological eye or the mechanical implant. Only the heat signatures of Kiannis and Mai'kull registered, spread loosely around the Tome's pedestal. Marrgot's outline was blocked by a pillar, and thus missed.

Even still, the sense of foreboding grew as his comrades moved into their own defensive postures. Khorvis grunted a terse order to stay silent. The small hairs along the backs of his arms and neck began to raise, and then he remembered. The ancient vaulted ceilings of stone, inherited by the Grim from masons of centuries passed, wallowing ever in shadow and neglect. The cobwebs of the rafters had been so thick that they could suspend the very bridgeworks of the Thandol Span...

"The shadow falls from above!" Khorvis howled and swung his meager blade over his head as an onslaught of spidery creatures wrought of the Void descended upon the Grim!
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Maikull
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Maikull »

Khorvis wrote: The Tome appeared to assume a more intimidating aura…
He felt the shift in magic in the air. Did it just react too what Khorvis said?
Khorvis wrote: A phantasmal wind whipped through its corridors. In a gale-force shear, all of the torches were extinguished simultaneously, plunging the Grim into inky darkness. The gusts dissipated and in their wake lurked a foreboding silence.
Mai’kull was still focused on the Book. He could still make out the magical aura of the Tome sitting atop the pedestal. His mind racing on options as he took a step back away and prepare himself for whatever was to come.
Khorvis wrote: "The shadow falls from above!" Khorvis howled
Mai’Kull finally looked up and was able to take in the complete darkness around him as Khorvis shouted out. Tackling the worst of the problems first, Mai’Kull filled the hall with light once more as the magical aura around him combusted in bright flames, illuminating the creatures descending upon them.

Fireblast over Kainnis and a Fireblast over Khorvas, clearing both combatants line of sight; He could feel the burning magic within him heating up. Targeting the largest concentration of void-spiders he could see he infused one with swelling fire energy. It wouldn’t take long before its physical form could no longer sustain the magic and it would detonate, taking its friends down with it and spreading the effect to the ones who managed to survive ((Living Bomb))

The residual magic from his spells had ignited several of the demons within the hall, each one flaring up for a brief moment as if a lightning bug. Sending out a stream of flames from his hands, he managed to fend off a few which had managed to surround him. He had to nullify the book, it did this. Rather there were spiders in the loft or not, he was sure it was the tome that beckoned them to attack...
Marrgot
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Marrgot »

“This really is a priest job.” Marrgot muttered angrily, leaping away from a shadow. Franticially calling upon some lesser spirits, he sent a lightning bolt flying at the nightmare’s face. The aberration vaporised with a howling scream Marrgot expected to wake the entire guild. Maybe only Marrgot heard the scream. He didn’t really know how these things worked, and he didn’t have time to figure it out.Taking the few seconds of calm he had, Marrgot reached out to the elemental spirits that occupied the area and, as a result of weeks of meditation and proper respect, felt them respond almost instantly. Lightning burst from his hands, leaping from one target to the next as if it had a mind of it’s own. ((chain lightning)). For a moment, the electricity illuminated the area around it, and the fight seemed to be going in Marrgot’s favor. Then the lightning was gone, and in it’s place was darkness.

If these creatures were insects, then darkness was their nest. In it, they multiplied rapidly, and with these conditions, that meant they had a infinite army with no clear weaknesses. Or many clear strengths. Or clear… anything. Know thine enemy, The mantra went, and right now Marrgot was definitely failing in that regard.

Well if you can’t know what you’re up against, know what they are. His grandfather’s words echoed in Marrgot’s head, as some back part of his mind took over the fighting part. Right now, his enemies were fighting a disjointed, surprised, surrounded, and ill equipped group of people duressed by nightmares, who were separated by hordes of enemy forces. Wonderful. Marrgot thought.

The main problem here was the separation. Each grim was isolated from the others by a wall of opposition, fighting their own wars. If the grim were to fight together, they could cover one another, and communicate easier.

Since nobody else seems to be taking command…

Mustering as much volume as possible, Marrgot shouted to his allies.

“TELEGRAPH YOUR LOCATION!”
He then raised a hand to the sky and shot a lightning bolt straight up, clearly visible in the darkness. He hoped his friends would figure out what to do from there, because the monsters seemed to respond to all the noise Marrgot made, as they were attacking him in greater force than before.

Time to let my unconscious do the thinking and lend my focus to the fighting, he scolded himself as he once again reached out to the elements.

((made a few grammer edits. I have a bad habit of writing spontainiously))
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

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[[ New post coming soon. My week got absorbed by a wake and a funeral. ]]
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Khorvis »

Khorvis dove to the side and barely dodged the wicked chain lightning that tore a hole in the air where he had been standing. The primal, crackling energy connected with one of the wraiths and forced its incorporeal form back into the Void. Scurrying underneath one of the broad oaken longtables, the orc emerged on the other side to confront a trio of spectres.

"Dream or not, I will carve your bloody black flesh, hauntlings!" Khorvis roared and charged the horrors, spinning and slashing his butter-knife like an assassin's dagger. His blows simply whiffed through their misty forms, drawing nothing more than a rancid chill in his arms. Growling, the warrior sank back into a defensive stance to reassess when he noticed the tell-tale glow of Maikull's spell in the belly of one of the beasties.

"Kodo piiiiIIIISSSSS!!" Khorvis howled as he again launched himself from the magical annihilation and in the direction of the old beer engines of the saloon. A crash and a splintering of wood as the orc's cartwheeling form rocketed away from the detonating wraith. He emerged from the debris, knife in hand, flailing wildly as a massive spray of ale spewed from disconnected hoses.

The wraiths closed in.

"I'll take you all together!" Despite his most berserking efforts, the blade met with no meat. The shadows' claws sunk into green flesh, tearing and pulling. Khorvis howled and continued his buttery bladestorm as the torchlight faded and altogether disappeared. Alone he was left in a pool of darkness, with utter nothingness stretching in every direction.

Khorvis stood alone, his leathers and his knife the only wards against an infinite darkness. He sank to his knees, his aged eyes grasping for purchase, yet there was none to be had. The knife clattered away. Time drifted away.
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

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He had done it again. In the face of danger, his strength had not been enough. It did not matter how many years that he had pushed himself, his training with all manner of weaponry. There were foes who simply laughed at his brute force and crude sticks.

Another failure. Another prison. The Commander would not be so forgiving this time. It was unlikely that Acherontia would be there to save his spirit. No cabal of felmancers to piece his hide back together. No Tuskinar to drag him from the bottom of the bottle.

Despair closed in upon Khorvis, the darkness a mountain bearing down upon his solitary form.

...

After what was an unremembered amount of time, the orc lifted his gaze, though the notion of "upwards" was entirely subjective at this point. At first the void appeared uniform in its emptiness, like staring down into a dark well. Slowly, his eyes began to focus on something... not darker, but more empty. A hole in the void of space, and though it could be purely the lack of reference, it seemed terribly far away.

Khorvis strained his senses to ascertain the shape of this anomaly, but it was futile at this distance. Even his mechanical eye, so perfectly crafted by Bloodscream, failed to achieve the proper dilation. He stood on shaky legs and took one step forward.

SMACK

The darkness exploded in a shower of stars, spots, and pain. "FEL! COCKS!" Khorvis roared and clasped both hands to his face. The nose was definitely broken and blood gushed between his fingers. He lowered his hands, staring at the blood, as the spots gradually faded, and the way it dripped to the floorstones. He paused.

Stone? Looking up, Khorvis faced a masoned wall with a blood smear at head height. He made a throaty grunt, stuffed as his nostrils were, and spun around. The Great Hall, familiar in its aged banquet tables and trophied arches. Had he returned to the Grim bastion? His spirits threatened to rise but wavered just below his jowls. Something was quite wrong with the scene.

It was as if he were looking through a fogged mirror, or a still pond laden with a skim of a rancid oil. Shadows twisted slowly in a light whose origin appeared untraceable. Strangest of all was the state of the Hall. Never had Khorvis remembered the stonework being in such disrepair. The mortar was literally cracking and trickling dust before his very eyes. The very beams of the cathedral ceiling, ancient timbers thick as a Tauren, sagged in decrepitude. Through a ragged hole in the roof, the astounded warrior thought he caught a glimpse of that perplexing maw in the void.

"By Grom's rotting arse, where the fel do I be?"
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Khorvis »

Familiar corridors wound and met at all of the expected intersections. The ancient and ornate stonework bore much of the same wear that years of passing hands and brushing armor had imparted. Even the strange marble beasts cunningly wrought into the cornices by whimsical masons of yore crouched in the same positions. And yet the Halls simply felt wrong. A queer decay marched through the complex, never settling for long, and though from one glance to the next it seemed to vanish and clutch at a different vantage, it always tormented the mirror-memory of this dreamworld that Khorvis now haunted.

The orc paused in an alcove and deliberated internally. The spectres had not followed him here - thank the elements - and there did not appear to be any immediate danger. Though this unsettling blight twisted the enclave he had once considered the most safe of demesnes, the structure maintained its integrity. No, the most frustrating aspect was the peculiar lack of Grim. Khorvis had been wandering the Halls for at least an hour; he should have encountered someone - anyone. A courier, a Supplicant. Fel, even a shit-stained peon returning from the stables!

Not a soul. It was bloody unnerving and the warrior was getting pissed. With meaty thud, his fist connected with the alcove's wall, this time breaking no bones. Khorvis grunted and snarled through a clotted nose, then took notice of his hand. Unlike the ashen grey world about him, his own flesh and leathers stood out in warm, saturated hues. Swampy greens and darkened hide. He brushed away some dried flecks of blood from his palm and tried to ignore the dissonance. Time to find some answers.

Khorvis exited the alcove and marched past a corroding brass obelisk. He followed a trail of plaques set into the floor, down another passageway. His head too prepossessed with the determination to solve this enigma, Khorvis failed to notice the scratches and gouges obscuring the runewords beneath his feet.
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

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"Hrmph! This place DO be queer..." Khorvis muttered as he ascended the secret stair in the High Inquisitor's office, glaring backwards at the desk receding below. The contents of the office had completely changed; no longer did the relics of his past sit above the mantle. The Lasher's desk of resolve too was missing. Instead, relics of a vaguely Tauren descent dominated the quarters. "I must speak with the goblins tasked with housekeeping..." He shook his head and continued his ascent.

Passing the still-maimed portraits of Inquisitors, Khorvis mounted the observatory. Strange - according to his memory, the glass had been repaired with thicker panes within the last year. The Commander's orders had been quite clear after the debacle with the Fel corruption. Which did not explain why the windows were shattered. Instead of a view of the Nether, the observatory stared out over the landscape of a grey Tirisfal. The sky was an broiling mass of silvery mammatus clouds, a condensation of expectant hatred bearing down on the still pine forest, but that all paled in comparison to the landscape's zenith. Where An'she should have hung, sublime in her passage, gaped ... what Khorvis could only have subconsciously characterized as the empty socket of the Earth-mother's skull.

Void. Blackness could not begin to detail the maw that sucked from above. The sheer emptiness, the absence of anything at all struck Khorvis like a hammer to a Pandaren gong. A stark hole in the sky stretched outward into infinity, imposing the sensation of falling upwards - or rather, that the observer hung tenuously to Azeroth and risked plummeting into oblivion.

A sickening wretch, and Khorvis backed away from the contents of his stomach (quickly they hissed and sputtered, then finally evaporated in a grey mist). Overcome by fear and vertigo, the orc stumbled away from the vista and down the winding stair. This was madness. a vision sent by the devils of the Nether. Under no such sky could a world exist. He clutched at the banister and dared to glance back towards the dread vision.

All along the walls, the portraits darkened. Disfigured faces of past Inquisitors twisted and split open like overripe fruit. From their mouths crawled horrors of shadow, warped and deformed beyond any recognizable form. With ebon claws upon countless limbs, the spectres skittered over stone and mortar towards their prey.

Khorvis fled.
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Khorvis
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Re: Dark Star Rising

Unread post by Khorvis »

Down the crumbling passages of the Grim Halls Khorvis ran at breakneck pace, casting occasional terrified glances over his shoulder. The wraiths still pursued, scabbering along the floors, walls, and ceilings with gnashing maws. The old orc's heart was pounding so loudly in his ears that he thought the aged vessel might burst. By the time he had descended below the catacombs, spots were beginning to creep at the edges of his vision. These beasts were unlike any mortals Khorvis could recall: relentless, unswerving, unyielding. Switching paths and circling chambers, he did his best to evade the pack, but the nightspawned hounds continued to corral him. Outflanked and out of options, the warrior made his choice.

A descent into the earthen bones of Tirisfal, through tunnels long ago quarried though not a part of the original stronghold's plan. Khorvis knew how dangerously close they did stray to that awful, pulsing source of evil. They had all felt it years ago, when the rogue mage Knithawk was shackled in the bowels of the catacombs. Something horrid lurked in the bedrock below the Whispering Forest. Now there was no other escape...



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As the Deathgate closed, Edgar "Boneslave" Hornridge abruptly halted his ascent from the catacombs. The folding between the Shadowlands of the Ebon Hold and the Grim Halls neatly turned closed but not before he caught a familiar scent. The Master... fleeing? Boneslave turned and stared down the ancient passages to those subterranean depths. Yawning caverns and pitch blackness were all that awaited the fool who strayed down their way. That, and a dark foreboding that kept the Grim at a safe distance...

Edgar hurried his rotting way up towards the Hall proper. The was no reason in the slightest for The Master to haunt himself to the depths. Not unless he was in grave danger! Matron Theira and the others! He must find them quickly, tonight, at that foolish auction!
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