Reading the recaps of the current guild campaign, specifically it's focus on a Wolf Spirit whose role is to direct the spirits of dead members of the clan to their rest, made me realize something. Other than briefly showing in a small event that Mal'garr's spirit was now serving Zul'garr's peculiar "Lady of the Abyss", I'd made no effort to actually explain how or why that happened. So, I've decided to write a few short scenes covering...well, what happened to Mal'garr's spirit after his death, how it came to serve Zul'garr's peculiar patron, and give some insight into the actual nature of the Lady of the Abyss that Zul'garr worships!
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The deck rocked gently beneath the elderly warlock. All around him the Orcs were moving, tending the wounded, sailing the ship, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. Mal’garr paid them very little mind. He was laid flat on the deck. He knew he should be weighed down by his armour, but he could barely feel it. He knew his legs should have been paining him, as they had been for decades, but he simply couldn’t feel them at all. His chest felt heavy, it burned. He could feel that his breathing was watery and difficult, and with each exhalation he brought up fluid. It was blackish. He assumed it was his blood. He assumed he was dying. Nar’thak had tried to heal him, but it had come to nothing. Okiba was by his side speaking to him, but the elderly warlock barely heard. He could feel the life leaving his body, strength leaving him, the red demonic light dimming in his eyes.
He used what little strength he still had to turn his head to face Okiba, forcing out words in spite of the blood and bile that accompanied them, befouling his long grey beard.
“Okiba, look after my staff for me. I don’t want it going overboard, and I don’t think I can carry it anymore.” He released his grip on the black iron staff, given to him in his youth as a gift when he had first completed his training and become a Shaman. He opened his hand, and let his staff fall to the ground. He trusted that Okiba would do as he had asked.
Mal’garr was broken, tired, and old. So very old, he had lived far longer than any Orc had any right to, extending his crippled half-life at the cost of the lives of others, many more deserving of their lives than he had ever been of his. Despite his fervent efforts to avoid death at all costs, the old fiend was surprised to find he felt no fear of it when its certainty faced him. After a life as twisted as that which he had lived, Mal’garr felt as if he would appreciate a rest. He closed his eyes, his breathing slowed, and the fel light in his eyes died completely. Darkness took his mind, and he fell out of the world.
Mal’garr awoke. He did not know how much time had passed, only that it had. His entire body burned and ached. He had hoped that in the afterlife he would be free of the physical afflictions he suffered from, but he felt worse now than he ever had. He pushed himself to his feet, feeling his legs struggle under his weight as they had always done, but feeling his body sting and burn as he shifted.
He stood now on what looked almost like a desert, and expanse of sand stretching out for quite some distance in all directions, broken up only by the occasional rock dotting the surface. He did not recognize this place. It was alien, and utterly devoid of life, and most notably, entirely colourless. Everything around him was dull and grey.
When looking around him gained him nothing, the warlock craned his eyes upwards…and saw the underside of a boat, floating alone in sky. He reached out for it almost instinctively with his left hand…but was forced to stop when he caught sight of his hand. It was…fleshless, entirely. Nothing more than a clawed skeletal hand sitting on the end of an exposed skeletal wrist. His eyes followed down his arm, up to his shoulder, and across his torso. His flesh had been burned away, leaving bare his warped bones, lined with glowing veins which he knew would have been green had the colour not been sucked out of the world.
He turned his head, to look at the other side of him, and found it much as he remembered it, fleshy, decrepit, and clad in his armoured robes. In the centre of his form, where bone and flesh met, he found the only colour he could see any more. Crystalline shards of deep purple embedded messily into his flesh. He recognized them as the remnants of soulstones.
Movement caught the Warlock’s eye. He turned his head to the sky again, and saw a body slowly falling towards the earth, surrounded by the remnants of what appeared to be a raft. He moved towards it quickly, ignoring the pain wracking his form. As he drew closer, he could make out who the body had belonged to. He saw himself falling slowly, charred and burned, a half-skeletal nightmare, buffeted by a current he couldn’t see.
He knew why he had never seen this place before. He was stood on the floor of the ocean, far below the boat on which his clan was escaping. They had attempted to burn his body, as was right, but had neglected to take from his corpse the bag of reagents and crystals he needed to perform his fel arts. As his body burned, it must have exploded, and the ruination of his body by mystical means had reflected upon his spirit in death. He searched for a while, as the ship moved away, trying to find his staff. It seemed it had not gone overboard with his body. He was thankful that Okiba had obeyed his final request.
He was dead and he presumed he was standing in the Shadowlands, the place to which souls which have not or have yet to be claimed by a greater power are damned. He had hoped that by swearing himself to the clan, and by dying in its service, he would perhaps have managed to redeem himself somewhat. To have earned some rest, some peace. The deafening silence told him otherwise. His spirit was abandoned, lost to the deep ocean, left to wander for eternity until either some foul entity ripped him from the Shadowlands for some foul purpose or until he went mad.
He could no longer see the ship which carried the Red Blades home, but he could make out its wake in the surface of the water he had originally mistaken for the sky. Having nowhere else to go, Mal’garr began walking after it, hoping that the wake would lead him to Kalimdor. If he was to be damned to walk the world unseen and unheard, he would rather walk the lands his people called home.