Og Blog

[ogrimskar]

Even Gods Must Die Part 1

The winds of Northrend howled like banshees in flight, bringing with them a biting cold which clawed at the eyes and the flesh. It was as much the enemy here as the dead who walked the landscape. Sapping hope and light in one fell blow, and nothing could fight that all encompassing cold. Not furs, blood, or shelter. For it seeped into the earth, it seeped into the pores and followed along with those who sought to escape it. Until that time when the claws of darkness dragged one into its clutches. And those who called it home were hardy, and tainted by its touch. Those who were foreign had not the strength that was born of the blood here. Those who came to the shore had to fight for every step, every breath.

There were only three left of the ten who set out that fateful day. The humans had perished long before them, the dwarven hardiness and stubbornness the only thing that kept their armored feet moving through the drifts of snow. Starvation took two of his people, the horrific rationing of their last dwindling supplies forcing them to make drastic choices. They had come across wild beasts, but the taint had seeped into them as well and made their meat poisonous to those who consumed it. One of his guards, the ever wild Soldi had thrown caution to the wind and consumed a wolf’s flesh raw from its body. He had spasmed one last time before they moved off. He was dead or turned into something far worse. They could only hope for the former. The last ones had died at the hands of the gripping cold, exposure to the elements doing them in. All that was left was three. Two foolish men who still followed their further foolish Thane who would never be.

Argyle, the former Master of the Guardians was too stubborn and too old to give up on their work. He would follow young Gunnar until the sun fell into the ocean. Hungir was simply too big and too dumb to know when death was stealing upon him. Even as frostbite took a finger and a toe, he just kept moving, unmindful of it. There was no pain in his extremities anymore, so there was nothing to fear in his simple mind. Gunnar appreciated the lack of complication within his mind. He wished he had such simplicity. Inhaling a lungful of the burning cold, he looked across the tundra and saw a glimpse of giant beasts lumbering. He did not know if they were simply beasts or the machinations of the Great Enemy. It did not matter. They were too many and too large for them to strike. Or perhaps they should, to bring an end to this ignoble journey.

“We should rest Gunnar!” Argyle called with his gruff voice over those howling winds, his gray beard whitened all the more by the blowing snows. He carried with him his great axe, shifting his fingers now and again so that the frost would not grow too strong on his fingers and locked his gauntlets to the metal of the weapon.

“No! We shall press on! This is our punishment! This is our destiny!” The call was returned by the sorrowful tones of the Thane-to-be. He did not even turn back to his Guardian, instead pushing on through the ankle deep snow drifts. His own sword, ancient and honed by those who came before him in his clan, rested at his back. The haft and the scabbard were frosted over and would require working to get out, but thankfully the grease they had made from a beached whale’s blubber kept it from freezing fully within the sheathe itself.

“There won’t be naught left to find your honor boy if you keep up this pace! Think about your last kin!” Argyle shouted all the louder, coming to stop in the snow. Hungir stopped as well, looking between the two men who he held his loyalty to. Master Guardian and the Thane that should have been. He didn’t know what to say or do, as he did not much of the time so he kept his mouth shut.

Gunnar turned slowly and there was something wild in his eyes. His black beard was caked in traceries of ice and snow, his wild hair weighted down by frozen sweat. He blinked slowly through a rime of cold slush, and raised a gauntlet to wipe away the worse of what had built up on his features. He stared at Argyle, stubbornly spreading his feet in that way a dwarf will when he shant be moved another inch unless he got his way. Gunnar snarled like an animal, hand reaching up to clasp around the hilt of his sword.

“You will do as you are bid Guardian! You chose to follow me! You could have remained at my Father’s side. You chose to side with me and throw yourself into this treason and this redemption! And now you shall follow me! By your oaths, you shall not defy me!” For a moment, through the months of guilt and pain, shone through the dwarf who could have led his Clan. Since his wife had died delivering his daughter, he had not been the same dwarf. Even as he took up the banner to defy his mad father and tried to retake his clan from the brink of calamity, he had been a shadow of his former self. And now, as what was left of his loyal followers dwindled and died upon the stalk, he was left only with barren fields to supplement his strength.

“I shall not Gunnar. And you know why. I defied mad orders before, and it becomes a habit. We should find shelter and figure a way to replenish our supplies safely. If we can find the ocean once more, we could fish and perhaps come up with something untainted by this land. See sense my boy. What honor is there in this death?” Argyle shook his head and stepped forward, hands raised, pleading in his own way with his leader. Hungir seemed once more to be confused and shifted his feet, looking between the two. In his simple mind, all he wanted was food and warmth. So perhaps Argyle had the better of it. But he could not say it to his Thane.

“So it comes to this! I should have seen your treachery Argyle. Why now? When there is nothing left to claim? Why choose now to rise your hand against me?” Gunnar’s voice came out a strangled rasp, his eyes wild and wide as his sword was yanked from its scabbard with a crack of ice. The shimmering blade slipped into his hands with ease, perfectly weighted for him.

“Put your sword away Gunnar and listen to sense! Look what this place has done to us! Perhaps we will die here. Seems almost assured. But the least we can do is take it on our own terms! Lets regroup, and do a proper sally into a camp o’ tha’ undead bastards! Go down swinging! Please boy! Don’t throw us away for nothing!” Argyle’s eyes would have been wet with tears if the wind and the cold had not robbed him of the ability.

“I will bring us the honor we sought my friend. I’m sorry you were not strong enough to see it through.” Gunnar’s voice trembled as it was robbed of all hope.

There was naught but sadness and wretched darkness within his mind now, seeing the last of the people who had walked side-by-side with him turn away from him. The cold had seeped into his skin and his bones, and the darkness had crept into his mind. It consumed him, took what little was light, twisting it. And as he stepped towards Argyle for one last time, he would not seek his embrace as before. With eyes burning and his heart hammering in his chest, his blade rose and pressed its tip to the heavy iron of his breastplate. Argyle did not even have time to defend himself from the strike, as he was so taken aback by the sudden action. Never in a hundred lifetimes would he think the dwarf he had watched grow from a baby into a man would turn on him like this. And in that last moment before the tip of the sword pierced his heart he had a moment of clarity. Perhaps the madness was genetic. Perhaps it had passed from father to son. He had never thought Grimfal capable of what he did. He should have worried about Gunnar’s mental health. And as his body fell back on the cold plains of Northrend, he was only thankful he didn’t have to watch the final agonizing end of Gunnar. Hopefully the Thane-to-be would find the peace he was seeking.

Gunnar Ironhands twisted his blade in the breast of his oldest friend, choking on a throatful of bile which he spattered onto the snow to the side of him. Hungir’s eyes were wide in shock as he watched his Thane kill his Master of Guardians. His hands gripped tightly to his hammer, but he did not raise it against his Thane. He didn’t know what to do. He was lost. Nothing in his past or his training could bring him any sort of comfort in this moment. He stared at the rapidly cooling body of Argyle, and then fell to his knee beside the corpse. His frostbitten hands scrabbled at the beard and throat of the old dwarf, trying to find a heartbeat he wouldn’t even be able to feel through his nerve damaged fingers. A low moan of sadness passed his lips as he found nothing. And the moan transmuted to a blood choked gurgle as the blade which had fled the heart of Argyle, pressed into the back of Hungir. Gunnar could not rightly say what drew his hand. Perhaps in the depths of his addled mind he saw Hungir’s convern as collusion with the traitor. Perhaps there was a voice there, pushing him foward and whispering from the winds themselves. But blood trickled down the thick brown beard of the big dwarf, until he fell forward over the body of the Master of Guardians.

Gunnar stumbled back from the bodies of the two men who followed him so far. As their lives pooled away from them, his senses returned to him. His eyes which had been clouded with anger and fear, were released from the grip of madness. And all he saw was what he had wrought. His sword was tainted with the blood of the last two who trusted him, the last two who were willing to give everything for him. And he took away the last bit of their lives for nothing. As the wind of Northrend howled on with no care for what he had done, he fell to an armored knee in the snow and let out a cry of hopeless and endless rage. His voice echoed across the tundra, a sound of such anguish and bleak hoplessness that it might have stirred the heart of even the coldest of creatures. But there was nothing in this land to heed such a cry. There was nothing here that would give him what he sought. And as his cry died down and the echoes stopped reverberating, he was forced to stand. Blood stained sword in hand, he turned his back on the crimes he committed. Inhaling another lungful of frozen air he stepped forward once more. And through the snow he trudged, alone and dwarfed by the enormity of the landscape. This was his last day of life, for his death would come during the night. But for him, this was the last moment of who Gunnar was. Gunnar was gone now, dead in the snow next to Argyle and Hungir. Left behind in the mad quest for redemption, for the failings that haunted his every step.

[ogrimskar]

Ashes of Memory

Ogrimskar watched as the world burned, and the ashes of what was were blown out to sea. With impassive eyes he stared at the past and allowed it to pass through his metal clad fingers, like sand. He closed his eyes once during that endless time, to fight back tears that would never truly come. Nothing could be returned, and nothing could be regained. And it still hurt so bad, that even in his unbeating heart he could feel the ache.

He had come here to find something. What was it he came to find? The past, history, old and unburied. He had prayed that it would lead him somewhere, that it would lead him nowhere. The duality is what upset him the most. How bad he wanted it, and how he couldn’t conceive of finding what he sought. It had not been burning in the beginning of course. It had been standing open and naked, stark and raving to the night skies above. The skeleton of his history, the bones of his origin. It had not been touched since they left long ago, left to moulder beneath uncaring sky. Had they left soon after he? Or had they lingered there? Pretending to be what they were no longer, keeping up the charade for as long as they could.

There were few who knew his story, the shameful tale that led to his death in the cold land of Northrend, left behind by those last few who cared for him. He saw her ghost in those smouldering bones of a settlement, walking along the well worn footpaths with her light step. Her hair bouncing with every movement, windblown and tousled. She passed him, with that challenging look in her eye. She had always challenged him. And he had loved her for that. When he saw that ghost, his cheeks stained with red, bloody tears forming. She vanished as she passed, gone like smoke in the night. The rest came and went, but had not the power that she had. His father, his brother, his mother. Argyle and his gruff words, Uhlrid and his quick wit. The ghosts of his clan came and went, though perhaps not ghosts. No, these were phantoms of memory not death. Many could still yet live, luxuriating in their damnation

The yawning abyss opened beneath him, like a great fanged maw in the earth. The thing that had swallowed up his people. It was cold and old, hungry and unyielding. The Twilight’s Hammer had come slowly and sickly, a disease which had swept over the weak minded. It consumed even the most powerful in the clan, promising power and riches. Even as Ogrimskar had mourned his fallen bride, his family betrayed him. They knew he would never understand, would never yield before the Void. And they had tried to take the last thing he cared about, the last tether to the living world.

He saw her in his plated arms, where once she lay in his bare hands. His child, his daughter. She who had become his whole world. This last little shred of his beloved. She had never cried, dwarven children were strong and stoic. He flexed his gauntleted fingers, remembering her weight and the way she shifted. He could still feel it after all these years. Another raw ache which would follow him for all time.  She vanished, as he remembered what he had to do. The lengths he had to go to protect her from his family. He had left his wife behind, and would never be able to visit her body again. But that was a small price to pay to protect her. She deserved to grow up without the taint of her clan, of her family. So he did the unthinkable.

He fell to a knee before the bones and the spirits, unable to hold his footing. He was weighted down now by his armor and his deeds. Was he any better than what his family had become? He had served a terrible power, and had been saved from it. Could they too be saved? Or had the passing of time so irrevocably damaged them? He had no idea, he couldn’t even find them. He had seen not one clue of his people since he had returned. Perhaps they were all gone, and their echoes really were their ghosts. Was that comfort? Or was that just more pain? He could not tell any longer, unable to distinguish the two aches from one another.

He had decided to burn it. There was nothing left of the past to preserve, and it remained only a mute testament to what had come before. Better to obliterate it and move forward as best as one could. It had not taken much to set them aflame, the structures of rotted wood had gone up quickly. There was nothing left of Gunnar Ironhands, and the people he was of. Now there was only Ogrimskar, and the scars he bore. Mental and physical, marring him for the rest of eternity. And as he turned his back on the burning past, and looked toward a bleak and unforgiving future, he could only grit his teeth and steel his spine.

For there was nothing but darkness ahead of him and only ashes behind him. And the transformation of those two things, was the gift he gave the world. He would be the one to burn the shadows. For was it not better to burn, than to drown?

[ogrimskar]

Cause Og is an original O-G! Thug life.

Credit to my guildie Mimi for this awesome drawing of the dorf himself.