Apostles of Doom

It was surrounded by impossibly tall peaks, which in turn were surrounded by smaller mountains and then an enormous ring of massive hills and rough lands. At the edges of these were fourteen tremendous spires — spires so tall and relatively thin that they could never have formed naturally. D’Orc legend had it that Loki had imported them from the Abyss and shored them up with magic to withstand the natural forces of Astlan.

Encircling these spires was a mighty river, whose width ranged from half a league to nearly three quarters of a league. This river was fed by a source below the Doomalogue, which flowed into four massive tributaries that radiated in the Primary Inter-Cardinal Directions to the circular river and then continued on to feed the rest of Easter Norelon.

To the west, eight massive obelisks as tall but far wider than the spires rose to form a magical wall protecting the henge from forgotten forces that had arisen from the central desert some twenty thousand years ago. Forces that had threatened the Doomalogue before Zarvarst’s time, well before the Desolation. Such timespans caused Tal Gor’s mind to reel. If it were not for the fact that they were still over thirty leagues from the encircling river, and he could plainly see with his unaided eyes the immense Spires of Doom, he would have thought such tales and description to be pure myth.

Tal Gore was suddenly distracted by the fact that Didar An Sep of the Fen Horde on Romdan had flown over to Zargvarst and had started pointing to various locations in the sky above them. Tal Gor looked towards the locations to which the D’Orc had been pointing, but saw nothing. Perhaps a few small specs, but that could be dust in his eyes.

After a few moments of the two staring at various locations, and the other D’Orcs doing the same, Zargvarst moved in closer, and gestured to Lob Smasher to also close in. Once the elder had done so, Zargvarst shouted to them. “It has been a long time since I have flown over these plains, but is there any reason why riders on hippogriffs would be flying patrol over them?” he asked.

Both Tal Gor and Lob gave him shocked expressions.

“Hippogriffs?” Lob asked, puzzled. “As far as I know only Nuren Alvar use hippogriffs on any scale. How many are you seeing?”

Tal Gor quickly began chanting to activate his Eagle Sight. It was one of the few chants that he was quite good at. He turned towards where a couple of the D’Orcs were focusing their attention. Sure enough, there was a patrol of six orcanoid riders on beasts with the head, wings and fore claws of a giant eagle and the hind legs of a horse. He could not make out the race of the riders nor any insignia; only their basic forms and vague colors. He did not recognize the colors as significant.

“We have spotted four patrols in various directions,” Zargvarst replied. “We are looking in the others.”

Lob Smasher shook his head and spat over the shoulder of his D’Warg. “Sniveling, traitorous mountain elves! They ride where they have agreed not to ride and betray their oaths! They are most likely too frightened to attack us at the moment, but they will be gathering reinforcements.”

Zargvarst nodded. “As I suspected. We should land and fully arm ourselves.” Lob nodded, as did the rest in earshot, which for the D’Orcs would have been all of them. They had been riding in their lighter underlayer of armor, since they had not expected to be challenged in known orc territory. These plains had multiple orc tribes and they bore markers of trust from the tribal leaders at Mount Orc, which accounted for the majority of tribes in Astlan.

Didar An Sep yelled back, “They are still few enough and far enough away that we should be secure on the ground while we’re changing. We will have plenty of warning should they try to descend on us.”

“They would need to be abysmally stupid to attack a party with five D’Orcs and six orc warriors on D’Wargback,” Tal Gor’s brother, Bor Tal, said.

Tal Gor suppressed the thought that the six orc warriors — his family, by and large, were rather superfluous in that assessment.

Zargvarst looked at the young warrior skeptically. “They are elves! Intelligence and the normal rules of logic have little to do with their motives. They are cowardly, conniving, dishonorably duplicitous creatures of pure hatred and bile. Sanity is not something that factors into their decisions.”

The Inferno: Mid Fourth Period

“We’ve got something!” Diocate Temerlain shouted into Arch-Vicar General Barabus’s quarters. As with most passengers and crew, Barabus kept his door open to assist the Inferno’s air circulation system’s efforts to keep the ship cool.

Barabus looked up from his notes in surprise. “You’ve spotted Talarius?”

Diocate Temerlain nodded excitedly.

“Where?” Barabus jumped out of his bunk.

“Let’s go to the bridge and I can locate it on the map.” Temerlain grinned enthusiastically.

“Excellent!” Barabus shouted.