Friday 1 October 2010

The coming of Ug

Under the Baleful presence of the new moon they gathered. Their Herdstone Glowing faintly red as the warping energies of chaos exuded from within it. The mighty herd surrounded the stones and raised their voices in exaltation to the great god Khorne. Tied to the stone, atop the heaped spoils of war, was a single runt-like minotaur, chosen as a sacrifice by the bray-shamans. As the braying of the herd reached cacophonous levels, a towering bull, over 12 feet tall and rippling with muscle, strode from within the crowds and up to his victim. Plunging his hand into the beasts chest he ripped its heart out in a single flowing move and devoured it. Then, one by one more of the surrounding minotaurs came forwards and took a piece of flesh from the sacrifice, consuming it, at with it, some of the energies of Khorne himself.

Next the corpse of Galrag, Ug’s standard bearer who was ripped to shreds in a previous battle, was brought forward. Upon his corpse the herd descended, ripping what pieces they could out of his flesh as they picked him to the bones. One minotaur, a mighty champion much blessed by the dark gods, fought his way atop the carcass, and, swinging a large branch, forced all others to step back. He ripped the head of his former comrade from it’s shoulders, and took bite after crunching bit into the skull, until naught but the horns remained. At this point a red glow came into his eyes. He felt the hunger of the bloodlust, khorne’s gift to the minotaur, upon him but to a degree he had never felt before, and stampeded into the forests to hunt.

As the rest of the herd slumbered, satiated by the heaps of ogre-flesh upon which they had gorged themselves, This one, nameless, minotaur pillaged and destroyed all the villages he came upon, his flesh warping with the energies of tzeentch, as he spread chaos and destruction in his wake, growing ever more powerful, larger, fiercer and more crazed with each raid. Finally after months of pillaging he collapsed, exhausted and finally satiated he slept for three weeks, and awoke completely changed. The Gods had chosen to truly bless this one, granting him a second pair of arms, a second glorious pair of horns and a new hugely powerful frame, turning him into a frightful killing machine. The change was not easily won however, and the minotaur paid with his conciousness, now more beast than ever he existed only to wreak destruction upon the civilized lands, to rip men open with his bare hands and consume all in front of him.

He was not the only minotaur chosen for greatness at this gathering. A weak and lowly minotaur, Ulrark, was unable to force his way to the flesh on offer, and found himself starved, beaten away from the foodstuffs by his mightier kinsmen, and, crazed by hunger, found himself forced to consume the fractured shards of a destroyed elven waystone. As the magicks of chaos within him swirled and combated the elven magic of the waystone, he too became crazed and was driven to seek solitude in the forests. With a great scream of pain he felt the waystone embed itself in his stomach and begin to draw on the magical energies that had created him. His eyes clouded over until he could barely see and he stampeded, panicked, through the forest until he collapsed in a field.

He awoke to the quieted whispers of men, and when he opened his eyes he found he could see the glowing outline of one of them and could feel the magical energies exuding from him. He could feel the shard of waystone within him calling for the man’s blood. In one swift move Ulrark leapt from the floor and gripped the man by the skull, lifting him into the air and biting into him. As the mans lifeblood slipped away to be drank in by the crazed beast, Ulrark felt something else being consumed as well, for he was consuming the wizard’s soul. The men with the wizard fled in terror from this disgusting beast and Ulrark clattered back into the forest, to once more hunt the prey he had been assigned.

So it was that Cygors and Ghorgons first came to Palurin.

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