I am Dorden, once high shaman of Jekard the Mountain-Breaker and herald of His word in the capital city of Krushok Meir. I have lived a hundred winters and fought a hundred battles. I have stood at a place of honor by the side of three grand Chieftains. Twice, have I brought the head of the mighty ice dragon to my temple. I have crushed a thousand enemies with my hammer. There are few who can boast my achievements, and yet, there are none who can match my shame. I am Dorden, Heretic of the Age, doomed to exile.
Many cyclopes see heroism as a measure of brute force of arms. I say these cyclopes are fools. It was Jekard's instincts, not just the strength of his sacred hammer Kroth-Kallun, which secured him a place amongst the greatest of gods. He knew enough to choose the time and place of his battles and never once was he defeated. It was to honor Him that I called forth His power and opened the gap that now bears my name. In that moment, I did not know that, by preparing our warriors for a proper combat on our own terms, I would be renounced and branded an outcast.
Nadirak Death Fiend
The spring of AR 3 changed much for both my people and our world. The Larocian king had just taken an elvan bride and solidified a peace between their lands. The dwarves of Cladash would soon follow. My people wanted none of it. Battle is our way. It ends only in victory or defeat. But there had been no victor in the Empire War, only a great weariness. After so many brave heroes had fought their Final Battle and gone on to the afterlife at the Empire War's end, my people were lost.
It was the appearance of the little ones from beyond the Chasm that brought renewed hope. The imps warned of a terrible force from their home world, preparing to cross through the rift we had created and enslave or destroy all of Ganedan. My people saw battle on the horizon once more; glorious battle for a glorious cause.
We gladly joined in alliance with those we had once fought against. The Larocian humans, the Cladashite and Karthadian dwarves, the Illanthian elves, the Savincian gnomes, we had all pledged ourselves to this pact and united against a common foe. But unity had its limits. The other four pact members began making plans to construct enormous walls to block off the Chasm. Where my people sought battle, these others wanted only to hide from their enemies. We thought them fools, their spirits broken by the loss of their strongest heroes during the Empire War. In truth, they were the ones who truly understood the nature of our common enemy. And so, in the spring of AR 4, Dauldok, Grand Chieftain of Markadon, assembled the remnants of his army and led us forth into the Sorrowlands to face the Nadirak, blade for blade.
We marched with a new breed of untested warriors who would stand with us at the site of our last glorious battle. They strode forth with weapons in hand, snarling in anticipation, daring the Chasm to spit forth a challenge worthy to stand against a force that was so mighty and so many. It saddened me to see how few of them there actually were. At the end of the Empire War, we had marched with a legion that shook the ground under our feet and pounded the snow into a sheet of flawless ice. Our banners had blocked out the sun above our heads and filled the tundra with a sea of color. This group couldn't have formed a circle around us, not if they had laid down every soldier head to toe.
Hungry for battle, they stormed toward the Sorrowlands from the north. As we led them across the scorched, broken ground, I was prepared to relive the glory of that last battle of the Empire War.
We never reached the Chasm.
A battalion of Nadirak warriors found us on the waste. Not since the changing of the age had I seen such a huge mass of soldiers. At the time, I wondered if the whole of their infernal realm had emptied itself of every creature it had to offer. I later learned that they were only a small splinter group, an advanced force of scouts, possibly the first organized troops the Nadirak had sent across. Wretched, hateful, bloodthirsty creatures massed together from one end of the horizon to the other. For every cyclops warrior, there were a dozen Nadirak, all bred for the sole purpose of bloodshed and war. I knew that not a single one of my brethren would survive. Our Final Battle had come. |
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They swarmed us with cruel abandon, hungry and hateful. Worthy cyclops warriors fell on all sides of me, victims of base treachery. The Nadirak know nothing of honor, they desire only carnage. I could not stand by and watch such a pointless display. My fellow warriors deserved more fitting deaths.
I called on the power of Jekard the Earthshaker, and raised my hammer high overhead. Storm clouds roiled and jagged tongues of lightning lanced through the sky. Thunder cracked deafeningly as I opened myself completely to His power. I felt that power gather in my hands, as if I wielded the great Kroth-Kallun itself, and brought my hammer down against the earth with all my might.
For an instant, the world stopped, a frozen, silent moment before Jekard's power once again changed the face of the world. Stone shattered and exploded into the sky, opening a great canyon before me and my troops. The destruction stretched all the way to the eastern shoreline and a roaring wall of seawater rushed in to fill the space, crushing and drowning a thousand Nadirak and smashing the rent in the earth ever wider. For the second time in a decade, a shock from the Sorrowlands was felt half a continent away.
When the uproar subsided, we crawled to our feet, our hearing ducts ringing, and slew the few Nadirak who had managed to reach us before Jekard's wrath split the earth. More than two-thirds of their troops remained, but a league of ocean now separated us from them and the Chasm. Our destinies were not to become part of the ruin of the Sorrowlands. Too many of our kinsmen had done so already. We needed time to regroup, to rally our allies and fight the Nadirak on even ground.
But my people did not understand. Where I had seen pointless suicide, they had seen glorious deaths in a battle to end all battles. They had been prepared to make a final stand that would have surely earned them a place in the Hall of the Gods. And I had taken that away from them.
Grand Chieftain Dauldok himself denounced my actions and placed the curse of exile upon me. I had stood by two Grand Chieftains before him and yet he abandoned me to the snowy steppes. Had I not used Jekard's power to split the earth, I have no doubt that Markadon would never have recovered the loss of so many more soldiers. My people would have simply faded into the scrolls of history. Pitying him for his short-sightedness, I accepted my chieftain's declaration with true warrior's bearing and turned my back on Krushok Meir forever.
Now, I wander the ice, with only my hammer and the favor of my god to protect me. Dauldok desperately seeks to meet the Nadirak in battle again and has ordered the construction of bridges to span Dorden's Gap, but I remain satisfied. While his engineers labor to reach their goal, new cyclops warriors train with feverish vigor and their numbers slowly replenish. Their human, gnome, dwarf, elf, dragonkin and even imp allies have been preparing, as well. When the time comes, my people will be prepared to battle the Nadirak and the gods themselves will envy our strength and bravery.
One of the cyclops bridges spanning Dorden's Gap
I am Dorden, the Outcast. I walk the endless steppes in the winter of my years. My people have scarred my name with dishonor, but I am assured that my god has seen the true heroism of my actions. I am Dorden, Protector of Markadon. |
