Soft, slow music resounded in the damp, hollow walls of the temple. String instruments of the bards who had been hired for a current ceremony to be echoing in the main halls until they would be excused by the host and paid in silver. Deeper in the holy place, soft chain mesh boots crunched on the cold, hard cobbles paving the steps of the winding staircase down to the dungeons. The music faded into a background atmosphere, muffled and distant, as the armoured priests decline into the earth deepened. As he reached the bottom chambers his torch flickered. Illuminated contraptions of torture and menace around the walls and centre. Empty cages croaked like dying men, their rusty chains attached to the ceiling swayed like the gallows at dawn bringing an eerie atmosphere to the rarely visited pit that he stood in now. Against the wall in front of him he waved his torch to illuminate a frail man and attract his attention. Stirring, weakly, the shackled prisoner stared up at the imposing figure before him. Clear, crystal blue eyes pierced down at the pitiful man. "They tell me you are an Uthgardt seer," the priest spoke bitterly. Spittle flew from his mouth like flies escaping a cadaver. As the prisoners eyes focus the blurred image of a man before him took form. He gulped dryly, desperately, breaking the patient silence after the words of the armoured figure. The priest stepped back from the man easily and began pacing too and fro, "The young one we recently acquired. Tell me what you know," he spoke with confidence his eyes never leaving the bound old fool. The seer's long white beard and hair was stuck to his frail, dusky body with sweat and caked blood. In the pale torchlight his eyes sought out the face of the voice but blurred and marred, his sight failed him. "Tell me what you know," the priest instructed again. This time a hint of aggression took his tongue and he spat the words at the prisoner rather than spoke them. His free hand clenched with a soft mash of grinding chainmail as he formed a fist. "He will grow strong, like his father," the seer grunted, "but he will find no peace in this life." The priest's dark green, ceremonial cloak swept around him as he lowered to a knee. Facing the seer, the torchlight struggled in the weak air of the tomb-like atmosphere. "No peace," the seer repeated looking desperately to his captor. Warily his eyes followed the chain around his throat and spied the bronze disk containing a black fist within it. A shiver crept down his spine, "Raise him, if you can, though his heart will remain as twisted as the roots of the great oaks." A slight smile grew on the lips of the priest and he rose slowly with a slight grunt under the straining weight of his chainmail. As he rose, he reached into his cloak and dropped a halved loaf of bread onto the Uthgard's lap. "Raise him we will, then," spoke the priest. Small crow’s-feet deepened in the corners of his eyes as he huffed a short laugh bringing his cloak around his body, "The boy has a fire in him, that much is known. His heart will beat for duty, and in fear of the Black Lord." "He was not meant to survive," the ramblings of the shackled seer croaked to the deaf ears of darkness as the torchlight which once illuminated the torture chamber found itself winding back up the staircase from which it came, "He was not meant to survive."
The year was 1327 DR, twenty-eight cycles gone. The snow was thick on the steep slopes of The Frozen far as it always was, the blistering northern winds wounding the morale of the Zhentil legion which marched in tight formation. Three days since departure from the forward camp on the western coast of the Sea of Moving Ice. Rigid discipline and fear of failure was the only factor of motivation to kept the numb bodies of the soldiers moving through the hellish blizzard that siege them from all sides. Roman was at front, a young and pious acolyte of Bane. He marched proudly, despite the foul weather in the safety of his elemental ward, an exemplar of physical and mental prime in his decorated plate mail. His steps fell beside those of the High Priestess leading the expedition. The cruel woman and all who followed her a stark contrast to the white landscape in their ebony black steel, darkened leather jackboots and cloaks. As they came over the small rise, they found the quarry they had hunted so long. So determined, was Roman, to prevent fate. Down the slope a vast glacier stretched, the orcish war party hustling across it in an unorganised mob toward the small shack in the shelter of some pines. Smoke billowed from the humble brick chimney, it was occupied. The Uthgardt Seer, wrapped in bear pelts and wolf skins approached the side of the priest and priestess leaning on his ritual staff, his world weary stare falling on the orcish reveres and their impending victims. His eyes closed. The priestess turned to him, chin tilted proudly as her voice penetrated the shrieking winds in an authoritive snarl, "This is the one, then." The seer's breath came on the wind in a weak mist, his long white hair and beard billowing chaotically in the violent weather, "It is." Soldiers seized the seer after a motion from the Priestess, dragging him out of her presence. One wave of her arm signaled for the Zhentarim riders on the glacier and their armoured war dogs to intercept the path of the raiders. A second command followed. The foot soldiers manoeuvred down the slope haste fully at the order of the priestess who snapped at their heels like a hellhound, Roman leading the assault. He cursed himself as a handful of the lightly armoured marauders evaded the interception and reached the shack. They beat in the door and windows, howling and barking in their black tongue. The shriek of a woman and young child carried on the blizzard to his ears over the raging battle he was quickly approaching, his eyes watered in determination. A portion of the war band turned to address the charging Zhentarim foot soldiers, an issued order at extension of Roman's mace detaching a line of troopers to manoeuvre around the right flank. and lock them into the melee from all sides. Blood steamed on his shield and armour as the forces collided in a spectacular orgy of chaos, the warmth of orcish blood on his cheeks stinging his frostbitten flesh as he bludgeoned his way through the savage beasts. His hellish lungs tore through the winds, an infernal hail to the god of Tyranny, inspiring his men who butchered mercilessly at his command. Reassembling swiftly, leaving their fallen amongst the orcs, the phalanx charged toward the woodsman’s hut. The riders and their war hounds pursued the stragglers who fled in all directions through the broad glacier, the wounded orcs falling to the viscous dogs; both human and hound. Roman's shield raised to catch an arrow from an orc who leapt out from behind the lodge with a short bow, a brisk pace toward the beast and a weighty bludgeon on its thick neck causing its fall. He turned swiftly after and was the first to enter the lodge, accompanied by two Northerner legionnaires wheezing and panting from the exertion. The sight before him was sickening. The woman lay fallen and without grace on the ground beside two butchered green skin marauders, her pale flesh exposed, brutalised by the loins of either orc or man. A towering red haired giant stood in the opposite corner howling furiously over a cowering and bloodied child who trembled as if he had stared into the eyes of Bane himself. Roman's noble blue eyes ached from the stinging winds, and the taste of fear and urine within the chamber that assaulted his senses. The legionnaires with him stepped out to either side immediately, shields raised, swords pointed, treading on remains of both orcs and the woman with no respect. The giant turned, a bloodied axe in hand from defending his property. He glared down at the comparatively diminutive priest who extended his plated arm, the black fist head of his mace pointed toward the red headed man as he addressed him, "Kneel, or your life is forfeit!" The raging father took a step forward with a growling war cry which fell abruptly short, bloodied spittle immediately erupting from his gaping mouth as the Zhentarim soldiers either side of him stabbed his un-armoured flanks and chest in ferocious and merciless repetition. The colossal fiend fell to his knees and locked eyes with the priest above him with an incredulous stare, the Knights still hacking and butchering his shoulders and back sending sprays of blood into the air. Roman took a step forward, his chin tilting proudly as he heaved his mace in a diagonal arc. The black fist shattered the skull with a satisfying crunch. The human collapsed to the floor beside his unconscious child, eyes wide from the fatal concussion and unnecessarily excessive sword wounds, his last attention focused unnervingly on the boy as his eyes dulled. Roman holstered his bloodied mace and stepped toward the snivelling child, fetching the unconscious young man by the back of his fiery orange locks to force his face to him instead of his fathers or mothers corpse. The child gasped eyes fluttering vacantly and fell limp after a brief moment, eyes rolling into the back of his thick skull. Roman released him, wrapped him in a thick blanket then heaved him into his arms, moving out of the shack where the Priestess and Seer had gathered patiently. Roman offered a single nod of his head, casting one last stare into the horror of the lodge before falling back into formation; they had found what they came for.
