Nen'rokh

Xota
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Joined: Sat Sep 18, 2010 3:08 pm
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Nen'rokh

Unread post by Xota »

Here's a story I wrote for a "writers' challenge" on the official forums. The challenge was to write a fanfic about a mundane object that played an important role in world events. Since mine featured a head-hunter (no pet though), I thought I'd post it here as well.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic ... 3?page=1#3

It had been centuries since the Gurubashi tribe had come down from the mountains to interact with the lower tribes. But an army of dwarfs had arrived in an armored rivership, and were plundering troll temples. Temples sacred to the Gurubashi. So they sent out their witch-doctors, their venomancers, and their head hunters. Which included the young headhunter Zantal, not inexperienced, but not battle hardened, until today.

Wherever there was a high point or clearing, including Lake Nazferiti, the dwarven snipers kept the trolls at bay. But they couldn't venture far into the jungles without their high-range rifles rotting in the humidity. In the jungle, the trolls were winning. But they were losing the war, the dwarves were slowly clearing the jungle, occupying stone temples and fortresses the trolls had built long ago, keeping their rifles and machines safe.

Zantal's scouting party had run across a band of dwarves who had set up camp at a stone altar of Bethekk, the panther loa. The trolls managed to defeat the dwarves, but not without great cost. Most of the party lay dead or dying, but Bethekk must have smiled on Zantal. Relatively uninjured, he searched through the dwarves possessions for medicine. He also found their rifles, the steel not yet rotted out. Clever with his hands, he took one apart, to find out how it worked. The parts reminded him of the arrow traps at a nearby temple to another primal god. Traps made of metal that didn't rot! Souldarite. After tending to the wounded, he left to find a Souldarite arrow trap he could use.

Clever with his hands, Zantal cannibalized the dwarven rifle and the arrow trap to make a new rifle, with the sniping range the dwarven weapon had had, but durable enough for guerrilla tactics from the jungle. He called his weapon Nen'rokh, the dwarf destroyer. And with it, and copies he was able to make for other head-hunters willing to give up their traditional weapons, they were able to push back the dwarven invasion. No longer called Zantal, the former junior headhunter was trained as a Shadow Hunter of Bethekk as Nen'rokh, he and his weapon now a single entity in the minds of the Gurubashi.

The victory over the dwarves got the Gurubashi thinking again, of their former glory, and of Zul'Gurub, the great city of the gurubashi. And it got some factions thinking about rebuilding their empire with their blood god, who had not been seen in an age.
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