Misery’s Passage

Not every Titanspawn was a mindless beast bent only on rape and slaughter. Some were merely heartless pragmatists.

On the caravan-trail between the city-state of Hollowfaust and the predominantly Halfling community of Three Moons, in the Heteronomy of Virduk, lies a small sad town known as ‘Nimura’ on maps drawn far away, but called Misery’s Passage, or simply ‘the Passage’ by its residents.

175 or so years ago, a powerful adventuring group, composed entirely of Orcs, retired from the lingering battles of the Divine War, dispirited by the fall of Mormo, and abandoning their no-longer defensible position within the Hornsaw forest, now overrun with undead. They picked a small fort that overlooked the caravan-routes between Calastia and Darakeene, utterly razing it in a single bloody night, and deciding to build their new encampment on its ashes, the better to raid passing caravans, from the same sheltered position that once provided them a safe nights rest from bandit attacks.

The Orcs had no intention of actually constructing their ‘retirement home’ with their own hands, and instead they traveled to a nearby dwarven community, fashioned from the rock of the nearby Mt Somethingorother (the mountain between Hollowfaust and Three Moons) by displaced wood dwarves from the Hornsaw. Again, striking fast and without mercy, combining the magics of powerful Druids and vicious trained beasts (for they were especially fond of Wolf-taming), the Orcish ‘adventurers’ overwhelmed the enclave of dwarves and chained the fifty odd survivors into slavery.

Over the next few years, the town that the dwarves privately called ‘Misery’ sprung into being. A sprawling and defensible ‘palace’ of stone was crafted, smaller than a typical human manor house, but designed to be functional more than pleasant. The Orcs supervised ruthlessly, and dwarves who shirked their instructions died slowly over days, executed at the worksite, their cries incentive for their companions to continue working without complaint.

At first the dwarven slaves squatted outside, chained together, but later they were allowed to craft small stone huts for themselves (and their 10 ft by 10 ft square homes, 5 ft high, were arranged in such a way as to break up any charging formation headed for the main structure, as well as set low enough that the orcs assigned to watch duty could see over them effortlessly, keeping a clear view of the surroundings), again using stone they were forced to quarry from the rock of the nearby mountain. Above the quarry where they toiled, they could still see the charred and blasted ruins of their former home, now abandoned, an eternal reminder of where they were meant to be, and were they could not return.

The Orcs raided caravans for well over a dozen years, allowing some to pass with only a small ‘tax,’ and razing others utterly, depending on their own supply status, and also taking slaves from the survivors. It amused them to allow the dwarves ‘preferred slave’ status, and put them in charge of the humans and halflings captured, and soon the humans found themselves squatting in the corners of 5 ft high stone buildings at night, not ill-treated by the dwarves, but certainly not welcome, since they earned no extra rations of food for having an extra mouth to feed. Fights between dwarves and humans broke out on occasion and the orcs would laugh and place bets on how quickly the humans would learn their place, or be killed in unsubtle ‘accidents’ by the dwarves, who had mastered the ability to fight amongst themselves ‘below the notice’ of their masters over the last decade. The orcs made the mistake of counting on the internecine strife to keep the dwarves and humans from raising too much of a fuss, and spent most of their free time raiding into the forest for fresh meat and siring children on each other and the more comely (by orc standards) slaves.

The Half-Orc population was just reaching its teens and beginning to be groomed for slave-handling duties, freeing up their aging orcish parents for their own internal bickering when the Seven Pilgrims passed through on the way to the abandoned ghoul-haunt of Sumara. Mistaking them for any old caravan, the aging orcs rode forth and demanded tribute.

Say what you will of Taason the Black and his ethics, but his death-magics were without peer, and the orcs, powerful by most standards, died rotting where they stood as black storms of negative energy tore through them before they had even finished listing their demands. Over the next few hours, the necromancers and their undead retinue finished off the hundred or so orcs remaining in the town, and added them to their shambling bodyguard. They remained the night, and Carthylla, Sapheral and Paeridates are still remembered in the lore of the town for spending time learning of the plight of the residents and helping them to accept their newfound freedoms. At least a dozen Half-Orcs had also survived, and at the insistence of these more gentle Pilgrims, were left alive, to be integrated into the new society that would be formed by their mothers.

In the morning, the necromancers rode forth, as they had more important matters to attend to than assisting some rescued slaves to rebuild their shattered lives. By the end of the day, the remaining Half-Orcs were dead, along with a human mother who attempted to protect her child, and it was clear to the humans and halflings remaining in the town where the law lay, in the hands of dwarves.

And yet the dwarves had no intention of staying in this place, which the humans were now calling ‘Misery’s Passage.’ Within a months time, they returned to the mountain, fully intending to rebuild their home there, and begin the long process of rebuilding their interrupted lives, for they had remained childless over the years, silently agreeing among themselves to deny the orcs a future generation of slaves. The humans and halflings had come to no such agreement, and one day the town was inhabited by a few dozen humans, and a token number of Halflings. They didn’t consider leaving, for this place was the most defensible one they knew, and so they settled down, attempting to begin the long process of building a town in this strange place. Some knew the ways of hunting, having been brought along by the orcish hunting parties to flush game and carry carcasses back, and they began to hunt. Others broke into stores of foodstuffs that the orcs had held for their own use, for they had served it to them on many occasions and knew where it lay, even if they had never been allowed to taste of it. A few knew the barest skills of agriculture, and began to plant edible tubers and the like closer to the city itself, for ease of cultivating.

In a matter of decades, the tiny village, flush with a wave of fresh refugees, had hundreds of members, and was being built onto in all directions with wooden additions to the basic stone blockhouses. They received no word from the dwarves, and visits to the quarries for stone found their old home as abandoned as ever. It was if they had marched off of the world entirely, and the humans didn’t feel the need to examine that mystery.

While occasional visits from the necromancers had been uneventful, if disquieting, none expected Taason to return. In 28 AV, a group of necromancers arrived at the village and the black storms rose again. Only a few dozen humans, mostly women and children, hidden within the warrens dug beneath the orc ‘fortress’ (and used for daytime sleep and storage of the ‘pleasure slaves’) survived the attack, the rest rising and leaving with Airat and Taason, leaving a reeking trail directly into the tainted forest itself.

It was days before the survivors felt brave enough to peek their heads out, and the town was abandoned, dried blood and upended goods lying abandoned. The only bodies remaining were those of infants and animals, now being savaged by carrion birds, insects and rats, as every body able to walk had left with their killers, often carrying anything ‘useful’ with them, leaving the town even emptier than it had been after the dwarven leavetaking.

The oldest woman alive, Naia, had been born to human slaves in the town, and knew of no other life, so she grimly organized the children, buried the all-too-few dead, and began to rebuild, yet again. Over the next fifty years, before her death in the night to a simple fever, she managed to keep the dozen children alive and stable, again with the community filling up with refugees, and children’s children, until it numbered several hundred. No Halflings remained alive, no dwarves had remained behind (and she bred a distrust of them into ‘her children’) and no orc or half-orc was welcome within the stone buildings.

While entering the town these days, a person will see a fairly typical village of wood and daub (in a generally maze-like array), but at the center of the two dozen innermost buildings is a block of stone, often utterly concealed by wooden additions. The stone construction has survived several raids over the years, as the dwarves built them to be stout and impenetrable. The center of the town is taken up by a rambling stone house, in some disrepair at this point, but still defensible, and in a pinch, between inner dimensions and underground storage spaces, able to hold half the towns population of 300. Between the ‘palace’ and the outer homes, the entire population could be sealed in stone to ride out an attack, although the quarters would be cramped indeed. Of the outer stone houses, every one contains a cellar, at least 5 ft by 5 ft, and sometimes connecting to other such cellars, a bit of work started in the dark of the night, and of which the orcs were entirely unaware. Generally these spaces are used for storage of preserved foods and water supplies, as the villagers have learned to prepare against raiding bandits.

When the humans first moved into these spaces, they were filled with things almost too grim to mention, tiny carved stones laid over tiny bundles of bones. The dwarven decision to not bear their children into slavery did not change their biology, only their choices. These remains were removed and buried with reverence by the humans, who may not have loved their dwarven predecessors, but had no desire to be haunted by the spirits of their unborn children.

Naia, as head of a town full of children for a time, and by circumstance, foremost authority on everything, was known to tell those inquiring that the dwarves had gone to be with their own children, and perhaps it is true.

Misery’s Passage is now a fairly normal community, with a stone building at its center that allows it to withstand bandit raids, fierce storms or titanspawn raids, that is somewhat matriarchal (the town leader always seems to reside in the central building, and is Naia’s grand-daughter). The families descended from those dozen children who survived Taasons passage are considered to be the ‘official families’ of the town, and are respected as the leaders of the community. Half-Orcs, dwarves, orcs and wolves are all distrusted or even actively despised, by those who have heard only rumors of them.

Currently wolf-attacks are on the rise in the area, and it is rumored that one or more werewolves frequent the forest. Orcish raiding bands have also attacked in recent memory (an orcish ‘tradition’ that began a week after the Seven Pilgrims devastated the settlement, and may have prompted the dwarves to leave, as neighboring orcish tribes would often visit for trade purposes, and they were less than thrilled with the notion that the village had ‘changed hands’).