Conquest of the Horde

Tressian’s gloved hand ran across the page presented before him, touching rune after rune. He could inscribe nearly all of them. Empower them. But they seldom did as promised. They never performed as well as he had hoped. This Naz’groth’s confession was nothing compared to Thalindel Dawnwing’s: A fellow member of the Fallen Triad.

The man’s green eyes weaved through the print of the introduction several times, a discontented frown managing to find it’s place behind locks of hair that fell in front of his face. Tressian flicked the last paragraph with a finger, “With no payment aside from my time! Hah...” Black shoes of fine leather, a short heel protruding from the sole, turned across the aged stone floor, “...Perhaps if it didn’t take days to decipher what was being said. If the script could answer the questions that I have. But no. Text cannot. A mentor still reserves that privilege.”

The book promised what Tressian had hoped to garner for years. The skill to raise the undead. To resurrect his prior mentor, the only stable figure in his life. What lengths he had gone to to get this tome, all for naught! The Coven in the Ghostlands... The poison in their well... So many bodies. The Magi would have liked to collect them, but perhaps the stench of fresh corpses was too much for the nearby Scourge to resist, the poor masterless fools.

And here he was, several steps ahead, but no closer to becoming what he hoped to. Nearly all the spells were runes. Sigils. Marks. Child’s play, used to prevent the practitioner from succumbing to arcane corruption. He needed something else. Something more.

“I need Naz’groth...”

Tressian slipped the book closed, letting it’s cover fall into place, hiding the forbidden contents from view. The arcanist took the tome in hand, heading for the exit of his humble Alteracian home, to gaze at the night sky. His vision drifted in the general direction of Outland; Or at least, where it was thought to be. The Gnomes had come up with a few theories, and the Dark Portal had always been of special interest to Tress... It was finally time for him to visit the massive dimensional waygate. Time for him to enter the world of the demonic, on the shattered plane of Outland, within the furthest reaches of the Nether.

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Black boots kicked up a small cloud of dust as the out of place form of an Alteracian nobleman stepped out of the Swamp of Sorrows, into the former resting place of the Black Morass. Pulling himself down into a squat, the man rubbed a line through the red dirt beneath his feet. He ground the substance between thumb and forefinger, bringing it up to his nose as he stood. A soft smile graced his face as he looked out at the vast expanse before him. The Fel was palpable even this far from the Portal.