The Knight's Tale
A record of the travels of Aidan Medren and his companions as his life unfolds.

Orcs of the Horde, veterans of the Icy North, the Treacherous Highlands and the boiling sands. The hour for our kind is dark. We live in a world that is tearing itself apart, our people die of hunger and starvation at home, while our brothers and sisters in arms die far from home. The Alliance pillages and burns the outer settlements, showing no mercy and stealing from the dead. Troops pour endlessly from the mouth of Theramore, clad in armor and with blades ready to strike. With machinations of steam and iron, immense war machines of great destruction lumber slowly towards our homes and our lives. The Alliance comes for us, brothers and sisters.

Still we carry on, against a powerful and dangerous enemy. Our allies in Thunder Bluff, whom we give our lives defending refuse to acknowledge that this cannot be stopped with pretty words and politics. The trolls of the Isles send neither aid nor troops to help the cause, and the recently inducted goblins taint and disease our oldest hunting grounds in the name of gold and profit. The Forsaken, far across the seas and entrenched in a battle of attrition against a nation of old, there is truly no one coming to the aide of the Horde's founding people. They have grown comfortable with the lands purchased for them with our blood. Now that they no longer have need of our boots or our axes, they toss us aside to the vultures. Truely, we are alone.

When a wolf is cornered, it is the most ferocious beast any can encounter. Like the mighty wolf, we must show the Alliance that our teeth can still rip, and that our blades can still cut. We must be strong, brothers and sisters. The times ahead will be some of the hardest we may ever face on this new world. We must be resolute as mountains in our cause, as steady as ox in our beliefs, and as vicious as wolves on the battlefield. As the world burns around us, we buffet the storm of ash and fire. Victory is coming, brothers and sisters. And our lifetime of endless hardship assures us, we are the only ones strong enough to reap it's benefits.

A glorious victory will not be given freely, we must enter the breach once more. But through the shells, the bombings, the bullets fly and the lance's march? The peace we have been promised, but kept from our grasp. The lives that were robbed from us, and the strength that keeps our enemies from sleep late at night. Rally behind Garrosh Hellscream, son of Grom Hellscream. We will know the victory that only the son of a great and mighty hero can grant us, and prove ourselves mightier than any foe. Loktar Ogar, brothers and sisters of the Horde, and may your blades never dull.

"Right," the grunt had said reluctantly, eying them appraisingly. "You look like a tough lot. I need a favor done," he had said, cutting straight to the chase. "We sent out a patrol earlier today, but we've heard nothing from them. We're spread thin with the recent troubles in the Barrens - but nobody cares to admit it. Can't scramble the men for a search party in time, so . . . I'm looking at creative solutions."

The adventurers had accepted their quest, and set out to investigate. What they found was the evidence of treason - the body of an orc in the water. Pulling it onto the riverside, the adventurers discovered that he had not drowned. His throat was bruised. He had been strangled. Through the mystic rites of the pyremaster, the adventurers learned the murderer's name, but they know nothing of his motives. What they do know is that if one man can make a whole patrol disappear barely without a trace, he can pose a danger to Razor Hill.