Gorzash
Battle-Jaded Orc
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This fan fiction is based on a role play, but I'm trying to incorporate the elements of a true novel (or as many elements as my unprofessional self can incorporate).
This is going to be a little different than most fan fictions: it is in a book format and hence, I had to upload it as a series of images. I'll provide links to the chapters' albums as I upload them.
If you don't feel like reading it in this format for whatever reason, I've copied the text below each chapter.
Chapter 1: The Vengeful Stone
The rotted door gives way as the Orc’s armored boot tip rattles it once more. Numbness has begun to creep into his toes, but at last the sacrifice pays off. Wood sprays outward, and a heavy musk seeps into the already stale air. Small clumps of dirt litter the ground and smaller particles irritate his eyes in the momentary stillness – then in the ensuing chaos. The Orc is the first to react. His weapon is not easily curbed from its destination; a defending sword futilely clashes with his warhammer, and the foolish marauder gasps a few final times as his lungs and ribs are crushed to ruins. The victor advances mercilessly.
His main target can be harkened easily by bestial sounds and barked curses; typical for a man who is wanted for murder, theft, and cannibalism.
He catches a waft of moldering carrion, and its putridity nearly breaks his concentration. A silent gag is all he can afford in a moment of such severity. The Orsimer rounds a final corner, staunching the flow of air through his nose and bracing his weapon with clenched hands. No more cursing. Only snarls. The corner of the corridor passes sharply and slowly, like a sideways curtain, until the chamber is fully visible. The Orc feels his blood slow as he locks onto furious, animal eyes that glower madly from a shaded mass at the unknown end of the room. The werewolf propels itself forward too quickly, a blurred vision of swarthy fur. The Orc is barely able to stumble backwards before the fiend’s paws hurl him into the hard earth. Mighty jaws clamp and tear at his exposed upper ribs; he bellows and thrashes as the teeth sink deeper, but knots of black furriness clog his throat and smother his cries. The hairs that cover his vision seem to sway this way and that as his sight becomes increasingly dizzied, and his hearing slowly shuts off. He knows that it will not be long before he becomes a pale, bloodless thing, another one of the rotting bodies. And then the jaws suddenly release; the Orsimer instinctively scrambles to his base, as a vitalizing adrenaline rush saves him from the torture of his dripping wound. But he has no time to be thankful: focusing a frantic eye on his foe, he sees why it has let go. A flurry of claws and teeth again surges forward, this time for his neck. He reacts with instincts that he does not know he possesses and turns a staunch mass of shoulder armor to the monster, delivering him from anything lethal.
The pain, however, is returning now, crippling, paralyzing. The Orc’s muscles contort in a twinge, and a long shiver tears through his body. The warhammer that he had previously held tightly now dangles from half-open palms that shake erratically.
And then, like floodgates unleashing a sea of water, the hatred overflows in his heart. The memories swarm relentlessly, and with hellish ambition, he lashes out with his hammer, battering flesh and fur, feeling the impact reverberate through his bones. The mongrel bears fangs in agony, trembling at its shattered form.
More hate, more memories. His hammer again flies viciously, this time catching a jawbone, open in mid-whimper. The beast crumples to its knees, and the baneful whistling of air is heard by both as warhammer descends upon skull.
After nudging the body for safe measure, the Orc falls heavily atop a nearby barrel, the feverish rush having left with the battle. His darting eyes progressively calm themselves, and he negotiates steadier breaths past his throat, muttering between them,“I’m… too old for this…”
After a few minutes in the deafening silence, the agony fully settles in. Clenching his ravaged flesh, the Orc watches as a thick, murky redness spills over his uselessly curled fingers. Removing a crimson palm from the bite wound, he grimaces, and he seldom does. I’ve been through worse… he voicelessly reminded himself. And it’s true: his injuries are the least of his troubles. In the spreading stillness, the feelings arrive, umbrage fresh and painful. Grief, pity, remorse, doubt. He is nothing more than a savage, who murders men. That’s what he is – a murderer. He kills for money; he kills to live. The usual wave of nausea broods within his stomach, and the scent of fresh blood does not offer relief.
“I’m not… not like them… No, they’re the animals…” he mumbles between quivering breaths, and they agitate the dust in the air. The particles swim away from him in brisk currents.
“You all did this to me!”
He cries at the glazed-over eyes of the monster’s corpse. Even in death, a wicked grin is slathered across the werewolf’s countenance, and this taunts him into greater madness and sorrow.
He feels an irritating tear of hatred scudding down his left cheek. Another one follows… Enough of this absurd pity. He hastily fumbles through his satchel for his reminder, pulling out his ring. Before him, it was his father’s ring, and before his father, his grandfather’s. It is a beautiful work of craftsmanship, one of those masterpieces never again to be recreated. He gazes into the center: a roughly-cut emerald the size of a septim. Running a fairly clean finger across it and straining his eye to see past the bleak layer of natural murkiness on its surface, he beholds an ethereally distorted light within. The Orsimer conjures memories of the night he first laid eyes upon it.
“Come on downstairs. Help your brothers and your father finish packing up.”
“But mother… Have you seen the lights in the sky, tonight? They’re so bright!”
He could tell that his attempts at digression were unsuccessful.
“Yes, I saw them, sweetie. Now come on down.”
With a reluctant gait, he walked to the floor below. A few hours ago, it would have seemed that a tempest had torn through the place: every valuable they owned had been strewn about the room. Now, mostly everything was packed away in barrels, sacks, and satchels.
Father beckoned as he saw his son.
"Gorz, come 'ere. Help me finish packing up."
He shuffled warily towards his father, approaching with questioning eyes. What is it? they inquired.
Gorz’s brothers were probably outside, hoisting crates and leather sacks into the carriage outside, or doing something else that kept them out of the room. Presently, father and son were left to themselves. Gorz shifted his weight uneasily as the quietness swelled.
Father was at a loss for words for a short moment, then he propped himself up in his chair with a murmured,“Well… How ‘bout you load your mother’s jewelry up in that sack over there… That’ll be the last of the apparel.”
Eager to occupy himself with something else, Gorz scurried toward the scarce assortment of amulets and bracelets. As he brushed their delicate bodies of silver and bronze into a sack, a certain stone caught his eye. Its awkwardly cut sides cast deep, viridian shapes about the room so that it seemed as if the auroras’ shadows were cavorting above. Ironically, this effect appeared to be the cause of the gemstone’s scabrous, gloomy surface. Mystifying, this was.
Father noticed his son’s abstraction and the elder Orc’s words attracted a pair of intrigued eyes.
“Ah, you like that?”
A vigorous nod.
Father grinned faintly and plodded toward his son; even he himself seemed to be spellbound by the emerald’s concealed brilliance. He picked it up delicately between bulky fingers and marveled.
“You, ah, wanna hear the story behind this?”
Another nod.
“Hmh, well… My father gave it to me. You never met him… He was a jeweler, a crafter like me, an’ he made this. Ha! I remember what he told me the night he came home with it.‘This,’ he said” – father now held the ring, probably reenacting his own father –“‘this is you.’”
The old Orc grew silent and his eyes focused on a vacant point in space, maybe perplexed.
“Anyhow…” he rumbled as he adjusted his posture. That solitary word seemed to be his favorite. Gorz thought that it was a nice way for Father to dismiss his own, unnerving presence.
“You take it.”
The sudden utterance gave Gorz quite a jolt. Then eyes beamed widely and brightly with elatedness, and small hands reached out to behold the turbid yet alluring stone.
The two of them finished packing, but that half-hour passed quickly for the little Orc, as his mind revolved around what exactly it was that he treasured about his new gift.
The carriage horses were perhaps even more eager to steal away into the twilight than the family. As they squeezed uncomfortably into the conveyance, Gorz took one final glance at the safety and purity of Orsinium. The days of chopping wood for his neighbors and helping his father at the forge were over. Just like that, gone. Then, with the snap of a whip, they were propelled away from the city and into the blackness of the Wrothgorian Mountains.
Then came surging the abhorrent terror…
He lifts himself with authority now, but he has forgotten about his mangled ribs. A wail escapes him, and for a moment he becomes less a hearted warrior than a helpless, fetal thing amid the clammy underworld.
The pain subsides enough for him to plunge a hand into his satchel, jumbling around for a spare healing potion… The ring, a scarce few septims, two apples, a bottle of cheap ale; it does not take long for him to discover the remedy’s absence. His lacerated skin already is beginning to fade to a sickly yellow… It would take him hours to make the journey back to Whiterun, and by then, it may be too late. He has but one, painful option; such is the life of a bounty hunter. He studies the harsh ale approvingly, takes a long swig from it and through the agony, forces a drizzle of the substance upon his wound. Pained, primitive noises escape his clenched jaw, as the alcohol boils away with slighter mercy than he had shown recent enemies.
“That should do for now…” he whispers to the immortal cavern walls. His echoes form a sort of abrupt, laughing noise coming from every direction.
Gorz roams about the now-uninhabited bandit camp with his right shoulder suspended unnaturally; he is careful not to disturb the bloody mess beneath it. Following the trail he has made of motionless bandits in the subterranean dreariness, he manages to stumble upon another rotted door. The voids between its wooden planks cast harsh sunbeams into the blackness of the grotto. The Orc presses onward.
At first, the oversaturated colors and blinding light of the living world are uneasy on the eye. Gradually, his vision adjusts and tense muscles relax. He descries a sharp path amidst the spirited plains – a road not far away.
Only the towering walls of Whiterun can be made out against cloudless, azure skies; despite his wound, their sight inspires a bounce to his step.
Yet, he is irritated by something he can’t quite put a finger on. The everyday, invigorating air of the plains gradually tires the longer the Orc traipses in its company. And, every traveler in sight – an unusually dense crowd of them there is – possesses an unnerving posture: slightly slumped in mild fatigue, but at the same time more alert, cocking their heads at the sway of the heaths' tall grass when caught in a sudden breeze.
Something is amiss. The frequently trodden roads of the flatlands had grown out of their notorious reputation years ago. Nowadays, the typical wayfarer holds his nose high to the scented wafts of fresh air, taking in the beauty and peace…
The Orc steps cautiously now; one may have been mildly amused watching him, so forethoughtful-looking, so wary. A sentry familiar with the city's entryway addresses Gorz with a tentative pair of eyes, veiled behind thick metal.
“Another one? Hmh. Elisif an' the militia are just inside Dragonsreach. Uh, head north; you'll run into a staircase, and… Well, you seem like a common passerby,” says the guard as he sizes up the Orsimer. The sentry’s casualness alone is enough to catch his attention.
“You said... Elisif?” he asks, his attempts to hide his bewilderment futile. The High Queen seldom communicates with her subjects these days, for civil war continues to weigh heavily on her mind.
“Is there another?” the guard chuckles, but soon his demeanor solidifies; the Orc is irritated, for he can sense the man’s tenseness beneath the iron mask.“You haven't heard, have you? Of the invasion in Solitude?‘The Serpent’s Foray’ they're calling it.”
A hissing wind hurries through a patch of nearby foxtails, their fragile stems giving way. Both Orc and guard are frightened for an instant; then each notices the other, and they hastily straighten their posture.
Gorz tries to rack up his thoughts as a myriad of questions swell in his mind. He cannot decide which one has the privilege of being asked first. What are the Tsaesci? What happened to Solitude? Is this part of the war, perhaps? Instead of standing idly, pondering on which one to inquire, he presses through the looming doors of Whiterun, cantering anxiously, and wisps of evening air jostled him all the way to Dragonsreach.
This fan fiction is based on a role play, but I'm trying to incorporate the elements of a true novel (or as many elements as my unprofessional self can incorporate).
This is going to be a little different than most fan fictions: it is in a book format and hence, I had to upload it as a series of images. I'll provide links to the chapters' albums as I upload them.
If you don't feel like reading it in this format for whatever reason, I've copied the text below each chapter.
Chapter 1: The Vengeful Stone
CHAPTER ONE
__The Vengeful Stone__
The rotted door gives way as the Orc’s armored boot tip rattles it once more. Numbness has begun to creep into his toes, but at last the sacrifice pays off. Wood sprays outward, and a heavy musk seeps into the already stale air. Small clumps of dirt litter the ground and smaller particles irritate his eyes in the momentary stillness – then in the ensuing chaos. The Orc is the first to react. His weapon is not easily curbed from its destination; a defending sword futilely clashes with his warhammer, and the foolish marauder gasps a few final times as his lungs and ribs are crushed to ruins. The victor advances mercilessly.
His main target can be harkened easily by bestial sounds and barked curses; typical for a man who is wanted for murder, theft, and cannibalism.
He catches a waft of moldering carrion, and its putridity nearly breaks his concentration. A silent gag is all he can afford in a moment of such severity. The Orsimer rounds a final corner, staunching the flow of air through his nose and bracing his weapon with clenched hands. No more cursing. Only snarls. The corner of the corridor passes sharply and slowly, like a sideways curtain, until the chamber is fully visible. The Orc feels his blood slow as he locks onto furious, animal eyes that glower madly from a shaded mass at the unknown end of the room. The werewolf propels itself forward too quickly, a blurred vision of swarthy fur. The Orc is barely able to stumble backwards before the fiend’s paws hurl him into the hard earth. Mighty jaws clamp and tear at his exposed upper ribs; he bellows and thrashes as the teeth sink deeper, but knots of black furriness clog his throat and smother his cries. The hairs that cover his vision seem to sway this way and that as his sight becomes increasingly dizzied, and his hearing slowly shuts off. He knows that it will not be long before he becomes a pale, bloodless thing, another one of the rotting bodies. And then the jaws suddenly release; the Orsimer instinctively scrambles to his base, as a vitalizing adrenaline rush saves him from the torture of his dripping wound. But he has no time to be thankful: focusing a frantic eye on his foe, he sees why it has let go. A flurry of claws and teeth again surges forward, this time for his neck. He reacts with instincts that he does not know he possesses and turns a staunch mass of shoulder armor to the monster, delivering him from anything lethal.
The pain, however, is returning now, crippling, paralyzing. The Orc’s muscles contort in a twinge, and a long shiver tears through his body. The warhammer that he had previously held tightly now dangles from half-open palms that shake erratically.
And then, like floodgates unleashing a sea of water, the hatred overflows in his heart. The memories swarm relentlessly, and with hellish ambition, he lashes out with his hammer, battering flesh and fur, feeling the impact reverberate through his bones. The mongrel bears fangs in agony, trembling at its shattered form.
More hate, more memories. His hammer again flies viciously, this time catching a jawbone, open in mid-whimper. The beast crumples to its knees, and the baneful whistling of air is heard by both as warhammer descends upon skull.
After nudging the body for safe measure, the Orc falls heavily atop a nearby barrel, the feverish rush having left with the battle. His darting eyes progressively calm themselves, and he negotiates steadier breaths past his throat, muttering between them,“I’m… too old for this…”
After a few minutes in the deafening silence, the agony fully settles in. Clenching his ravaged flesh, the Orc watches as a thick, murky redness spills over his uselessly curled fingers. Removing a crimson palm from the bite wound, he grimaces, and he seldom does. I’ve been through worse… he voicelessly reminded himself. And it’s true: his injuries are the least of his troubles. In the spreading stillness, the feelings arrive, umbrage fresh and painful. Grief, pity, remorse, doubt. He is nothing more than a savage, who murders men. That’s what he is – a murderer. He kills for money; he kills to live. The usual wave of nausea broods within his stomach, and the scent of fresh blood does not offer relief.
“I’m not… not like them… No, they’re the animals…” he mumbles between quivering breaths, and they agitate the dust in the air. The particles swim away from him in brisk currents.
“You all did this to me!”
He cries at the glazed-over eyes of the monster’s corpse. Even in death, a wicked grin is slathered across the werewolf’s countenance, and this taunts him into greater madness and sorrow.
He feels an irritating tear of hatred scudding down his left cheek. Another one follows… Enough of this absurd pity. He hastily fumbles through his satchel for his reminder, pulling out his ring. Before him, it was his father’s ring, and before his father, his grandfather’s. It is a beautiful work of craftsmanship, one of those masterpieces never again to be recreated. He gazes into the center: a roughly-cut emerald the size of a septim. Running a fairly clean finger across it and straining his eye to see past the bleak layer of natural murkiness on its surface, he beholds an ethereally distorted light within. The Orsimer conjures memories of the night he first laid eyes upon it.
***
The auroras put on quite a show. Celestial ribbons danced playfully so that one may have thought that they followed a quickly paced tune on the lute. The Orc named Gorz peered out of the upstairs window at the lights. In his trance, even the soothing tone of his mother sufficed in startling him.“Come on downstairs. Help your brothers and your father finish packing up.”
“But mother… Have you seen the lights in the sky, tonight? They’re so bright!”
He could tell that his attempts at digression were unsuccessful.
“Yes, I saw them, sweetie. Now come on down.”
With a reluctant gait, he walked to the floor below. A few hours ago, it would have seemed that a tempest had torn through the place: every valuable they owned had been strewn about the room. Now, mostly everything was packed away in barrels, sacks, and satchels.
Father beckoned as he saw his son.
"Gorz, come 'ere. Help me finish packing up."
He shuffled warily towards his father, approaching with questioning eyes. What is it? they inquired.
Gorz’s brothers were probably outside, hoisting crates and leather sacks into the carriage outside, or doing something else that kept them out of the room. Presently, father and son were left to themselves. Gorz shifted his weight uneasily as the quietness swelled.
Father was at a loss for words for a short moment, then he propped himself up in his chair with a murmured,“Well… How ‘bout you load your mother’s jewelry up in that sack over there… That’ll be the last of the apparel.”
Eager to occupy himself with something else, Gorz scurried toward the scarce assortment of amulets and bracelets. As he brushed their delicate bodies of silver and bronze into a sack, a certain stone caught his eye. Its awkwardly cut sides cast deep, viridian shapes about the room so that it seemed as if the auroras’ shadows were cavorting above. Ironically, this effect appeared to be the cause of the gemstone’s scabrous, gloomy surface. Mystifying, this was.
Father noticed his son’s abstraction and the elder Orc’s words attracted a pair of intrigued eyes.
“Ah, you like that?”
A vigorous nod.
Father grinned faintly and plodded toward his son; even he himself seemed to be spellbound by the emerald’s concealed brilliance. He picked it up delicately between bulky fingers and marveled.
“You, ah, wanna hear the story behind this?”
Another nod.
“Hmh, well… My father gave it to me. You never met him… He was a jeweler, a crafter like me, an’ he made this. Ha! I remember what he told me the night he came home with it.‘This,’ he said” – father now held the ring, probably reenacting his own father –“‘this is you.’”
The old Orc grew silent and his eyes focused on a vacant point in space, maybe perplexed.
“Anyhow…” he rumbled as he adjusted his posture. That solitary word seemed to be his favorite. Gorz thought that it was a nice way for Father to dismiss his own, unnerving presence.
“You take it.”
The sudden utterance gave Gorz quite a jolt. Then eyes beamed widely and brightly with elatedness, and small hands reached out to behold the turbid yet alluring stone.
The two of them finished packing, but that half-hour passed quickly for the little Orc, as his mind revolved around what exactly it was that he treasured about his new gift.
The carriage horses were perhaps even more eager to steal away into the twilight than the family. As they squeezed uncomfortably into the conveyance, Gorz took one final glance at the safety and purity of Orsinium. The days of chopping wood for his neighbors and helping his father at the forge were over. Just like that, gone. Then, with the snap of a whip, they were propelled away from the city and into the blackness of the Wrothgorian Mountains.
Then came surging the abhorrent terror…
***
Gorz’s gaze creeps away from the stone and his thoughts follow, until he has returned to the present. As he tucks the ring back into the safety of his satchel, feelings of furious grief are conquered as revenge pools up. That is why he kills; and those who fall lifeless to his feet in battle are not men. They are animals – all of them.He lifts himself with authority now, but he has forgotten about his mangled ribs. A wail escapes him, and for a moment he becomes less a hearted warrior than a helpless, fetal thing amid the clammy underworld.
The pain subsides enough for him to plunge a hand into his satchel, jumbling around for a spare healing potion… The ring, a scarce few septims, two apples, a bottle of cheap ale; it does not take long for him to discover the remedy’s absence. His lacerated skin already is beginning to fade to a sickly yellow… It would take him hours to make the journey back to Whiterun, and by then, it may be too late. He has but one, painful option; such is the life of a bounty hunter. He studies the harsh ale approvingly, takes a long swig from it and through the agony, forces a drizzle of the substance upon his wound. Pained, primitive noises escape his clenched jaw, as the alcohol boils away with slighter mercy than he had shown recent enemies.
“That should do for now…” he whispers to the immortal cavern walls. His echoes form a sort of abrupt, laughing noise coming from every direction.
Gorz roams about the now-uninhabited bandit camp with his right shoulder suspended unnaturally; he is careful not to disturb the bloody mess beneath it. Following the trail he has made of motionless bandits in the subterranean dreariness, he manages to stumble upon another rotted door. The voids between its wooden planks cast harsh sunbeams into the blackness of the grotto. The Orc presses onward.
At first, the oversaturated colors and blinding light of the living world are uneasy on the eye. Gradually, his vision adjusts and tense muscles relax. He descries a sharp path amidst the spirited plains – a road not far away.
Only the towering walls of Whiterun can be made out against cloudless, azure skies; despite his wound, their sight inspires a bounce to his step.
***
He treads heavily as he approaches the city’s gates, still slumped in counteraction to the pain of his maimed underside. It has been another rigorous day of slaying werewolves and bandits; he’s earned a nice, chilled mug of Honningbrew mead.Yet, he is irritated by something he can’t quite put a finger on. The everyday, invigorating air of the plains gradually tires the longer the Orc traipses in its company. And, every traveler in sight – an unusually dense crowd of them there is – possesses an unnerving posture: slightly slumped in mild fatigue, but at the same time more alert, cocking their heads at the sway of the heaths' tall grass when caught in a sudden breeze.
Something is amiss. The frequently trodden roads of the flatlands had grown out of their notorious reputation years ago. Nowadays, the typical wayfarer holds his nose high to the scented wafts of fresh air, taking in the beauty and peace…
The Orc steps cautiously now; one may have been mildly amused watching him, so forethoughtful-looking, so wary. A sentry familiar with the city's entryway addresses Gorz with a tentative pair of eyes, veiled behind thick metal.
“Another one? Hmh. Elisif an' the militia are just inside Dragonsreach. Uh, head north; you'll run into a staircase, and… Well, you seem like a common passerby,” says the guard as he sizes up the Orsimer. The sentry’s casualness alone is enough to catch his attention.
“You said... Elisif?” he asks, his attempts to hide his bewilderment futile. The High Queen seldom communicates with her subjects these days, for civil war continues to weigh heavily on her mind.
“Is there another?” the guard chuckles, but soon his demeanor solidifies; the Orc is irritated, for he can sense the man’s tenseness beneath the iron mask.“You haven't heard, have you? Of the invasion in Solitude?‘The Serpent’s Foray’ they're calling it.”
A hissing wind hurries through a patch of nearby foxtails, their fragile stems giving way. Both Orc and guard are frightened for an instant; then each notices the other, and they hastily straighten their posture.
Gorz tries to rack up his thoughts as a myriad of questions swell in his mind. He cannot decide which one has the privilege of being asked first. What are the Tsaesci? What happened to Solitude? Is this part of the war, perhaps? Instead of standing idly, pondering on which one to inquire, he presses through the looming doors of Whiterun, cantering anxiously, and wisps of evening air jostled him all the way to Dragonsreach.
