World of Warcraft - Interbellum (IC Thread)

[MrAbdiel]

Spoiler: OOC: Stealth

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Everyone beats a 10, so you seem concealed - fortunately, drunken ogres aren't terribly observant, and you manage not to draw attention to yourselves!

Spoiler: Jakk'ari's Perception

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Gazing down at the village revelry, you are able to discern some facts, but not the one you're seeking. The ogres are largely, but not impermeably separated by sex, in the celebrations below; through the male circles and female circles are no less rowdy and intoxicated than one or the other. The large number of ogre youth running about, wrestling and chasing each other through the festivities, tells you this is a whole-community event; and the daubing of ochre symbols on the flesh of those youths seems at first decorative, but at second glance, purposeful.
Confirming with Mor'Lag makes the picture clear enough - this is an after-party for a series of marriage arrangements. With some effort, you see pairs of the ogre youths with matching ochre symbols - too young to have much interest in each other yet, but promised to each other by their families and with the stipulations of those marriage contracts spelled out on their skin in temporary glyphs. Occasionally, you spot an ogreling with more complex markings - perhaps with a more complex marriage arrangement, or promised to an other settlement of Stonemaul or even another clan. Arranged marriages are the reality for many societies in Azeroth and beyond, for those who do not occupy the narrow band between "too poor" and "too rich" to consider exclusively romantic marriages, and for those who do not belong to a boldly forward-looking approach to generational continuity. Whether the Stonemaul do this as a welcome cultural extension of an ancient tradition or as a necessary evil to ensure the familial tribes that make up the greater clan are welded together for another desperately surviving generation is not clear; but the children don't seem to care for the moment, and the adults certainly seem to be having fun celebrating the end of this round of negotiations on behalf of their juvenile offspring.

But what passes for ogre architecture thwarts your hunt for an apparent jail. There are some loose surface huts made of tree trunks and thatch, unsuitable for such a purpose; but the majority of the buildings are ogre mounds: hills that have been hollowed out, with multiple entrances reinforced by big slabby stones, decorated with paint and animal hides and containing a potential warren for dozens or hundreds of ogres in their passageways and lacunae. The Stonemaul could have a hundred prisoners tucked away inside those mounds and you'd have no way to know. What's worse, your communion with the earth spirits here detects the same muddled drunkenness that you found in them at the camp site in the swamp. Someone has been here, with power enough over the elements to stupefy the local spirits into amnesia about their passing.

You ascend the bluff, keeping low and avoiding conspicuous movements that would draw the revellers eyes up to the idol. Stonemaul ogres are not especially pious folk, and given the choice of their attentions landing on cavorting comrades and grog, or casting them heavenward to their stone ancestor, the choice is premade in your favor.

Up close, the idol is crude, but not bad stonework. It depicts a masculine ogre with the very rare fatless phenotype; a thick, muscular form chipped from an almost cylindrical menhir. It faces down over the village, arms tucked to its chest. At its base, located behind its facing so to be at the terminus of the path you followed up, there is a bed of offerings left for the idol. You spot the withered remains of flowers and handfuls of predator teeth from crocolisks and raptors; but the majority of the offering is bones, and the decaying remnants of their former owners. Big swamp snakes, marsh deer, crocolisks... and you're quite sure, based on one prominent skull, at least one orc.

Around heap of offerings, carved into the earth within a day or two, are a combination of runic markings - some ogrish, as depicted on the bodies of those celebrating below, and some undeniably demonic, recognizable instinctively to anyone who has encountered demonic language before.

Spoiler: Investigation: DC 10

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Sifting through the carcasses, you discover exactly what you feared would be the case: the bodies of two alliance cadets, young men that can't be much over sixteen. They are cold, bloodless, and seem to have been dead for days. There's no doubt these poor boys are the remaining cadets you're looking for.

Cadet Felix hasn't seen them yet; he's keeping obediently at the back of the group, crouched in the grass.

Spoiler: Investigation: DC 15 (Marion, with +2 from Jakk'ari's Assist)

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You don't speak ogrish, so the runic circle is half unknown to you; but the other half is gibberish. These are demonic runes to be sure, but presented as if copied from half-glimpsed Legion banners and peppered randomly to create the illusion of a genuine demonic ritual. Someone has enough demonology to know basic elements of summoning magic, but wants it to look like these ogres are practising more advanced summoning magic, and that the dead cadets - and orcs - were sacrifices to fuel it. In the middle of the heap, beneath the bodies, is a large, hollow grey stone covered in scorch marks.

Spoiler: Investigation: DC 20 (Marion, with +2 from Jakk'ari's Assist)

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You've never seen one up close before, but you're certain - this is an infernal core. Typically, the legion summons them charged with fel energy in the upper stratosphere and they plunge like green comets toward signs of life, emerging as the demonic golems that are forever burned into the fear centres of Horde and Alliance veterans across the world. This one looks to have been exposed to fire recently - though you cannot guess why, except possibly a clumsy effort to revive the construct. Conventional fire does not have the magical nature to accomplish that feat, however; so perhaps it's just here to enhance the presentation of this fake 'ritual'.

Spoiler: Investigation: DC 15 (Isaera)

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The idol, sadly, is part of an elven runestone from the second war; beautiful Thalassian alabaster now stained and mistreated. It's still redolent with magical energies, though pooling idly within the stone with no remnant rune to channel it and no leyline connection to fuel it in an ongoing fashion: a piece of elven glory, bashed into the shape of some ancient tyrant. It looks like a summoning circle, but clumsy - and clumsy in a way any spellcaster knows they can't afford to be. Not the kind of clumsy that twists the spell, but the kind that makes it fall apart blandly. The poor cadets have been killed and drained of blood, perhaps for demonic use somewhere else. In the middle of the heap, beneath the bodies, is a large, hollow grey stone covered in scorch marks.

Spoiler: Investigation: DC 20 (Isaera)

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The stone's nature is demonic in some way; that much you can tell by the fel power radiating off it. But the scorch marks aren't exclusively felflame - the most recent exposure it's had to flame has the robust, heady arcane tang of dragonfire - and arcane ley energy bleeding slowly into it from the idol's nearness.

Spoiler: Mor'Lag's Ogre Insights

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Concerning the festival: The ogres are largely, but not impermeably separated by sex, in the celebrations below; through the male circles and female circles are no less rowdy and intoxicated than one or the other. The large number of ogre youth running about, wrestling and chasing each other through the festivities, tells you this is a whole-community event; and the daubing of ochre symbols on the flesh of those youths seems purposeful. This is an after-party for a series of marriage arrangements. With some effort, you see pairs of the ogre youths with matching ochre symbols - too young to have much interest in each other yet, but promised to each other by their families and with the stipulations of those marriage contracts spelled out on their skin in temporary glyphs. Occasionally, you spot an ogreling with more complex markings - perhaps with a more complex marriage arrangement, or promised to an other settlement of Stonemaul or another clan. Arranged marriages are the reality for many societies in Azeroth and beyond, for those who do not occupy the narrow band between "too poor" and "too rich" to consider exclusively romantic marriages, and for those who do not belong to a boldly forward-looking approach to generational continuity. Whether the Stonemaul do this as a welcome cultural extension of an ancient tradition or as a necessary evil to ensure the familial tribes that make up the greater clan are welded together for another desperately surviving generation is not clear; but the children don't seem to care for the moment, and the adults certainly seem to be having fun celebrating the end of this round of negotiations on behalf of their juvenile offspring.

Concerning the Idol: You don't read demonic, so half of the runic circle is impenetrable to you - but the other half is gibberish. They are clumsy ogre pictograms slapped into the circle to give it an 'ogre' flavor, but not one anyone who knew the language would mistake as having been written authentically. The offerings here infront of the ancestor stone are not uncommon tokens of ogre ancestor reverence, so it seems like this was a legitimate enough ancestor idol - but the folk cavorting below would have had no reason to come up herein the last few days because of the ongoing festival. Someone has come here to desecrate this place with demonic runs, but has for some reason wanted it to look like an ogre has done it.