Tirisfal Glades. Once a shining testament to the tenacity and ingenuity of humankind, now wasted and nearly uninhabitable. It lay shrouded in a perpetual gloom, as though the sun itself turned its face away from the stain on humanity's history. The chill mist brought comfort to a lone rider, sitting astride a skeletal horse. Tirisfal Glades is as it should be. The undead should not reside in cheerful, sun-touched places.
The horse and rider wound their way along the dirt path toward Deathknell, the birthplace of all new Forsaken. The rider sat straight-backed in the saddle, her lank blonde hair nearly reaching the small of her back. Black, spiked metal armor covered her from chest to feet, and a similarly styled shield was affixed within easy reach on her back. Dried blood and bits of flesh still clung to the spikes of her shield and armor. She didn't need a conventional weapon: her body was her weapon. At the time her human life ended, her right arm had been savagely ripped off. Rather than settle for the unremarkable life of a tradeswoman, she trained as a warrior, and adapted those teachings to suit her needs.
The only extravagance she allowed herself in undeath was regular upkeep of her skin, to prevent it from flaking away at the joints like most of her brethren allowed. If not for her dimly glowing eyes and the pallor of her skin, she might be mistaken a living, breathing human.
Ahead, the tiny village of Deathknell loomed out of the mist. As she drew closer, the breathy moaning of the mindless failures reached her ears. Undead who were too decayed, injured, or simply too overwhelmed to be successfully brought into their new life roamed the streets. One approached her and clumsily clutched at her leg, staring sightlessly ahead. She sneered and lashed out with her foot, smiling with satisfaction as the skull crumbled beneath her heavy plate boot. The zombie tumbled backward, its legs still jerking about as though it was walking.
The horse and rider passed a rough wooden barricade, and halted beside a forsaken in a simple brown robe. "Hello, Father. I trust you received my message?"
"Yes, Cynthia. You showed up just in time. The others are impatient to begin, but I know how you like to look over them before they wake," Father Hastings said as he fell into stride alongside the horse and rider. "If I may suggest, can you try and keep this one a bit... safer? You go through squires so quickly, and creating new forsaken isn't easy, no matter how the val'kyr make it seem."
"I can't be held responsible for the failings of others. If they aren't smart enough to remove themselves from the line of fire they are of no use to me. And don't call me by that name, its just Hackett now, you know that."
The priest smiled slightly as they continued walking, "As you wish."
The duo approached the reanimation site. A large, shallow, mass grave marked the area of rebirth. Human corpses were being tossed in unceremoniously by forsaken attendants. Above, a spectral, winged woman kept a silent vigil. She was a val'kyr, and her necromantic powers would soon breathe new life into the cold limbs of the bodies below her. Around the grave, several forsaken stood by, waiting for the event to begin.
"Why are there so many people here?" Hackett asked as she dismounted.
"I've been doing a bit of research, and I've found that the rate of assimilation into our fold is increased threefold when the newly-risen are given plenty of one-on-one guidance. I surmise that even brief mentoring and companionship calms the mind down. When the realization of what they have become hits them, they can absorb it easier."
"I call it coddling, but if you feel it helps, by all means," replied Hackett as she surveyed the corpses. Weak, they all looked weak. None appealed to her. Wives in simple dresses. Men in robes marking them as wielders of magic. She needed strength. Her squires were pushed to the limit: repairing armor, carrying her supplies, tending to her every need, and putting up with a constant barrage of insults and blows. This lot would never do. She frowned, stepped away from the grave, and walked toward her warhorse. She would have to come back another day.
A slight trembling of the ground caused her to halt her stride. She knew what it meant, and gazed expectantly to the east. The rhythmic quaking became stronger, and soon a monstrous shaped surged from the mist. A cart pulled by a giant, gnarled humanoid soon stopped by the grave. At the urging of its forsaken taskmaster, the ettin lifted the cart and dumped its contents into the grave. A jumbled mess of nearly a dozen sodden human corpses fell out of the cart, landing on the grass with a sickening splat.
The driver of the cart chuckled as he watched the bodies tumble to the ground. "Refugees trying to flee Fenris Isle," he said, answering everyone's unspoken question. "We caught them last night out on the lake, sank their boat with the cannon, then picked them off with muskets as they tried to swim for shore. Most fun I've had in quite a while."
Hackett watched the bodies settle into the grave, hoping a suitable squire would be found. She didn't want to have to make a second trip. Tirisfal was lovely, but she belonged on a battlefield. She circled the pile of corpses, and froze. The upper body of a young man was visible, his lower half obscured by the corpses that landed on top of him. If she had been prone to retain actions from her life, she might have gasped in shock. She swiftly walked to his side and knelt beside him.
A portion of his long black hair was plastered across his forehead by the lake water, and Hackett gently brushed it aside, gazing intently at the boy's anguished face. So much like... he would be about this age, too. The boy's eyes were wide open in an expression of horror. His teeth were gritted together, probably from the pain of the wound on his face. A large portion of his skin, from above his left eye down to the left side of his neck, was in tatters, showing the muscle beneath. Hackett couldn't determine the cause of the wound just yet. A portion of his chest was blown outward as well, certainly an exit wound from a bullet to his back. Small amounts of pink froth around his nose and mouth told Hackett his main cause of death was most likely drowning. If he hadn't been in the water, he would certainly have bled to death. She turned his head slightly, water and blood dribbled out of his mouth.
Father Hastings watched Hackett with an expression of amusement. "A friend of yours?" he asked.
Hackett immediately regained her composure and stood, fixing the priest with a withering stare, "Of course not, I've never seen that boy before. I'm simply excited. Look at his hands: calloused, black stains, he's a blacksmith for certain. An apprentice at least, he looks too young to be a full fledged smith."
"If I remember correctly," Father Hastings began carefully, "You had sons. The youngest would be... sixteen now? This boy seems about that age-"
"This conversation is delaying what we all came here for, let's get on with it!" Hackett interrupted, grabbing the collar of the youth's jacket and pulling him from under the other bodies. She dropped him a short distance from the other corpses and walked to stand next to Father Hastings. She kept her eye on the boy as the val'kyr flew into position. He was dressed in dark blue riding pants, a white linen shirt, and a calf-length coat the same shade as his pants. Knee-high brown leather boots covered his feet. Quite a fancy outfit for an apprentice blacksmith, but she would be able to ask him about it once he awoke.
The val'kyr paused briefly over the mound of bodies, then let loose jagged bolts of necromantic energy. The bolts pierced the rigid corpses, their bodies jerked in response. This went on for several seconds, then the val'kyr abruptly stopped. She slowly and silently flew to a position near the grave, her task complete.
The glade was deathly silent for a few long moments, then groan issued from the grave, and another. A whisper of cloth dragging against cloth also became audible as stiff limbs began to move yet again. Hackett smiled grimly.
It was time to meet her new squire.