Given my current addiction to Shadow of War (and my current playthrough in particular- I've encountered some of my favourite Orc enemies in this particular form, and my general sense of disgust and disappointment with the Blade of Galadriel DLC, I got inspired to write this based on a desire to include one of my favourite background characters from the works of Tolkien; namely Khamûl the Easterling, the only Ringwraith besides the Witch King Tolkien ever identified who I've been fascinated by ever since seeing his depiction in the Battle of the Five Armies. Since unless he appears in the Desolation of Mordor DLC, Shadow of War will overlook Khamûl, this is just my attempt to bring him into the setting and give the Black Easterling a chance to battle the Gravewalker (As well as write something involving my favourite Orc enemies and followers within the game). Will be a beat of a slow burning thing like all my FF projects at the moment, but I do plan to finish this...hope you all enjoy my attempt to write a story involving the war for Mordor...
The mountains of Seregost, four months after the fall of Minas Ithil
Amûg Sword-Master stamped his feet impatiently by the fire, waiting for the last of the gathering to arrive. All around the campfires that dotted the mountain pass connecting the valley of Seregost to the plains of Gorgoroth, Orcs in service to near half a dozen ambitious captains huddled near to campfires and braziers, swigging from casks of grog and chewing on scraps of ghûl and caragor meat from the few creatures the hunters had managed to bring down, in an effort to ward off the cold- winter had come early to the mountains and the blizzards had been savage; many of those gathered had already lost some members of their forces to the snow and ice. The enforced inactivity was beginning to grate on the gathered Orcs, and fights and murders had already broken out amongst the lesser grunts, though to Amûg's satisfaction, none of the captains gathered at his invitation had lowered themselves to get involved in conflicts between their underlings, for which he was relieved. His new master had grand plans for them all, and it would irritate him greatly to lose even one such potential recruit.
'I will not fail him' the Orc thought, rubbing the skin of his throat beneath the hem of the sackcloth bag he wore tied about his face to hide the extent of the blade and burn scars across his broad visage, the work of some scummy Tark in Nurnen. 'I owe him too much already my life, my army, becoming a warchief- and hopefully will receive more, to fail my new master now'
"How muchth longer do we hath to wait, Ahmûg?" a familiar, slurring voice grumbled from behind him; Amûg turned, the motion pulling tight the burn scars across his face and neck to face the speaker, a stocky, bronze-skinned Orc from Cirith Ungol, clad in scraps of mail and plate armour nailed and fused together, a sickle-curved blade engraved with cursed runes sheathed at the waist, and a horrendously ugly face with protruding fangs, a droopy eye and a mouth that perpetually hung open, slack-jawed, causing the Orc to continually lisp and drool. He had been one of the first to answer the call- Bolg Iron-Skull, formerly Bolg Gold-Thief, a skilled raider and marauder in the Spider's Cleft, until a brutal blow to the head with a hammer had left a concave crater in the left temple that had driven bone deep into his brain, leaving Bolg deformed.
"You promithed my boyz a good scrap and me payback for my head" Bolg snapped, rubbing the circular scar in his head "but we're just sitting here, freething and starving! I've lost six of my boyz to the cold and the caragors as it ith!"
"Soon enough, Bolg, we'll be moving" Amûg assured him. "Once the last of us arrives, then the offer you are waiting to hear will be made to you. And trust me, you will want to hear it". Bolg growled and sullenly wiped another line of drool from his slack mouth, but reluctantly nodded and headed back to his camp. Beneath his cloth mask, Amûg bared his fangs in a malevolent smile; no matter his dislike of the situation and the location, Bolg would wait. The promise all of them had been lured to Seregost with was too tempting for them to pass up.
A buzzing in his ear drew Amûg's attention away from Bolg's retreating back; looking round, he saw a hairy black insect with a large red dot on its back land on his right pauldron. The Orc's gauntleted hand darted out, catching the Morgai fly in its grasp and crushing it as Amûg smiled again, baring hooked, yellow fangs; the last of their number had arrived. Out of the night, a tall, thin and misshapen figure stalked over to stand across from Amûg at the fireside, the flames casting his disfigured frame into relief; ugly, horny growths that looked almost like wood stretching across the left side of his chest, shoulder and skull, protruding out from the Orc's jaw and obliterating the left eye and most of the nose, red-and-black bodied Morgai flies crawling in and out of the hideous growths turning the Orc into their living, breathing hive. Nor was the misshapen nature of the newcomer confined there; his arms had been severed raggedly by a Tark's sword, the right at the elbow, the left at the shoulder, and replaced by the Machine Tribe's finest metal workers with rusted iron prostheses, tipped with hooked claws dripping with ghûl venom, sufficient to dull senses and reactions, making the stricken more likely to miss a stroke...leaving a perfect opening for the fatal blow.
"You're late, Khrosh" Amûg opined to the newcomer. Khrosh of the Flies, formerly a deadly assassin in service to the warchief Mozu Man-Breaker before his untimely death in Cirith Ungol, Khrosh had been reborn when a human sword had opened his belly as a swarm of Morgai flies tore and bit him when a well-placed arrow had brought their nest smashing down onto his skull, infesting his wounds, cutting away his flesh and remoulding it into their new home. Somehow, the infestion had not killed Khrosh; instead he had come back stronger, using the flies that swarmed his body to cover his approach as he moved in for the kill or, when the element of surprise was lost, using the swarm to blind and confound his enemies as Khrosh made to strike the fatal blow.
"Couldn't be helped; had to fix up a loose end or two" the assassin retorted as he tossed something across the fire to land at Amûg's feet. The burned warchief picked it up; a Orc head, severed raggedly at the neck, still covered by the black cloth hood and iron mask of a member of the Dark Tribe. Amûg studied the face, surprised to see it was one he recognised.
"Skoth Ranger-Killer. He would have been of use for what's planned"
"The Gravewalker got to him before your messenger did" Khrosh replied with a shrug of his malformed shoulders. "When your message arrived, I had to make sure he wouldn't pass it on to the Bright Lord". Amûg scowled at the loss of Skoth but conceded the necessity of the killing; his new master had been adamant the Gravewalker couldn't find out what they were planning until the hammer blow came crashing down. With Khrosh's arrival, Amûg pulled the warhorn from his belt and placed it to his scarred, burned lips, blowing a deep, sonorous blast that caught the attention of every Orc in the mountain pass. One by one, he watched as dark shapes moved to join him and Khrosh around the fireside, all of them veterans of Minas Ithil and the perpetual conflicts within Mordor, all of them battle-scarred and marked by war. Beside himself, Khrosh and Bolg, Amûg recognised Lûga Iron-Claw, Thrak Foul-Spawn and Pûgrish the Machine, all lured by the same thing. The Orc captains were all fond of battle, eager for plunder, grog and slaves that would come from the sack of a fortress, but that wasn't the promised prize that had brought them to Seregost.
All of them wanted vengeance. All of them wanted the Gravewalker dead once and for all.
The injuries Amûg, Khrosh and Bolg had suffered at the hands of the Gravewalker spoke for themselves, as did those of Pûgrish, who'd been carved apart by the Gravewalker's blade almost as swiftly as he'd been put back together, both arms and legs, most of his chest and skull replaced with metal plates and prostheses, the paired scimitars he'd once wielded welded to his arms, a part of him. Lûga's namesake was bound and fused to his left shoulder where the Tark's sword had cut it away and he had other reasons to want the Gravewalker dead, namely a blood-brother tortured into madness and then torn apart by a pack of caragors under the Bright Lord's control. Thrak, who'd been doused in toxic, burning slime when a flaming arrow shot from above had ignited a poisoned grog barrel he'd been stood by. By the time Thrak had managed to put the fire out, the skin and flesh of his face had melted like tallow and run like strips down his skull, leaving the bone bare atop his brow and exposing his jaw in a half-melted death's head grin.
"Why are we here, Amûg?!" Thrak defended, his voice rasping and soft. "You promised us loot, revenge, power…but we sit here starving and freezing while our boys either get bored and run off! I want answers, you bag-wearing glob!"
"There is a chance here, lads, to get something-"
"For you, you snivelling rat?!" Pûgrish barked viciously. "To get payback for your spilled guts in Minas Ithil?! To throw us one by one onto the Tark's sword to weigh his blade down, until he's too weak from cutting us up to stop you from taking his head, leaving you with our boys all leaderless and a nice new fortress to call yourself Overlord of?! If you think I'll stand by and be chopped up any more for the sake of a worthless glob like you, you've got even more shrakh for brains than I thought!"
The other orcs muttered agreement, their greed at war with suspicion. Even in its weakened state, the fortress that dominated Seregost would not be easy to take, even more so with the Gravewalker's presence and with such a significant array of forces from all the tribes of Mordor, Uruks and Olog-hai both, and beasts broken to serve in war- caragors, graugs, even a drake or two- whoever was left standing when the dust settled would have a well-positioned fortress and a sizeable army to take advantage of the region with...and most of the captains present had likely toyed with the notion of bumping off their fellows in the heat of battle to be the last one standing. Amûg knew that he had to explain the reason why he'd gathered them, because they were all intended to play a part in a master plan, each a single cog in a mighty machine of war. All they needed now was the last part, a power to counter the Bright Lord's unholy magics… 'And thanks to my new boss, we'll have that!' Amûg thought to himself, his lipless mouth peeling into a fanged grin as he saw mist begin to coalesce along the ground and the all too familiar sound of wings beaten could be heard in the distance.
"I should just say, this plan's not mine" Amûg replied, pointing up at the sky and the fast-approaching new arrival. "It's his. Maybe you'll trust his words over mine"
"Oh thrakh!" Bolg lisped in stunned fear as a keening howl like metal being torn cut through the night air while sickly, necrotic green mist began to settle over the mountain pass. "It's a Thrieker!"
The Orcs automatically sank to one knee, their faces looking firmly at the ground as a missile of dark sorcery slammed into the earth and from the greenish-black smoke that billowed from the impact, a translucent figure in armour and helm stepped forward. The armour was reminiscent of that worn by the Easterlings of Rhûn, stalwart allies of the Dark Lord, but whereas the armour of the Easterling cohorts was gold and scarlet, the armour worn by the Nazgûl before them was pewter grey, tinted the necrotic green of dark sorcery. The full helm the Nazgûl wore was reminiscent of ones Amûg had seen denoting Easterling commanders, though it was more ornate, engravings of serpents down the cheek and eye guards, and a pair of curling horns like those of a ram or dragon rising up from the helm's brow. In the Nazgûl's gauntleted right fist, a long spear of Easterling manufacture was clutched, with a bronze, rectangular shield on the left arm and a sabre, its hilt and pommel fashioned like a rearing serpent, sheathed at the hip.
"Lord Khamûl, as you asked, I have gathered the captains you asked of me" Amûg spoke; he had served the Witch King initially, but it had been the Black Easterling who had saved him from dying of a Tark's sword buried almost to the hilt in his chest, had made him his right hand, with the opportunity to both claim his vengeance and potentially rise high in service to one of the Nine. A clawed gauntlet rested on his shoulder as a sepulchral voice, like air escaping from a tomb, answered him.
"You have done well, my champion. Your service will not be forgotten" Khamul spoke before he turned his attention to the other Orcs. "I called you here because I have need of an army, and you have need of my patronage if you are to all achieve your shared design. The words I speak are the Dark Lord's will; Lord Sauron will suffer no rivals. The interference of Celebrimbor's pawn will be tolerated no longer. The Witch King believes the Gravewalker can be turned…the Witch King is a fool. Lord Sauron wishes the Gravewalker's head to decorate a spear atop the gates of Barad-dur…and with your aid, we will tear down the Bright Lord's ambitions once and for all!"
A nimbus of dark sorcery curdled to life in the Nazgûl's hand, slipping between Khamûl's fingers, circling and writhing around the Orcs like metallic serpents, giving them a mere hint of the power that they could have, minor wounds closing up at the merest touch of dark magic. All the gathered Orcs raised their heads, their eyes gleaming with the prospect of victory and vengeance. The Nazgul's words meant far more than the ramblings of one Orc warchief…and if they succeeded, there was a chance to advance further and attain the patronage of the Nine, and even the notice of the Dark Lord himself.
"At the foot of these mountains, the fortress of Khargukor waits. Its defences are damaged and broken by the assault of the lackies of Talion. Its defenders are soft and fat, glutted on the spoils of victory. They will not expect a fresh assault so swiftly from within Seregost's borders…and we will fall upon them like starving caragors and spare nothing within its walls. Rise up as my Chosen, stand at my side and we will purge the stain of Celebrimbor's arrogance from Mordor and put the Gravewalker into his grave for the final time!"