Chapter 1
"Remnant"
"Would ye mind passin' me a bit'a that buttar'?" Asked a grizzled, unkempt dwarf sitting at the moldy table.
"..." No reply came from the scarred, hulking orc at the other end of the table who seemed preoccupied with looking at the corner of the room.
"Fine fine, but ye' know... gonna have to start bein' a bit more friendly ya'?" Said the dwarf in a kind tone as he reached over and grabbed a spoonful of melted butter from a wooden bowl.
The orc looked to the dwarf that accompanied him across the old, broken table with a grim snarl before shrugging and spitting at the foot of his chair, turning back towards the arbitrary corner. He seemed reluctant to make eye contact. The dwarf meanwhile begun whistling merrily while sliding a dull knife coated in butter across a moldy, half eaten bread roll before taking a bite out of it noisily.
In came walking a tall, broad human man wearing a tattered and sand covered cloak that draped the majority of his body. His raven hair was cut short and speckled with sand like the rest of him. A pair of tinted goggles masked his eyes and a ruffled bandanna covered his nose and mouth. He pulled the bandanna down to his neck as he gave the dwarf and orc a simultaneous pat on the back, mouth curling into a grin as he pulled a satchel from his side and placed it on the table.
"Good news!" Came the human, "I found some near pristine swine flanks in the cellar of a nearby farmhouse. We'll be eaten good tonight huh?" Another pat to both of their backs before the man settled down in a chair at the table.
The room they were in was underground, walls of earth surrounded them and were supported by hastily placed planks. The doorway was less of a door and more of a piece of heavy cloth draping their little hole in the ground. Small passages went in all directions, the one in which the human came in from was a small stretch of tunnel leading to the outside, where as others lead to sleeping areas that mostly just composed of poor pillows and dirty blankets thrown on the ground. The room the three currently occupied was filled with boxes and bags, supplies of various sorts.
The orc and the dwarf seemed rather comfortable, if even the orc seemed displeased with his company. Both of them were wearing rags like the human, sand splashed and rugged. Pairs of goggles hung from stakes in the wall next to the exit, as did larger, heavier robes and cloaks.
The orc, who was named Urok, finally broke his silence and looked to the human and then the satchel, speaking broken common.
"You find meat?" He said gruffly, lowly, and with an awkward and trying accent.
"Yeah buddy, dig in!" Said the human, who went by Feren.
Urok gave Feren a glance before reaching into the satchel, almost a hopeful gleam in his eye before he suddenly clenched his teeth together and roared with disgruntlement. Urok pulled from the satchel a large, dead, decaying rat as he tossed it to the ground while Feren and the dwarf, who was called Gureb, broke into laughter.
"Ah! Almost got me ya' did!" Gureb chuckled, slapping his knee while continuing to enjoy his roll.
Urok went back to a sulking demeanor.
"Oh, lighten up! You should of known I was joking, we're not gonna find any 'pristine' anything out here! Especially meat! Do you see any pigs out there?" Feren continued to laugh before getting more comfortable, removing his cloak and hanging it up on one of the empty stakes in the wall near the exit. He was now wearing a simple yet dirty white linen shirt and pair of sturdy traveling pants and boots that had seen a lot of wear.
"Anyway, jokes over." Feren started in while Urok continued to fume.
"I was looking around near the border-" Suddenly Gureb finished his roll and slammed his stout hands on the table, nearly breaking it off its dilapidated legs.
"The border! Alone lad?" Gureb's tone changed serious and somewhat angry.
"Calm down it was just for a bit." Feren tried to calm the now unpleasant dwarf.
"No! We don't go that far away alone, we don't we don't we don't!" Gureb chanted, Urok just listened and begun to nibble at a piece of moldy bread himself.
"Well, I did, now listen to what I found." Feren continued his point.
"About a dozen or so miles to the east, when you're getting close to Durotar, it looks like there are some others out there starting to set up a rather large encampment on the riverside, or what used to be the river anyway." Feren recounted while Urok listened, somewhat interested.
"You sure about that lad? Did ya' actually see anyone?" Gureb said with hesitation.
"Obviously! I didn't just see a bunch of sticks in the ground and assume it was the end of our troubles." Feren said light heartedly.
"An' I s'pose you just want us to waltz right on over there and say 'ello yeah?" Gureb said with harsh sarcasm before taking large drink from a nearby wooden mug.
"I figured it'd be worth it to see what the situation is over there. Or are you content with our nice little hole in the ground?" Feren became a bit frustrated with Gureb's reluctance.
"This 'hole in the ground' has kept us safe and breathing real nice for about two years now lad! I'm pa-retty inclined to stay wherever there ain't bugs tha' size of a tank tryin' to get me!" Gureb took another angry gulp of his mug.
"Plus, we've done a pretty nice job'a stocking up here. You gonna move all this yourself laddy?"
"Right now I think we should just go see." Feren said as he began to nibble on some bread. "What do you think Urok?"
The big orc looked at Feren as he had been the whole duration of the conversation since the mention of Durotar.
"I go." Urok replied curtly.
"Right! It's settled then, the three of us will travel out to see about that camp in the morning tomorrow." Feren declared as he finished up a roll and stood up, stretching out his broad arms and yawning.
"When the sun's up, we're heading out!" Feren departed to one of the sleeping areas.
Gureb ate the rest of his dinner in silence, then topped off his mug before slamming it back down against the table to vent his frustration, looking to Urok.
"Love tha' boy to death but he's gonna get us killed if he doesn't start thinkin' ahead. He said he saw the camp from tha' border, yanno what that means? Means it ain't underground. Know what that means? Means those things prolly all ready gottem." Gureb exhaled deeply, his eyes growing somber as he pinched his brow and looked at his lap. Urok didn't say anything or make too much of a motion, Gureb looked back up to him.
"I know what you're thinkin', it's close to home yeah?" Gureb spokes softly and considerately.
"But we both know those things wiped it all out, ain't gonna be nothin' there but more of those things and a whole mess of trouble."
Urok looked at the dwarf sternly, Gureb didn't flinch but he knew what the orc was thinking.
"Everyone there, here, anywhere, is dead. Findin' survivors is like findin' a piece of hay in a stack of needles, it ain't worth goin' in after!"
Urok stood and retired to another one of the sleeping areas, Gureb exhaled heavily and stood up as well tossing the napkin from his shirt to his plate before heading to his own room. The sun soon dropping outside in what was once the Barrens, previously a somewhat damaged land had become like most of the suspected world now, decrepit desert devoid of life.
They were called the silithid, they had been an issue in southern Kalimdor for some time. The silithid were a vile force of destruction composed of insect like creatures that grew to horrible size and bred with alarming rapidity. The silithid were born from the Qiraj, and the Qiraj had come from an even more disturbing origin. By the time the races of Azeroth had discovered the frightening truth and had begun to mobilize against the silithid, calling themselves the Might of Kalimdor, they were all ready too late.
Rarely have the combined forces of all the major powers in Azeroth joined against a common enemy, though when they were brought together before the gates of Ahn'Qiraj it was not enough. The Qiraj had been biding themselves, and the silithid's presence outside of the ancient temple proved to be a fragment of a fragment as terrible as what had been dormant inside. Heroes had come with the aid of the Bronze Dragonflight itself to reopen the gates and face the threat inside, but when they did they hardly had the time to react to the force the quickly overwhelmed their countless men and women who had so bravely come to protect their home. The silithid soon spread across all of Kalimdor, wiping clean all forms of life until Kalimdor resembled a giant desert, much like Silithus.
Counter efforts had been made in response to the silithid's sudden eruption of power, but all who resisted with force were overwhelmed. Thunder Bluff, the capital city of the tauren was the first to fall. The speed in which they were attacked hardly gave them time to respond, their city on the rise soon becoming just another site of death and more hives to the silithid, Mulgore became a faceless desert like the rest of Kalimdor soon would. The silithid had won, and in their wake there remained only handfuls of survivors, their continuing existence solely to thank to simply being in the right places at the wrong time.
