Dark Lady's Chosen

They stood atop a hill in northern Tirisfal Glades, surveying the remains of the last multi-guild raid by members of the Alliance. As numerous as those last invaders had been, they'd still fallen before they'd moved too far beyond the coast, most of the civilian inhabitants of Tirisfal not having known about the attack until a few days after it had been foiled. The red midday sky allowed just enough distorted sunlight through to shine on the open air trenches that marked the scene of the failed invasion. Bodies littered those trenches, many of them partially buried in mud and debris after a recent drizzle. Although it would be difficult, it would certainly make for a visually impressive scene.

Barghash stepped away from his skeletal horse, leaving it behind with the plague hounds he'd brought along with him. He was well-prepared and without disturbance, but ironically the anti-social human actually wished he had witnesses to what he was about to do. Considering the fact that Queen Sylvanas herself had met with him to personally christen his efforts that day, it would have reflected well on him if others could testify to the scene.

Then again...he was about to have quite a few witnesses, even if it would be to their own raising.

Hiking his red robes up with one hand, he walked along the driest part of the ground to keep his boots clean as he approached the single largest contingent among the Alliance invaders. Among the bodies, he identified mostly humans with a smattering of half elves (a necromancer could always tell the difference between the skeletons of different sentient species) in a single fallen formation. According to what the Queen's informants had told them, this was an elite group of Menethil defenders sent to take revenge for previous conflicts...if only they knew how they'd end up.

Once he was in the middle of the twenty-strong unit of spearmen, Barghash raised his gauntlet. A silver-steel alloy with enchanted rings embedded in the finger slots, it was merely an enhancement of power, not a replacement; what he was about to do was all from practice and study.

Digging down deep, he began to tug on his mana pool from the bottom up. It was a metaphysical movement that only magic users would understand, and that few of them would tax themselves with regularly. Somewhat akin to peeling off a bandaid by ripping one's hair off first, he tugged and drew up the bulk of his power like one entity, heaving the ley lines he'd detected and bending them with brute magical force. The muscle of his forearm actually strained as he tapped more mana, balancing it like a stack of plates as he molded it to the dimensions he needed.

Sweat dripped down his brow as he willed the death magic to stabilize, eschewing his usual finesse in spell channeling. One by one the rings embedded in his gauntlet began to glow, augmenting his power and propping up the mana funnel he'd established between the anchor that was himself and the physical realm. Spontaneous hunger attacked his stomach as he strained, but the distraction wasn't enough to deter him as he scraped the entire landscape with his spell. Only when he was sure the inanimate, chaotic power had been forcibly subdued did he turn his palm to the ground. The swirls of black, green and purple came into view, drilling into the muck and peat of the open air grave on that ruddy, raven-infested field. He grinned; even if there wasn't anybody there to observe how far he'd pushed himself, at least he now knew that he was capable of doing what even Scourge necromancers wouldn't risk.

He'd raised twenty strong-willed warriors at the same time.

The ground beneath his boots shook, though the rumble was mostly absorbed by the usntable nature of the mud. Brown bubbles popped up as if the natural air pockets in the trampled soil had been disturbed, creating sick sloshing sounds as the wet topsoil shifted around. Satisfied, Barghash retained only a cursory grip on the mass raise dead spell, knowing that the chain reaction had already been initiated.

Writhing like maggots in rotten flesh, the fallen Alliance warriors escaped what had originally been their end. Indistinguishable limbs thrashed, slowed by the thick muck but never stopped due to their unholy strength. Absent were the groans normally associated with physical strain; the soldiers merely rose as they'd been summoned, fighting their way out of yards of ground above them in some cases, relentless as they heeded the call of undeath.

Some of them were mere skeleton soldiers, like empty suits of armor with the faint yellowed calcium peeking through the visors of their helmets. Others were mostly fleshy and preserved, if greyed and desiccated, and almost appeared like monstrous humanoids. Others were in between, appearing of be patchworks of flesh and bone. All of them, however, priced their way out of their accidental mass grave with a vigor unattainable by all but the most fit of living humans, and certainly beyond what Barghash could have mustered himself. He let go entirely, needing no blood pact or constant magical link draining on his mana pool once his minions had been reanimated.

Without even being told, all twenty of the spearmen lined up in a long marching column. Their formation was longer than it was wide, perfectly prepared for a strong push against enemies hiding in bottlenecks or attempting to fortify a position. Their armor was mostly intact since it hadn't been in the mud long enough to rust yet, and even their spears were miraculously intact. They'd supposedly been hit by the apothecaries before they'd even attacked, thus preserving them as perfectly as the Queen's informants had claimed.

Of course, their shields all bore the Alliance insignia, but that was a simple matter of labor and paint. And Barghash grinned even wider when he realized that they were ready to do far more than that.

"Must hear and obey," all twenty of them droned at once, perfectly in sync and mostly lacking sentience.

Taking a deep breath, he felt the hunger pang disappear as his mana pool slowly started to regenerate after so much exertion in such a short amount of time. No, he wouldn't need witnesses to their actual raising; the unit's internal harmony was testimony enough for what he'd achieved.

Pointing toward the south, he already began to walk back over toward his undead horse. "You are to march with me back to Brill, where you'll await further instructions at a crypt marked for you. In twenty days, we leave for Stormheim." Without even a nod, the entire unit did as they were told, marching past him based on residual memories of the city they'd originally intended to raid in life. This time, they'd be marching on their new home base.

"You are the first...you are those honored with the Banshee Queen's blessing as the beginning. And so, you will forever be known as the Dark Lady's Chosen."