Ash Nazg Durbatulûk
Shadow of War/Witcher story
Chapter 1The whispers of his master had transformed to all consuming roars in the short number of days since the Heir of Isildur revealed himself and marched on the Morannon. Before this the Voice that had directed the Nine had been the soft spoken commander that he had fought against for decades. The soft voice that echoed in the Witch-King's voice when the dread being had entreated the man he once had been to give in and accept his ultimate destiny: eternal service of the Blazing Eye of Annatar.
But the Witch-King was dead, but not just dead. This Ringwraith knew that an old enemy of his had finally fallen. That provoked a muted emotion that was not strong enough for this ringwraith to hold to long enough for faded understanding to well up.
This Ringwraith had remembered that he had fought against this fate until the bitter moment of acceptance(or had it been the final capitulation to a long seduction?). As the foul wings of his fell beast flapped, the hooded wraith regarded the grand melee raging between the forces of the Blazing Eye and those gathered under the stars and crowned tree of the Heir of Isildur. The command of his master having drawn him and his fellow wraiths back to guard the approach to Orodruin. This Ringwraith couldn't help but be grateful for that command, the terrible beaks and talons of the Eagles had nearly brought down his fell beast.
As he and his fellow rode the hot currents around Orodruin, guarding the great volcano at their Master's command, something unforeseen happened. The undominable and implacable All-Seeing Eye turned from the fight on the Dagorlad, turning to cast its unfathomably piercing gaze onto the midsection of the great mountain. With a flash of insight, this Ringwraith knew what the Eye was gazing upon: the Sammath Naur.
Where once this ringwraith and another being -the traitor!- had forged their own implement of cool steel and shining blue to cleanse the Dark Land of its Shadow. A pang of terrible longing ran rampant through this Ringwraith, oh how he ached for that steel piece of him at times. His new ring rose up to meet those pangs of longing, as it always did, whispering to this Ringwraith that it had this ring of burnished gold now. He didn't need the old ring. The soothing of his -still his and always his- ring broke this Ringwraith from his momentary mental pause, so that this Ringwraith could continue to focus on perfectly obeying the will of the rightful Lord of the World.
The inner void where this Ringwraith's emotions had once resided collapsed. An all-consuming panic gripped this Ringwraith and he quailed before it, a mere fragment of the emotion that his Master was feeling transmitted down the unseen but ever present chains that tethered and bound him to the will of the true King of Men.
Around the cloud covered top of Orodruin, the eight figures and their unnatural steeds jerked about unnaturally, the crushing fist of Annatar the Great ordering them to dive. Now! Protect The Ring!
The exact nature of what had drawn the King of Kings' attention was revealed to the Ringwraiths. The One Ring was in Mordor! It was in the heart of the land, Mount Doom and it was in danger!
But all the straining of the fell beasts and all the speed by which the Nazgûl could move could not stop fate from having it's day. A curious thing, that several hobbits and a slip would be able to alter the course of Arda, but nevertheless it happened all too quickly for the Nazgûl to stop.
The One Ring slipped into the fires of Mount Doom and Sauron was defeated, his power and very self reduced to scattered grains of sand that would never be able to form a single thought again. In the rest of Middle-Earth, the Free Peoples rejoiced. The army on Dagorlad cheered their king. Gondor and Rohan beheld the blue of the sky once again. Durin's Folk and the Men of Dale felt courage kindle once more in their breasts. And the elves felt an eternal moment of ending that would follow them until they took the passage into the uttermost west, but for the current moment they sang in joy and victory as they marched on Dol Guldur. The land groaned a sigh of relief at the vanishing of the Shadow that had hung over it for millennia.
But in Mordor, where shadows once lied, did not sigh. It did not cheer or rejoice.
For Mordor broke as the power of its master fled it. Deep and terrible rifts opened on Gorgoroth as Mount Doom belched its furious flames at the destruction of its greatest creation. The eastern lands trembled at the quakes birthed by the collapse of Barad-dûr. The malicious rivers of Mordor flooded their banks, bathing the soil in the cruel cold they contained. The Sea of Nurnen frothed from the heat of the land below and the salt winds the Boiling would haunt the region for decades.
Yet in the midst of the death of Mordor, a rebirth happened. For in the fiery skies of Mount Doom, a Ringwraith, who was banished from death, woke up.
Talion of Mordor, once of Gondor, returned from death while falling. The first part was known to him, familiar, but the sensation of falling while doing so was not. He opened his eyes, feeling the lack of ring-power in them, and looked around. The action tired him, greatly, and his body felt encased in sap. Talion took in the sight: the erupting Mount Doom and the balls of flaming rock it scattered into the air. The ball of flaming rock that had struck the rear of his fell beast. Most importantly to Talion, the sight of a crumbling Barad-dûr, the Flaming Eye's absence a gaping hole in the wraith world.
His emotions moved sluggishly, painfully. In concert with the slowness of the wraith world Talion and the rest of his brotherhood moved in. But move his emotions did and continue to fall Talion did. Sauron was dead!
Talion could not believe it, but could not deny it. The Dark Lord was more than defeated, he was destroyed. Talion could perceive the quick dissolution of his power from this land and his crystalized heart managed to lift itself. His fight was over, he could be free at last.
Free to at last venture on that final journey that was the Gift of Men that Celebrimbor had discussed with him on occasion.
"Celebrimbor." The name had not crossed Talion's lips or thoughts in decades. Not since before the final decades of his long war, when Talion's uruks had referred to him more as the Lord of Minas Morgul than the Bright Lord. But the name of the traitor -his only friend in Mordor- managed to rekindle more of Talion's memories.
"And I will dominate Sauron. His armies will be mine."
"I will not trade one Dark Lord for another. This is not the end I have fought for."
"You are but a vessel"
A bright ring is stolen from his hand and given to another's. An unworthy hand. He thought. It was MY creation too, Celebrimbor!
The thoughts of his ring -and oh how he missed it!- made Talion look at his left hand, seeing soothing gold where once there should have been unyielding steel. It calmed his mind, giving him clarity that he had not felt when he had first worn this beautiful, perfect ring. His true ring. A ring that whispered to Talion that it would never leave him. For Talion was perfect to this ring it whispered, and why would it want to leave perfection?
"As long as I have breath in my body, my fate is my own…"
The thoughts of rings summoned up the oath that had driven Talion for neigh a century and took his gaze away from his ring to the hard crags of Gorgoroth that inched towards him. This would be the end, Talion realized, the final end. No more reforming, no more clinging chills that lingered on his bones for hours, no more pain.
Most of Talion wanted that final respite, to finally slip off westwards. To pursue what first Celebrimbor, then Talion had denied himself.
But then he remembered his ring and the words he had sworn of his own free will, meaning every single one of them. And the fragment of Talion that wanted to live surged forward, wrestling away the apathy and eagerness towards a final death, and replacing it with the fire of life. To die when there was nothing driving him, commanding him, at the exact moment of freedom would only prove Celebrimbor right. It would mean the elf-lord had been right about Talion, and Talion's hatred towards the ringmaker was too deep to let him win now
Talion closed his eyes and inhaled a rattling breath. Then the eyes of the Gravewalker opened, glowing with the power of a ring-lord.
Talion looked deep in the wraith world and saw his black fellowship around him, glowing with a green light that he could see was quickly fading. Their forms inert as they fell. Helm, Suladân, the Sisters, and even the terrible Khamûl. He realized that their long slavery under Sauron -how good it felt to even think that name without punishment- had stripped them of any free will the other Nazgûl could have exerted now that the fist of their two masters no longer existed to drive them along.
But Talion had not been broken like them and he would live while his fellows died. Time began to move quicker, he could hear the dying shrieks of his fell beast now. With the experience of years, Talion found a solidish looking piece of land.
The jar of exiting the wraith world nearly ended his attempt right there and then, not to mention the painful sound of Orodruin's wrath, but Talion fought through it. Unsheathing Acharn, that dagger that had always been precious to him, though Talion did not know why, Talion cut himself free from the straps that secured him on the fell beast's saddle. Gravity gripped him, pulling Talion down. With a grunt of effort and a flap of black robes, Talion righted himself. Now his descent was more manageable.
He didn't think of what he would do once he landed, where he would go. He didn't really think he was capable of conceiving such thoughts at the moment. He just needed to land, then move from there.
Ba-dump
His undead heart skipped a beat. Impossible. Talion heard the fabric of the world scream as it tore. Also impossible. Then Talion screamed in agony as the outrush of chaos slammed into him, pulling at his soul. For once the unnatural order Sauron had imposed on Mordor had been broken, a long held at bay unnatural chaos rushed into the gap.
And Talion's focus was shattered as his spirit was wracked with a pain that not even the torment the Witch-King and Sauron had inflicted on him for his defiance had reached. And so the Gravewalker and once Lord of Minas Morgul would have died, impacting the ground of Gorgoroth like Fate had intended for him. Then Talion of Mordor, once of Gondor, would have passed through the Halls of Mandos to make the last journey of Man.
But Talion was not alone as he fell. He wore a Ring of Power, and rings have a will of their own to add to their masters.
So the newest and last of the Nazgûl, and his ring, vanished from Arda through a swallowing swirl of blue and passed entirely from the knowledge of the people of that land. His enemies would not remember him, for the true enemies of Talion predeceased him. But the tale of the Gravewalker and his deeds would live on in Tribesmen of Nurnen, who remembered the daring rescues of their one-time comrade-in-arms and knew him the best. In those people the highest compliment to give a warrior would become 'You fight with the arms of the Gravewalker.' Several of their kings after the Ring War would take the regnal name Talion in his honor.
Even a few companies of Haradrim and Easterlings that survived the War of the Ring would return home with tales of the great Ringwraith siege breaker that had led them headfirst over any set of walls they assailed. The tactics seen by those companies would become the foundation for all future siege warfare tactics in the South and East of Middle-Earth for generations afterwards.
A small impact on the grander scale but an impact nonetheless. Talion would not have wanted it anyway else. But that was Middle-Earth, and the land Talion would appear in would be much more malleable.
A/N: So you might be asking yourself: Balerion, shouldn't you be writing something for your other two stories right now? Especially the one that hasn't been updated since summer?
My answer to that is: yes, yes I should. And I will but first a story bug must be scratched(caused by me playing Shadow of War and getting mad at hand dealt to our boy Talion. And loving the Ringwraith look the game gave you in Act 4). Thought about what might allow an easy crossover and thought about Witcher, with its description of magic being inherently chaotical. Bingo bango, here we are. I can't promise this story will be a long term thing however. Hope what I've provided at the moment is enjoyable however.
Now for the 'real' meat of the chapter, my efforts to clean up the SoW timeline to be in line with the books.
So first off the Black Gate and Minas Ithil/Morgul. The Black Gate being taken by Mordor isn't given an exact date so it occurs when it happens in the game [which going off the SoM trailer is 2954, the reawakening of Mount Doom). This is the last outpost of Gondor in Mordor to fall. Minas Morgul has been Minas Morgul for 900 years by this point. The Castamir plot is reworked into a general from Ithiliden selling out his troops by leading them into an ambush to save Idril. This doesn't work, but Idril(Baranor too) and survivors are taken prisoner in Mordor for slave work. Freeing these slaves is the source of the Gondorian missions. Castamir's sellout of his army also contributed to the complete abandonment of the final parts of Gondorian Ithilien.
Shelob. She was never good, period. She wanted the new ring because she desires the light of the ring. Obviously this didn't work out well for her due to Talion and Celebrimbor wanting to get it back, so she uses her power to give them visions, injecting just enough truth that Talion buys into her ability to always be right. Shelob doesn't want Sauron to be defeated(the stupid be human desire and revenge on Sauron for betraying her motive is erased), and because she has some sight, she knows that when Talion and Celebrimbor cast him out(back to Dol Goldur, which necessitates the invasion of wider middle earth she tells Talion about in Act 3. The pair are still hunting Sauron but they aren't interested in the diplomacy to help them get to Sauron at that point) they are coming for Shelob, the spawn of the hell-demon spider that Celebrimbor will definitely tell Talion worked alongside Morgoth.
Isildur the Ringwraith. Still happens but he is turned by the other Nazgul as they flee Mordor. The survivors hope that Isildur would lead them to the One Ring immediately after the War of the Last Alliance. That plan didn't work out unfortunately, so Isildur joins his new brethren in Nazgul adventures in the East until the Angmar Operation kicks off.
Celebrimbor is not involved in handing out the Rings of Power and Helm Hammerhand did not live in the Second Age. Celebrimbor is still a bastard more concerned with power than doing the right thing but he didn't get that way until after he wore the One Ring and was forced to bounce around Mordor as a Houseless Spirit for millennia. And seeing his family be brutally murdered in front of him.
Eltariel has brown hair, not blonde.
Other than that, the rest of the two games fit together with the books decently(ignoring video game mechanics in the lore as video game mechanics). If I missed anything else, namely events that Talion will reference later, let me know.