The humans in the cells adjacent to his own shivered and chattered their teeth from atop their ruddy bunks, huddling into their smallclothes and thin blanket covers for whatever warmth they could. An early October cold front had settled into the land, and underground as they were, imprisoned beneath the Stormwind waterways, frosted over with sleet and snow, it was even worse for the prisoners of the Stockades.

This was perhaps the first time in this life that Kowler was thankful to have been born a gnoll. His fur was thick and hearty, and through its plentiful warmth he'd no fear of the cold. At least, not this level of cold. He'd yet to test his mettle against the likes of Dun Morogh or Winterspring or Northrend, but even then, Kowler liked to think his fur alone would have been able to handle their harsh conditions.

Though he would have preferred the option to wear clothes at all. Alas, such was taken from him, and he'd only a loincloth to cover his shame.

The Stockades were nothing like they were represented in the game. Kowler should have expected that, seeing as how the Redridge pack was both greater and lesser than what he remembered playing, as well was everything in this world larger and clearer and real.

It was little wonder that this, just as everything else, was different. And yet, the obvious was still a surprise for Kowler.

In the World of Warcraft, the Stockade was an instanced dungeon, an incomplete zone for Alliance players to essentially power-level their way to their late twenties. The experience was easy, the area was small, the loot pools were similarly small so there was little drama to be had on that front, and higher-level players were often-times willing to offer free runs to friends and guildmates and strangers just to be kind or when struck by fits of genuine boredom coupled with an unwillingness to go outside. With three wings to its name and an almost linear format, it was a simple and well-rehearsed matter to take on, one that Kowler himself had done a few times on some of his characters.

But away from the game, in the actual Stockades, this was not the case. The proper Stockades were a dark, damp sort of space, built of blackened stone and thick wooden posts and was wrought of jailed bars and seedy prisoners, with only barely-there torchfire wicks for light. The cells were small, their denizens mean, the stench of piss and shit wafted as if a windowsill pie and the passageways were winding, snaking, maze-like things. The wardens were smart enough to put covers over their prisoner's heads just before entering, jostling them in such a way that made it near impossible to traverse by memory. Certainly nobody dumb enough to be sent to the Stockades was smart enough to remember their route of entry.

Seven months and eleven days he'd been here. Exactly two hundred and twenty-three days, counted by the scratchings he'd gnarled into the wall of his cot with the butt of his dinner spork. The quietness, the solitary feeling that the Stockades brought out in him… Kowler almost wished that he'd taken that initial offer of a quick death.

Almost.

And glancing at his cellmate, stoically sleeping against the far corner opposite his own, snoring loudly for any and all to hear, he foully remembered why he'd wished for such a death.

The Stockade wardens were not cruel by nature, but they were willing to give in to some levels of cruelty when it came to certain matters. Such things included their prisoners of other races. Kowler, as a gnoll, was not allotted much. He had no cot to sleep upon, nor a blanket to huddle into. Luckily, he had his as-before mentioned fur for warmth and comfort, else this would have been quite the poor circumstance. As it were, it was just an annoyance. What really was cruel in Kowlers mind was that the guards were rare to change his chamber pot, and his cell held one of the most pungest stenches in the Stockades as a result. His nose happened to be quite strong, so it felt far worse.

But beyond that, beyond all the unkindness's that he might have been subjected to, it was his cellmate that brought about his worry. The wardens liked it when non-human races were grouped together, for reasons Kowler didn't know, and didn't want to think about. Humans stayed with humans, and the rest came together. Races such as gnolls, such as ogres, such as dwarves…

Such as orcs.

The orc before Kowler was an imposing one, that much he'd admit without a shred of shame. His skin was a grim grey, well matched to their prison walls, and he was muscled and scarred beyond any other orc Kowler had seen so far, and larger to boot. His eyes were a cruel yellow, his teeth sharp and harsh, his jaw thick and wide, and his hair was tied back in a warrior's tail, as befit the warrior that bore it. Perhaps the most notable trait to his personage were the red tattoo's lining his body, over his arms and legs and torso and even portions of his face.

Targorr the Dread, he was called. An executioner of the Blackrock Clan, captured for a life's sentence by the Lakeshire guards regiment.

And a vicious little shit besides, Kowler thought boldly.

Targorr and Kowler held a surprisingly cordial relationship, in that they kept quiet around one another and did not cross the imaginary border lines of their cell. It did not start out this way.

Targorr had been a prisoner of Stormwind for over three years now, captured for his brutal and unmerciful ways towards humans, and each new cellmate he'd been given suffered an accident soon enough, for his temper was quick to rouse and he did not care for sharing space. The Stockade guards, realizing that he would be a pain and unwilling to risk their own mortality by punishing him seriously, decided to just stuff other prisoners that they believed would be a pain onto him, likely hoping that one or both would die. Then Kowler came.

It was little surprise that within their first day of sharing space, a fight broke out. Kowler did not like Blackrock orcs, and Targorr did not like gnolls. It was inevitable, really. What was surprising, to the prisoners and the guards and to Targorr himself, was that Kowler came out the better in their fight. Not the victor, it should be clarified. The better.

Targorr was strong and fast and brutally efficient, able to use his body as if it were a weapon itself, and that would normally be enough. It was nearly enough, too. But Kowler was strong and fast as well, and though Targorr still exceeded Kowler's efforts in physical combat, Kowler had access to the one thing that Targorr never would, something that nobody but Kowler could ever hope to claim.

Astreamor.

The reason Kowler had no clothes to his name was due to the Stockade regulation of property. So long as it was not a weapon, and so long as it could not be used in any format to escape, prisoners were allowed to hold on to one item of their choice. Most prisoners chose to keep their clothes, or their robes if they were arrested in such. Some kept a trinket or memento; one even kept a smoking pipe. Targorr chose to keep a leather shoulderguard with straps that wrapped over his torso and arm, leaving him, similar to Kowler, covered only by a loincloth.

Kowler kept his totem, uncaring that his nakedness was the result of his decision.

Normally, the guards would not have allowed this, for the totem, as a staff, could have been seen as a weapon. But there was a factor in their allowance, and that factor's name was Targorr. There had been an instance in the past where they'd allowed a prisoner to shirk the rules a bit and wield a baton to hopefully ward the orc away, and though that was a failed event, a small ceremonial staff was of a similar nature and just as unlikely to be of any serious aid. Plus, Kowler was using it as a walking stick when he had initially been brought to Stormwind, not having had a chance to fully heal the arrow wound in his leg. The wound had looked genuinely uncomfortable to the wardens, and so he was given permission to keep his staff.

Which allowed Kowler to keep Targorr in line.

Through his totem, and through the small puddles and constantly dripping ceilings scattered all around the Stockades courtesy of their being located underneath a waterway, Kowler was able to subdue Targorr. And even then, in a space which should have made the gnoll an undisputed victor, it was a close thing. Were it not due to Targorr's own cultural belief systems, this could have gone decidedly different.

To almost all orcs, regardless of clan affiliation, shamanism was a decidedly sacred affair. To their lore and culture, the spirits of their ancestors became one with the world upon their death, and so the ability to commune with and harness the elements of the world was quite special. A deceased brother or sister, a parent or grandparent, a friend or lover… A shaman could call upon them and be offered wisdom from the beyond.

Or at least, that's what the orcs believed. Kowler had yet to have anything of the sort occur in his shamanistic practice, but he did not discount the possibility that it could happen. Hells, he did not even know that that was the case for orcs, having been a hard-core Alliance player once upon a time.

And thus, Kowler's had been quite confused when, accented and rough though his Common was, Targorr actually apologized to the gnoll.

From there, their relationship of Leave me the fuck alone! was born. Targorr would leave Kowler alone, solely due to the fact that he was a shaman, and Kowler would leave Targorr alone, because Targorr had about a hundred pounds of muscle over the gnoll and the orc was able to use it at a distinctly competent degree.

The gnoll knew where he was outmatched, and he also knew that if Targorr hadn't let up on him due to his shamanism, his stay in the Stockades could have been very different. Different, and far shorter.

Yes, Kowler was quite pleased to have become a shaman. It had saved his ass more times than he cared to count, and he was not even contracted to any other elementals yet. Were the elements that he communed with not so difficult to settle, he might have chosen to forgo his hope for being a mage and instead devote the entirety of his energy towards mastering the elements of Azeroth.

Alas, they were still extraordinarily difficult to deal with, grasping and cunning and generally a bunch of bitches, and thus Kowler still hoped to become a mage.

He blinked, his attention startled away from Targorr's sleeping form, when he heard a new voice approaching, his ears twitching to listen better.

"…-u know I did nothin' wrong! I'm an innocent! It was just a wee punch, not my problem his jaw be made o' glass!"

"You punched a nobleman for asking a question. While wearing plated gauntlets. He's lucky to be alive." Another voice said, dryly. Kowler knew that voice; everybody who kept to these prison cells knew that voice. It belonged to Warden Thelwater, the man in charge of the whole of the Stockades, every facet of it to the food stuffs, the guards, the upkeep of the cells and even the prisoners themselves.

"He asked me if I was drinking milk! MILK! A'course I punched the twat! And I would do it again had I the- OI! Put me down, ya bunch o' ninnies!"

The indignant voice was soon to be seen; a dwarf was flailing in rage, held taught by a trio of struggling guards, one on each arm and one holding the legs. Warden Thelwater walked behind the small group, one hand holding a well lit torch, the other leaning over the hilt of his sword; a wary eye on his many prison cells.

Then they stopped, right in front of Kowler's own cell. Thelwater caught sight of Targorr sleeping, and quickly opened the cell door, his retinue shoving the dwarf inside. He scrambled to his feet and lunged for the bars, but found them quickly closed.

Thelwater cast a quick eye to Kowler, one that Kowler returned balefully, and the warden then shrugged. Though Kowler and Targorr's relationship was confusing but tolerable, the one between Kowler and Thelwater was of a different sort of muddled.

To Thelwater, Kowler was a surprise. A gnoll that not only didn't cause any trouble, but was able to both handle bunking with the orc and hold a conversation between bars? A surprise to be certain, but an unexpectedly welcome one. He actually liked the gnoll.

To most prisoners, Thelwater was a relatively fair man. He gave decent servings for mealtimes, was willing to talk and request lesser sentences for prisoners that showed both remorse and a willingness to change their ways, and was generous regardless, showing this by punishing the occasional guard that thought fucking around when chamber pots needed to be replaced was a grand idea. Sadly, that was not as uncommon as it should have been. Thelwater would sometimes allow prisoners card packs or a smoking rolls of ground briarthorn for good behavior, too. He was an honestly kind man trying to make the best of his lot in life, and many prisoners felt a sort of kinship with him.

Kowler did not view him as such. Though Thelwater was fair and kind when here, the simple fact of the matter was that he was rarely around. Thelwater was not only the big boss of this prison, he was also a noble of decent status with political interest of his own, leading him away from the Stockades on the regular, which then left his less-than-kind employees to take the reins. Kowler did not like Thelwater because he believed him to be complacent in the malpractice of his staff. And, not only was he the one keeping him behind bars, he was also a human. The sentencing of Eastvale cut hard for the gnoll, and Kowler forgot nothing; nor, did he think, was he likely to forgive. He had been shunted into his cell, forced to fight an overly aggressive orc, and stripped of his clothing and dignity, due to the paranoia of humans.

Kowler no longer cared for his former race.

Perhaps he should have come to this conclusion earlier. Perhaps he should have just fallen into line with his new people, taking more than his fair share and teaching his pack to be better. Perhaps he should have just made to kill Yowler and oust him as the alpha, civilizing his race in the aftermath. Those would have been noble pursuits, and might have allowed him access to magic by way of trade later down the line. But Kowler had clung to his humanity and ignored his opportunity to better the gnolls and had naively hoped that humanity would cling to him just as fiercely.

His eyes were now opened, wide and clear. And with those wide and opened eyes, he quickly realized his self-made backstory about being a human-turned-gnoll was decidedly stupid, especially in the manner with which he told the story. Hindsight always came too late. Really, he should have just shut his gob and asked for the Stockades. Who was dumb enough to try and reason with the good will of an angry mob? His stupid ass, that's who. Now his malarkey was on written record.

Hopefully they would just refute what was written down as the babbling of a lucky-to-be-alive prisoner.

Eastvale had been a blunder. But it also taught a lesson to Kowler, one he most assuredly would need in this life; humans weren't to be trusted, not implicitly. They lied to get what they wanted and wanted him dead for existing. While Kowler would not return that sentiment, no longer would he allow them his immediate kindness. Kindness was earned, just as respect was, and the action of being born earned nothing. Not anymore.

And the dwarf that was now bashing away at their cell door seemed to hold a similar sentiment towards the warden, too.

"LET ME OUT!" He screamed, and then screamed even louder when the wardens began to walk away. "YE GOT THE WRONG DWARF! I AIN'T DO NOTHING WRONG! IT WAS IMELDA! IMELDA DID IT! SHE'S ALWAYS BEEN A CUNT!"

Kowler could not help but snicker at that line. His snickering turned to full bellied laughter when one of the wardens idly threw a ratty blanket right into the face of the screaming dwarf, muffling him into a stream of curses. Kowler chirped and cackled without heed or control, and the dwarf spun around in anger, ready to dish out vengeance on the one who laughed at him, only to seemingly pale as he took in his new cellmates, his new blanket falling to the floor.

"…Fuck me standin'…" He breathed out, eying the pair wildly.

Kowler laughed even harder, going so far to wipe a tear from his eye. Shaking his head, he sat up a little straighter and took in the dwarf's appearance.

He was an older sort, though not elderly. Middle aged, if that was appropriate. His nose was large, his cheeks were puffy, and his brown eyes were red from exhaustion. That was basically all Kowler could see regarding the dwarf's face, for the rest of his muzzle was covered by a great black beard, large enough to pool around the knees of the dwarf, intricately braided as it was. Decently muscled and fully clothed, he appeared a proper, strong dwarf, a fair representation of his race.

"Maker's arse, the hell did I do ta be stuck with a damned gnoll and a fucking orc?" He muttered to himself.

But Kowler heard his words clearly, and so responded even if they were not meant for him. "Nearly killed a noble, apparently."

"Pah! Nearly killed him my arse, that twat was healed up by one'a them druids in a jiff. Reported me the day after, smellin' like roses all the while." The dwarf said, scowling furiously.

Then he paused for a second and cocked his head to the side. "Wait, ye speak proper Common, gnoll?"

Kowler had long concluded that he'd have to ignore this sort of confusion. It was extremely unusual for a gnoll to talk properly in any format, so it was warranted.

That did not mean it wouldn't get old after a while.

"I do. Name's Kowler. You?"

"Bruegal," the dwarf said. "Bruegal Ironknuckle."

"Well met, Bruegal."

"Wish I could say the same, laddie. Truly, I do." Bruegal grumbled, slumping against the bars. He idly gripped his new blanket and covered his body. "I ain't s'posed ta be here. 'twas just a little barfight, that's all. I'm with the Explorer's League, we were meant to supply here for the week and then head to the Badlands. Now they say I gotta spend a year down here? For a wee little punch? The League'll wring my neck, if me wife don't first, that be."

"We all have different stories." Kowler said, shrugging. Bruegal's tale showed favoritism, but it was not particularly unheard of. The House of Nobles in Stormwind was a decidedly corrupt group of people, and they tended to get their way. His intentions for the Badlands were interesting though. "I was brought here for failing to stop my pack from sacking a village; took a life's sentence over the chop. Mathas, one of the humans in the cell across from ours, was caught stealing a wheel of cheese from a Trade District merchant for his starving younger sister; it was two years down here or the loss of a hand. If enough people say you do bad, or the right people, at least, then you get brought here."

"True enough," Bruegal scowled. He jabbed a thumb towards Targorr. "And him? What's he done?"

Targorr growled lowly from his corner, evidently awake now. He opened a single eyelid and glared a yellow fury at Bruegal. "Be silent, dwarf. Else I'll show you exactly why I am here."

"I dare ye ta try ye-"

"You really don't want to." Kowler drawled, standing from his own corner. Bruegal looked strong and was probably good in a fight, but Targorr was an entirely different story. And Kowler did not want to risk his only opportunity for continuous conversation since his imprisonment. Targorr was many things, but a talker he was not. It was a lucky day when Kowler got more than two sentences out of the orc that were not of the confrontational sort. Total.

He then looked around, scowling at the size of their space. It was fine for two inmates, but a third complicated things. The cell only really had enough space for two. While there would be just enough floor room for a third to lay about, the border Targorr and Kowler had crafted would be breached.

Jerking his head, Kowler motioned the dwarf next to him. Better he lose some personal space than his life. "You can take the spot by me."

"I think I'll be fine here, laddie." Bruegal said slowly, arching an eyebrow, pushing his back further into the bar doors.

Kowler doubted that would last, not with the way Targorr was looking.

"So what's yer story then?" Bruegal asked, trying and failing to get comfortable. "A gnoll that talks proper? Speaks sense? That's gotta be a tale worth drinkin' over."

"We'll swap stories after you sleep. You look like you need it, and I'll not risk our friend's ire further."

"Aye," Bruegal grunted, shooting a quick look towards Targorr before covering the whole of his body with his blanket, hiding his face from sight. "Sounds fair. I've got some thinkin' ta do, it seems. And it ain't like I've much else ta do in here."

And that was truer than Kowler wished to admit.

Bit of a shorter chapter, I'll admit, but I wanted to set the Stockades up with a bit more detail and character introduction. I know some of you all didn't like the route I decided to take with that past chapter, but don't worry! There's a plan.

The biggest issue that I've held with WoW is that they have so many characters they never really fleshed out, which makes sense because there are literally thousands of characters, but still. Named npc's in dungeons and quest givers should have some meat to their bones.

For those that are curious, the quest giver in this case is Thelwater and the named npc's are Bruegal Ironknuckle and Targorr the Dread. Thelwater just gives some kill quests, Targorr is known only as an executioner for the Redridge branch of the Blackrock Orcs, and Bruegal has nothing to his name. Literally the only reason anybody might know who Bruegal is is because he's a rarespawn; the only mob in the Stockades that gives any loot worth a damn.

Alas, such is life.

This was a surprisingly easy chapter to write. It kinda wrote itself. Like, I just looked at spawn points for Targorr and saw that there's an area in the dungeon where he and Bruegal shared spawns, which gave this chapter its own life all by itself. And it set up the basis for the next chapter relatively seamlessly. For those of you that know the basic lore of the Stockades- er, well… Yeah, it'll happen in Chapter 5. For those that don't… Well, I mean you could spoil yourselves if you wanted and look it up, but that'd be kinda weak.

Regardless, things are progressing smoothly. And I've got some exciting things to show you all!

If you liked this chapter, pleased Favorite/Follow and don't forget to Review!