A Bloodprint's story

I'm not sure if I'm going to get back into modeling and playing like I was... the local shop I used to play at fell victim to the economy, I'm got married and am working on a family, have more responsibility on the job and generally less time to play and model. On the other hand, I was able to check out the new book, which rekindled my excitement for the Ogres and my army. Of course, modeling, painting and playing aren't in the picture unless I can find a shop that sells the models and people to play against. And win the lottery, because right now I'm saving every penny I can scrounge for diapers and baby food.

On the other hand, I can still write. And I love the fluff. SO.... here we go.

1.

Good Morning. My name is Sterling Bloodprint, and I am an Ogre. The tales I am about to tell you are true, as experienced by myself for the past three years.

Of course, the first thing you would want to know is why I am not dirty, smelly, speaking in third person, or trying to eat you when you aren't looking. Explaining that I am not a normal ogre when I am standing in front of you like this is stating the obvious, yet some explanation is warranted.

My youth is a fuzzy memory, but I believe it to have been a normal one by Ogre standards. I was a member of the Eye-biter tribe; a tribe any well-travelled caravan is likely to be familiar with. I was born to one of the more powerful members of the tribe, and was expected to do great things. In my youth and ignorance, I listened to tales of our tribes "great heroes", who are everything you would expect an Ogre to be and they were everything I wanted to be.

On the other hand, there were also stories of another Ogre, a former Eye-biter who had been thrown out of the clan. At first, no one would tell me about his story, which drove me harder to find out about him. After a great deal of persistence, I uncovered part of his story.

His name was Wunka, and he was called a traitor. He had once been a mercenary loyal to Grandfather Malron, but had betrayed the clan to join another army, worst of all; it was an army of thinlings. And he had done so voluntarily, without Grandfather Malron being paid by the thinlings for his service. This was considered to be a great offence, and that made him just the kind of enemy a young Ogre could make a name for himself by eating.

So I went off to make a name for myself killing this evil traitor. The details of much during that time are difficult to remember as my mind was not as clear as it is now. Rather than detail the sketchy half-remembered events of my first ogre-hunt, I will simply say that I eventually found the traitor and challenged him to single combat. He beat me within an inch of my life and left me for dead.

I remember some of that beating, but not all of it. Most clearly, I remember the look of boredom on his face as he tore my weapon away and beat me with his bare hands. I remember thinking that I should have won, because the Great Maw had blessed my quest. I think I said something along those lines, because as Wunka threw me into a ravine after the beating, he told me something that changed my life.

"If the Maw really blessed you, go ask it why!"

I'm not sure if he actually meant for me to do that or if he was giving the Ogre equivilent of "Go take a long walk down a short pier", but remember, in an Ogre tribe, you do what someone stronger than you tells you to do or you end up in their belly. So, when I could move again, I went on a pilgrimage to the Great Maw. My memory of that time is very vague, like I remember how I felt instead of what actually happened. I know it was a long and difficult journey, taking most of a year. I remember eating rocks to quiet my stomach. I remember being so hungry that nothing else existed to me beyond eating, and no matter how much I ate I only wanted more. And I remember a green glow.

I don't remember if I ever actually reached the Great Maw, or if I asked it a question or found an answer. I remember following some deep instict that drew me east, then a change, then I was following a similar instinct, but headed west. Instead of traveling toward the Great Maw, I was seeking the one who had beaten me. I have no explanation for why I was on one journey, then I had a new one. At the time, I never thought to question it. Of course, I never really thought much of anything prior to then, but that's when I started to change.

The more I traveled, the stranger I became. Often I would awaken in a different place than where I lay down, alternately covered in fresh blood or surrounded by strange runes on the ground. For the first time, I remember just thinking. It's not that Ogre's don't think, but rarely, if ever, are those thoughts clear or reflective. Usual ogre thoughts are about food, either how to get it or how to get more. As I began to understand beyond the basic animal instincts which I had lived with, another instinct remained constant. I had to find the one that had beaten me.

So I made my way back over the Mountains of Mourne, and though my path was the same as before, this time the trip was radically different, though perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that the traveler was different rather than the trail. There were many things I noticed for the first time, yet must have been there on my previous journey. Not just things about the journey, but things about the world.

I noticed the way rocks split along predictable lines. I noticed the way moss grew on the same side of every tree. When I stared at the night sky, I noticed how the stars shifted ever so slightly. I noticed the tracks I left, the smells I made, the sounds of things around me. It was as if an early morning fog in my mind had been burned away by a strange green glow. I knew that something had happened to me. The impulses that drove me away from my tribe to confront Wunka were still clear in my memory, but it was like another being had done those things.

I began to do something I had never done before; I began to question. I looked at varying sides of things and came to many simple conclusions about myself, my tribe, my race and the world we occupy, and then I questioned them. I questioned the clouds that obscured the moutain peaks. I questioned the sun that blazed over the barren, rocky landscape. I sought out the patches of grass and thatch to discover why they were so sparse. I found the water souces by following the birds; located the prey animals that drank from the water; and found the predators by following the prey. I hunted the predators, knowing that in Ogre territory, stealing prey beasts from other tribes is a quick way to become prey yourself. I questioned why Ogres, as a race, lived in a place where food was so scarce, and then I questioned if food was scarce because of the Ogres or because of the climate. One thing, however, I did not question. I did not question what led me toward the Great Maw, or what was now leading me back toward Wunka again, until much later.

Following a trail over a year old through a barren landscape would ordinarily not be a simple task, but in the case of Wunka it was surprisingly easy. Ogre tribes, as a rule, devour anything that doesn't run too fast or fight too well within the first month of establishing a temporary "home" during their nomadic wandering. There is plenty of dangerous or elusive prey around for hunting, though, and any ogre tribe will always accept meat in trade for information, and they kept close track of all the other predators in their area. Trading food to the various tribes I passed kept me headed in the right general direction. Apparently, Wunka was traveling alone, and as long as I wasn't looking to eat their food they were more than happy to send me on my way.

The blackouts still happened from time to time but they grew noticeably less frequent as time passed on my journey. While I had no memory of what I did, I was obviously careful while doing it, never wandering into another tribe's hunting grounds or stumbling into a rhinox den. I learned to use a spear instead of a club for hunting, and learned to build traps at night to keep myself safe. I studied the world around me and found it full of more wonder and amazement than I had ever dreamed possible. I learned so many things during my journey that, when I finally closed in on my quarry almost two years after my defeat at his hands, I neither physically nor mentally resembled the ogre he had defeated.

2.

I caught up to Wunka when he stopped in a smallish camp on the outskirts of Goldtooth's territory. Situated at the west base of a small mountain, it would have been a reasonably safe, defensible camp if it weren't for the wooded brush that had grown just to the south where a mountain stream passed. As it was, I was able to get within a stone's throw of the camp undetected except by a few bugs and a squirrel. The camp itself was a sloppy place, full of refuse and the discarded skins of past meals. There were no tents or permanent structures, in fact, the only things that differentiated the camp from the wilderness around it was the Maw pit at the center and the pungent smells of decay and bodily waste. Apparently, those living within did not believe in taking long walks before relieving themselves. With dismay, I realized I had snuck into sight of the camp through the camp latrine. They must be from a branch of Ogre with no sense of smell, the lucky bastards. I could identify five Ogres in the camp besides Wunka, with maybe a score of gnoblar scurrying about. I knew which one was Wunka by that same instinct that had led me this far.

I must confess, my first sight of Wunka in two years was somewhat disappointing. In my memory, he had taken my club from me like a parent taking a sharp stick from a baby, smacked me around until he got bored and then threw me twenty feet through the air into a ravine. Naturally, the Wunka in I remembered was half as tall as a giant and twice as muscled. The reality was initially disappointing, but made more frightening as I watched.

He stood barely nine feet tall and had a gut no larger than my own. He wore armored plates on his legs and only a simple, unadorned gut-plate, which is unusual for one of my people who had traveled and worked as a mercenary. We all wear gut-plates, or simple shield held over our vulnerable gut by a strap around out back, but a well-traveled ogre will usually pick up additional pieces of armor both as decoration and additional protection. For instance, three of the ogres from the camp had helmets and one was almost completely armored. None of the armor matched, but it looked like it would be effective. Besides his armored legs and gut plate, Wunka wore a pendant with a small golden disk and a curious green scarf unlikely to offer any protection, except perhaps against frostbite.

As if the armor weren't enough, there were the weapons. The armored ogre had a sword almost as large as he was, and judging by the stains, chips and his relaxed grip, he'd had plenty of practice using it, though he'd had none cleaning or sharpening it. The others carried more manageable, if less intimidating, weapons, including a couple standard clubs and swords that would need two hands for a human to lift. Wunka faced them all with a polished staff with metal caps on either end.

As a group, they were taller, larger, better equipped and had Wunka out-numbered five to one. You could almost see that very thought slowly working it's way thru their heads as they surrounded him with drawn weapons. I thought about rushing to the rescue, but all I had was a hunting spear which would likely break the first time it struck an armored opponent. I didn't know why I was chasing Wunka in the first place, so I figured to just wait and do some reflecting while Wunka got himself killed. All I really wanted to do was get upwind while this played it's way to the inevitable conclusion.

So when the shouting started, I backed away and started circling around the wooded area to approach the camp. I figured that since I was working on instinct anyway, and my instincts were telling me not to bother hurrying, what was the point? I couldn't see, but I never really got out of ear-shot of the camp. It did occur to me that the shouting and fighting went on for a really long time considering it was five armored ogres with swords against one nearly naked ogre with a glorified stick.

The shouting died out just as I came back into sight of the camp. Wunka stood with his back to the Maw Pit facing the Armored ogre. One of the camp ogres lay unconscious and bleeding from a shattered nose and three more whimpered while clutching obviously broken limbs. The armored one was staring stupidly at his sword as it lay on the ground. He was also clutching his right arm, which was bent at an impossible angle halfway thru his forearm, making it almost appear that he had two elbows. I must have gasped or made some kind of noise because both of them looked toward me. The armored one looked scared, right up until Wunka's staff flashed, his nose exploded in a fountain of blood, and his eyes rolled back in his head, unconscious. Wunka just looked bored.

"You any good with that spear? I's not even breathing hard," Wunka shouted by way of greeting. His words had a strange, chopped accent I had not heard before.

"You aren't furry enough to spear," I tossed my spear aside and stopped. The spear wouldn't do me any good if I decided to fight Wunka, anyway, but he didn't need to know that. As long as I didn't look like I was threatening him, my instincts said he wouldn't kill me. After all, he really wasn't breathing hard after that fight. Which, considering the ambient smell, was probably the only way to stay conscious. "My name's Sterling and I've come a long way looking for you, Wunka."

"This ain't 'bout that Feastmaster girl again, is it? I told them I didn't know whose daughter she was, 'n I sure weren't her first."

"This isn't about a girl, someone's daughter or not, although I'd like to hear that story if we have time later,” believe it or not, in the entire year of chasing this ogre, it wasn't until that point, standing in front of him saying hello, that I realized I had absolutely no idea why I was chasing him. Even that instinct that kept me on his trail was now mysteriously absent. It probably ran off to some dark corner of my brain to have a good laugh at the joke.

Since I wasn’t real sure why I was after him, I decided just tell him my best guess and see what happened, “Would you believe the Great Maw sent me to you?"

"Sure. Just my luck the Maw would send the skinniest runt of a butcher ta me. Go back to the Maw and tell it I ain't interested in worshipin'."

That damned instinct kicked me right between the ears when he said that. I got the point. I also got the sudden desire to get rid of this instinct, because I had the idea that this quest was going to be a whole lot more complicated than simply finding this Ogre. Nothing to be done about it just now, might as well keep down this path and see where it leads. I'd follow my instinct, but I knew even then that I would regret it.

"So what is it you are interested in?" I replied.

"Soldierin'"

3.

So we started talking, right there in that miserable, smelly, filthy camp, and I learned about Wunka.

Wunka wasn't exceptionally large or strong or hungry or exceptionally anything, except maybe smarter than the average Ogre, which isn't exactly an encouraged trait in Ogre society. Physically, he was amost depressingly average, even a little short for an Ogre. He left the Eye-biters to become a mercenary because he was bored. There really wasn't much to actually do with the eye-biters. He wasn't big enough for any other Ogres to listen to, he wasn't strong enough to make them listen, and he was smart enough to know that wasn't going to change. So he left, and at the time, no one cared. He felt the need to belong to something greater than himself but the Eye-biters weren't it.

So he left and joined a group of mercenaries called the Iron Hands, learning how to be a mercenary. The Iron Hands had a contract with Cathay, and among the troops of Cathay, Wunka had a life-changing experience. Because he was more calm and had a good deal of self-control for an Ogre, the Cathayan general that had hired his unit reassigned Wunka to a training base in Northern Cathay, where he was to represent "the enemy" in mock-combat situations.

Wunka changed a great deal in that training camp. He had always been one of the smartest Ogres in his tribe, but it was in this camp that Wunka learned what it was to be more than an Ogre. Wunka learned what it was to be a Soldier; a part of an Army. He learned what it meant to train, to practice, to drill, to fight and kill as part of something he could believe in, for a commander he trusted and with comrades he believed in. He was hired for a six month training assignment.

Who emerged from that training camp was different from the Ogre who who went in. What came out was an Ogre with purpose. Wunka had found what he was missing, an Army. So he did what any soldier should do; he enlisted. That was where he upset the Iron Hands and the Eye-biters, because he enlisted in the army for volunteer pay instead of as a mercenary. As far as Wunka knew, he was the first non-human to be accepted as a volunteer regular in the Cathayan Millitary.

Everything was good for a time. Everything had an place, including him. Two months in Basic Training followed by a year doing border work in the north, and Wunka had found his place in the world. It took time, but eventually his fellow soldiers accepted him as one of their own and he was happy. However, there turned out to be one problem with the Cathayan millitary; they promoted him and tranferred him away from his comrades on the border. That was when Wunka learned that he could not be a leader of men. Being bigger and tougher and an Ogre among humans worked against him, because soldiers assigned to his unit were either too afraid or believed him too stupid to lead. His commanders feared he might surpass thier rank, so they would not help him. He saw himself causing a split within the army he served. For the good of the army he would give his life for, he retired from active service after an 8 year career. Wunka found himself a Soldier without an army.

At this point, the ogres from the camp were waking up, clearly surprised not to be half eaten. Wunka and I went about the business of setting the broken limbs & staunching the blood flow. I was curious about Wunka's decision not to kill these Ogres, but it was his decision so I followed his lead. After hearing about his past, I asked about his plans for the future.

"I need to find another army to join. I was thinking about the humans out this way, and I'm sure I can find one that will just let me be a soldier."

"What about making your own army?" that instinct buzzed in my head again.

"Where are tha soldiers? Who would lead 'em? Ogres are undisciplined slobs, with no thought that don't start in tha belly. Look at dese fools," he waved a hand at the five ogres he'd just defeated. "They attacked an unknown ogre wit a strange weapon, and did it one-at-a-time instead of workin' together. They's fools who're lucky to be alive."

"And what were you before your training? Who were you before you went to Cathay?"

"An undisciplined slob, with no thought that didn't start in ma belly," he said softly as the connection was made. "So you're sayin' ta make an army instead of trying to join one. It'll be a lot of work, starting from scratch, but it ain't like I got sumfin else ta do.

I'll need some help getting it started. What'cha think? Did the Maw give you some'fin else ta do? Dese boys'll want a good butcher and it's always good ta have the Maw on our side."

That instinct in my head stood up and cheered, which is fairly annoying but effective getting the message across. "Sure. I've got some free time."

4.

I realize that the ugly truth may be quite a shock. I've heard glorious tales about being the "Chosen of God" and "Destined for Greatness" or at the very least "Driven by a Greater Purpose". Hell, I've spread some of those tales myself. The truth is that we are Soldiers, and a Soldier's truth is hardly ever glorious. The truth is that Wunka started the Bloodprints because he wanted to be part of an army, had the time and is a do-it-yourself type of Ogre. Think of it this way; An unemployed blacksmith would build a forge. An unemployed baker would build a bakery. An unemployed farmer would build a farm. Well, Wunka was an unemployed soldier, so he decided to build an army.

I'm pretty sure that if he had not been promoted out of the Cathayan borderlands, the Bloodprints would not exist, and he'd be happily fighting side-by-side with his puny thinling comrades. Instead, he took five of the dumbest, laziest, dirtiest ogres I've ever seen, dragged them out of their rot and excrement filled home and made them soldiers. I don't think he realized he'd be good at it, and if he knew what the future would bring, he'd have killed them, and me, and gone to fight for the Brets or some other thinling army.

To tell the truth, even that makes it sound more special than it really was. Judging by those first five recruits, the process of making a soldier involves yelling, running, yelling, beating, yelling, digging and yelling. That first morning, Wunka was up before the sun and had a gleam in his eye that scared me as much as anything I had ever seen. He sent me out to hunt, saying that they would need a lot of food. He sent the gnoblar out on some other errand. Then he ripped a branch off one of the trees, kicked the closest sleeping recruit and started yelling. I don't think he stopped until sundown.

I took a quick look at the camp and figured these five had been in the area long enough to eat everything slow enough and stupid enough to be easily caught. That meant hunting up enough food for the camp would be a challenge, but a quick look at the other five ogres being goaded into movement was enough to convince me that it would be safest to be elsewhere. I won't detail too much of my hunting, but I went about setting some traps by the water and managed to locate some fresh tracks, following them to a small herd of big-horn sheep. I speared a medium-sized ewe and snapped the neck of a young ram that tried to show off by standing up to me when the smarter members of the herd fled. I let the rest go because it's never safe to hunt too heavily in Ogre territory. You never know when some young tyrant-wanna-be will decide those were his sheep, or a pack of wild sabretusks will decide to take your kill instead of finding their own. Carrying a quarter ton of dead mountain sheep will slow anyone down, so the sun was half sunk when I got in sight of the camp again.

I discovered the camp empty of Ogres, just gnoblar scurrying around, after apparently completed whatever mission Wunka had sent them on. The camp had a few new features and a lot less refuse. The most prominent addition was a cooking pit, which would make my job a lot easier, but there were also large areas of upturned earth nearby. I started to worry when I realized there were five of them, thinking that perhaps Wunka had decided this was a waste of time, killed the others, buried the bodies and left to join someone else's army. As always, it's easier to notice what's there instead of what's missing. Just when I started to worry, I noticed that the smell throughout most of the camp had diminished considerably, but was still strongest where I saw the overturned earth, which is when I realized that they had buried most of the worst smells. The smell when I came close to them made me thankful that the fire pit had been built on the opposite side of the camp.

Hoping for the best, I got to work preparing my kills. I've never much liked gnoblar, either as food or as people, but I grabbed three that had clearer eyes than the rest and sent them into the woods to gather plants to add flavor. I had just set them to roast when the sun hit the top of the mountains and I caught the first echo of Wunka, still yelling obscenities at our would-be soldiers. For being a typical ogre without the green glow that cleared out my thoughts, I have to praise his creativity; the sun was almost completely gone before I heard him repeat any vulgarity.

I finally saw them jogging into camp as darkness fell, Wunka leading the rest and still shouting over his shoulder. He had one of the five recruits slung over his shoulder, unconscious. Two more recruits were carrying the fourth, who was at barely conscious. The last of the bunch stumbled in under his own power but collapsed as soon as he stopped. Wunka stomped over to me, and as his back turned to the recruits, I swear I saw the corner of his mouth twitch in a barely contained smile.

"So this is what I've got to make into soldiers?" Wunka continued to shout, anger and disgust dripping from every word, "For the love a da maw, you useless slobs just made it to the fight! You think soldierin's about fighting when yer warm and rested and comfortable? Hell no! When I'm done with ye, you'll march three days thru a swamp, climb to the top of a mountain, wrestle a giant to the ground and then charge the enemy, and you'll fight better and harder than you've ever thought possible. You think you know what it takes to be a soldier? You can't even get to the enemy, let alone kill'em. Right now, you can't even stand up!"

Wunka kicked the unconscious Ogre for effect. The unfortunate victim woke up long enough to moan, then passed out again; the energy used to moan being more than he could spare. He looked at me and signaled me to follow him away from the camp.

"General Sterling wants to talk to me about you slobs," I just about pulled a muscle jumping as hard as I did when he called me that, but he shot me a warning look so I played along, "Any one of you runs, you damn well better run faster than me. The General said yer mine. The Great Maw told the general yer mine. That means yer mine until I can make soldiers out of ya. Any one of ya don't wanna be mine, get yer lard outta here and go tell the Maw ya quit."

We walked away from the camp. To tell the truth, I wasn't feeling so good. I sure as heck did not want to be a general. I could almost feel that instinct that drove me to find Wunka shrugging it's shoulders in wonderment. Of course, another instinct, which I have named "self-preservation", took one look at Wunka's face and decided I really wanted to be a general. In fact, Self-Preservation assured me that it was a life-long dream of mine. After all, how bad could being a general be? It had to beat being a soldier, since all the soldiers I knew were laying on the ground almost too exhausted to eat.

The first thing he did was strip them down to loincloths, scrub them clean and shave every hair but their eyebrows. Wunka explained that the lads had to look like soldiers, which meant they all had to be the same. Unless they could all dress in uniform, they would not dress at all. Once they looked like soldiers, they had to learn to live like soldiers, which meant being organized and mobile. So first they made the camp mobile, burying refuse & anything that wouldn't be taken on the march. Then he had the pack up, strap everything they owned to their back and start running. Wunka ran around them, beating them with a tree branch every time one of them slowed down.

"Dat's what soldiers call 'Motivatin'," Wunka said with a grin. I decided I was really glad to be the general.

Great so far. Its refreshing to read a different take in ogres.

Thanks. Sorry about the typos in Chapter 4 - after I finished typing it, I had to go somewhere and didn't have much time for editing. I will probably edit the post to correct them... especially "aboput". Obviously I didn't even find the time to spellcheck.

As far as the different take on Ogres, it's really something I came up with to give eyes and a voice to the reader. The problem I have is that I am terrible at writing in third person & much prefer first person. In order to write in first person, I have to maintain a voice, and that means either writing the whole thing 'stupid' in ogre-speak, writing it from the pov of a non-ogre, or altering a normal ogre's voice so they could relate the story.

Ogre-speak is interesting in bursts but will make your head explode after a few hundred words. An outsider telling the story would be forced to tell his story instead of the story of the army. The army would not trust in an outsider and I couldn't model an outsider being a part of the army (unless it was a gnoblar, and that would rule out normal speaking also).

(edited chapter 1, because I saw an opportunity to describe the landscape. Edited and spell-checked chapter 4. Posted chapter 5.)

5.

Over the next five days, life developed a pattern. Wunka woke up the lads every morning before sunrise, had them moving within three minutes of being awake. The camp itself went under a slow transformation. When we arrived, all that identified the camp was a Maw Pit, trash and things better left unidentified. Before they left on their first training march, they buried the worst of the trash and built the fire pit. Before they left for the second day's run, they filled in the fire pit and maw pit, packed the dried mutton I had hunted, loaded what weapons they had and filled their water barrels for a long day. When they returned, they set up a brand new camp thirty feet from the old one. They dug a new Maw Pit, a new Fire Pit, and then built a perimeter of buried wooden spikes that they had cut and collected while they were out. The next day, they broke down the whole camp, including the pikes, tying them with dried skins from my kills and strapping them to their back while they ran.

And so it went, adding more weight to each ogre's load in the morning and adding new structure to camp every afternoon. By the end of the 5th day, the previously empty camp had a pike wall, Gnoblar Lookout baskets, full drying racks for meat and additional racks for weapons. Every Ogre in the camp had a digging tool and a scarf similar to Wunka's, made of dried animal hide. When they packed up the camp, the scarf was used to tie the pikes, weapons, meat and everything else they carried away from the camp into manageable bundles. When they set up camp, the scarf was wrapped around the head. I did not understand why at the time, but Wunka insisted that they never cover their mouth.

While they worked and trained, I hunted. It's hard to understate how much I needed to hunt. To put it in relative terms, a one hundred fifty pound human eats his weight in two score days. An ogre weighs as much as five humans and eats his weight in just one score. That means every ogre needs to eat nearly four hundred pounds of food every ten days. Fortunately, we can easily eat four hundred pounds in a single meal, then not eat again for a week. Some can eat as much as six or seven hundred pounds in a single feast, as evidenced by the fact that we do tend to celebrate winning a fight by eating the loser. The problem with feasting and fasting is that our bodies shut down for the better part of a day after a feast to process all of the food we ate, and Wunka would not allow that. A normal tribe has routine feasts whenever there's enough food to allow for it, but Wunka put the boys on rations as soon as they returned that first night. They were allowed just enough food to live on, around 35 or 40 pounds every. That means between the Ogres and the gnoblar, we were going thru three hundred pounds of meat every day, but we were not feasting in true Ogre fashion. I brought that up to Wunka on the sixth night, as we went out past the spiked border for our nightly 'report'.

"Why? Da Maw getting upset? When I's trained, dere's no feasts til I earned my name. And I spent a day in the Mask," Wunka shuddered as he recalled a bad memory.

"What Mask?" I pressed, curious what would draw such a reaction.

"The Killin Mask," Wunka nearly whispered. For the first time in a week, I felt the instinct perk up and start listening while he continued, "It's some kind of magic. terrible magic. It covered my head and my mouth and wouldn't come off. Dey told me it had to stay on from sundown to sundown.

"I figured it was some thinling thing about teaching me to be hungry. I wasn't gonna tell dem an ogre can go a week between feasts, no problem. That's when the damn magic started. The mask got in my head and made me start to want stuff. Nothing specific at first, but I WANTED it. Sometime that morning, the feelings from the mask found my hunger. By the time the sun was high, I was starved. When the sun started to drift down, I was past starved. Before the sun was half way down, I had ripped at the mask until my fingers bled. When I couldn't get it off, I tore at my own stomach to silence it. Even after opening myself up, the hunger remained. I remember nothing after I opened my stomach."

Wunka was shivering. After a week of seeing him terrify five viscous ogres, knowing he'd beat them unconscious on more than one occasion without ever being afraid, I barely recognized the look as it came over him. Wunka was afraid.

"That day was the worst in my life, and the best. That was the day I earned my place in the army and became Private Bloodprint. They told me about the mask, about what it did. It takes the thing you want most and makes it impossible to resist. A greedy man will try to get the money. A perverse man will go for women. A coward will try to flee," Wunka hung his head and his voice lowered. "They said they did not understand what hunger really was to an ogre, or they never would have used it. Or at least, they would have been better prepared. That day, in my insanity, I killed Master Tri, Privates Gushie and Timo, and almost a dozen recruits.

"Despite that, or perhaps because of it, they considered the helmet a success," Wunka shook his head at the memory. "Even though I was clearly out of control, I used my training. I spent two weeks being healed from my various wounds, but almost all had been things I did to myself. Master Tri was a swordsman unmatched in our camp, and I not only killed him, I disarmed him first using techniques he had taught me. While I wore the mask, I was stronger, fiercer, immune to pain. When the sun set and the mask came off, I could still remember the feeling of power. The sorcerer took control of my training then, and together, we learned to control and call on the strength and skill that I had when masked."

There was no pride in his voice when he told me about his training. Though he never truly understood why, my instincts kicked in when he told me about his training. Most of it revolved around the scarf he wore, which was not magical, but a sensory trigger he used to tap into the source of his strength, which he called 'The Hunger'. When training or working or sparing, he left it around his neck, but when combat was for real and to the death, he pulled it up over his mouth and nose. The sense-memory aided him in calling up the Hunger, making him stronger than an ogre twice his size without losing his speed or skill.

When I went out to hunt the next day, I had a lot on my mind. Not just the hunt and the need for food, but the mask and what it symbolized for Wunka. The magical effects it had were impressive, but I was more interested in the psychological effect. It was a rite of passage for him in his journey to becoming a soldier. I was distracted as I walked over the barren, rocky landscape collecting smaller prey from the traps I had set, but otherwise ignoring my surroundings. I missed the signs. That's the only excuse I have to explain how I walked right into a trap.

(**edited last chapter** This one's a bit shorter, but it gets me to the next thing.)

6.

Before I go on, I need everyone to understand a few basic things; Orcs fight. Dwarves drink. Elves dance. Humans build. Ogres eat. I'm not saying that elves can't drink, humans can't fight and dwarves can't dance, it's just that it doesn't define who and what they are. Although dancing dwarves are hillarious, and I highly recommend seeing it at least once in your life. That's what I hate about the powers of Chaos; they take what we do and make it ugly. Fighting, eating, drinking and celebrating are all part of life, but Chaos twists a beatiful thing and makes it ugly.

I will admit, however, that I have a special hatred for Minotaurs. Ogre's eat, but those overgrown cows come around and think they can eat better than us? Okay, they are as big as we are and eat as much, but they lose their minds when they stuff themselves, so how can they truly appreciate it? What minotaurs do is blasphemy to the maw and an insult to the Ogre's art of eating. I'm not the most vocal of the Maw's supporters, but it is our God and it's power should be respected even by those that don't worship it. They take the joy out of eating, and turn something that should be a pleasure into a blind orgy of blood and meat and violence. Plus they're ugly. Okay, I'm prejudiced, but they are ugly. And dumb.

So anyway, back to the story. I got extremely lucky, and minotaur are extremely dumb. Fortunately for me, the whole idea of a surprise attack got lost somewhere in the minotaur's chaos-addled brain, and he roared when he lept at me from behind a boulder. Yes, he roared before attacking. Seriously, how dumb do you need to be to roar, jump out in front of me and flex, then charge. If he hadn't roared, waited for me to pass and charged from my blind spot, he could have gored me before I even knew he was there. I suppose he'll know better the next time he gets the chance, but that will be in whatever afterlife his dark gods have promised him. While he roared, I rolled, and his mighty charge passed harmessly by.

It took him a moment to recover his ballance, which was long enough for me to ready my spear. Unfortunately for me, he was armed with more than horns and halitosis, and by the time I had my feet back under me I was facing a two-handed axe that had obviously seen quite a bit of use. He continued to roar as he followed up on his charge, but his advance was predictable and I was able to keep him at bay with my spear. My main focus was the axe, which could snap my spear into splinters if it ever occured to him to swing at my puny hunting spear instead of me, however, what truely concerned me was the continuous roar from deep in the beast's chest. It was unlikely that it had come here alone, and even though we were evenly matched right now, it probably had friends a lot closer than mine.

So I was as good as dead if I took my time with this fight. Even if I could defeat this one minotaur, more were probably on the way. At this point, I would love to thrill you with a tale of my superior skills and might overpowering the beast, but the truth is that tall, dark and stinky was better armed and had almost every advantage. Even stupid, was worked up enough that the little pokes from my spear weren't even slowing him down. So I gave up and decided to run as best I could back to the camp and hope Wunka and the boys were still around.

I waited for his next wild swing, planning to throw my spear as a distraction and run back to the camp. That was when I learned that the instinct in my head was more than just an internal voice of my own subconscious. It began to speak in a language I had never dreamed of, let alone heard. I could feel my spear lift, independant of my own will, as a sudden pressure slammed into my head just behind my eyes. The world's normal, sun-baked glare took on a sudden greenish tinge that was eerily familiar, and I heard my voice shout a word in the language of the voice in my head. The pressure faded almost as suddenly as it arrived, like water being poured out of a full cup.

The world slowly resumed it's normal, scorched appearance. Both the minotaur and I stared at the gaping hole in his chest, still smoking with green fire. I met the minotaur's gaze as it looked up at me, and saw confused wonder in his eyes just before the last of his life was carried away on drifting green smoke.