When I first woke up–and I don’t mean today–though it is a rather lovely day, don’t cha know?–I was a blank slate. Didn’t remember anything. Didn’t know why my ears were gone, why my mouth was about to fall off, didn’t know why my knees creaked. I knew I had a pair of daggers, no boots, and some tattered clothing the color that makes it easier to hide in the shadows. I also knew there was some ghouls stumbling around that looked at me like I was a nice kodo dinner, so I took my daggers clumsily in my hand like so–pretty silly of me to hold them like that, right?–and stabbed them. A lot. Until they were dead. Or dead-ish. And then I wandered in those dark Silverpine woods for a few days until the Forsaken found me.
Hey, they looked like me. And they were nice. Sorta. So I did what they told me. They had lots of jobs for me, too–but maybe I shouldn’t go into that if you just ate. I killed things that needed killing and, um, ate a few things that I don’t remember what they were. And just sorta lived. Sorta.
Then the memories started to come back. Flashes here and there, you know? I looked at a tree, and thought, that’s a good place to build a house. But then I thought, houses don’t go in trees, am I going crazy? Then I looked at a bow and thought, I know how to use that! Which I knew I didn’t know how, because I had never picked one up since I had “woke up”, but when I took it (I was going to give it back, I swear) and shot at a ghoul, I hit it right there. Not bad for a first timer, no?
So I began to wonder about other things. Like why I was so abnormally thin. And why my hair was green. Naturally green. Not dyed or with that funny algae stuff some undead get. I also wondered why I wasn’t nasty. You see some undead, they treat the world like it’s their personal larder. Or scientific test table. Or…other things. They just like to be mean. I wasn’t like that. I actually kind of liked nature. I started to find myself be a little disgusted at how they treated it. But I didn’t know there was anything else, that people could be different, so what could I do? I just did what they told me.
Then I met my first tauren. It was in Silverpine Forest, if I remember correctly…I smelled the grass and their clean leathers and I thought, “Hey, that seems familiar.” I asked her what she was doing in Silverpine and she says “I’m studying the forest. It’s dying, and I want to heal it.” And I think to myself, hey, that seems familiar too. I ask her where she comes from, and she says “West.” There’s no towns out west, I say. Nothing but ocean. “That’s right,” she says. “I live in the land beyond the ocean. Kalimdor.”
And you should’ve seen the fireworks going off in my head when she said Kalimdor!
I saw trees and I saw mountains and I saw these funny people and funny villages in my head. Tall people! Tall purple people! With glowing eyes like me! And not eyes that glowed because they had funky lich magic coursing through their veins, eyes glowing because that’s what was right; that’s what was natural!
I don’t remember if I thanked her or not, but I skedaddled from that place like a scared cockroach and got the first zeppelin to that other brave new world–”Kal-lim-dor”.
Well, you can probably guess where I landed and you also know what Ogrimmar is like. Kodo and undead horses stomping everywhere, worgs and raptors nipping you in the pants, people screaming that they want to sell you their arcane rifle whatsis for sacks-full of coins, and then people in tattered clothing just like me producing those coins out of nowhere and then giving them–giving them!–to other people.
I saw a lot more tauren and also some squat green-skinned people and tall, lanky blue-skinned people with huge tusks. They were all a bit rude, but you know how much I stink, so I guess that put them off. I thought of the trees and the purple people in my mind and thought “Is this Kalimdor? It doesn’t feel right.”
So I pushed through all those people until I came to the gates of that place. There was a great big bridge–you know the one I’m talking about–over a great big river. Down one side of the river was barren desert and grass. Up the other was….trees! So I crossed that bridge and ran up to those trees..but you know, it wasn’t really the happy homecoming or whatnot I had expected.
*****
The first thing I came to was–you guessed it–the Warsong Lumber Camp. At first I had no idea what the huge, flat, round, wooden things that were scattered all over were. Tables? Altars? Then I saw the saws, and the shredders. I wasn’t stupid–just amnesic–so I put two and two together and what I came out with made my stomach drop.
I kept walking, anyway. Lots of the green-skinned people milled around, some of them a lot smaller than the others (I eventually learned the small ones were goblins and the big ones were orcs). The bigger ones carried axes and many, many stacks of wood. So many! I wondered what they did with them all. The smaller ones rode in humanoid machines with circular cutting blades on the end of their arms. The blades were sharp enough to cut you at a touch. I felt like trying to dismantle a few, but I never caught any of them unattended.
I don’t remember quite when I began to run from the horrors of that place, but I finally came to the edge of another place that was even worse. It was dark, stank, and it had a sort of unnatural chill that made what was left of your hair stand up. I saw what some of what the Forsaken back home called friends and pets, but I tell you, the creatures here weren’t either of those. Huge monsters of rock and green fire scorched the land with every step they took, others were so big they made it shake, and whenever one of those woman-looking succubi passed by, you got a very unpleasant thrill just looking at them–part down your back and part in another place, if ya know what I mean.
So I didn’t think I’d be able to stand up to the demons there–even talk my way out–so I slipped through as quietly as I could and came out into the real forest. My agitated thoughts began to settle and ever since I woke up I felt sort of…well…normal. As if you’ve been on the run your entire life and you finally get settled into a safe little nook, or a cat rubs itself against you even though they’ll later be washing themselves for hours, or you finally find someone you really can trust to pay back their loan. It’s really not that easy to describe.
A while I just sat and stared around me. And sat…stared…and slept. Or something like sleep. I’m not sure undead ever really go into true sleep–they’ll sit down to let their friends rest, but they don’t really rest themselves. I don’t really get tired. Physically. Sometimes I get tired of dealing with people, and then I’ll go dormant for a while and pretend to sleep, but that’s not REALLY sleep. I don’t really dream either.
But that time I dreamed. I saw a night elven woman. I felt myself moving, and when I looked around I saw the woman and I were fighting back and forth in a glade in a forest a lot like the one I was sitting in. But we weren’t trying to kill each other–once the woman tossed me on my back with a jovial laugh and said something in Darnassian that means, “You lose,” and I knew we were just practicing. Training. That woman had been my mentor.
But then I felt a blade against my neck, a real blade, not from the dream. I’m not sure the person holding it knew I was undead or not because otherwise she would have held it in a different location–undead don’t bleed, so cutting our throats doesn’t usually hurt us.
I got up with a start, and the blade sliced through my neck. Now that did hurt, even though it didn’t kill me, so I stopped moving, and wondered who was trying to kill me.
Whoever it was realized I wasn’t dying or bleeding, and quickly switched the weapon to another, more dangerous place. I very carefully looked over my shoulder. It was night elf. A woman, and her piercing silver eyes sent memories pouring across my mind that for a moment I was blinded by the torrent.
Things like…I was a night elf myself. I had been training to be a warden–they’re night elves who keep justice, usually by watching prisoners and tracking down those who escape. When the Third War broke out, I had been sent to Mount Hyjal, and I had been killed by a demon there.
My mouth fell open and I tried to explain this all to that woman who was glaring at me like I was an abomination. (And I was. How would you like to see an undead bull stride into the middle of Thunder Bluff?) But my tongue caught in my throat…I suddenly knew everything about my past, but I still could not recall a single word of the night elven language.
Now I’m not sure we undead can cry; I’m not even sure my eyes can make tears, but I sure wanted to right then. The Sentinel was saying something at me, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. I blurted out something in Gutterspeak–the Forsaken dialect, you know–but I think that just made her angrier, and she would have stabbed me right then and there if an arrow hadn’t pierced her neck.
I just watched her fall, completely stunned.
*****
An orc scouting group had found us, and seeing the night elf, had killed her on orc principle. They shot an arrow at me too, but because you hit undead in different places to kill them, I survived okay until they realized I was Forsaken and not an enemy.
I went back to Orgrimmar and drank a lot. I thought about what I had learned. But mostly, I just drank. It was quite a while until I remembered the tauren I had met in Silverpine, and made my way to Thunder Bluff. But I’ll tell you that part later.
*****
By and by I made my way to Mulgore, traveling across the Barrens through the outposts of Crossroads and Camp Taurajo. There wasn’t much of interest–at least, for those of you who have been by that route before. Hungry raptors, lions, a herd or two of plainstriders, zhevra, giraffes…I also saw a kodo.
I hadn’t learned much of the culture of the Horde, but I did know they liked kodo. So I sat and watched the beast nose through the grass stems for a while. It seemed very peaceful, and I thought of our saber cats back at home. It was kind of an art to ride a saber cat–I never got the hang of it–because cats don’t usually respect masters. If you want them to do something, you have to feed them. I wondered if kodo were like that, but it was getting on in the day and I wanted to stop somewhere that had booze for the night.
By morning I was within Mulgore, somewhere on the Golden Plains. Mulgore didn’t touch my heart like Ashenvale had, but it still felt “in balance”. Tauren were hunters–we all are, really–but they didn’t overhunt, and they took only what they needed. I stopped to watch a young bull down his first kodo. I didn’t get why he ate the heart raw, but he did put lots of work into skinning the animal, cutting up the meat, cleaning the bones and horn and other things. I approved, and felt a bit closer to home. Maybe night elves weren’t the only “nature savvy” ones?
Noon saw me climbing up to one of the great lifts of Thunder Bluff. The ride up didn’t bother me much, as I had climbed trees just as high or higher. I walked onto what they call the Lower Rise, and looked around me.
Immediately I felt better about fitting in. There were some undead floating around, a few orcs and one troll–and of course a lot of tauren. There was a huge circle gathered nearby one of the auctioneer’s tents (or where they would be; when I made my trip to Thunder Bluff, the goblins hadn’t set up an auction house branch there yet.) I came over to stand nearby and listened. They were telling stories.
I listened and watched and suddenly one of the tauren called out to me and gestured me to come sit. I uncomfortably sat on the very edge, but the tauren seemed satisfied and one of them launched into another tale.
So…it wasn’t home, but it felt okay. I knew I would always miss the great forests and the saber cats and the owls, but this would do. For now.
I listened to the stories and eventually I learned that the matriarch of this group of tauren was called Red Earth. I thought about it a bit, said “oh what the fel”, and sent her a letter explaining that I’d be interested in joining her family.
*****
Her reply didn’t come in the form of a letter, but a tauren woman. No, not that way, don’t look at me like that. The woman was also one of Red Earth’s tribe—do you remember Mieru?—and she was there to explain to me what it meant to be Shu’halo. Besides the fur and horns and hooves I mean.
There were a lot of words I didn’t really understand—she didn’t speak Orcish very well—but the basis of it made me feel better about Red Earth and the tauren in general. She spoke of honor, thanking nature for its bounty, not taking more than I needed, and that sort of thing. It all made perfect sense to me, but the Forsaken had barely even heard of such things. They didn’t practice such things, certainly.
The tauren then gave me a black feather and told me the rest of the tribe would meet me at Stonebull Lake the next day. She also told me to bring my hunting supplies.
I only had my daggers and the clothes on my back, but I was very excited, so I set out immediately. I reached the Lake around dusk, and since there were no tauren nearby, I sat down and twiddled my fingers around in the water. Either I fell asleep again like I did in Ashenvale, or having lots of your things on your mind makes time pass quickly, but before I knew it, it was dawn and a group of tauren were approaching me.
The leader was a female, her fur reddish brown. I decided she must be Red Earth. I stood up and gave her a Forsaken salute; she nodded and told me to stand easy.
“So what do you want me to do?” I blurted out.
The tauren smiled patiently and said, “Mieru gave you your feather?”
“Yes, the black one?” I said. “I still have it! Somewhere…hold on…”
“And she explained to you what it means?” Red Earth continued, watching me empty my pouches with a vague look of amusement. If I had the blood to blush, I think I would have.
I finally found the feather and quickly preened its messy hairs before the tauren could see. “She said it meant you were interested in me…and that you would be holding a trial for me soon…right?”
Red Earth nodded. “That trial will be held today.
“The Shu’halo are hunters and always have been, since the Earthmother breathed life into our race. The greatest honor a Shu’halo can earn is tracking down a great beast of the plains, then meeting it on its own terms and besting it in single combat.
“In dying, the beast gives us his strength, of body and spirit. We thank it for its gift, and make sure its death is not in vain by making use of its fur, skin, bones, horns, and whatever else its body can offer us.
“This is the trial that stands before you. Out there in Mulgore is a kodo we call ‘Ishte Ichnee Eche’ or, White Broken Horn in Orcish. Bring him down, and we will call you Shu’halo.”
Some of her words didn’t make much sense. How was killing an animal worth honor? Night elf tenets held that hunting, killing, and eating of other creatures was all part of the cycle of life, but they never entered into that cycle themselves, preferring to only eat nuts and fruit and other plant stuff.
But maybe that’s where the difference lay. The Horde was constantly claiming the night elves to be a stuck up and arrogant race, and maybe that was why. For all their love of nature and its doings, they held themselves apart from it. They were not “Nature”, but “Nature’s Keepers”, like they were above it all. Masters, not brothers.
That’s when I began seeing the tauren and their ways as more “pure”. After all, weren’t all creatures, sentient or not, children of Elune (or the Earthmother, as you tauren would say)? I’ve never had a sibling of my own, but I had seen enough brothers and sisters of other families to understand that mothers did not hold any of their children above the rest. The night elves were arrogant in thinking that Elune should do so for them!
Red Earth was still watching me. I snapped into a salute again and bowed. “I will hunt down this ‘White Broken Horn’ and give him the honor of fulfilling his purpose in life.”
The tauren smiled at my words, and Red Earth gave me a Forsaken-style salute. Without any other farewells forthcoming, I excused myself to begin my trial.
*****
You young tauren make tracking look easy.
I had been up and down the breadth of Mulgore, and I hadn’t seen hair nor horn of any kodo, let alone this “Ishte Ichnee Eche” fellow. Although my body wasn’t exhausted—it rarely ever is—I sat down under a pine tree and chewed absentmindedly on a piece of deer jerky. I let my mind wander, but I always found it coming back to my trial…and my past.
The memories of my previous life were coming back stronger and stronger, and included in those memories was tracking deer and other animals in Ashenvale. But hunting in a forest is much different than out on the open plains—here, there are no bushes for fur to get caught in, and the ground, when it isn’t covered over in grass, is too dry to keep footprints intact. I’d have to wait for a rain, or find a body of water…
And then I nearly hit myself for being so stupid. How could I not have thought of it before, for what bigger and better lake in all of Mulgore but Stonebull Lake itself?
I leapt to my feet and ran back towards the lake. Occasionally grouse and prairie dogs took flight from my mad rush, but I still didn’t see anything bigger than the vultures circling in the sky high above.
I slowed to a walk once the lake was in sight. The ground was wetter there, and I paused every so often to look for tracks. There wasn’t much, until I got to the muddy ground at the water’s edge.
So many tracks! I didn’t know which was what. There were a few pawprints—but kodo didn’t have paws—three toed bird prints—way too small—and then some big, broad tracks I couldn’t identify.
I didn’t know what else in Mulgore could be that big, so it had to be a kodo!
Animals are creatures of habit, so if a kodo had been here before, likely it would come here again. I looked around for someplace to hide, and decided on the water itself. What? Undead don’t really have to breathe, so I could stay down there quite comfortably for the rest of the day.
I positioned myself right next to where I had found the tracks, and buried myself halfway in the mud, so I didn’t give myself away. And then I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Finally, the ground began to shake, and from my vantage point I could see dust filtering up into the sky. I tensed up, but carefully kept still. Eventually a herd of maybe ten kodo appeared over the rise, and spread out along the lake’s shore to drink. One of the herd stayed back as a sentry.
One of the kodo waddled right up to me and stuck its nose in the water above my head. I could see straight up its gullet as it began to drink. If I had a working heart, it would have been pounding as fast as a prairie dog’s right then. I very slowly reached for my daggers, but then I noticed the kodo was a female. Ishte Ichnee Eche was male.
I relaxed again, and took a look at the other kodo. Red Earth hadn’t given me a very good description, but Ishte Ichnee Eche had pale fur, and a broken horn. The kodo before me were all shades of grey and brown. A few had chips in their horns, but none of them had been broken off.
I admit, I began to wonder if Red Earth would be satisfied if I brought in another kodo besides Ishte Ichnee Eche. Would I completely mess up my chance to become a part of her tribe? I guess we’ll never know…
While I was thinking this, the ground began to shake more and more. More kodo were coming down the rise to the lake, until nothing but the backs of kodo was visible in the great dust cloud. A great brute of a kodo paused on the edge of the rise, and all I could see of him was his silhouette.
And the silhouette of his huge, broken horn.
Well, that was great, but I had a whole herd of kodo between me and him. How could I get to him without spooking the other kodo? I sat pondering in the mud, while the kodo took their turns drinking at the lake.
As I watched and tried to come up with a plan, Ishte Ichnee Eche slowly filtered down the slope with the rest of the kodo. As he got closer, I could see white scars all over his sides and nose. The rest of the kodo gave him a wide berth in respect, and finally he reached the water’s edge, a few tauren-lengths away from me, and began to drink.
Now was my chance, but again I felt misgivings. Ishte Ichnee Eche was old, that much was plain. Was it murder to slay an old kodo, who obviously been through many battles?
Ishte Ichnee Eche finished his drink and began to sidle away. It was now or never.
I broke from my cover with a great sucking sound of mud and the splashing of water. I think I left a few toe bones behind. At my sudden appearance, the kodo all reared up like angry deathchargers. I watched in amazement as the members of the herd shuffled and switched places, and instead of a row of placidly drinking kodo, I was faced with a wall of bristling horns and snorting noses.
I couldn’t back down now, so I jumped up, grabbing the horn of a particularly big male in front of me and swinging onto his head. Kodo don’t look very agile, but in the next few moments I was swung around like a baton, bashing my ribs and legs and shoulders against the ground and even other kodo. I hung on for dear life.
Even a pinching crab couldn’t have held that grip, so eventually I went flying. I grabbed wildly for something to catch, and grabbed the white mane of some other kodo. My body thunked into his side and there I hung as the kodo capered and twirled under me.
Between the thumpings and bumpings, I gradually began to realize just what kodo I had grabbed onto. Forgetting for the moment my precarious position, I reached for a dagger with one hand, and stabbed the rippling, scarred hide under me.
I felt his pained bellow more than heard it, and the kodo’s flailing got even wilder. I dropped my dagger and climbed up his side like a haystack—a wildly bouncing haystack—until I could settle myself across his back like I was riding him.
Good thing I’m kinda numb down there, if you know what I mean…
It was a good thing Ichte Ichnee Eche was so big, as the other kodo couldn’t do more than brush the soles of my feet with their horns. But I found myself wondering how I was going to actually kill the kodo. I couldn’t reach any of his vitals, especially with only a short dagger left as a weapon…unless…
Gripping his sides with only my legs, I took out my remaining dagger. I felt around in his mane until I felt the knobby joints of his backbone, then I stabbed.
And missed. Ichte Ichnee Eche bellowed again and I was flung around like a ragdoll. I rolled his mane around one hand so I wouldn’t be dislodged, and yanked my dagger out of his back.
I felt sorry for that poor kodo, as this certainly wasn’t the quickest way to kill him. Again I aimed, and again I stabbed.
I must have gotten a nerve, as the kodo’s back half went limp. I cut again, severing the spinal cord—it was like sawing through a thick rope—and then climbed towards the beast’s head. I had to punch a few other kodo in the nose as they were still trying to defend their old patriarch.
Finally I reached the big kodo’s head and ended it.
The head landed with a ground-shaking thump, and I flipped off into the dust. I quickly crawled out of the way of the stomping feet of the other kodo, splashing into the lake and swimming away.
I must’ve stayed out in the water for hours as the kodo attempted to get to me without swimming. But eventually, they shuffled away, leaving the body of Ishte Ichnee Eche as a great white boulder next to the water’s edge.
I slowly swam back, and then stared down at the old kodo’s corpse. He seemed so beautiful and majestic, even in death. I touched his nose—it was soft—and his mane—it was coarse, like horse hair. Then I looked over his great hulking body and wondered how I was going to carry all the meat and fur back to Bloodhoof Village.
Wrenching my dagger out of the kodo’s eye socket, I began to work at skinning. Mieru found me when I was halfway done.
“Aren’t you going to eat his heart?”
I looked up at her, incredulous.
“The kill is yours.” Mieru reached into the kodo’s chest cavity and pulled out the organ. “So to you goes the heart.”
She handed the heart to me, and I looked down at it in disgust. There are a few recipes in kal’dorei culture that used animal hearts in them, but usually the organs were fed to the tame animals the night elves kept as pet. But Mieru was watching me, so I took a bite, trying not to grimace.
Well, it wasn’t spectacular, but it wasn’t that bad either. “Here goes,” I said to Mieru, and swallowed the rest of the organ whole. Gulp.
She grinned and cheered, then turned towards Ishte Ichnee Eche and kneeled. She quietly said some phrases—I caught the word “thanks” a few times. Then Mieru turned back to me, a broad smile on her face.
“Ishte Ichnee Eche gives you his blessing. I’ll help you carry the hides back to Bloodhoof.”
“H-how do you know that?” I asked.
Mieru pointed upwards. “Do you not see him? …I suppose not. In time, perhaps. But Ishte Ichnee Eche knew his place in the cycle of nature. Something that us humanoids still have yet to learn, I think.” The tauren winked at me.
I didn’t answer, but cut the rest of the skin from the kodo and bunched it up on my shoulders. Mieru sliced the meat into manageable chunks, wrapping them in leather. A few of these parcels she buried, explaining to me that she could not carry them all at once, and that burying them would keep the coyotes from stealing it. I only watched, and when she was finally ready to go, I followed her to Bloodhoof Village.
*****
I do not think I need to tell you about the rest of my indoctrination into Red Earth’s tribe, as I’m sure it’s common knowledge by now. The tribe held a celebration in my name—and in Ishte Ichnee Eche’s. We feasted on his meat and Mieru made a headdress for me out of the kodo’s skin and some harpy feathers she had collected earlier. Another tauren painted my face until I resembled a troll shaman and tied beads into my hair. My clothes were replaced with ones of leather, freshly cured and also extravagantly painted and beaded.
I still have those clothes in a chest in my tent. Every so often I pull them out, because unlike the plant dyes the night elves use, the colors do not fade. Night elves live long lives—indeed, before Nordrassil was destroyed, they were immortal.
Tauren are not immortal, but now I knew their spirits and the spirit of their culture would last through the ages, perhaps even longer than the night elves. The Earthmother has had many adversaries in the past few years—Scourge, Silithid, Old Gods, the list goes on—but she will always find a way to triumph. I believe that now. One only has to look at the bones and white hide of Ishte Ichnee Eche that decorate my tent. Like the tauren, the Earthmother has a place and purpose for everyone.
Even a smelly, undead night elf like myself, heh.
