Nergis was a bit overwhelmed by all of this. Technically she could be considered a traitor. The Horde interrogators were on the lookout for defeatists, and if Jarindar had found out about about her views, others could as well. This was no worry when the Horde was in Northrend, as the frontiers were wild and free and people spoke as they willed… especially in the Argent Crusade strongholds. However, here, in Azeroth, the freedom to speak was not so much a concern as whether one would have freedom after speech.
Still, she could not deny that what elements of the Horde were doing could only be considered evil by the view of the Light. She hoped that it would not come to treason, but as it stood, something had to be done or else they would slip back into barbarism.
She rode on to Thunder Bluff to meet others with the cause. Jarindar had told her they called themselves Lok-Narash An’she: “Arm Yourself [for the] Light” in a combination of Orcish and Taurahe, as the orcs had no term of their own for the Light. An’she was an approximation of Light (it literally meant sun in the sense of the eye of the Earth Mother) and was a co-opted word used by followers of the light). Members of the Horde who had joined the Argent Crusade had to learn many Common phrases to learn the theology.
She wondered why the LNA (as it was abbreviated) chose Thunder Bluff… aside from the fact that it was a virtual backwater, which could make it more secure as nobody went there… though there was rumors that the Goblins would start flying their zeppelins out there soon.
Her Gryphon landing, she looked around to find her contact. Jarindar had said it would be a Tauren.
“Lok’tar Ogar” (Victory or Death) came a voice behind her giving the militant Horde greeting. The tauren was a female, about seven feet tall, clad in beaded leather and bearing a staff. “Greetings, Nergis. I am Potichaua. Jarindar told me to expect you.”
Nergis bowed. Potichaua’s greeting was one which was safe from unwelcome ears. “Greetings, Potichaua. I am curious as to why I have been called here when I was told to contact…” the two of them changed subjects as some Orcish soldiers, wearing the Red Eagle of the Interrogators walked by.
Potichaua made a face after they were gone. “The Death Knights are so unnatural…” Remembering her mission, she said “We call her simply ‘the wanderer.’ Simple and easily misunderstood. Yes, we do want you to find her, yet we also want to ensure you can be trusted. If you cannot be, your trail will end here with me. Absalom may trust you. The rest of us want to be sure…”
Nergis nodded. Having given that Death Knight named Haukena the runaround, she could understand the need for security. “I assume a test will be required?”
Potichaua nodded. “What do you know of the Grimtotem?”
“As I understand it, they oppose our being members with the Horde, though they ally with the Forsaken, and are known to practice dark arts.”
“You are correct. After the Incident at the Undercity, we have been concerned that the extremists would remove the leaders of the Horde in favor of their own evil leaders. Between Garrosh, the Grimtotems, the Apothecaries and the Kael’thelas supporters among the Belfs, we have the potential of having a Horde which is not only cold to the Light, but would seek to do outright evil.”
Nergis nodded thoughtfully. “So I assume you wish me to ‘remove’ an obstacle?”
“Yes. I am sure the Crusade would not approve, but we do need to act to protect the Bluffs from attack. In Dustwallow Marsh there is a village of the Grimtotems, whom we wish you eliminate. Their actions are escalating the hostilities of the Alliance towards us.”
“Would it not do good for the Proudmoore ruler to learn of the dangers so she does not betray us to the Warchief?”
“Pah!” Potichaua spat. “She makes up excuses. She believes Thrall is the One and thinks what threatens him threatens peace, so she scuttles things which threatens her idea of peace. No, my concern is with the King called Wrynn. He is more stable than Garrosh of course, but his deeds can be rash. If he does not realize that the Grimtotem seek to sabotage us all, he could see their acts as an act of war from the Horde itself.”
“So, another piece of inaction from our leaders means another threat to peace?” Nergis murmured gloomily.
“The ends justify the means, I believe…”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ironforge
“No, the ends do not justify the means” Amaxe said patiently. A delegation of the Ebon Blade had come to visit King Magni, and as ambassador, Amaxe had been invited in. The Ebon Blade had argued that the dispute over the tactics of the war was distracting from the ultimate end. “There are three elements to a good act. The end, the intent and the circumstances of the act itself. If you miss one or more of these, you do not have a good act. So in focusing on the end, but ignoring an evil intent or an evil circumstances, you in fact have an evil action.”
Rolf Brataas, leader of the delegation shook his head. “Ambassador, I must respectfully disagree.” His dead eyes hid the loathing he had for this Draenei. “While it may be ideal to have a good intention and a good act, I believe it is wrong to make the ultimate end hostage to certain acts. The Scourge has no scruples in the war. We must set it aside as well or the Scourge will win.”
“It is ironic you should invoke the Scourge,” Amaxe said. “It seems they are the direct personification of the philosophy of the ends justify the means. Too many lives are lost because the one known as Prince Arthas and the one known as Ner’zhul justified this view. The evil means corrupted the good end desired. If we become as loathsome as the Scourge in our behavior, will we not become as evil as the Scourge? How can we condemn Arthas for forcing corpses to rise if we do the same?”
Rolf snapped “We don’t force them to work for our own personal gain. They are dead. Let their bodies serve the war against Arthas? Honestly, you followers of the Light are so unreasonable believing in an absolute morality!”
“Indeed? Have you seen the Plaguelands? I understand it was once a land of beauty. Now, the undead walk serving the end of Arthas. Now, if you do not believe morality can be absolute, then under what grounds can we say Arthas was wrong?”
“I don’t have to answer that!” Rolf snapped.
“You do if you want your answer to be deemed credible. If there is no absolute morality, then the actions of the Scourge cannot be considered evil. The Lich King is merely using means to a justified end in his view. Only in the view of an absolute morality can we say that there is an evil to be opposed.”
Sir Nicholae Murgu listened with interest here. He was watching the Ambassador in Ironforge, and he wondered if he had something to exploit here. He wondered if, a partial reporting of the facts could lead to an accusation that she was denying the Scourge was evil. If the Draenei could be convinced she was a heretic, there was no doubt her influence could fail.
“So, you believe that the Tournament is to be the model of behavior, jousting and fair play to the enemy?”
“Personally I think the Tournament is rather foolish because it confuses a means for an end. The end of the Tournament is to foster cooperation between the Alliance and the Horde. However, it views this end as a means to the defeat of the Lich King. Because of this it is a confused logic and it forgets itself. Training with jousting is not going to help in the defeat of Arthas. As long as Kor’kron infantry shoot at Alliance troops in Ymirheim, the end of cooperation is bound to fail, while the end of defeating Arthas is hampered because the Tournament confuses two separate ends. Rogues are not suited for battling on horses. Neither are shamans and priests or mages. Only the Warriors and Paladins and Death Knights are trained for such a form of combat. Yet the Tournament insists on this as a form of camaraderie, forgetting that those who can joust are by no means the only ones who can defeat Arthas, and those who cannot joust are deemed unready to face Arthas…”
She kept the bitterness out of her tone. She trusted the Light to guide her to do what was right. However, even though she was an Argent Champion, she was barred from the jousts on the grounds she might be hostile to the Horde. Deliver me from pride… she prayed silently
“However getting back to the topic,” Amaxe continued, “the foolishness of the Tournament does not justify an evil act from the Ebon Blade…”
King Magni listened as the discussion went on. He knew that the Scourge evil was furthered by Arthas, furthered by traitors in the Plaguelands… all of whom had a view that the end was what mattered, yet were corrupted. He knew Amaxe was right in saying they could not use any means to accomplish their end…
…and yet, he wondered that if they threw away certain weapons, they were damning themselves to destruction. Didn’t it make sense that the Ebon Blade would know the Scourge better than any other? Or were one of them to rise up and become the next Lich King? Truly it would be a gamble, for choosing one meant abandoning the other…
His ancestors and the ancestors of the humans had fought long and hard against the dragonkin and against the trolls against long odds. What would his ancestors think of the current war and the means chosen to fight. Would they have accepted the use of practitioners of voodoo against the troll foul voodoo magics? Corruption or necessary evil?
Finally, he raised his hand. “I believe I have heard enough for one night. I will reflect on this and consider what the policy of the dwarves shall be.
He had a sense of what he should do, but was not sure he had the required trust in the Light to see it through.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ogrimmar
“A revolutionary society?” Thrall rumbled listening to the reports of the Interrogators. This was another result of the attempted coup in Undercity. Some of his “allies” were untrustworthy and a threat to the security of the Horde.
“Yes, Warchief.” This was Stonebreaker Timur Cig, a heavily scarred orc. “There was a murder involving some of the Hand of Vengeance. An orc and a belf were suspected to be the killers. We don’t have names, but both were believed to be members of the Argent Crusade.”
Thrall sighed wearily. The Grimtotems, the Apothecaries, Garrosh Hellscream… hell, he had even heard some of the trolls were inspired by the Drakkari… all of them seeking to tear down the ideals he had created for a society which spurned the barbarism they had crawled from.
“Do we have any ideas as to what they are pushing for?” If they could head off the desires of another Secret Society, they could perhaps have peace for another year within the Horde. Jaina had once used a saying Like herding cats. This was what governing the Horde was like. If it wasn’t going in the direction they wanted, it was about impossible to get them to cooperate. Debts of honor only went so far…
“Only that they are practitioners of this religion of the Light and believe that what is contrary to the Light needs to be opposed.” This was Magister Shinayne Windstrider, one of the “belfs” (as the blood elves were termed) and a wizard in service to Thrall. “The enthymeme of their argument is that the Horde is contrary to the Light.”
“Religious zealots in other words?”
“Yes. The religion of the Argents, though I don’t know how much influence the Argents have over them.”
“Pah,” Timur muttered darkly. “The Argents are weak and of no use to us. We should swing our support fully to the Ebon Blade. Let that foolish Draenei continue to push them entirely into our camp.”
Thrall said nothing, pondering. He remembered the strong rebukes the Ambassador had issued prior to the debacle of the Undercity.
Whatever happens between Alliance and Horde, you stand at a crossroads between Light and Shadow and the choice you make will save or damn the Horde regardless of whether there is peace or war between us…
He knew there was truth in what she said. The Apothecaries were proof of this. Had they won, there would have been civil war within the Horde. The Alliance had helped bring the Apothecaries down, which could have been used for encouraging peace and ending the cold war between the Alliance and Horde… and it had been brought to ruin because of the damage within the Horde.
“Leave me for now…” Thrall growled. “I need to ponder this.”
The others left. Thrall was certain that Timur would be reporting this to Garrosh and Garrosh would use this to assert the growing weakness of the Horde leadership.
Shortly after they left, the glowing of a portal appeared, and Thrall could see the outlines of Theramore on the other side. A moment later, Jaina appeared to him. He rose in greeting.
“It is good to see you again…” he said. From a perspective of leading the Horde, her information was invaluable in assessing the Alliance. However, their relationship was more than a relationship between two leaders. He could see in her the ideal of friend.
Jaina nodded. “It is good to see you too, though I wish it were possible to do so in peace rather than war.” Personally, she was a bit taken aback by his appearance. He seemed haggard, lacking sleep, seeming more suspicious than in the past.
Thrall turned to the map before him. It showed where the Horde was strongest, and where it was weakest (more places than he would have liked in Northrend). “I too wish so…” he said grimly.
Jaina looked at the map. Kings Magni and Wrynn would have loved to have seen the map. The information on it would have permitted some solid strikes at low cost, since they believed that the Horde wanted war. However, she would never consider betraying Thrall, her friend.
“So, there is a new threat to our working for peace?” she asked.
“So it seems. A group which seeks to force the Light on the Horde is working among us.” He was over generalizing to be sure but he did not trust the system which went against the ancestors and the spirits of the elements. “Since the Horde does not for the most part serve the light, this group must be seen as a threat.”
Jaina winced inwardly. There was a difference between the Light and those who served it. Personally she believed that the clergy of the Light were far too rigid in their moral requirements and that idiot ambassador Amaxe with her philosophical claims… However, if Thrall could be exploited by extremists in the Horde to believe the Light itself was the enemy, then it was unlikely peace would be restored.
“Not all the followers of the Light are enemies of the Horde. I understand the Argent Dawn and the Argent Crusade have members of the Horde who follow the Light—”
“What happens if they decide the Horde as it is needs to be overturned to bring about the Light?”
“What if they do not? Would you do something to end a threat which does not exist?” She feared Thrall was overreacting to the Apothecary incident. He had trusted the Forsaken to police their own, they had failed. Now he was lashing out at every sign of something odd.
Thrall looked down. “What else can we do? We are falling apart… not at the level of the individual member who is loyal, but all those who lead are becoming split by factionalism, by the difference between the followers of nature and the followers of the unnatural… There are a group among the druids I understand who are asking why they should work with people who scar the earth… the warlocks and the death knights… and this new secret group wants to have us abandon our own gods for this Light?" The Horde would collapse into a bunch of tribes, loosely affiliated at best. We will never be slaves again…”
Jaina wondered if he was considering the possibility of being a slave to his fears. It was true that Thrall had been a slave, but Aedelas Blackmoore was not one who had acted under orders of the Alliance, but a traitor who sought to use the internment camps to create an army to turn against the Alliance. In a way, the Horde was an extension of Blackmoore’s plot, in action though not for the intent he had planned.
Why can’t we just put things behind us and live in peace…?
Tags: Aedelas, Amaxe, Atlixcatzin, Blackmoore, Jarindar, Magni, Ner'zhul, Nergis, Nichole, Potichaua, Rolf, Shinayne, Thrall, Timur
