Kargath

During the Orcish War, the Horde that invaded Azeroth consisted of many orc clans, large and small, including the Blackrock Clan, Shadowmoon Clan, Dragonmaw Clan, Warsong Clan, and others. Having drunk Demon Blood, these orcs were driven by their demonic masters to madness and brutality. But faced with stubborn resistance from the Alliance of humans, Night Elves, Dwarves, and Gnomes, the Horde was eventually defeated. Apart from a few Fallen Clans still roaming at large, most orcs were imprisoned in Internment Camps. There, the influence of Demon Blood gradually faded from them.

Later, Thrall, the new chieftain of the Frostwolf Clan, led his clan's warriors to free the orcs imprisoned in the camps. Unlike the orcs of the Old Horde, these orcs had shaken off the Demon Blood. They remained hot-tempered, but had regained their reason and were no longer bloodthirsty and crazed. Under Thrall's leadership, they left the Eastern Kingdoms and crossed the sea to Kalimdor. There, they fought alongside the Alliance against an invasion by their former demonic masters-the Burning Legion. After winning the war, they joined their allies, the Tauren and Darkspear Trolls, to establish a new Horde in Durotar, with Orgrimmar as its capital. Thrall became the New Horde's first Warchief. Later, the Forsaken, undead led by Sylvanas Windrunner, also joined them.

To survive, the New Horde dispatched large numbers of people to establish Forward Camps throughout Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, exploring little-known wilderness regions to secure more room to live.

Kargath was one of these Forward Camps, a small but fully functional outpost where orcs and their allies could rest and resupply while exploring the surrounding area. Located in the northwestern Badlands, it held considerable importance-it guarded the only mountain trail connecting the Badlands and Searing Gorge.

The old orc Gorn managed this outpost. He and his warriors kept watch over the Old Horde in the Eastern Kingdoms-the Blackrock Clan to the south and the Dragonmaw Clan to the north. He devoted himself to eliminating the fallen orcs remaining on the continent and earnestly promoting mutual trust between the Horde and the Alliance.

But one man's efforts clearly could not erase the estrangement and hatred between the Alliance and the Horde, old or new, even though just last year they had fought side by side and successfully resisted the Burning Legion's invasion. Once the war ended, this camp immediately became less friendly toward passing Alliance travelers-the blood feud left by the Orcish War was not so easily washed away.

It was the twenty-first year after the opening of the Dark Portal.

One afternoon in late June of that year, two mysterious travelers, entirely shrouded in cloaks, arrived outside Kargath's eastern gate. But when they were still fifty meters away, an arrow struck the ground and stopped their approach.

"Who are you?" an orc shouted from an archery tower behind the wooden palisade. His Common sounded awkward, but was just barely understandable.

"Two travelers from the Badlands. We've been walking for over a month. We're tired and hungry, and urgently need rest and supplies," the taller traveler answered. Things were not as dire as he made them sound, however. Neither Druids nor hunters were strangers to the wilderness; even spending half a year there would not have been much hardship for them.

"What do you do?" the orc sentry asked warily. Anyone who could cross the Badlands, with its beasts and Ogres, was no pushover. The weak had already been weeded out in that desert.

"Traveling merchants," the taller one answered, patting the large pack on his back. It contained rare herbs he had gathered along the way. These were essential ingredients for alchemy and could also be ground into various special inks for Inscription, making them quite valuable.

"Smugglers, you mean?" the guard sneered. He had grounds for thinking so. Since the Orcish War, merchants had seldom traveled this dangerous trade route. Only smugglers seeking exorbitant profits still used it to transport contraband, such as Bloodthistle.

"Leave. You're not welcome here!" the guard said smugly, having "exposed" their true identities. He waved them away as though shooing flies.

"Then could we pass through here to Searing Gorge?" After a moment's silence, the taller traveler lowered his request. This had actually been their original intention. "We can pay a toll."

"No." The orc sentry hesitated, apparently struggling against the lure of gold, but ultimately refused their request-he was too young to have reached the age of caring only about profit. "This place is closed. We've received word of new activity from the Dragonmaw Clan to the north."

"Do you honestly think we're Dragonmaw Orcs?" The taller traveler abruptly threw back his hood, revealing his long ears and distinctively Night Elven face. He gestured for his companion to do the same. The latter complied, though he did not believe it would help. There were simply too many items in Azeroth that could change a person's appearance. Before transmigrating, he had owned an Orb of the Sin'dorei that could disguise him as a Blood Elf.

"Still no. Orders are orders!" Sure enough, the dutiful orc sentry firmly refused the Night Elf. "The orders say no one is allowed through."

This infuriated the Night Elf. Waving his hands agitatedly, he took several steps forward, only for an arrow to strike immediately in front of his feet.

"Stay back, unless you want a taste of my arrows!" the young orc shouted nervously, though he seemed rather eager for the Night Elf to try.

Furious, the Night Elf gathered nature energy, intending to teach this presumptuous youngster a lesson. But more orc guards poked their heads out from behind the palisade, making him abandon the idea entirely.

"Damn it all!" the Night Elf muttered. Quietly dispersing the spell energy already gathering, he retreated with his companion and disappeared from the orcs' sight. Behind them, the orcs' mocking laughter rang on.

"You were right. These greenskins are as stupid as Troggs. It's as though their skulls are stuffed with shit." On a rise about half a kilometer from Kargath Camp, the Night Elf Masley Bearhide cursed furiously. He had volunteered to negotiate for them both, only to fail.

Beside him, Diago Asnar was gazing toward Kargath. The whites around his pupils had turned completely golden, and a faint reddish glow edged his eyelids-the signs of casting Eagle Eye. The spell let him see farther, well beyond the limits of human eyes.

"I see a dozen orcs being sent out of camp. They're deploying toward the mountain trail. Well, congratulations, kid. You've successfully tipped them off and put those greenskins on their guard," Diago said mockingly. Lowering his head, he saw the young elf awkwardly twisting his mouth, looking on the verge of tears.

"How was I supposed to know these orcs would be so..." Masley said resentfully, at a loss for how to describe those hateful orcs.

"So quick to turn hostile?" Diago adjusted his tone, trying to make his voice gentler. "You have to understand, we've only just fought several life-and-death wars against the orcs. Stormwind City was even destroyed as a kingdom for a time, and some orc clans were wiped out entirely. Do you think all that hatred could disappear just because we were forced to fight together once?"

"But these orcs are different. They're the New Horde!" Masley argued stubbornly.

"But most of them came from the Old Horde! Many have blood feuds with us. Their families-parents, children, brothers, sisters, even entire households-died at Alliance hands. We may think they deserved it, that it was retribution for invading Azeroth, but can you be sure they think the same?" Diago challenged, staring intently at the Night Elf. "We were lucky today. Not killing us on the spot already showed considerable restraint. But from today onward, I won't indulge you in this again. You're gambling with both our lives."

"All right, I'll listen to you," the Night Elf conceded, convinced. He added admiringly, "I have to admit, I'm really no good at using my brain."

"It's not that you're no good at using your brain. You don't have one!" Diago teased.

"Hey, you!" The youngster stiffened his neck indignantly, his face bright red.

"All right, all right, I was joking." Diago smiled and waved a hand as he headed downhill. In the shadows at the foot of the slope, Khanifa slowly appeared-the big cat had been scouting in Stealth.

The big cat approached Diago, stopped beside his leg, and gave several low growls.

"What's it saying?" the Night Elf asked curiously. This was a limitation of the Druid class. Unless they were casting Beast Soothing, they could not know an animal's thoughts. Hunters, by contrast, could understand animals' thoughts at any time, though only those of their pets.

"The orcs have reinforced the guards on the trail. They've sent at least two dozen of their finest warriors!" Diago said gravely. This matched what he had seen through Eagle Eye.

"Then what do we do? Fight our way through?" the Night Elf asked murderously.

"No. Let's think of something else." Diago rejected Masley's suggestion. Although the orcs had refused them passage that day, he still did not want to slaughter them. He constantly reminded himself that this was a real world, not a game. Everyone had only one life, and he did not want to become a ruthless, cold-blooded man. These orcs were neither the fallen, deranged Dragonmaw Orcs nor the evil, selfish Dark Iron Dwarves. They still seemed quite restrained. Though unwilling to accommodate Alliance travelers, they had not attacked the two of them-the New Horde also needed time to recover and a chance to catch its breath. They, too, did not want to provoke a war.

"Perhaps we can slip through quietly without alerting anyone," Diago said. He was no pacifist, but neither could he remotely be called a kindly soul. He was simply wary of putting too much faith in violence. Sooner or later, the deeply divided Alliance and Horde would go to war again, but he did not want to be the cause. At the very least, he did not want to add anything new to their mutual hatred.

They did not have to wait long before the sky gradually darkened. After a simple meal of jerky, they began preparing for the night's operation in the fading twilight.

Compared with the scorching, parching heat of daytime, the Badlands at night were cool and pleasant. Had the wind not still carried sand and dust, Diago might not even have felt how harsh and unforgiving this place was. But that was not the reality. Night was when many nocturnal beasts emerged to hunt, and venomous creatures such as scorpions and vipers became active. Diago encountered a glossy black Sand Scorpion. It was hard to call this highly venomous creature a mere bug-it was nearly as large as a washbasin. When it raised its pincers and stinger, even Khanifa dared not go up and provoke it. The two travelers and their leopard quietly detoured around the enormous scorpion.

Diago remembered that before his transmigration, some hunters had kept venomous scorpions as pets. He had no idea how they tamed such poisonous creatures and deeply admired them for it. He certainly would not dare try, even with a healer like Masley Bearhide along.

Both moons were out that night, making their stealthy passage considerably harder. Still, the steep cliffs provided some shadows. There was a way through after all.

Kargath Camp did not completely block the mountain trail. There was still a gap between it and the cliff-roughly **ty meters-which ensured that the camp's archery towers could cover the entire road. At night, however, this became difficult to achieve. Even Night Elves, who had the best night vision, would struggle to see clearly at that distance.

Masley and Khanifa had already gone ahead to scout. Even under the Twin Moons, night remained the time they most welcomed. Darkness cloaked their every movement. Looking west from here, they could see the sky above Searing Gorge stained red by the blazing lava.

The unfortunate Diago lay flat on the ground, crawling slowly and as silently as possible. A Lizard-skin Cloak covered his entire body, making him seem to blend into the reddish-brown gravel.

During their journey across the Badlands, the two unfussy eaters had included nearly every species in the region in their diet-except, of course, intelligent species such as Ogres and Dark Iron Dwarves. Of them all, Sand Lizard meat was unquestionably the best. Whether it was lizard skewers, smoked lizard, or crispy fried lizard tails, the gluttonous Masley praised every bite.

Determined to waste nothing, Diago had sewn these Sand Lizard hides into a camouflage cloak. He had to admit that these chameleons' hides were natural camouflage material. They changed color with the terrain, making them many times better than the camouflage ghillie suits he had seen before transmigrating. According to the Night Elf, this finely textured leather could also block body heat. Diago had even made a special trip to an abandoned mine occupied by Troggs to test it. Sure enough, deep in the dark mine, not one of the Troggs with their infrared night vision detected him right under their noses. Diago was ecstatic-this thing was practically a divine artifact for a hunter. Whether lying in ambush for a shot or escaping in disguise, the cloak could play an unimaginably powerful role.

Even so, Diago dared not grow careless. Their daytime visit had clearly put the orcs sufficiently on guard. After nightfall, an illuminating arrow wrapped in oilcloth was fired out at almost regular intervals, landing in the space between the camp and the cliff. This put him at a severe disadvantage, because flares affected hunters far more than Druids. Under these conditions, he could barely move, while a Druid in cat form could pass outside the flares' illuminated area.

He crawled extremely slowly, perhaps moving only two or three meters a minute. He had no choice. If he crawled faster, the orcs in the towers would certainly notice. Sometimes he had to stop and remain still for a while, lest an orc sentry watching this way notice anything unusual.

Thus, when Diago finally rolled into a hollow at the foot of the mountain two hours later, he was nearly at breaking point. Extreme tension and maintaining the same posture for so long had exhausted him. He looked more bedraggled than if he had just fought a major battle.

He was about two hundred meters from Kargath Camp. At that distance, even the sharpest-eyed orc could not see this spot at night. Catching his breath, he cautiously peered around a corner of the cliff, then quickly pulled his head back.

In that brief glimpse, he saw a group of orc soldiers sitting around a campfire on the trail between the mountains, some twenty or thirty meters away. They seemed to be roasting some kind of meat over the fire. Even from where he was, he could smell it.

The orc soldiers completely blocked the trail, which was about four or five meters wide. This gave Diago a terrible headache. There seemed to be no choice except a bloody fight, though a dozen orcs would not be particularly difficult for the two of them-oh, and now Khanifa as well-to handle.

"If only we had a Rogue. They could throw a Smoke Bomb to create confusion, and we'd have a chance," Diago muttered to himself. Although he also had an Engineering schematic for Smoke Bombs, making them required Elemental Blasting Powder and Netherweave Cloth-both specialties of Outland that he could not obtain right now. A Rogue's Smoke Bomb, in contrast, was formed entirely from energy and required no materials.

Although Diago had no fondness for Rogues, he had to admit that sometimes these phantoms prowling through the shadows were more in their element than other classes. This situation, for instance.

Note: Azeroth's Rogues were not thieves or bandits in the traditional sense-though they were equally adept at picking locks, breaking in, and picking pockets. Like Warriors, they followed an adventuring profession. Most preferred poisoned daggers or short swords, attacking enemies from behind. As outstanding assassins and masters of Stealth, they made the finest scouts. They excelled at disarming traps-which might have been an important reason Diago disliked them.

These wanderers in the shadows excelled at concealing their presence. As they vanished from people's sight, they also slipped free of moral restraints. Some Rogues degenerated into killers for hire or even robbers. Since a few bad apples spoiled the barrel, few people liked Rogues. Even those recruited by SI:7 called themselves stealth operatives, but people who knew their background still preferred to call them Rogues.

Bloodthistle was an herb, reportedly an import smuggled into Azeroth from Outland. It was highly addictive, much like poppies.