34-05-27 - Outlaws and Fanatics
Outlaws – Bane of the sharecropper, and earnest commoner, and foe of the Lordamere Rangers were the greed-consumed poachers and murderers in mask, and a battle between them would be fought with long eyes and sharp arrows in the shadows of the Wetlands. Amongst the hoodlums, a name was heralded long before its coming; of their cruelest bandit lord, whose iron grip reduced the lower thieves, and deserter-soldiers to cower and obey. Bastien Northwell was his name.
Entering deep marshland, to lay greater stretches of tract behind them, the rangers sought this drifter of disrepute, and found a portion of his ragged men in waiting. Their friend, Hallwell, whose grudge of sadness epitome, first bore them Northwell’s name to their lips, was captive, and so his life, would be at stake in the ambush and unsheathed steel. Threats and jeers, jabs and jests were thrown out of the way, and hindrance was uncertainty; between the Bandit Lord’s lieutenant - Arthur Danell with his outlawed men, and the Lordamere Rangers, with their hounds. Skirmishers in the shadows hid to prey upon the other; for they were adversaries as rangers and bandits both, making chaos as soon as the fighting began. Steel and strength reaped distinction for who lived and who died. But the gods of old, and the light of the valves smiled upon the honour-seeking vagrants that day, and after the death of Arthur Danell in battle, those dishonest men still alive, threw down their swords before the Lordamere Rangers, and surrendered.
The decision proved unwise. Unaccounted for by rangers and brigands both was one; a stranger of magic arts, whose grudge and tale with these outlaws undid him his conscience to execute a surrendering enemy, his inferno of blaze, sprung like a trap before anyone could stop him - or indeed, see him, and like kindling, he burned black, all who had been Danell’s men, and introduced himself to the rangers as Valerian Reynes. He named the unconscious Hallwell his friend, and called him “Gallows”, divulging the cruelty that spawned him cruelty of his own that fateful night - of Bastien the Butcher’s bloody carousal upon him and his. Some wanted to ally with the mage, others wanted to hang him for his dishonourable act, or bring him to the Stockades of Stormwind. But with injured amongst them, and neither threat nor depth of the mage’s tale evident; the archers and their hounds withdrew for another day.
Before the next sunrise, passing through Ironbeard’s Tomb on their way, unto the Greenwarden’s Grove; the grey wanderers encountered remnant killers of the disparate Scarlet Crusade who had managed to pass under the Thandol Span, but incurred the wrath of a deathly pursuer; and rangers both. As one of the two red-flame fanatics fell, at the cost of the ranger-lieutenant’s hound, that was slain, so did he drop his accursed weapon - uncanny to find, even in the keeping of a madman; for when that blade, with its engravings of evil, touched the grass, it wilted and blackened with rot all at once, losing its colour and its life - ere another terrible tool of dark thaumaturgy, had found its way to the frightened keeping of rangers; deciding their next course.
A night of malediction and treacherous surprise, is behind us! - The Lordamere Rangers continue on a course back to the lands of Lordaeron, where they will range in its wartorn tract once more. The wanderers will be conducting their own affairs for a time, waiting for the upcoming war-campaign on the 19th:
Looking forward to it, friends! 