After a short rest, the Thane once again led the way into the blackstone caverns, winding ever deeper into the roots of Blackrock Mountain. In the dim light that they cast upon the walls, the Order spotted the wrought iron cages as they passed - hundreds of them, line along the walls and hanging from the ceiling of the cavern. A reminder of the dark past of the Dark Iron dwarves, and an indication of the one that led them onwards.
In time, the Order stepped into an arena, whose spectator ring above was warded by pilfered dwarven magics. This, Thane Angrune told them, was at the outer edge of the stronghold of Kol Ungor, and here they caught a glimpse of its inhabitants - the orcs, trolls, tauren and goblins that they had slowly be whittling down over the prior weeks. Among them, the dark, tall and foreboding figure of their leader, Drok Charhide, stood upon the spectator's ring, issuing his taunts to the dwarven thane that had fled his home so many years ago.
With little choice but to fight, the Order came face-to-face with a captured yeti, some fifteen feet tall, whose icy breath was no less deadly in the depths of the volcano than it was on the slopes of Dun Morogh. After dispatching it, Stone Guard Brukkor, an ogre adjutant of the Charspear warlord, personally came to dispatch the Order, with the aid of the legion's warshaman to flood the arena with magma.
The ogre, instead, met a fiery, ugly end in the magma, and the Order were quick to exploit the open passageway to the spectator's ring. While they did battle with the unsuspecting occupants of the bunkhouse adjacent to the gladiatorial ring, the Ninth Thane called upon the Living Flame to incinerate those that were readying their weapons on the spectators ring above.
After a short rest, the Order set out once more, across the spectator's ring and the carpet of blackened, charred bodies left in the wake of the Thane's sorcery. Just beyond, they came upon the vast chasm that led to the stronghold proper, the bridge upon which the Thane and the Warlord had last done battle. As they approached the gates of Kol Ungor, their foe came to meet them, with the warlord at their head. A vicious battle ensued, but as the battle raged on it became evident why Drok Charhide had managed to best the acolytes of the Living Flame before.
Casting Angrune aside, Drok turned his attention to the Order proper. The orc held a fierce sway over the elements, and the mountain trembled at his asking; the fiery depths beneath the span of granite upon which they stood roared in defiance of the pests that trod upon it. With just moments to spare, the shaman-warlord of the Charspear Legion was slain. For Angrune, retribution had come at last. Aided to his feet by a knight-aspirant of the Order as the warlord was brought low, the dwarven thane mustered his strength and charged the orc down. The Blackener, the ancestral warhammer from which the Thane drew his name, blazed with a dark fury, and as the last hammerblow was dealt the Warlord was instantly reduced to a glassy black fragments, stretched out some twenty feet along the causeway.
With the death of its warlord, the Charspear Legion was no more. What few remained in Kol Ungor, that had not been slain by the Living Flame or during the battle outside its gates, fled from the mountain. Whether they were slain by the Dark Iron patrols was unknown to the Order. The scavenge of the upper levels of the stronghold was left to those that had aided the Ninth Thane.
Among two decades of loot and plunder was an old elven blade, which was taken by one of the Order's rangers. Another found a particularly interesting ingot of metal - arcanite, no less, which the Ninth Thane demanded to be handed back to him, but eventually relented as payment. And lastly, a letter, written in the final days of Charhide's life of war and raiding, addressed to a junior orc of the Charspear Legion and imploring them to leave the mountain, to take 'the Scion' elsewhere, across the sea. Who this Scion was, where it was to be taken, or if the orc had even made it out alive remained unknown.
The Order’s long since left Blackrock Mountain and Kol Ungor behind (I’m just behind on writing up the details - things happen very quickly!). Now we’re on the war path, back in the northern reaches of the Eastern Kingdom, with our eyes set on all of our many, many enemies, most of all the heretical Blood Knights of Silvermoon. There really is no better time to join the Order!