09. Taretha arrives in Stormwind - Impasse

[moonshadows]

To my surprise, Joric leads me to a sort of balcony courtyard where a table and three chairs have been set up. Past the parapet, Stormwind spreads out in all its glory. Joric beats a hasty retreat while I am distracted and I drift away from the doorway, leaving Golthak and the two Kor'kron Elites to arrange themselves as they wish. The rhythmic sounds of plate armor inform me that I will soon have company, but I am caught up in watching the city.

"Lovely view, isn't it?"

Varian's voice at my elbow births panic. I whirl, one arm out in a half-formed gesture of either attack or defense, but his browned hand is suddenly around my wrist, painfully tight, and there is nothing of gentleness or mercy in his expression. A scream dies of fear in my throat, my bones turning to water even as my blood turns to ice. In a heartbeat, the warrior formerly known as Lo'gosh drops my wrist as though burned and backs up several steps, both hands raised in a gesture of surrender.

"Back away from her," Golthak barks in orcish. "Further. Further. Turn your back. Do not speak common."

Amazingly, Varian obeys the angry commands. He retreats almost to the door and turns to face my faithful shadow. "What I did?" he demands in broken orcish.

"He used to beat her. No, don't look. Give her time to calm down."

I can see those browned hands clench into angry fists, see the powerful muscles of his back and shoulders tense and tremble with suppressed fury beneath the blue doublet. Already, the calm of surrender flows from my dry eyes down my tight throat, leaving me numb and empty in the wake of terror. When the last bits of visceral fear have been smothered beneath emotional ice, I nod.

"Now you can look and speak," Golthak growls.

At first, Varian does not move. Head bowed, he seems to be struggling with himself. When he does turn, his hands are held open and away from his body and he advances slowly, eyes begging for my forgiveness. "Taretha, I'm sorry." His thick, unruly hair flutters in the breeze, a few errant strands glowing like burnished copper in the sun. "I should have known better than to startle you like that." He stops just out of reach, leaving me plenty of room to either side should I try to flee. "If you would rather eat alone after that, I'll understand."

Beneath his tan, the places where I struck him are still faintly discolored. Languidly, I take a step forward and brush his cheek lightly. He inhales sharply and flinches, but otherwise does not move.

"I believe this round is a tie, my lord." There is no inflection in my voice.

"No," he says shakily. Blue eyes bleed apology. "I forfeit."

Later, when the defensive detachment wears off, I will be able to appreciate the vulnerability he is displaying - and the power over him that he has just revealed I possess. The sound of more guards approaching, however, effectively breaks the tension in the air.

"Father?"

"Anduin."

Eyes still on me, he backs up a few paces before turning and sweeping his son into a fierce hug. While they are occupied, I seat myself at the table, choosing the seat that gives me a view of both the door and the city. Anduin gives me a curious look over his father's shoulder, but says nothing. When Varian has gotten himself under control again, they take their seats at the table and this seems to be the signal for lunch to be served.

If not for the presentation, it would be a very simple meal: roast chicken and bread, fresh lettuce and bell peppers and sharp yellow cheese. However, the chicken is game hens; the bread is rolls shaped like ducks floating on a lettuce pond with green pepper lily pads and red pepper flowers. The cheese, sliced into thin sticks, has been arranged into a nest on the 'shore' for the 'ducks'. When the servant bearing a bottle of wine approaches the table, Varian frantically waves him away, then looks at me with ill-concealed panic. With the reminder of Blackmoore's attentions fresh in his mind, it seems he would prefer to avoid any further comparison.

"That's a neat dress, Taretha," Anduin says after the last servant has left. "Are those feathers in your hair?"

With no signs of danger, the protective numbness begins thawing. "Tail feathers of a hawk. The Runetotem tribe made the dress for me."

"Tauren."

At the half-question, I glance at Varian but his eyes are firmly on the bread-duck he is holding. "Yes, tauren. When the Horde first landed on Kalimdor, the tauren people provided us all with cloth or clothing."

The duck loses its crusty head.

"Something wrong, Varian?"

The look he gives me is indecipherable. I can tell that words are swarming inside him, but he clenches his jaw and none of them come out. He looks at the decapitated roll as though unaware that he had mangled it, and drops it on his plate.

"Just disappointed in myself." With a visible effort, he forces the churning emotions from his expression. "You look lovely in that. Very fierce."

My lips form a smile I do not feel. "Thank you, my lord."

For a moment, he looks about to strike the table in frustration, and then he puts on an equally false smile. "I trust you slept well, my lady?"

"I thought we'd been over that point, my lord."

The slight edge to my tone brings a hint of genuine amusement to his eyes. "You still haven't given me your answer on that, you know."

"I have some reservations about accepting a gift that will tie me so tightly to the enemy."

He frowns. "You're not my enemy."

"Maybe not, my lord, but you have made yourself the enemy of my brother. I will not forswear the ties of blood."

Anduin watches silently as his father draws me neatly out of my shell of indifference.

"You forswore your ties to the race that birthed you," Varian points out with the slightest hint of a growl.

I smile sweetly, but my voice has gained an edge. "Need I remind you of what humanity gifted me with, my lord?"

"Damn it, woman, I-" he breaks off and shoves himself away from the table abruptly, pacing to the parapet where he stands with his hands on the stone, glaring down at the oblivious city. After a minute or two, he comes back and calmly takes his seat again. "I'm trying to right the wrongs committed against you, but you're not making it very easy," he says quietly.

"Have you given me a reason to?"

He gapes at me.

"Why should I forgive the race that displayed so much cruelty to me, and to the race of my clan? Just because you feel bad about it? If that is the case, my lord, I have to wonder what course of action you would take, were I to roll over and let you have your way with me." I stab a red-pepper-flower with more force than is absolutely necessary. "You wish to make amends to me, specifically, and I can't help but ask myself why that is. Is it because I am human? Is it because I am a woman?" The petals of the flower are broken off one by one while I pin him with my glare. "Is it because you are attracted to me?"

The look of hurt pride tells me all I need to know.

"Is my brother not worthy of reparations because he is an orc? Because he is male? Because you do not look at him and think 'there is someone that I feel needs my protection'? Why is it that you feel you are entitled to declare war on a race who went out of its way to leave humanity alone? What entitles you to wave your brief enslavement under our noses and ignore the fact that the vast majority of the orcish race has endured more years of slavery than you did months?"

Anduin cringes and mouths 'ouch'. Varian stares at me stoically, jaw set, as though I were pummeling him with my fists rather than my words.

"I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Taretha," he says, and he sounds torn between hopeless resignation and genuine relief. "I beg you, let's discuss what can be done to make this gift more suitable. I would not want you to feel that accepting will tie you to me against your will."

"Maybe take out the oath of fealty, Father?"

Hearing Anduin's voice breaks the tension between Varian and myself, and I nibble on the mutilated flower whose petals adorn my plate. The king blinks as though such a thing hadn't even occurred to him.

"Of course," he agrees. "In fact, why don't we just make the land a sovereign nation? It's not like there's any Alliance presence in the area strong enough to enforce anything, and the tax revenues haven't been counted in any budget for ten years."

"I have a better idea."

Varian looks at me expectantly, hints of delight at my lack of hostility gleaming in his eyes.

"Which parts of Alterac are unclaimed?"

Comments

unForgiven Re: Ankokugai22@yahoo.com

[(Anonymous)]

"Why should I forgive the race that displayed so much cruelty to me, and to the race of my clan?"

Are you shitting me? This girl SERIOUSLY does NOT do her research.

TRUE, Blackmore was an absolute ass. He was a rapist and a drunk and prone to blaming his problems on others. He, like Garithos, were members of Lorderon nobility who gave warcraft humanity a bad name and were followed by many human soldeirs simply because they were noble. What Blackmore did to Taretha is largely unforgivable and I've read enough about rape psychology to understand why she's behaving this way, but good god, not all men can or should be painted with the same brush and she's being as retardedly racist as she's amusing Varian of being.

When the Horde came to Stormwind the area where the poral opened was a rain-forest. Within a year the entire area was dead, the soil dry and barren and the only things hardy enough to live there were fel tainted boars with poisonous flesh and giant bugs.

Stormwind was a kingdom with 7 cities and 50 towns/villages and highly prosperous. There was one dialogue mention that the kingdom held over a million people. After the Horde ravaged the area, cursing several states and sacking each of the cities, 5000 made it north to the kingdoms of lorderan. The rest were murdered, raped and murdered, raped and held to bear half orc or half ogre children and then murdered, and a small percentage (the army) were killed in one battlefield or another. The orcs OWNED stormwind redridge, the burning steppes, the fertile plains of westfall, the rich mines of Elwynn and the forrests of duskshire. There was no resistence left save the trolls in the south who joined the Horde. A continent should have been enough for their homeland.

But no. Within a year they were building boats because building cities was too hard. For an orc, war solves everything. Direct quote from several games and the movie.

The moved north sacking dwarven and gnomish cities, killing everyone they could, until only gnomregan and Ironforge fortresses remained uncracked. The reported death tolls were much lower than for stormwind, at only 60%. They moved further north to shatter the kingdom of Stormgarde irreparably and after forming an alliance with alterac (the traitors) going genocidal on them too. Neither nation has yet recovered.

Then they bypassed the wildhammer and lorderan in favor of smashing cities in quel'thelas. 5 cities full of elves lost and the capitol besieged so that they could steal the runestone wards the elves had set up to keep the burning legion at bay. THIS is what gave Garrithos and Blackmore their original prejudices, because their lands and castles were trampled by the orcs rush to attack the elves.

Gen Greymane built his wall and the Horde turned on Lorderan, genocideing several cities and marching on the capitol (lorderon) again, only because Gul'dan betrayed everybody and ran off with all of the horde's warlocks and deathknights, the attack was thwarted and the orcs driven back.

Back out of lorderan, back out of Khazmodan, back out of stormwind, back out of the searing gorge, into the black morass and their portal closed. At which point they became living toadstools and rounded up into camps, unresistant, but largely immobile. The stated loss of life was three quarters of the kingdoms dead. Probably an exaggeration, but still apocalyptic.

The Humans, the Elves, the Dwarves, the Gnomes, they all have very good reasons to hate and never forgive the orcs their transgressions. The racism here has meaning, unlike most in our reality. But what do the alliance races do? They wave it off and blame the orcs evil on the demons whom the orcs willingly gave themselves too. Instead of going genocidal on them as anyone logical or bereaved would be expected to, they let the orcs live.

Jaina who lost 2 dear brothers and both her parents to orc attacks keeps trying to make peace with them. Gives up alliance hold over the barrens to thrall in diplomacy over her fathers attack. Varian who lost his parents, his older sister, his country and most of his countrymen/women to, settles for merely opposing horde expansion.

All this forgiven after the orcs drank mannoroth's blood WILLINGLY, not once, but twice, and were responsibly for both of the early warcraft games Apocalypse wars.

The orcs act of redemption? To be 1/3rd of the effort to clean up their own god damned mess.

Why should Taretha forgive humanity their cruelty to the orcs? Why should anyone forgive the orcs cruelty to the whole of Azeroth? Of the Horde races, the Tauren and the Blood Elves are the only ones who show themselves to be consistently worthy of respect, and they've got Magatha Grimtotem and Kael'thas the Mad.

The goblins, no explanation needed.
The orcs, traitors, cowards and murderers as often as anything honorable.
The Trolls, Canibals who are big into enslaving souls to act as potion and spell ingredients.
The undead, Before ICC they were repugnant but sympathetic, after...no explanation needed.

The pandaren came too much later to be counted, particularly because they play both sides. And they're pretty god damned honorable.

Re: unForgiven Re: Ankokugai22@yahoo.com

[moonshadows]

It's a little unfair to hold Taretha responsible for information she doesn't have. She grew up in what was basically a small town and the fact that she was taught how to read was WILDLY outside the norm. She's by far more educated than the average Lorderon citizen, but that doesn't grant her omniscience. She doesn't know what happens outside of Durnhold unless someone tells her, and who's going to discuss world politics with Blackmoore's whore?

Now, once she leaves and the Horde meets up with Jaina's forces, she'll have a new source of information - but then you have to look at what Jaina would be able to tell her. It boils down to "the men in charge are being stupid". So Taretha's not flat-out racist against humans, but boy does she have a bone to pick with human culture. Jaina couldn't even escape her father trying to tell her what to do by sailing halfway across the world to stop a demon threat that a king and an archmage both didn't consider worth their time and effort.

As for the "not all men" argument, it's not like she got to go visit other kingdoms. All she knows of human culture is Durnholde Keep, and then Theramore (see above and Jaina's father valuing a 20-year-old grudge over his daughter's word) and what Varian and his people have displayed. You may recall she had no problems with his guards. Varian is a hot-tempered man with a lot of authority and a lot of charm, three things he shares with her abuser. The first day he met her, he was casually racist pretty bluntly implied that she needed a man. She's not going to lay down and go gentle on his fragile male ego; she's going to puncture it until he stops to think before he leaps to conclusions. (Which, by the way, is the trait he proposed to her for, and the trait she accepted for.)

I applaud your knowledge of lore! However, the Black Morass was more accurately a swamp, and the reason the land withered was the connection to Draenor via the Dark Portal was basically an open would causing Azeroth to bleed life-energy into the void.

I haven't read any of the RPG books, so if the raping you mention comes from there, you can assume it didn't happen in Tariverse because Tides of Darkness doesn't mention Orgrim's Horde hanging around for halfbreeds to be born. It was crush, consolidate, and move on because they knew that if they'd stopped to settle down, it would only be a matter of time before the other human kingdoms showed up en masse to wage war on them. (And also, to be technical, the kingdom of Stormwind doesn't actually count as its own continent - even if you just count the landmass south of Arathi.) They went north not, as you assert, because building cities was "too hard". They went after Lordaeron because humans were a powerful foe, and they would not be able to settle down and rebuild their lives until they had utterly defeated the defenders of the land they intended to claim as their own.

Factions on both sides did horrible things during the war, and I won't try to pretend the Horde was blameless. But given that Stromgarde was able to repel the Scourge and provide a good chunk of Jaina's forces in the Third War, I'm going to have to call you on your claim that the Horde was able to "shatter the kingdom of Stormgarde irreparably". Furthermore, the orcs had pretty much nothing to do with Alterac's fall; they did that to themselves. With regards to the Horde being unable to take Lordaeron, Tides of Darkness makes it absolutely clear that the failed siege was due to Orgrim sending a chunk of his forces to run down Gul'dan immediately, not from Gul'dan's defection. He chose to prevent Gul'dan from getting whatever he wanted, even if it meant weakening the Horde to the point of being unable to complete the siege they were winning. Anything the orcs did in Quel'thalas was secondary to the trolls and their ancient war with the elves who pushed them out of their forests so long ago. Oh, and the Greymane Wall didn't go up until after the Second War was over.

I do have to wonder where you're getting your casualty numbers from because all the information I can find says the human kingdoms and their populations came out way more intact than the orc clans. It's unfair to say that the Alliance as a whole were generous in letting the remnants of the Horde live, because Stromgarde and Gilneas both left the Alliance out of disagreement with that decision.

On the pruning of the Proudmoore family tree: Daelin Proudmoore only had two sons, and only Derek died (Commander of the third fleet, who perished in the Second War when he came under the attack of dragonriders). Tandred is still alive and rules Kul Tiras. Their mother isn't so much as named in canon, much less given a fate. Daelin himself was consumed by hatred and sailed a fleet halfway across the world to disregard everything his daughter had to say and tell her to shut up while he continued a one-sided vendetta; he fully deserved his death.

Varian does not have a sister. Until the movie gave her a name, he didn't even have a mother. I could go into detail about his issues and where they come from, but like Daelin, he's carrying a grudge some twenty years old.

The orcs, as a whole, drank the demon blood under coercion and false pretenses when the Horde was first formed. Not all of them drank. Blackhand refused to allow his daughter that honor, for example, and Durotan forbade any of his clan from drinking. However, during the Third War, it was only Grom's Warsong that drank and he did it knowing that what he was doing was wrong and that Thrall would not approve. Furthermore, he was immediately held responsible for his actions and died redeeming himself.

The Third War was not "their own god damned mess". The orcs were a pawn of the Burning Legion, expendable canon fodder and cast aside when they'd outlived their usefulness. When their assault failed, the Legion got creative and sent dreadlords with the Lich King and tried again with the Scourge. It's not like they sat around in Kalimdor summoning Archimonde; on the contrary, they stood up where King Terenas and Archmage Antonidas dismissed Medivh's warning.

You call orcs "traitors, cowards and murderers as often as anything honorable" but to be brutally honest, the same can be said for humanity on Azeroth. For every Anduin Lothor there's an Aedelas Blackmoore; for every King Llane there's an Aiden Perenolde. And if you're going to hold the orcs accountable for everything they did under demonic influence, then you're going to have to give the same treatment to Medivh for being under Sargeras's influence. After all, if it weren't for Aegwynn's arrogance, there would have been no one to whisper into Gul'dan's mind and the Dark Portal would never have been opened.

Re: unForgiven Re: Ankokugai22@yahoo.com

[(Anonymous)]

A well detailed counter argument. A lot of the things we disagree on came from the RPG books.

Re: unForgiven Re: Ankokugai22@yahoo.com

[(Anonymous)]

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Half-orc