Urzog - Orc brigand betrayed by his gang.

Urzog the orc woke up to find himself lying prone in the dirt with a dozen crossbow quarrels stuck all over his back like he was a pin-cushion.

Groaning, he tried to raise his head to look around. However his surroundings were pitch black. He did however detect light coming from above him. Painfully, he turned his head to glance upwards and saw a hole high above him where copious moonlight was streaming through.

His memories started resurfacing in his mind. He remembered running in the woods. He was being hunted by the very people he once lead. They nearly had him cornered but in a twist of fate, the ground under his feet gave way and he fell into a pit.

Urzog had lost consciousness the moment he hit the bottom of the deep pit. Apparently, his pursuers did not relent and had proceeded to riddle him with crossbow bolts from above for good measure.

Groaning, Urzog reached to his sides and undid the straps of the cuirass that he was wearing. It was a crude piece of armor, amateurly fashioned out of the hide of a Kragan beast which he had stolen from a traveling merchant. Though uncomfortable to wear, the kragan hide was light and ridiculously tough.

Urzog found out just how tough that smelly piece of hide was. Thanks to the Kragan hide, the numerous crossbow bolt wounds on his back were mostly shallow and superficial. It was a miracle indeed that none of the bolts got him at the back of his head and neck.

After discarding his hide armor, Urzog tried getting to his feet. Thankfully, nothing about him seemed to be broken. He was just awfully sore from the chase and the fall.

Urzog glanced up at the opening high above him again and immediately deemed it impossible to climb out that way. Warily, he stepped into the shadows and tried to feel around. Surprisingly, there was more space around him than he first thought.

Once he was within the shadow, his eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness thanks to the natural orc trait of night-vision which they share with their distant cousins, the elves. He soon discovered that the place he had fallen into was not so much a pit but an entire subterranean cavern.

With no other avenue forwards, Urzog spent considerable time exploring the cavern. Before long, he reached a section where the dirt and rock surfaces gradually gave way into walls of masoned stone and mortar.

Urzog wasn’t at all surprised at the discovery. This was the frontier lands where innumerable untold mysteries have yet to be unearthed. However the discovery of the underground ruins brought hope to Urzog’s beleaguered heart as it likely meant that there would be a way out of this accursed cavern.

After some time threading along the stone walls, Urzog was rewarded by the sight of a doorway into a small round chamber which had a spiraling stone staircase leading upwards. Urzog was about to take the stairs, when he noticed another wide stone corridor leading away from the chamber with ornate stone sculptures adorning the ceilings and strange runes engraved along the walls and floor.

While it was true that Urzog had been living a life of an outlaw, brigand, and thief for the past five years, he had originally arrived at the frontier lands envisioning a different life for himself. Like many others he was drawn by tales of wondrous mysteries and incredible treasure, all ready to be discovered and exploited by those who were bold enough to answer the call of exploration.

Of course, as with most things, these things relies more on luck than anything else. And lady luck is a bitch who truly only cherishes a trickle few while giving a cold shoulder to the rest. Even those who seemingly has her good graces may soon discover her fickle nature and lose her favor in the next turn.

In any case, at that very moment, while gazing down that mysterious corridor, Urzog felt the familiar zeal which he hadn’t felt in a long time. It was the desire to explore the unknown, tinged with the invigorating lust for treasure. It was the electric thrill elicited by the obvious flirtations and beckoning of lady luck herself. It was the feeling that had possessed a young orc knight from the southern kingdom to abandon his oath and brought him to these very lands, only to bring him low, surviving by groveling for scraps, and finally resorting to brigandry to make ends meet.

It was the bubbly boldness, boiling in his veins. Lady luck’s giggly whispers in his mind’s ear, telling him to take a chance. Like that time he upstaged the boss of his brigand gang, and went on to lead the gang on a string of successful raids, earning both the attention and favor of the Brigand Queen herself. But it was also the same yearning which seized his heart again, to throw all caution into the wind, to roll the dice one more time, to lift lady luck’s invitingly delicate skirt to see if her legs are crossed or uncrossed, that lead Urzog to botch an important task given by the Brigand Queen herself, which lead to his considerable loss of stature and eventually resulted in him being upstaged by a couple of new upstarts in his gang.

Now after leaving him face down in the cold dirt with a dozen crossbow quarrels in his back, the feeling was back. Urzog could feel lady luck caressing and invigorating every nerve in his body. Down that mysterious corridor, the bitch beckons again.