Shrieking Traitor Sentinel Pilot
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It is the second night of the eighth moon, and Star-Blood stands before the last warherd. The rest have fallen, broken and beaten, on every moon past. Their whelps bear our banners, and fight in our horde. Their warriors fill our bellies, each herd a feast for our gor. We surround them with our banners held high and our war calls filling the night. Our numbers are beyond count: a field of axes, horns, and banners. The yellow glint of our eyes are everywhere in the night: a thousand thousand nightmares waiting for the feast. Half-Horn and Red-Maw lead the warcries with braying shouts and wild swings of their axes. They stir us to blood-hunger, but we are not to descend yet. We wait.
The prey warherd's chieftain stands defiantly by their fire: a wizened old beastlord with too much gray on his snout to cow before any other herd. He is a giant among gor, and has kept his warherd strong with the strength of his horns and the might of his axe. They alone stand apart from our horde, and Star-Blood will not lead us against the hornless men before he has tamed all the gor of the eastern plains.
Star-Blood appears at the edge of the camp, surrounded by his bestigor and the droning of warhorns. He is no towering beast, nor does he drag a greataxe behind him. His yellow eyes are steady, hungry, with a predator's blood-hunger just below. He does not clad himself in thick armor, but wraps his form in the hide of a broken beast from the north. His right arm lies bare, the fur waving in the night's air, and all can see what he brings to this challenge.
In his hand lies God-Fang. Its short, bladed edge gleams in the light. The sacred metal of its length lies unblemished despite its host of kills. Its teeth thirst for the blood of those who dare its bearer. Star-Blood raises it to the dark skies, and brays his legend for all to hear. It is a roar of triumph, rage, and blood. It is a roar that challenges the world itself to stop him.
The chieftain leaps, his axe raised high, and all the warcries are silenced. The old bull has strength in him still, and his charge carries the strength of a mad giant.
God-Fang sings through the air, and the last warherd becomes ours.
* * * *
It is the third night of the fourth moon, and Star-Blood stands before the bestigor herd. The warhorde is not yet large, and we dare not roam onto the eastern plains without more strength. The bestigor's axes are heavy, and their warcries are mighty, but they will not follow a young beastlord without a challenge. We have come tonight to give them challenge.
God-Fang lies in Star-Blood's hand, without blemish or mark to honor the fight. A length of horn, battered by many moons of war and challenges, sinks slowly into the mud beside him. It has been split as if by a shaman's wrath, and the echo of that crack still echoes through the glade.
The bestigor gouge-horn before him slowly falls to his knees, blinking away the shock and horror of his own horn cut from his head. His name is Fire-Spitter, but we will not call him that after this day. He kneels, pressing his snout deep into the mud at Star-Blood's feet, and swears a new blood-name: Half-Horn. His bestigor shout, not in rage, but in awe. Their cries echo the worship-chants of the shamans as they gaze upon the cold blade of God-Fang.
We are ready to step from the woods.
* * * *
It is the fifth night of the second moon, and Star-Blood is but a nameless gor in Stone-Eater's warherd. Stone-Eater tasted defeat at the hands of hornless men that dawn, and there will be challengers tonight. The bestigor have left the warherd, and none now protect the beastlord save his own hands.
The warm rains tear through our herd, but we stand, each waiting with hunger as Stone-Eater breaks one gor after another. Six challengers lie bloodied and dead on the earth, their blood-names fading into the mud in shame. The herd is restless, but cowed by Stone-Eater's strength. The challengers will be eaten, and none will dare strike until Stone-Eater fails again.
Star-Blood steps forward, with God-Fang clutched tight in his hand. He brays his chosen blood-name to us, and we laugh. We laugh because we do not know God-Fang. Stone-Eater laughs because he sees a whelp with a knife, nothing more.
Stone-Eater's armor was torn from a hornless man on a horse, and tied with leather and rope to fit the gor's brawn. It shone bright once, but no longer, and the strange cup carved into it has long been scratched away. The armor has turned away tooth and horn, fang and claw, and none tonight have broken it.
God-Fang tears it in two without stop, and spills Stone-Eater's steaming blood to the ground. There is no more laughter.
Star-Blood names us his warhorde, and says we will rise until we have buried the hornless men under a world-shake of horns and axes.
We believe him.
* * * *
It is the first night of the first moon, and God-Fang lies in the hand of another: a towering beast of a man, clad in midnight and blood. He stands on the edge of a broken city in the sky, drifting above our meaningless world. His fingers, drenched in red rivers, grip God-Fang's hilt and hold it aloft. His bone-white mask reveals no fear, only defiance.
His challengers come: giants clad in grey stone, with great blades and masks of their own. They clash, but there is no sound. God-Fang glitters in the starlight, cast away from the broken sky-city, and begins to fall.
Far below, a young whelp stands with his eyes to the dark skies. He has no herd, and no blood-name. Not yet.
God-Fang smokes with the fury of the skies as it lands at his feet, and Star-Blood is born.
((AoS army origin story. C&C welcome. Thanks for reading))
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