The Skull of Graglack

The clan considers its most prized relic to be the skull of one of the trolls from whom their home cave was captured. This skull has been treated to prevent any threat of regeneration and is part of the Shaman's ceremonial headgear.

How The Kreegchah's Void Clan came to be

It all started with a war party, as things often do. Kreegchah and his troops were dispatched to investigate a troll nest nearby, which had recently become a nuisance. A few foragers had come back to the grounds with lacerations after hiding from a troll in spindly borko bushes. A hunter was found dead, torn in half with incredible force. Some hunting grounds had been ravaged, vegetation ripped out, a waterhole polluted with troll droppings to the South. Strange totems had been found with half-chewed animal carcasses stuck onto them.

The trackers led the party to a cave two days' travel away. The opening was jagged and low with sharp cliff edges hanging from the ceiling and stains in an array of blood tones. Bones littered the surroundings. Though the mouth of the cave was barely large enough to allow a single troll through at a time, the sounds coming from within warned the pack of a considerable threat. Gravelly roars blast forth from the opening, shaking the ground and rattling the splint mails. The earsplitting song of a troll nest.

Though Kreegchah did not show it, he despaired. The lament coming from the cave door suggested their opponents were many. The nest could have been dozens strong for all he knew. He could not imagine how such a force could have arrived without their scouts noticing. Either way, they had not come here to turn back at the first sign of danger. If they stood no chance of victory, they at least had to find out more.

Ten skilled hunters led by Kreegchah crept into the cave as night fell. The rest of the party set up camp a little ways further to wait for them, though they did not expect them to return.

Come morning, the scout party was back. Six lifeless bodies were carried into the camp, each gruesomely bludgeoned. "Three," Kreegchah informed those running to help them, looking deep in thought. He ordered everybody to gather and told them what they'd found.

As they advanced through the passage into the mountain, the sounds of the enemy began to lose volume. They could begin to make out different voices and there were not as many as they had expected. In the depths of the mountain was a vast cavern, lit by the moonlight through an atrium a hundred metres above. There was shrubbery growing in the middle, moss on the walls and arrays of strange colorful mushrooms covering the walls. On one side of the entrance, an edge, over which they had seen no bottom. A vast black pit. There were only three trolls inside the cave and they could hear them clearly now.

The pack were roaring nonsense back and forth at each other. Not just troll speak but senseless grunts and stammerings. They were stumbling like drunks. They seemed to be out of their minds. As one of the trolls noticed them, it roared and...

Kreegchah paused and looked at the survivors of his group, as if to make sure they'd seen the same thing he'd seen. He looked at the six corpses. Then he continued.

One of the trolls had roared madly, picked up Golkat from Kreegchah's side and thrown him against the rock wall twenty metres away with incredible force. They'd never heard of anything like it before, let alone seen with their own eyes. And how the trolls fought... Like animals, berserk and mindless. Three trolls should be no match for an orc party of ten but these had had the strength of a dozen and the minds of none. Kreegchah's party may have won in the end but it cost them dearly in blood.

Kreegchah had brought a few of the mushrooms along and showed them to the others. He'd noticed they had been harvested from the walls. He suspected these were the secret behind the trolls' strength. They were slimy, bright purple and smelled of spice. He did not allow anyone to touch them. Picking them had made him dizzy, he said. Better to ask the shaman.

Over the next week, Kreegchah began to act strangely. The clan mystic had burnt the mushrooms he'd brought along saying they were strong poison but Kreegchah revealed that he had eaten one and was feeling perfect. It was true that his body did not seem to suffer, in fact he had become stronger than before, but it had changed something in his head. He began to speak of ancestors and visions. He began to argue with the shaman and stop mid-stride to stare at nothingness for minutes on end. The spirits were speaking to him, he said.

Soon, Kreegchah began to argue that the clan should relocate to the cavern of the trolls. They should do it to prepare for the invaders, for the waves of hairy and green. Was the bottomless chasm in the cave not a black spire in its own way? A spire into the ground, the ground that fed them. Was there not sun in the cavern that they could greet in the mornings? Was the peculiarity of the cave, amplifying the voices inside to such an amazing degree, not a sign of its power?

It is not remembered whether he left of his own will or was cast out but some of the clan followed. Enough to survive on their own, though only a small part of the whole. They became known as the Kreegchah's Void Clan.

Milestones to be added as they happen.