User:Lemona1d/Fire in the Stars

Author's notes: This piece of work is fan-fiction set in the official Warcraft universe.

This story follows the draenei death knight, Toravaax Bloodsoul, and his army of dead minions as they fight against the infinite onslaught of the Burning Legion.

Chapter One
Toravaax had witnessed the mass genocide of his people thanks to the blood-crazed frenzy of Draenor's orcish army. He had fallen mercilessly at the hands of the Lich King himself, and been forced into an agonizing eternity of permanent undeath, risen as a death knight. Yet somehow still, the Burning Legion was the single worst thing Toravaax had ever experienced in his entire existence.

Demons were the source of all the headaches that plagued Toravaax. Demons had slain Toravaax's people, his friends and his family and his lovers. Demons had been the indirect catalyst that had brought forth the Lich King and led to the creation of the vile scourge, which now had entrapped Toravaax within its rotting grasp. Demons were the reason Toravaax and his people had crashed on Azeroth in the first place, having been driven out of their new home in Draenor. Demons were the reason Toravaax was cursed with undeath for as long as a shred of his soul still existed, doomed to live with little of his former self still remained for an infinite amount of time.

In the frozen wastes of Northrend, at the roof of the world, Toravaax had ample time to fetter his hatred for the Burning Legion. He spent countless building refining strategies, fostering an army, expanding his domain. While the rest of Azeroth was off dealing with catastrophic events and villainous characters brimming with ire, Toravaax whittled away the years biding his time and playing the long con, pushing the very definition of the phrase.

The draenei death knight toyed with raising the dead from any kind of creature he could get his hands on, from fishy murlocs to ferocious yeti to hulking magnataur to even the dissipated husks of elemental spirits. All of them fell under Toravaax's will, rising up from beyond the grave and being commanded to their master's every whim. All of them becoming rotting, undead slaves. All of them mindless drones, subconscious empty and ready to be imprinted with commands. All of them not enough for Toravaax to enact his revenge.

Toravaax holed himself up in the shadow of Icecrown Citadel, building an empire on the remains of the Lich King's defunct fortress and the bones of nerubian ruins that still lay underneath the earth's crust. The death knight began hording cultists and necromancers alike by the masses, promising them fulfillment, enlightenment -- greatness. They began working tirelessly under their leader's vision, concocting pestilent diseases and keeping swathes of dead minions in line.

But what was Toravaax's vision?

In the now empty halls of Icecrown Citadel, Toravaax worked his necromantic magic in his personal reanimation chamber, toiling away day after day to achieve the perfect creation to would make his army the most feared in all the known universe. The rotting corpses of every animal and creature native to Northrend, all with skins and bones and pelts and furs and hides, stashed away for the draenei's own purposes. The violet-shaded man stood hunched over in the vacuous, barren chamber,

A loud tapping noise echoed throughout the massive hallways of the citadel. Someone, or perhaps something, was approaching.

Splinters of bones and scraps of hair encircled Toravaax's cerulean fingers, his hand glowering with a sickly green light. "Still fiddling with your playthings, I see." A low voice rumbled slowly. It was the Underking Iahm'Ra, Toravaax's personal advisor. The crypt lord's talon-like claws scraped against the floor of the hallways he roamed.

Toravaax smirked to himself, standing up straight and turning to face the towering crypt lord. "These playthings will help me conquer my greatest foe, Iahm'Ra," Toravaax responded. "We will crush them in way they would never see coming in a thousand-thousand years. Their greatness will be their biggest weakness in turn, and they will be too ignorant to see their downfall approaching."

"You truly believe this little hobby of yours will lead us to victory against the most immeasurable army in the known universe? This is how we plan to snuff out the fire in the stars?" Iahm'Ra questioned with a grumble. Toravaax knelt down and extended his hand, willing a creature to life from the viscera surrounding him; the creature hopped around excitedly before disintegrating into cleanly into many different pieces. "You are quite the odd commander, my liege."

With a chuckle Toravaax rose to his feet. "And yet you still follow me, do you not, my friend?"

Iahm'Ra clacked his mandibles together in laughter, the nerubian's way of returning the gesture.