Party

Being an uruk is a bit of a mixed bag, but for me it was fucking dope. Morgoth created the first orcs by corrupting and twisting elves, but did so with the other races as well from men all the way to Maia. Traits from these various species can crop up from time to time seemingly at random as unfortunately I exist in a breeding pit version of the verse and not one Tolkien described in his fan mail as obviously having orc women.

Some orcs and especially uruks win the genetic lottery being long lived and freakishly powerful and hard to kill, and others are sickly, small, and sniveling pathetic. I inhabited one of the former, obviously. And Talion seemed damn set on pushing me to my limits quickly as the man thought it wise to send a death threat to me.

Why the man would take an action that immediately empowered me further and drew in more uruks for my growing warband, I cannot imagine. Unless he is secretly a krogan and is overjoyed to have found a worthy foe in me.

I knew the guy was around, doing his research, preparing. And I hope he was fucking confused as hell. Was I a Tracker? A Slayer? A Commander? A Tank? The poor sod was finding out that I was far less limited in capacity than his typical prey.

My star was rising rapidly among the uruks of Nurn, and that little shit Ratbag had reacted predictably by trying to make me disappear in the ultra competitive lower rungs of the hierarchy. I'd ended no less than five uruk captains claiming to have come to collect the bounty on my head, but at least they had all been kind enough to leave their equipment in the pools of blood I drowned them in.

Metal turned out to be my biggest limiting factor. I had wood, hides, bone, and sinew aplenty but metal all came from the scavenged gear of the fools who came against me. So I'd done the smart thing and recycled all the looted gear and used it to make helmets, spearheads, axe heads, and knives.

Outfitting my boys in leather armor was the obvious go. It isn't some light weight system used by fantasy rogues, but thick hides, properly treated, boiled, molded, and glued together to form thick layered protection that is genuine hell to get through without a fantasy level edge sharpness that orcs just can't seem to produce.

I'd have to get some samples of elf and dwarf weaponry to test soon.

Anyway, between the armor and the shields that I also layered boiled leather onto, my boys were rapidly becoming the hardest to kill SOB's in Mordor, making the Elite Gang trait a joke.

It was a slow roll out starting with myself and then moving to the minions with potential. Between the ghouls, graugs, wargs, caragors, and trolls infesting the area we'd never find ourselves lacking material, and I found myself quite liking my full plate troll leather armor covered in bones.

I always felt like what Ratbag lacked in courage, strength, and skill he made up for in swag. Plus I love me some rams skulls on my helmets. Utterly impractical. A tactical liability. Swag Hundi.

Talion made his play during one of my regulars feasts, an event I held often because when you are a guy living with his homies in the woods there ain't much to do except eat and drink when the work for the day is all done.

The constant vigilance culture meant that we were in full armor with weapons at hand when a pair of captains came up to the encampment with their crews and I could see a faint blue light in their eyes. These uruks were Talion's boys, and the first one shouting about the Bright Lord would have given that away even without my vision being sharp enough to see the magical influence holding them.

"Your master has betrayed you fools!" I shouted and picked up my newly forged and lethally sharp axes, "Neither of you will see the next sunrise."

I set about quickly dealing with the Defender type captains, knowing full well that they were only there as distractions for Talion and the pair of assassins he'd brought with him, silently making their way towards me.

They struck when I buried my axe into the head of the first captain, Talion launching a shadow strike on me while his pair of Dark Tribe assassins came at me with their wickedly sharp daggers. The ranger's attack didn't hit hard enough to matter and I warded off the first Assassin with cursed black energy radiating off his blades, but the second used the opening created by the pair of them to ram his poison dripping dagger into my lightly protected armpit.

I kicked him away before he could really get the dagger in deep enough to mortally wound me, but the poison coming in so close to my heart had my head reeling, my stomach churning and my skin covered in sweat in precious few moments.

"Fuck!" I snarled and took an unsteady swing to back the trio up as they circled giving me a opening to launch a kick that sent the last Defender captain headfirst into a cooking fire, knocking the greasy pig into the fire with him for extra damage.

His screams made me chuckle as Talion grimaced. One of the only facial expressions he is capable of.

"Big boy still got it." One of the hooded Dark Tribe Assassins laughed, "Pour Pushkrimp ain't going to be very pretty after that."

"If he makes it." smiled the other as he watched the uruk rolling on the ground trying to extinguish the fire that clung to his greasy unwashed body.

Note to self.

Bathe.

Talion and the pair had to deflect a series of incoming spear thrusts as my boys had mostly finished with the crews that came with them for this, leaving them simmering in hot water as my body quickly regenerated and purged the poison.

Seeing the battle swiftly shifting as my minions poked a few holes in him, Talion leapt back and shot a trio of arrows with incredible quickness at our campfires and the whole place erupted into a firefly conflagration spawned by his elvish magic.

Only one of the assassin's came out of that explosion unscathed, the one who shanked me caught fire in the same blast that knocked me on my ass. Leather doesn't burn easily, so for the most part the gang was unscathed, just stunned, myself included. Knocked on my ass, ears ringing, sweating out some nasty orc poison meant the last Assassin had me dead to rights.

Instead he sprinted over and stomped the other Assassin out and hefted him over his shoulders before hoofing it out of there just like Talion had.

"Who's still alive?" I shouted after my ears stopped ringing.

"~Memememeeee!~" sang a lone uruk who I was sure was destined to become The Singer.

"I think everyone that matters!" shouted another, less self centered uruk.

"Is the grog safe?" I demanded.

"It's here!" a happy uruk yelled.

"Then let's get back to the party!" I roared, once more right as rain thanks to uruk healing factor.