#galorlon

Galorlon is a wealthy noble from Lordaeron. A talented and cunning fighter who relies on stealth over brute force, Galorlon made a name for himself after Lordaeron fell by hunting and killing rogue wizards and warlocks. Known well for his dalliances with both men and women as well as his other vices, Galorlon is still well respected for his charitable nature.

Family

Galorlon is the fourth child and third son of the Cerunnin family line. His parents were both from wealthy families, his father, the firstborn son of Reglan Cerunnin, helped forge his father’s merchant business into a far reaching network, with caravans reaching from Lordaeron to Stormwind. For many ages the Cerunnin line was known for their prowess as hunters. Though they had moved over the centuries to a focus on business, they remained hunters at heart, keeping the white stag on a green field as their emblem.

His mother, Carissa Lensworth, was the daughter of a smaller noble family. The pair met during a fall tournament. While many women longed for Reglan’s love, it was Carissa who won it when she challenged the young lord to a hunting contest. The two trekked through the woods and hunted late into the evening. Carissa emerged the victor, and the pair were betrothed shortly after.

History

Galorlon was born just shortly after the start of the First War. A healthy and strong young boy, he was raised like his older brothers in all the arts of being a noble lord. As a child, Galorlon saw little chance of ever being the head of the Cerunnin house and instead would often neglect his lessons in favor of exploring the forest around his family’s estate. This caused great trouble and stress on his tutors who feared for the boy’s safety.

From a young age Galorlon admired his older brother, Herad. Herad was a powerful young man when Galorlon was born, being trained in the art of war. Galrolon admired his older brother’s skill and dedication. When he wasn’t going on adventures through the woods, he would often sneak out to watch his brother train with a sword in the courtyard.

Galorlon’s adventures were ended, temporarily at least, on one fateful day at the age of ten. While exploring the deeper parts of the forest, Galorlon came upon a massive white stag, a larger beast than any the young lord had seen before with an impressive crown of horns. The stag was in rut, and the young lord arriving in its clearing enraged the beast. It charged Galorlon and wounded the boy before the child was able to flee.

While Galorlon was able to escape without a mortal wound, he was maimed by the encounter. His right eye was ruined beyond the skills of the healers in his father’s employ to repair. The injury drew mockery from his siblings, the twins Pavis and Anabeth calling him “Staglord”. His younger brother, Nielan called him “Cyclops Buck”. To Galorlon’s dismay, even Herad joined the torment, using both the names given to him by his siblings.

Galorlon withdrew after the injury and became a more brooding child. He no longer saw Herad in such a heroic light, and stopped slipping away from his lessons to watch him train.

Two years after being wounded, Galorlon was taken with his father on a hunting trip. Rumors were still whispered about the great white stag that had injured the word. Some said it was a bad omen. Others told tales of still seeing the buck with the remains of the destroyed eye on it’s antler. Reglan had decided to put an end to the tales. He took Galorlon with him to track the beast down. The two found the stag finally, and Galorlon slew the beast.

Reglan had a cloak made for Galorlon from the stag’s skin and had the antler’s replaced with wooden replicas so that a sword and dagger could be made, using the bases of the beast’s horns as hilts. After that, the names and mockery stopped, though he retained the title “Staglord” as a symbol of pride. That night there was a great feast. The head of the stag was mounted above the main hall of the estate, and Galorlon was given the seat at the head of the table.

Galorlon’s mood changed after that, and he became prouder and braver again. He made more journey’s into the forest, and went on more adventures, now confident in being a master over the woods.

Meanwhile, his brothers were going on their own journeys. Herad had joined the newly formed Silver Hand. Pavis was training to be a mage at Dalaran and Anabeth had joined the Lordaeron military. At home, Galorlon was the eldest child, a fact he used to his advantage with his younger siblings, often commanding them to obey his lie for him about his whereabouts or even join him on adventures.

At the age of 16, Galorlon would once again gain fame for himself. While riding through the forest, the young lord encountered a stray troll that had wandered down from the north. He had not been seen, and so the young lord took it upon himself to slay the vile monster. Slipping through the shadows, Galorlon crept toward the troll, which was hunched over a boar, feasting. Before he could get close enough to slay the beast, however, he stepped on a dry branch, announcing his presence.

After a short chase, Galorlon finally gained advantage by climbing a tree to hide and drop down on his opponent. He sunk his sword deep into the troll’s body through the shoulder. Knowing trolls were dangerously resilient, Galorlon hacked the monster’s head from it’s shoulders and dragged the corpse back to the estate to be burned. He was hailed as a hero when news spread of his victory. A great festival was held in his honor, and there were many who came to honor the young lord’s feat.

Galorlon’s happy life was soon changed forever, though, when the Plague came.

Though the Cerunnin household was largely unaffected by the disease, it struck the family at the heart when it claimed Carissa Cerunnin. Stricken with grief, Reglan locked her away in the cellar of the estate, keeping her chained to the wall and hidden from all. Herad fell in battle, slain by the revolting orcs. Then the Scourge came to Lordaeron in true force. Reglan took his remaining family and fled south with their household guard. Along the way Reglan was slain in battle with the Scourge, leaving the task of guiding his younger siblings to safety in the hands of Galorlon.

Though they reached safety without further losses, Galorlon was traumatized by the events of the escape. Having been trapped for a night in a small closet at an inn while the undead hordes tried to reach him, and seeing his father slain and raised as a ghoul had wounded the young man deeper than any physical injury. He tried to move past it, taking up residence at his father’s Stormwind estate, giving work to refugees fleeing the destruction of Lordaeron, but it still haunted him.

He turned to drink and opiates to try and slay the inner demons, escaping in a haze of physical pleasure from drugs and flesh. Pavis, who had survived the destruction of Dalaran, tried to give his brother purpose, putting him in command of their father’s business. The responsibility gave him some small amount of escape from his anguish that vices didn’t bring, and kept him sober partially, though he still spent many nights in a drunken haze.

His state was worsened when word of Anabeth’s death reached him The young woman had joined the Scarlet Crusade after the fall of Lordaeron, but had been slain by the Forsaken some time after. Galorlon was furious at the loss, and dealt with it the only way he knew, more drinking.

Eventually he found other work that would sate his anger, putting his skills at killing to use as an assassin for hire, killing rogue sorcerers and wizards near Stormwind. But it wasn’t truly fulfilling for the lord. He wanted more. Seeing his brother more focused on his work as an archmage angered the boy, who wanted to see the family estate restored to power and felt that such a powerful wizard could achieve a task easily. Accusing his brother of neglecting his duty as heir to the Cerunnin line, he began to demand being given the title of lord of the house. Pavis refused.

“You think I was only after trinkets?” Galorlon barked out a mirthless laugh. “If all I wanted were a few mementos of home, I would have taken them years ago. You know fully well why I want our father’s home back.”

The archmage sighed and shook his head. He set his drink down on the small table between them, fixing his gaze on his standing brother. “I do. And you are an idiot. The land is far removed from Alliance support. You’d be living right between the undead and elves. And even if you could secure the land, I have seen the house. It is a ruin. It would take many men months to repair it. Better to tear the place down and start again.” The mage went to retrieve his drink, but Galorlon angrily swept the glass from the table, sending the crystalline wine cup sailing to shatter against the far wall.

“Temper temper, brother.” The mage smirked and gestured, conjuring a new glass of wine from thin air. There was a heavy silence between the two for several minutes. Galorlon returned to his chair, glaring at his smug brother.

“How long have you known?”

“Pardon?”

“How long have you known, you Lightdamned bastard?”

“Brother I can assure you I am no bastard. You should know, having such an intimate knowledge on the subject.” The mage held up his hands in a placating gesture when he saw his brother gripping the armrests of his chair, ready to leap across the table separating the two. “Just a joke. I’ve kept an eye on those women who have born fruit of your seed. You should take better care of the whores you bed.”

“They aren’t whores. I don’t pay. They come willingly to my bed.”

“I am sure.” The mage smiled in a manner that suggested he still didn’t believe Galorlon’s oft repeated protest. “Regardless, that is not the subject we were discussing, is it? I’ve known for some time the sad state of our father’s home. I’m sure you have two. I’ve had more than one report of you scouting out the area, but it seems you never went close enough to explore the ruin. I do wonder why.”

“Get to the point.” The younger Cerunnin gritted his teeth.

“So impatient. Very well. Brother, I do know your plan. You think to steal away my inheritance. It’s been your plan for some time. You want everything. Father’s death was so convenient for it, and I am now all that stands between you and the riches of our name. I won’t let you have it, though.”

Galorlon stood, sending his chair clattering to the floor. Flashes of images were rushing through his mind. An inn. Blood. Screams as people were torn apart by the undead. He balled his fists and pointed an angry finger at his brother. “You accuse me of killing our father now? You go too far, Pavis. I will not have this in my home!”

“I saw the body, I saw your swords laying by father’s body. Of course, given the state of the body and the time, it is hard to say if he was turned or not, but I am sure somewhere, deep inside you, you know the truth, dear brother.” The mage stood, smirking confidently at his brother.

Galorlon hit him.

Pavis fell, toppling the table and spraying red wine over the white cloak, staining it. He stared up at Galorlon in shock, holding his jaw where the younger brother had struck him.

“Get. Out.”

The archmage scrambled to his feet and stumbled away from Galorlon. “I knew it. There’s a monster in you, Stag Lord.” The old title, once an insult by the boys older brothers hit Galorlon like a slap. “You want to take that little sword of yours, run me through? Try it. I’m not an archmage because I shuffle papers.”

Galorlon wasn’t listening. He grabbed his brother by the front of his robes and started to drag him to the door. Pavis continued his rant as they reached the entrance to the estate.

“You will never be lord of the estate. I’ll have an heir, a true heir, and all you will ever have are bastards. The land is mine, and I will leave it where it is, brother. Do you hear me? That land will rot. It will belong to the forsaken before I ever let you touch it!”

SAIGIO

Saigio slept fitfully. The paladin had never really been used to sea travel, preferring to use portals for all long distance transportation. Portals were quick and convenient and not prone to sinking. But it was not the shop of the waves or the creaking of the vessel that kept Saigio from resting peacefully.

Old terrors, shadows the paladin had thought himself rid of years ago, danced in his mind. And a laughter that echoed deep, bouncing off his skull. Those two eredar. But not just their laugh. Another melded with theirs. Older and more insidious to Saigio.

He was back in the Forest again, on the ancient worn stone path. But this time the Forest was different. More twisted. The trees more menacing. Gleaming red eyes peered from the shadows.

Saigio felt small and alone. He was naked and unarmed in the Forest. It was cold and he heard howls in the distance. Primal fear bubbled up from deep within. He tried to be brave. 

It almost worked. 

He started walking down the path, not wanting to stay in one place with whatever may be out there hunting. His eyes darted about, watching the bushes and trees for stalking beasts. His heart was hammering in his chest like a drum.

Badoom badoom

“Child, why do you run?” The voice was cold. No emotion. No hate or anger or compassion or kindness. The sound echoed through the forest until it seemed to be coming from every direction at once.

“Stop running.”

Saigio kept running.

“I said stop.” The command boomed like thunder, and Saigio found himself frozen. “This is a dream.” Saigio reminded himself. “Just a dream. Dreams have no power.” The voice laughed. Shadows began to twist about on the path ahead of the paladin. The shape of a man forms, pinpoints of green fire for eyes.In the blink of an eye it was inches from Saigio’s face. The only visible feature other than the eyes was a thin, wide mouth that split open to reveal jagged yellow teeth. Saigio flinched back.

“No.” He felt his heart beating even faster. “No, I banished you. You are not a part of me.”

“Ah yes, you climbed a mountain and drank some water and that was supposed to destroy me.” The shadow laughed and waved a hand. The forest surrounding the two dissolved into void. “A fair effort, to be truthful. You did weaken me, and you did purge yourself of what improvements I had done. But truly did you think you could stand in light and not cast a shadow?”

Saigio narrowed his eyes. “That sounds incredibly cliche.” The witty banter made him feel better, like had some control over the dream. The feeling lasted until the shadow laughed.

“Perhaps it is, but it is also true. It has been hard, but I have had time to grow in your heart. Your hate gave me space to exert my will.” The void was replaced by a scene the paladin had seen in his dreams once before.

It was a cold crypt of old stone. Green flames circled a large altar. But this time it was different. Before the nightmare had the paladin possessed by evil forces, sacrificing his wife to demonic forces. 

In this dream it was his wife standing over the altar with a knife in hand. Saigio stood beside her, and both were dressed in dark ritual robes. He couldn’t see the figure on the table, but it was a young child for sure. The knife in her hand flashed and the image melted.

“No, this will not be.” Saigio roared in defiance.

“You cannot stop it.” The Shadow replied calmly.

“I shall!”

“You will never succeed. You and your allies will die before you reach the Sisters.”

“I shall slay the demons and then I shall rip out your vile corruption for good!” The shadow laughed. It laughed and laughed, the horrible sound bombarding Saigio until the paladin bolted awake.

His breathing was heavy. He rubbed a hand over his face. The green skin a reminder of the advancing curse placed on him. He sat in his bed in the dark for several hours before lighting a candle. He could not sleep again, couldn’t face that shadow thing again. He picked up his locket and stared at the faces inside. His family, wife and children were on one side. On the other was a painting of his parents.

“Light give me strength.” Saigio clutched the pendent to his heart. “I must not fail them.”

GALORLON

Galorlon was dreaming. It was a nightmare that had haunted his sleep for many years, ever since Lordaeron fell. The dream was the same every time, a memory burned into his mind that no amount of drink or pleasurable company would ever fully erase.

The nightmare started the same as always. Fear, a crowd of panicked refugees running down a road through the forest, monsters snapping at their heels. Undead, twisted abominations that wore the faces of loved ones killed by plague chased the survivors with a hunger for flesh. The beasts were untiring, unlike their prey, and they seemed to know it, a dark, hungry glimmer in the eyes that watched from the shadows of the forest.

The faces around Galor were all those that had fallen during the escape. He knew that in the back of his mind as he saw the scene playing out again, but there was that small doubt, the whisper that maybe this time will be different. An insidious hope that tormented the nobleman every night that the dream came to him.

As he tossed and turned in his bed, in his mind he was running toward an empty tavern, abandoned after the orcs began their revolt at the prison camps. The young man and the other survivors had hoped to take shelter there, to maybe even fight the undead horde chasing them. The household guards that served the Cerunnin estate were well trained and armed with the best equipment Galorlon’s father could afford. If anyone could defeat the hellish army of scourge they could. Galorlon knew this.

But he also knew they were doomed. 

They hid in the tavern, and for a few hours it seemed as if the undead were leaving them for easier prey. Deep into the night there wasn’t a sound from the trees around them. Galorlon, against even his own better judgment, began to relax. After finding a bed that was more intact than the others to res on, he lay down. In reality it had been almost another hour after he had laid his head on the mattress before the undead struck, but in his dream sitting on the bed conjured the undead to the shelter almost as if the young man had summoned them himself. 

The gurgling screams of the sentries was the only warning the refugees received. Undead swarmed over the building, massive and terrible, painted with blood and clothed in organs and skin not their own. The smell overwhelmed Galorlon, he wanted to puke, to run, to shit himself. The sleeping man urged his dreamself to stand, to fight, to beat back the undead. The grown man could fight them. The man could stand against the monsters, slay them, save what family had fled the estate.

But in his dream he was no man. Just a boy. His father may have called him a man for the slain troll, called him a man for the stag he brought down. His father may have given him fine weapons with hilts carved from the antlers of that great white stag he had killed in the forest, the same beast that had taken his eye. He may have been called a man. He may have been a man sleeping. But in the dream he was a boy, scared and alone and surrounded by the living dead. He fled, but there was no where to run to. Only places to hide and pray that he wouldn’t be found.

A closet would serve as either his salvation or his tomb. The man knew the truth, but the boy didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. He hid, clutching those weapons, symbols of his supposed manhood and waited. Outside he could hear the terrible slaughter. It was louder in the dream, and he heard more. Ripping flesh as if the ghouls were eating corpses right beside him, in the cramped closet. Screams of the wounded not yet dead as the monsters tore their bodies open. Steel clanging and then wood ripping. Shouts of guards protecting his father as they valiantly protected their lord. They fell one by one, each shrieking in horror as the horde overcame them until finally his father’s shout rang out, the proud family words of his family.

“WE ARE THE HUNTERS! OUR BOWS AND BLADES ARE TRUE!”

A breath later his brave shout turned to a horrified scream.

Finally, Galorlon’s terror broke and anger took hold of the boy. Screaming, he rushed through the door, swinging his weapons.

Galorlon woke up with a shout. He was soaked with sweat and trembling. He wiped a hand over his face and stumbled out from under the silk sheets of his soft feather bed. There was a stirring in the sheets and a sound, a soft voice. Galorlon spun around, snatching a small knife from his bed stand. The man relaxed when he saw it wasn’t some remnant of his dreams but the young barmaid he had brought back to his home. She hadn’t been woken, luckily, and Galorlon meant to keep it that way. He returned the knife to its resting place and stumbled to his wash basin.

Trembling hands splashed water onto his face, trying to chase away the last fragments of the nightmare, still clinging to the edges of his mind. He looked to the mirror. His face was pale and drawn, and the dim light of morning that peeked through his heavy curtains cast eerie shadows that made him look more like one of the horrors from his dream than a man.

Memories returned to the man and he clutched the edges of his wash basin until his knuckles went white. Thoughts of what he had seen when he left that closet. What he had done. What he had had no choice but to do. The memories were only fragments, but even those broken images were enough to haunt the man. He made a vow to himself, the same he had made every morning after he had the nightmare.

He would return to that inn one day.

He would retrieve his sword and dagger from that room.