#grawl

The asura were just as displaced by Primordus as the norn were by Jormag, forced from their underground homes where the entire race used to live subterraneously. Imagine the terror of the only home you'd ever known collapsing in on you as fiery creatures emerged from the walls and floors around you, stepping into the blinding sun for the first time as you wondered how you'd ever rebuild. The failed expeditions to retrieve the dead of valued heirlooms.

Now imagine the new expeditions, sent out with confidence at last that Primordus would no longer pose a threat, that once destroyers were killed they wouldn't be followed up by a dozen newly made minions in their place. They can unbury generations of history and knowledge lost to them in turn, old projects left to crumble and a language they'd forsaken instead to learn new krytan, the more universal language of where they'd burst through the ground into. Family lines finding old souvenirs their grandparents had told them about and seeing the ways they used to live. They've changed so much, their lives no longer are limited to below the ground, but it is an option again. And they can finally rebuild their past.

The Kodan have had the ships they'd always lived on, sure, but a ship isn't a well protected fortress when it's forcefully beached by layers of ice. It's not a well supplied warm home for a once nomadic race when you're constantly fighting enemies that can walk right across the water to you and hoping that your ship's voice will not be the next that Jormag turns their whispers to. It's a fragile life to live when your way of living depends on balance and calm, instead of all this new uncertainty and frailty.

Now picture the thaw that finally comes to the northern shiverpeaks. The snow stays, sure, but it recedes. The ice thins and melts completely in some regions. And with some steady, loud cracks...the ships right themselves in the water. Kodan sway momentarily from being on a ship moving with the waves for the first time in countless ages. But they all right themselves, of course they do. The ocean waters run in their blood and the waves hold a rhythm they remember and longed for. Kodan ships finally finish repairs left in the frostbitten planks trapped by the ice, and they sail once again. Grand ships the likes of which would make a corsair think twice about attacking, kodan on land trailing along to board their old homes as they pass by shorelines before the ships and full crews finally head out to deeper waters once more.

The grawl were hit hard, likely targeted by the whispers often to keep them in a state of chaos and at war with the norn rather than finding a steady alliance. Jormag had done the same to the Jotun once, and they had never truly recovered. The grawl were a similar target, intended to tear them down and divide potential allegiances and it worked so well, the norn thinking the grawl below them just as they seem to with the jotun so often now.

But they're free, the whispers are gone, proper totems and statues can be erected once more with clear minds. Supplies can be replenished and they can travel once more around the lands without fear. There's still animosity sure, towards the races who did not help them in turn and only sowed hatred and belittlement, but time and long meetings can smooth over the worst of things when both races are so tired they simply want their lives back. The grawl may flourish the way they're capable of, though they long had more than people gave them credit for.

The newly affected races were not prepared for the freeze, the voices and death that swarmed their land from the cold outside and the unwitting victims within who stepped into it "willingly" with calm smiles on their faces. It was a devastating blow, but one that could be rebuilt.