"I've had to work around those svelk for a while now. If they're going to help us attack the elves, it might be a good idea for me to go on that one so I can keep an eye on them, captain." You say.
"Yes, you do have a reputation even among those shifty bastards, though they'd never admit it. Okay, sounds good. I shall send another officer to lead the mission against the Wendigo tribe. I may even just go along on that mission." Captain Krozer replies.
"You are captain?"
"Yes, I find that I've been getting stuck behind the desk too much lately. It'll be good to be back out in the field. Don't want to become like one of those fat self-important generals that do nothing except point to maps and make equally fat musings on tactics. A true leader should lead from the front, I'm sure you agree."
"It is preferable yes…but I do understand the need to keep those with keen military minds safe from major war zones. Such people have their place as all do in their service of the Emperor."
"Why lieutenant, are you complimenting me on my intelligence? It's not like you to flirt." Captain Krozer asks in a tone slightly friendlier than usual, it catches you a little off guard.
"I…no! I mean yes, you are very intelligent, but…"
"Relax lieutenant, just having a little fun, didn't mean to put you on the spot. Anyway, we'll pick this up later, you better get prepared for your mission, and good luck."

You do exactly that. You know that this is going to be a tedious mission. The elves rarely ever fight in straight up combat. It's typically a series of ambushes and hit and run tactics with some traps thrown in for good measure. Attempting to locate their hideout is going to be equally as tedious. While the dark elves will certainly be helpful, you wish you had a few battle wizards, but most of those have been assigned either at Fort Defiance or on the frontlines of the Felkan War.

The first thing you do is talk with the leader of the dark elven mercenaries about how would be the best way to track down the elves. Eldolith normally is outwardly disdainful of humans, but she manages to just barely contain that distain in your case. She's typical of her kind, arrogant and acts like she's doing you a favor just by being in your presence. Reminds you of the days when Mistress trained you.

"Ah the Bane of Rask, if it isn't my favorite mon…human. What do I owe this dubious pleasure?" she asks while polishing one of her leather boots.
"We want to find the elven home and destroy them for good."
"Finally ready to destroy those sveld eh? About fucking time. The whole time we've been playing around with your semi-evolved barbaric kin, I've had a few of my men out scouting this entire forsaken frontier. We got a lead a few months ago and we're pretty sure it's good."
"Wait. Hold on. You've known where they've been hiding and you didn't report it to us?"
"As I recall your superior isn't paying us for reconnaissance. We're just here to fight. Besides, it's still not necessarily a one hundred percent sure thing."
"If you're so opposed to doing jobs that you aren't being paid for, why'd you do this secret scouting mission anyway?"
"We're also not just here for YOU, human. We have our own agenda. The only reason why we have not followed up on this lead, is because we've been busy helping you monkeys, not to mention we all felt it would also be best if we had more warm bodies to distract our hated kind with. Congratulations." Eldolith sneers.

In typical dark elf fashion she's attempting to provoke you to get angry for her amusement and to put on a show for her men. Won't work though.

"Wise decision Eldolith. No way you could've handled them yourselves."
"We could have, but as I stated we were busy helping YOU."
"If you say so. Anyway I'll expect to your group to be ready in a couple hours." You say and leave, but your own dismissive behavior annoys Eldolith so much that she boldly grabs your arm. This is all the excuse you needed.

"Don't you turn your back on…ack!" Eldolith is interrupted when you quickly turn around grab her arm, spin her around and twist it behind her back. You other arm is wrapped tightly around her neck.

Her men grab their crossbows and point them at you, but it's a futile gesture, she's in front of you, they'd be more likely to hit her than you.

"Put your bows down you fools!" she struggles to yell.
"I advise you all to heed your leader's orders. Even if you did manage to kill me, not one of you would make it out of this fort alive. I might remind you that you initiated this by putting your hands on me in the first place, surely I had the right to defend myself correct?"
"(Sigh) Yes, it would've been foolish to react in any other way I suppose. The mistake was mine. Ugh, I'm going to have the stench of human on me for days. Release me!"

No please or begging of course, just more orders. Still, you've made your point. You let her go by shoving her down on the floor. As you leave you can hear her verbally abusing her own men. She's going to have problems maintaining her leadership position now after looking so weak. You're going to have to be careful as well, lest you "accidentally" get a bolt in the back during the heat of battle, but then again you're always alert while dark elves are around.

Eventually you set off on your mission. For a while it's a simple uneventful march through ice and snow. Eldolith mentions that the Alabaster Pines are where they think the elves are making their home, but not in the traditional sense. There is evidence that they are actually making their home underground.

"Can you believe it? Members of our kind actually living like those disgusting rock eaters? It shames me to even think that these sveld were actually even related to us at one time." Edolith says.

When you reach the Alabaster Pines, you remind your company to keep alert for traps and potential ambushes. You also tell them to keep alert of your so called "allies" as well.

It doesn't take long before you're attacked. The elves predictably engage in their guerilla tactics. These attacks might've taken a greater toll, but with the help of the dark elves, the long range attacks that they favor are less effective. The deeper you go into the forest, the more desperate the attacks become. They begin to attack you directly in hand to hand combat and to the death. They scream curses and obscenities in your language and their own calling you all murderers and evil.

The dark elves of course are enjoying all this. You and your company on the other hand aren't. Not due to any sort of sympathy they are the enemy after all, but this is just another mission to you. Funny that you should have a more "detached" attitude than the mercenaries themselves.

Soon you enter a part of the forest where the trees are so tall that they completely block out the sky. There isn't even that much snow ground. Almost a "warm" feeling encompasses the place.

"One of my scouts said they made it this far before and that's where he found evidence that these sveld had an entrance to an underground lair. Should be near an odd blue rock. Let's look around." Edolith says to you.
"Where's that scout of yours, shouldn't he be able to show us directly?" you ask.
"The useless bastard is lying dead with two sveld arrows in him a mile back. Now come on, we'll be able to find this place better if all us look."
"I'm not sure. Something about this seems too easy. Why don't you look, and we'll stay alert to make sure this isn't an ambush."
"If the sveld were going to ambush us, they would've done it by now or haven't you noticed how desperate their attacks have gotten? They probably already know we're coming and building up defenses as we speak. The longer we take, the tougher it's going to be to root them out."

You stay vigilant

This still feels off to you, no your company isn't going to scatter themselves looking for odd colored rocks, the dark elves first found this place they can do the leg work. Edolith of course is annoyed that you aren't going to help and for a moment she almost says if you're not going to participate in the search then they aren't either. However it's quite clear her desire to put more of her kin to the sword is a lot stronger than defying you, she throws up her hands, mumbles something about you being scared monkeys and orders all of her men to start searching the area. You tell your own men to set themselves up in a defensive perimeter, so just in case this is still an ambush, you're at least no going to get caught off guard and have a weak point open. About an hour passes and one of the dark elves finds the rock with a hidden door in the ground nearby.

"Well we found it, some of my more enthusiastic men have taken it upon themselves to head down there already. Just as well considering you monkeys can't see in the dark." Edolith says to you.

You have your own men light up torches and follow the dark elves down the ladder and into the darkness. As it turns out there wasn't anything to worry about. There was no trap waiting to pick anyone off the ladder, just like there wasn't any ambush.

When you finally get down into the elven hideout, many of the dark elves and some of your own men have already gone on ahead. Edolith has opted to stay near the back, closer to where you are. A few moment after traveling down the dark dirt corridor, you hear a bunch of yelling up front, followed by high pitched squeals further up ahead and then something spoke in the elven that sounds like a command. Then a bright light appears far in front of you.

"SHIELDS AND DUCK DOWN!" you yell, realizing this is a fireball. There's no place to run because you're stuck in the corridor, you duck down behind the large shields that the men in front have and hope for the best. You feel the heat of the flame that incinerates the unfortunate souls caught in front, and you're even burned a little, but you were lucky that the blast didn't extend too far back.

Having survived the blast, you and the survivors run over the burned bodies and out of the corridor into the large open dimly lit area beyond as soon as you can before another fireball comes at you. It is then you see an older elf mumbling something in his language. Obviously a wizard of some sort. The dark elves that survived are attempting to shoot bolts at him, but he has a magic shield up. He strikes a couple of them down with well placed lightning bolts.

"Don't just stand out in the open catching lightning bolts! Take cover and keep firing!" you hear Edolith shout.

You tell your own men to take cover as well. With all their metal armor they'd end up being mass fried by the lightning. As for you, you find cover behind a house structure where you hear whimpering inside.

You peer out from behind your cover and see your men pinned down behind cover, but safe. The dark elves can't break through his barrier, the only option will be to get in close enough to chop his head off or get him to drop his shield, but how to do that without getting fried is another matter.

Still hearing the whimpering from inside the house structure, you quickly run inside to investigate. Inside you see a female elf with a younger one cowering in the corner of their home. They say something in their language, which you can only guess is pleas for you not to kill them. You also see a crib with a baby in it and you quickly get a plan.

You grab the baby and push aside the mother's feeble attempts to stop you. Carrying the crying baby under your arm you run out of the house. You see the wizard still blasting bolts at the dark elves and you make a beeline towards him. He notices you and as he begins to cast his spell you throw the baby at him as hard as you can. The shock of having a baby thrown at him catches him severely off guard and he stops casting. He also drops his shield to catch the baby.

"FIRE!" you hear Eldolith shout and the dark elves comply.

Bolts sinks into the wizard's head dropping him.
Another bolt ceases the baby's cries.

"WATCH OUT CAPTAIN!" you hear one of your men shout and you instinctively attempt to get back into cover. Several bolts just miss you, but your still catch one to the leg before scrambling behind another rock.

The sounds of battle between your men and the dark elves fills your ears as you try to pull the bolt out. You just get the bolt out of your leg, when Edolith attempts to cleave your head in. You roll out of the way and pick up your sword, though you're having a little trouble standing.

"I have to admit, baby throwing was a tactic worthy of a svelk. Too bad I have to kill you, you were okay for a monkey. But I got a reputation to maintain among my men."
"So do I." you answer and clash weapons with Edolith.

She's quicker and lands a few good hits, but her mistake is getting in close enough for you to grab her long flowing hair. She attempts to pull free, but you yank hard and grab her wrist. You then break it causing her to drop her weapon. She holds back yelling out in pain and knees you as hard as she can in the groin and jamming her sharp fingernails straight into your eye.

This doesn't cause you to release your grip. With the pain slowly creeping up from your nuts and into your stomach and bloody ocular jelly leaking out your socket you take both of your arms and wrap them around Edolith's waist and squeeze tightly in an attempt to break her back. You then smash her in the face several times with your head, breaking her nose completely and even knocking out a few teeth. The pair of you crash to the ground and you finish her off by viciously biting out her throat. The copper taste of her blood fills the taste buds of your tongue and you spit a thick glob of it on her face as she gurgles and dies.

After it's all said and done, you stagger to your feet victorious over your opponent. One of your men comes up to you.

"Sir! Are you alright?"
"No. But I'll heal."
"Okay…well all the treacherous dark elves are dead and it looks like all the regular elves are too. There are only women and children left hiding in their homes and none of them are fighters."
"Are they still elves?" you ask.
"Well yes."
"Then kill 'em all. I'm sick of the whole fucking race at this point." You say and stagger off.

After the grim business of extermination the elves, you and the remainder of your company set off back to Fort Destiny. A day later when you finally arrive at the fort you notice it's a lot more empty from when you left it. In fact Captain Krozer isn't even here. Lieutenant Verant seems to be in charge though he's almost subservient when you address him.

"By the Emperor! Lieutenant I think you need to see a medic, you've got a limp, your skin is burned and cut up and your eye is missing!" he says when seeing your wounds.
"Where's Captain Krozer? I wish to report our total victory on the elves as well as the treachery of the dark ones that we'll no longer have to pay."
"Captain Krozer? She went with most of the men to do battle with the wendigo tribe. Their territory is quite a ways, but I imagine she'll be back soon. Congratulations on your victory, but go see the medic right away!"

You nod and allow yourself to finally relax at the medic's office. You've been running on adrenaline for quite some time and now that your safe, you at last feel like you can rest a little. Most of your wounds aren't particularly bad, except for the eye, which can't be repaired. The medic just does his best to remove the permanently damaged orb, clean the socket and give you a patch.

"You'll be able to fight good enough with one eye. You just have to move your head a lot more." He says.

You rest for a couple days, which are still pretty quiet around the fort. You and everyone else are expecting Captain Krozer to show up, but the worst is starting to creep into everyone's mind.

"We need to send a search team." You say.
"We can't afford to! Between the men you lost fighting the elves, and the entire missing company that Krozer lead, we need all of them here in the area!" Verant says.
"Oh come on Verant! We can't spare at least ten? I'll lead the search!"
"(Sigh) Look I didn't really want this responsibility. I figured she'd come back and I could go back to filing out reports!"
"Well if we don't find her or if she's dead, then you're going to be in this job a lot longer than you thought."
"I know…I know…hey why don't you take over?"
"What?"
"Sure! You're a leader of men and a big tough Eternal! You'd do a better job than me."
"Well of course I would, but doesn't this have to be official, like assigned from a higher commanding officer?"
"You said it yourself, Krozer may already be dead, if that's the case then who's really going to know? Besides I'm in charge I can hand over the reigns of power if I feel I am no longer fit to command."
"Okay, but what if she's not dead? When she comes walking in, she's going to wonder what the hell's going on, and both of us are going to get in trouble and I am not getting in trouble over nonsense."
"I shouldn't think we'd get in that much trouble. I mean you know Captain Krozer, she's fairly easy going as far as commanding officers go. She's probably yell at me more than anything, but not likely to put us on report or anything serious."

You take command

Verant is right about one thing, you'll probably get more accomplish if you're in charge. You agree and take command, of course your first order of business is to have Verant catch you up on what exactly has been going. He explains that in addition to Captain Krozer's disappearance, there have been a few patrols not reporting in either, when you ask what has he done about this, he says nothing, in fact that's why he didn't want to send you out for fear of losing you too.

"So your approach to everything has been to just adopt a siege mentality and not let any of the soldiers out while someone is obviously picking us off? By the Emperor I should have you killed right now for extreme incompetence, but quite frankly I'm going to need you for all the bureaucratic stuff that I'm not exactly familiar with."

You breathe deeply to contain some of the anger you're feeling with Verant's cowardice before continuing.

"Okay I want double men on all the patrols, I want them to question every townsperson within the area about what they might know. I also want you to send word to the generals back home about the situation, maybe we can get some reinforcements up here. In fact send a well armed group up to Fort Defiance too, maybe they can spare some help too."
"Very well sir, and Captain Krozer?" Verant asks.
"Well with this new information that you gave me with missing patrols, we probably should hold off on the search. If anything she's probably dead and the wendigos are most likely behind the missing patrols too. This seems a little sneaky for them though, who knows maybe we've got another threat that we don't know about."

Your first orders as head of Fort Destiny are carried out. It takes days of waiting, but eventually you get some results, though not all good.

Your patrols aren't attacked, but the townsfolk are very upset with how things have been going for them. They've been victims of kidnappings as well as the occasional outright murder. The main problem is nobody has been caught doing any of it. People are either just turning up missing, or pieces of their bodies are being found have eaten and mauled. Again, this part points to the wendigos, but this is still very odd behavior for them if it is them. They have never been known for their stealth tactics, and have always been the most outright brutal of all the barbarian tribes. You can only wonder if its due to them being the "last" major ones in the area that they've changed.

Regardless, you don't really have enough troops to go marching into wendigo territory now. Which bring you to your second problem.

Word from headquarter approves of you taking command and even officially promotes you to captain. Another letter from Mr. Mol even states that he's impressed with your progress and says you no longer need any sort of supervision. Unfortunately that's all the help you get. The top brass claims that they can't afford to send you anyone as most are needed on the Felkan border. As for the team you sent to Fort Defiance, it disappeared. You can only assume they were killed, this also makes you wonder if Fort Defiance is alright. You can't think of a time any communication has really gone on between the two forts since you've been here. In any event you've got your own concerns for now and you're going to have to figure out what to do with your limited resources…

Year 23

"Get the bastards on the north side! They're climbing up the fucking walls!" you shout.

Boiling oil is thrown over the side of the wall, scalding the wendigos as they fall to the ground several feet below. You look around and see a nearby soldier laughing uncontrollably.

"Its heh heh heh heh heh all so clear! We should stop fighting. We need to EMBRACE THE BEAST!" he snarls and runs at you. You decapitate him and throw his body over the battlements below.

"Why do you resist us Eternal? Your skills would be most welcome to our…"
"SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" you shout at the disembodied voice.

The years of battling the wendigos has all lead up to this. Surrounded by an army of them. You did your best to try to curb their growth, but ultimately they replenished their numbers with greater ease than you did. Even when you did manage to get reinforcements it still was never enough. The wendigos as you would come to learn aren't truly flesh and blood creatures. They are spirits that possess the minds of others. You demanded battle wizards, but none were sent. You demanded golems, but none were sent. You did get a company of orcs, but this was more of a detriment as their minds were even more susceptible to wendigo influence.

You chop off the hand of another wendigo that attempts to make it over the wall. You look around and see that they've already broken through the front door.

How the wendigos suddenly became so sneaky is still somewhat of a mystery and it hardly matters at this point, but if you had to guess; When captain Krozer attacked them all those years ago, they must've possessed her, learned from her and adapted her tactics. They realized that if they did not they would've been destroyed without any more hosts. So they watched, they waited; they picked off victims and possessed converts one by one. And even with you opposing them at every turn town after town fell. Those peasants that weren't killed or turned, fled to the southern parts of the Empire. Even some of your soldiers deserted.

The wendigos deprived themselves of food for far too long though and over the past few months it has finally unleashed itself into this orgy of violence. An all out attack on the fort, which really is the only bastion of civilization left in the Rask frontier.

You see what few men you have left get slaughtered below before struggling against two more wendigos of your own. You shove your sword through a wendigo's heart while trying to ignore the pain of it sinking its teeth into your flesh. Despite swiveling your head around as much as you can to see all your opponents, you feel a heavy blow to your back and claws ripping through your armor. You're then thrown from the walkway and to the ground.

You try to get back up as quick as you can and then foot to the face prevents you from doing so. Your weapon is ripped from your hand and another foot comes down on top of your head cracking your skull. The internal bleeding in your brain causes a delirious effect for one moment and then you pass out forever before the wendigos feat upon your body.