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Lurg awoke with a sudden jerk, having once again had the nightmare that had come every night since he and his company of orcs had made their camp near the Slave River just one day’s march from Aizen Khrahl.
Lurg was not normally one to be afraid of phantom dreams. In fact, Lurg, like most orcs, claimed not to be afraid of anything. Why should he be made to worry about a bane that has no name that he cannot slay and that cannot slay him.
Three nights with little or no sleep is hard, even for an orc. The setting of the sun and the lengthening shadows of the Ash Mountains had begun to bring a sense of foreboding. To the west was Aizen Khrahl, and desertion was not an option.
The dreams always began the same. The raiding company would encounter a patrol of dwarves as usual, and as usual the orcs would have the upper-hand in battle... until the Seven arrived.
These were no ordinary dwarves. They brought with them battle-magic like none Lurg had ever heard of. Three were great holy-men that brought with them curses. One curse made the orc captains and sergeants fall mute and not be able to give commands, nor could the shaman cast spells. Another curse lulled the orcs into a false sense of security all the while they were under attack. The third curse actually caused the orcs to turn their wrath upon one-another.
Though the orcs would try to fight back, their blades, axes and arrows cutting down dwarf after dwarf, the Seven had amoung them a great healer who could heal all their wounds no matter how grievous.
In Lurg’s nightmare, he would always try to run from the carnage, but then one of the Seven's two most powerful sorcerers would invoke a spell that would bring a great fatigue upon those not already stricken down. Lurg’s legs would turn to lead and he would find himself surrounded by his nightmare-tormentors. Meanwhile, the other sorcerer would cast a plague of sickness upon all of Hordeland; a harmless little sneezing malady that would inevitably wipe out every orc, goblin, ogre, troll and bugbear in Adon.
On this night, however, Lurg finally faced the leader of the Seven, a beardless and stoic dwarf of nightmare proportion. Lurg swung, but it passed right through the apparition. The menacingly tall dwarf then bellowed a sinister laugh and with surprising strength and agility, pushed Lurg over the precipice of the mountainside into a spiraling freefall that landed him in his old familiar bivouac by the Slave River.
Lurg awoke with a sudden jerk.
This time he had learned one thing about his enemy. Now his bane had a name.
It was...
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... Dopey?
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