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Home. He stared as he approached the mountain fortress. It had been a few months since his awakening, and his memory of his time before had grown no better. Sure, the minor things had come back, of Garrosh and the Horde and Alliance. But the important things remained a mystery. The sense of abandonment and betrayal nagged at him... Not betrayal of himself, but of those he'd counted as friends. He hadn't found them, and so surely they were lost or dead, dying while he slept in the ice. This was all guesswork. In the end, he didn't know. He did know that the Horde had changed. During his time Thrall had been a peacemaker, but the clans had still known how to throw some punches under him. Then had come Garrosh, and war was even more acceptable. Now, with this... Troll... One had to be very careful making war as a member of the Horde. Skolgrim was far too hungry to be careful. Even after his massacre awakening in Northrend, and his bloody trail back to the shockingly decrepit Warsong Hold... he had DIED to establish that hold... the thirst for death and suffering was never far from the foreground of his sensations. So, as he felt certain he'd done before, he went around the law. He found the Blackrock Clan. Skolgrim wasn't sure why he'd put off moving in for so long. He knew many still worshiped demons. That might have disgusted him once, but he remembered he had drank the demon blood the first time around, and had since been tainted further by the ghastly entity Ner'zhul and the foolish Human had joined to create in the Lich King, so who was he to judge? Perhaps it was that he didn't really need a residence. As undead, he had very few needs. He did not hunger, he did not need sleep, and simple comforts were nothing to him. All he really wanted was to find his old friends again... Before he made the trip to die on this new Draenor. That was all he required. Except... Rushing water sang like the maiden's laughter in his ears. Skolgrim quickly dumped his gear inside the door before hustling off to satisfy one of the few other need's he required. * * * "Aaaaah..." It was a contented groan amidst the sound of running water. He was dimly aware that normally, bubbles would have run from his mouth as he sank to the bottom of the lake. Not anymore. He recalled it an unpleasant sensation, getting used to his lungs filling with water, but it was second nature now. The drawback, of course, was the fact that he had to wash far more often than when he was alive in order to combat the rot that afflicted many undead. It was a cosmetic concern, but Skolgrim was determined to meet his death looking like an Orc, not a corpse. And so he bathed in lakes and rivers, using his innate mastery of the cold to freeze any rot growing on him clean off at least once a day, often twice. It was not without it's pelasures. Since his turn, he now found the cold water as comforting as he had found hot springs as a living orc. Truth be told, groans and sighs were impractical now, but they just made him feel more... alive. He tried to remember what it was like to be alive. He briefly wondered what his new friends in the Blackrock Clan would think if they knew he had been pre-maturely aged and given blood from Gul'dan himself, and sent to do much of his dirty work. Sent to kill- "Gah!" The scream woke Skolgrim like a dinner bell. He focused for but a second, freezing the water about him and letting the ice float him to the surface. His control over such things had improved greatly with time, and he'd frozen just enough to thaw off as he neared the surface in time to see... Sex. They could not have been more mix matched.. The human male, laying on his back on the riverbank, bore many scars on his face that spoke more of disease than battle, his grin checkered by lost teeth. The human female, riding him with admirable gusto, was shaped as perfectly as a god's dream. Plump and muscled in all the right places, her lines smooth, her eyes fierce, her sexual sounds akin to that of a she-panther. Her long brown hair swaying like wheat in the breeze. Skolgrim quietly moved to his side of the lake, and slipped on his skeletal mask. He flooded his lungs with water once more, and slowly walked on the lake-bed towards them. He heard them the whole way. They spoke sweetly to each other. It did not move him. They did not hear him even as he rose from the water. Their backs were to him, their attention was as unfocused as it could be. Until he grabbed her by the back of the head. Oh how she screeched as he lifted her into the air. The male was valiant. He threw himself at Skolgrim, but he may as well have been a child. Perhaps he is a child, Skolgrim thought, as he lifted the boy off his feat by his hair. He kept struggling, of course, spewing impotent curses at him. Skolgrim knew little of the human tongue, but knew enough of expression to read lines of defiance in the males mouth, while seeing lines of despair in his eyes. Curiously, the female was quiet, almost serene. Her eyes almost seemed calm, even though her mouth murmured what no doubt were prayers to her Light. Still, she seemed so... Disconnected. As if not believing the events were real. Or perhaps as if they didn't matter. Skolgrim drank all of this in, holding them by their hair well above their standing height. They were both literally naked and helpless. He was not entertaining any thought of mercy. He knew what he was. He required death and suffering to keep his sanity. He was useful to his people so long as he used that drive on his enemy. Humans were the enemy. He was only holding out, feasting on their dread until it came to it's climax as real to him as the physical climax they had not been far from. The male, his voice wavering, his piggish eyes wide, turned to the female... "I...I wuv you..." The female turned to her lover. "I lov-" *CRUSH* Skolgrim used all of his considerable unholy might to bash their heads together, literally entwining their skulls and brain matter as close in death as their hearts had metaphorically been in life. Their heads remained connected, bound by jagged skull in brain tissue, as he dropped them and searched about their camp. Apperently the boy was a stable hand, the rope he had was clearly meant for lassoing new mounts. Skolgrim bound the lovers by the tool of the boy's trade as he dragged their corpses across the lake and to his new keep. Astonishingly, their heads kept together. It was almost sweet, in a way. From the make of the girl's clothes, she was clearly a noble, and as far as Skolgrim knew, such folk laying with craftsmen like the male was frowned upon. It was silly, but they were humans. At least this way, they died at the height of passion. Before the male lost more teeth, or the lady got more plump, or their secret tore their families apart. They died young, and together, before age and experience could leech the heart from them. They died at the peak of love, blissfully young and ignorant of it's crushing descent. All this Skolgrim mused as he climbed the wall and hung the conjoined corpses by their leash from the walls of Stone watch. Let the others see. Let the rumors flow. Sure, the initial story would be of their horrid death. But then they would ask what they were doing together? Skolgrim had little doubt a legend would form. They would live far better in death than they ever would in life. Content as one who'd just eaten a fine meal, Skolgrim went about finding a room for himself in his new home. Perhaps a tower room...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Qx2f6OMn_x4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Somehow, he could still sense the beauty of his imprisonment. Serene fields of snow and pine at the base of a great mountain marked his location for... Months? Years? He did not know. He did not know many thing anymore, not even his own name. He had been doing something on the mountainside... Something that seemed terribly important, when the cold had betrayed him, buried him... He did not know. There were folk part of him desperetly wanted to find, who meant the world to him, but he no longer knew them. He'd had a purpose, a burning drive, but it had since frozen over. He did not know. What he did know was that something was coming. He did not know what, but after so long buried within the ice, the slightest movement touched him as if it were his own skin. He was not sure if it were real or deranged fantasy that he'd made passing over his icy grave particularly difficult, and claimed the lives of the occasional traveler. He was pretty sure somebody was digging towards him... He was most sure of his hunger.. Not as the living knew it, a brief meal to warm the belly and gracelessly defecate out later... No, he was a Death Knight, and his hungers left a better mark on the world than a steaming pile of shit in the snow. He hungered for pain, for death, for souls. And he was starving. The world had shook horrifically of late, awakening him, acquainting him with this awful hunger. He knew the deeds, his deeds, that flashed before his eyes should have repulsed him. Instead he felt an elation in his chest and knew that his heart would quicken if it still had a beat. They were closer now. Through feet of ice and snow, he could feel them... Smells them... Booze. Body hair. Dwarves... He could sense one of them swaying with drink, singing aloud as he dug. Doubtless scavenging the remains of the battle that buried him... The Death Knight flinched. His first physical motion in some time. How did he suddenly remember that? No matter... The Dwarf was inches away when the Death Knight struck, his blow snapping as if he had been coiled to deliver it in the years he had been buried. His fist snapped out through the ice, his Orcish fist palming the Dwarf's face with ease. Blood began to run from where hand gripped face. The sensation was could not be described. It was the feeling of a master returning to his art, coupled with a man dying of thirst reaching an oasis. It was purpose realized, it was losing one's virginity all over again... It was bloody. The dwarf's agonized screams reached a supernatural octave. He struggled futilely as the armored fingers hooked inwards, driving into his skull. The Death Knight let his fingers rest there, enjoying the oh-so-sweet agony... Before jerking back and ripping the Dwarf's face above his jaw clean off. Hot blood showered the ice still containing him, steaming a portion of it away, painting a fitting portal of death for his re-entry into the world. The blood and ice finally shattered before his efforts, leaving the remaining dwarven salvagers frozen in dumbfounded terror. They beheld an Orc in tattered rysty armor, with a skeletal countenance. His blazing blue eyes belied an unholy hunger, and his wolfish grin spoke of a brutal delight in satiating that hunger. He spoke in the tone of bones being ground to dust. "I'm back, bitches..." None survived his reawakening. He later regarded himself in the bloody reflection of his leavings. He was leaner...His face nearly a skull... His expression grim. Heh. There was a name. "Skolgrim," he renamed himself. Memory flooded him, of the Burning Legion, drinking the blood, of his death, serving the Scourge... "Skolgrim, Twice Damned." His face twisted into a savage grin.

I slept through it in theaters.

I'm still with ya, man.

http://youtu.be/hzYLTbQQEZQ

Clearly the amount of forces you gather/amount you played multiplayer has a direct relationship with how much of a badass your Shepherd is. I only survived cause I got a Krogan Soldier like... right away in the multiplayer, and I like meleeing flamethrower wielding geth and Brutes.

I really want to think if it as fighting indoctination at the end (partially cause, were that true I won through in the willpower department, rather than gave into my love of savagery)... Hell I replayed the last mission today to look for more hints of it. But as much as everything post reaper-bitchslap seemed out of tune... From what I gather walked away from the ending with, it seemed like they went with an arc that made the events of Mass Effect the basis for the mythologies of the next generation of sentient life. The most obvious example being the old man and his kid post credits (which I rather enjoyed), and in its own way the end of the game is its own apocalypse. No matter what, the world (galaxy) as you know it ends. Your job, as I believe your character says him/herself, is to make it start up again on your terms. No matter what, this is accomplished. I'm more inclined to believe this is what Bioware meant with the ending, with all the mythological references in both Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I don't hate it. It doesn't make me happy, but I don't believe all entertainment should make you happy. The world is born in your mind at the start of the series, and it dies by the end. Inevitable unpopular, but in a way I have to respect the gamble. It makes history and civilizations mirror life, or even the seasons. Mythology. I don't know how overplayed this kind of thing is in anime, I'm not a fan of the stuff (drawing style always stuck me as gay.), but honestly the only thing I really want from it is to know the fate of the friends I'd made along the way. In the end... Hell, I don't know. I've wrestled with it the last day or two. But it's made me think, and I have to grant that that means something.

I stayed up way too late last night to finish the game. I saw the end was in sight and rushed it in a night before film productions start to kick up again. I got the suggested survival end. I didn't much like killing all synthetics, but it seemed the only plausible survival end, and I really wanted to see Jack again. "Don't do something stupid and get killed, dumbass, because I'm getting laid when this is all over," She said. In all honesty I'm kinda still in shock from it. I can kinda appreciate the mythological shit, but at the end of the day that's not what I played Mass Effect for, or really any Bioware games. I play them because I love the characters. I wanna kick back and cause chaos with Jack, or hang out with Garrus, or party with some Krogan. It just seemed like at the end there they just used these characters I've come to love so much as cutaway images to choke me up because I'm probably never going to "see" them again. Which is too bad. The game was going flawlessly... Until the end. I'm not sure I'm as angry as I am just... Sad. The world I've reveled in escaping the more mundane moments of live to has ended, and the friends I've made in it deserved better treatment in my last moments with them. I wonder if Old Republic just stretched them too thin.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=721 Westeros mod for Medieval II: Total War. Keeping the good people alive and OBLITERATING the ones I hate. Joffrey is going to DIE like the little bitch he is, and Cersei is going to be raped by wolves.

Mixture of Ares and Dionysus.

I wouldn't put Tywin Lannister in grey either, though he is fairly minor in this one.