Conleth: Betrayal
July 4th, Hearthglen, Lordaeron
I thought, once, that nothing the undead did could surprise me anymore. Lately, though, I'd been trying to believe my comrades' insistence that some of the undead could be trusted. Father Warreth was our healer, charged with the lives of all of my men. It took a great deal of restraint to allow him that role. I watched him carefully, I thought, for any hint of betrayal, and I felt justified in doing so. The undead destroyed Lordaeron and would have devoured the world. I am still not sure that the Forsaken don't mean to do just that, right after they and the Ebon Blade finish wiping out my living brothers in the Crusade. *dots of ink follow*
My brothers. I wish I could have stayed. I feel like a traitor for turning my back on our brotherhood, but following the command of demon is something I could not do. And I'm glad I didn't. A monster turned our friends, our comrades in the Eastern Plaguelands, into the undead. All of them. No matter how much I wanted to spare them, based on their former service, I knew I couldn't. I volunteered to join the Brotherhood of the Light in defeating them. The Light could never truly live in those hearts again, corrupted by demons and undeath as they were.
Which, I suppose, is a long way of saying that I should have known that a Forsaken priest could not be trusted. His ability to command the Light at all was impressive, a testament to his strong will. Will, I suppose, that allowed him to escape the Lich King's control in the first place. But the pain he suffered when using the Light should have been my sign. Never would the Light welcome one such as him. And it is quite justified in that. What he's done is reprehensible. Had I been in my right mind when I saw him last night, I would have struck his head from his shoulders and bathed the entire blighted corpse in the Holy Light.
There have been strange things happening for a while that I've put down to work in the Plaguelands and lingering Cult of the Damned influence. Supplies went missing. Crates of medicine, food, and weapons intended for our unit disappeared mysteriously from storage. Never in any quantity or frequency to merit extra guards on the storage areas. At the same time, the Argent Crusade itself had been losing men to Scourge in the Plaguelands. Unsurprising, really. It was a tragedy, but one that was expected for the work we do.
That mess last year with the death knight Nikkitah Blightheart...I don't know the best way to describe it in a length suitable for these pages. Lieutenant Stonebrow assures me that Sergeant Bloodrend is overzealous in his hatred of that particular group of death knights. I was busy at the time assisting the Brotherhood with the offensive against the Scarlet Crusade in Stratholme, or else I would have been more directly involved. I left it to Lieutenant Stonebrow to deal with, and reading back over the reports, I regret that decision. Looking back, especially after everything that happened to Sergeant Bloodrend, I question whether Sergeant Bloodrend wasn't correct in his assessment of Nikkitah Blightheart and his men. I should know better than most that, while dangerous and easily led astray, a zealot can be correct about someone.
Whether Nikkitah Blightheart was indeed allied with the Scourge or not is irrelevant at this point, anyway. The death knight is dead, or so I've read in the tome. The final entry from his tome seems to indicate he did, in the end, face the Light's justice. I haven't heard anything about it and I'm not curious enough to find out, but good riddance. I mention Blightheart only because of Father Warreth.
The blood elf in the tome, Sunthistle, says that Father Warreth tortured Crusaders for Nikkitah Blightheart. Last night, while others were out celebrating the holiday, I questioned Father Warreth on this. What I was told...well, were I still among the Scarlet Crusade, I fear some dark part of me would enjoy purging this evil from Lordaeron. I am no longer one of them, and I think I held my temper in check admirably, even with Warreth deliberately trying to provoke me.
According to Father Warreth, he'd been helping the Cult of the Damned and the Scourge since he joined the Argent Crusade, in the late stages of the Northrend war. He joined the Crusade specifically to try to sabotage it from within. It was he who took our supplies and passed them along to the Cult of the Damned. In the time after the war, when the Crusade returned to the Plaguelands and began to make real headway in cleansing the Plaguelands of the undead menace, it was he who ambushed isolated Crusade patrols. He who used shadow magic to kill Crusaders. He who fed their corpses to the ghouls.
That was how he was caught, in the end. One member of a patrol managed to get to his mount and return to a tower to get help. When reinforcements arrived, they found Father Warreth supervising a group of ghouls while they ate. *splatters of ink dot the page* Just writing that makes my stomach churn. I could kill him for that crime alone, but there was more.
The torture that Sunthistle mentioned, Father Warreth said, was part of a campaign of intimidation that Blightheart came up with to get Sergeant Bloodrend and Recruit Dawnstrike to cease their attacks on him in the tome. Father Warreth used shadow magic to keep Bloodrend in a state of agony, while Blightheart claimed it was him causing the "curse". It backfired, of course. Bloodrend went mad with fury, but not at Aenleros, as Blightheart wanted. He was furious at Blightheart. That was the day that Bloodrend stormed out of Stratholme in a fury. I'm told he piled Scourge bodies high that day.
I won't go into detail. Even now it enrages me, what happened. I feel...cheated, that Blightheart met his death before I could pay him back for the suffering of my men. Probably just as well. Suffice to say that we later found Sergeant Bloodrend...well, if Recruit Dawnstrike hadn't been there, I am certain that Bloodrend would now be as dead as too many of our brothers that were found that week. He tells me they died at Blightheart's hands. I can't say I doubt him.
I've gone on a tangent with Blightheart. Father Warreth continued his...work, even after I ordered those under my command to cease writing in the tome. It was he who kept Bloodrend unconscious for a long while. He who was responsible for the loss of so many Crusaders in the Plaguelands. Who almost caused the deaths of my men due to lack of supplies.
I feel no remorse in asking my superiors for his death. I only hope they allow me to carry out the sentence personally. Whatever happens, I intend to make sure the Light's justice is done. The dead deserve justice. Our dead deserve to see their murderer pay for his crimes. The Light should not have to tolerate such a monster.
If I must go against orders and be branded a zealot, so be it. I am used to that particular epithet.
I thought, once, that nothing the undead did could surprise me anymore. Lately, though, I'd been trying to believe my comrades' insistence that some of the undead could be trusted. Father Warreth was our healer, charged with the lives of all of my men. It took a great deal of restraint to allow him that role. I watched him carefully, I thought, for any hint of betrayal, and I felt justified in doing so. The undead destroyed Lordaeron and would have devoured the world. I am still not sure that the Forsaken don't mean to do just that, right after they and the Ebon Blade finish wiping out my living brothers in the Crusade. *dots of ink follow*
My brothers. I wish I could have stayed. I feel like a traitor for turning my back on our brotherhood, but following the command of demon is something I could not do. And I'm glad I didn't. A monster turned our friends, our comrades in the Eastern Plaguelands, into the undead. All of them. No matter how much I wanted to spare them, based on their former service, I knew I couldn't. I volunteered to join the Brotherhood of the Light in defeating them. The Light could never truly live in those hearts again, corrupted by demons and undeath as they were.
Which, I suppose, is a long way of saying that I should have known that a Forsaken priest could not be trusted. His ability to command the Light at all was impressive, a testament to his strong will. Will, I suppose, that allowed him to escape the Lich King's control in the first place. But the pain he suffered when using the Light should have been my sign. Never would the Light welcome one such as him. And it is quite justified in that. What he's done is reprehensible. Had I been in my right mind when I saw him last night, I would have struck his head from his shoulders and bathed the entire blighted corpse in the Holy Light.
There have been strange things happening for a while that I've put down to work in the Plaguelands and lingering Cult of the Damned influence. Supplies went missing. Crates of medicine, food, and weapons intended for our unit disappeared mysteriously from storage. Never in any quantity or frequency to merit extra guards on the storage areas. At the same time, the Argent Crusade itself had been losing men to Scourge in the Plaguelands. Unsurprising, really. It was a tragedy, but one that was expected for the work we do.
That mess last year with the death knight Nikkitah Blightheart...I don't know the best way to describe it in a length suitable for these pages. Lieutenant Stonebrow assures me that Sergeant Bloodrend is overzealous in his hatred of that particular group of death knights. I was busy at the time assisting the Brotherhood with the offensive against the Scarlet Crusade in Stratholme, or else I would have been more directly involved. I left it to Lieutenant Stonebrow to deal with, and reading back over the reports, I regret that decision. Looking back, especially after everything that happened to Sergeant Bloodrend, I question whether Sergeant Bloodrend wasn't correct in his assessment of Nikkitah Blightheart and his men. I should know better than most that, while dangerous and easily led astray, a zealot can be correct about someone.
Whether Nikkitah Blightheart was indeed allied with the Scourge or not is irrelevant at this point, anyway. The death knight is dead, or so I've read in the tome. The final entry from his tome seems to indicate he did, in the end, face the Light's justice. I haven't heard anything about it and I'm not curious enough to find out, but good riddance. I mention Blightheart only because of Father Warreth.
The blood elf in the tome, Sunthistle, says that Father Warreth tortured Crusaders for Nikkitah Blightheart. Last night, while others were out celebrating the holiday, I questioned Father Warreth on this. What I was told...well, were I still among the Scarlet Crusade, I fear some dark part of me would enjoy purging this evil from Lordaeron. I am no longer one of them, and I think I held my temper in check admirably, even with Warreth deliberately trying to provoke me.
According to Father Warreth, he'd been helping the Cult of the Damned and the Scourge since he joined the Argent Crusade, in the late stages of the Northrend war. He joined the Crusade specifically to try to sabotage it from within. It was he who took our supplies and passed them along to the Cult of the Damned. In the time after the war, when the Crusade returned to the Plaguelands and began to make real headway in cleansing the Plaguelands of the undead menace, it was he who ambushed isolated Crusade patrols. He who used shadow magic to kill Crusaders. He who fed their corpses to the ghouls.
That was how he was caught, in the end. One member of a patrol managed to get to his mount and return to a tower to get help. When reinforcements arrived, they found Father Warreth supervising a group of ghouls while they ate. *splatters of ink dot the page* Just writing that makes my stomach churn. I could kill him for that crime alone, but there was more.
The torture that Sunthistle mentioned, Father Warreth said, was part of a campaign of intimidation that Blightheart came up with to get Sergeant Bloodrend and Recruit Dawnstrike to cease their attacks on him in the tome. Father Warreth used shadow magic to keep Bloodrend in a state of agony, while Blightheart claimed it was him causing the "curse". It backfired, of course. Bloodrend went mad with fury, but not at Aenleros, as Blightheart wanted. He was furious at Blightheart. That was the day that Bloodrend stormed out of Stratholme in a fury. I'm told he piled Scourge bodies high that day.
I won't go into detail. Even now it enrages me, what happened. I feel...cheated, that Blightheart met his death before I could pay him back for the suffering of my men. Probably just as well. Suffice to say that we later found Sergeant Bloodrend...well, if Recruit Dawnstrike hadn't been there, I am certain that Bloodrend would now be as dead as too many of our brothers that were found that week. He tells me they died at Blightheart's hands. I can't say I doubt him.
I've gone on a tangent with Blightheart. Father Warreth continued his...work, even after I ordered those under my command to cease writing in the tome. It was he who kept Bloodrend unconscious for a long while. He who was responsible for the loss of so many Crusaders in the Plaguelands. Who almost caused the deaths of my men due to lack of supplies.
I feel no remorse in asking my superiors for his death. I only hope they allow me to carry out the sentence personally. Whatever happens, I intend to make sure the Light's justice is done. The dead deserve justice. Our dead deserve to see their murderer pay for his crimes. The Light should not have to tolerate such a monster.
If I must go against orders and be branded a zealot, so be it. I am used to that particular epithet.