Shovash arrives with her company back at the Cenotaph, where the core settlement of the Mutilated Corpse tribe is in shambles. There are gaps in the palisade around it, and a sullen, smoking fire that has devoured much of the eastern half of the settlement. Orcs are hurrying around the place, trying to control the fire. There don't seem to be enough of them, though, for the size of the settlement.

"I feel like you would have mentioned it if this place were this far gone when you left," Aiva says casually. Calm as a stone in the chaos.

  "I left for an hour, replies her friend bitterly. "One. Hour."

  Shovash starts toward the fire, leaving Aiva and Ragnar to decide for themselves whether to participate in the cleanup. As she walks, she grows taller with every step until she towers over the largest of her warriors, until between the ash and soot of her skin and the firey glow of her tattoos, she looks like one of the burning buildings had gotten up to walk around as a demon. And then she starts pulling water out of the air with her bare hands, palms chanting in unison, until the wave obediently following at her heel looms double her new height. She waves it forward before raising her clan flag high enough to be seen across the camp.

  "Bring me the injured!" she bellows. "And Graxs, if he lives!"

One huge water elemental, rod-boosted to gargantuan and given the agile template
This message was last edited by the player at 16:56, Sat 01 Feb 2020.

Leaving Shovash to muster her followers back into whatever semblance of order she expected of them, Ragnar takes the air and begins a slow survey of the camp from above. What he's looking for, he couldn't quite say - some indication, perhaps, either of what caused the current state of ruin or indications of further trouble yet to come.

Several of the orcs begin to rally around Shovash, including most of those who had become her local lieutenants - Arkr leads their group despite heavy gashes in his arms and chest, and personally hauls several of the wounded to her. They are cut, bruised, burned, clawed, but alive. By the time she reaches the fire and directs a wall of water at it, he has apparently finished bringing in those too injured to walk.

He kneels before her. "Shovash Godsbane, Mistress of Fiends, Planes-Strider, Breaker of Vigil," he says, his tone deeply formal. "My chief has betrayed his people. In his cowardice he fled from battle when the dead attacked, abandoning his position before the eyes of gods and men. I will not grace him with my axe any longer. I ask that I may join under your banner, leaving the Mutilated Corpse tribe behind me and fighting for your cause."

Meanwhile, above the ground, Ragnar sees signs of a massed attack coming from the direction of the Cenotaph. It looks like tracks of the undead...and they dragged the corpses back with them.