Wormer made his way towards the first group of prisoners he would be talking to, who were the former grass pixies now imprisoned on the very warships they once crewed. It was a rather ironic situation for the former crews of the once-powerful war fleet. Though Wormer didn't think the farmer pixies appreciated the irony, especially as they had been a powerful threat only a half a day at most ago.

It shocked Wormer that despite the scale of the conflict, it was over with rather quickly in the grand scheme of things. Which now would add towards the bitter feelings those imprisoned had about the situation and make his task all that harder. Wormer sighed to himself as he realized the true challenge of what had been asked of him.

As he was now in charge of explaining to the prisoners their new position in the kingdom of Smog on parchment, he was also going to have to figure out how they exactly fit into a new kingdom of the undead. Which he did not figure they would agree to, considering it would be a betrayal of everything they believe in. As grass pixies, they are to maintain the grasslands, but the power of the great skull, who rules the kingdom, will change the land.

So they will have to try and maintain grasslands with necrotic magic trying to change it into something else. Though Wormer thought more deeply on it as he walked the final distance between him and the now prison ships. Perhaps he could use the fact that they needed to get back to their clan territories quickly if they were to maintain the nature of their grassland as well as could be expected within the domain of the kingdom of necrotic smog.

So Wormer made it to the steps up to the prison ships with a plan only to be suddenly stopped at the first ship he was going to visit and make his case to by an undead hornet. The undead hornet just suddenly appeared, buzzing in front of him, stopping his progress forward. Before Wormer could figure out what it wanted, he was suddenly picked up by two other undead hornets who were carrying him off somewhere.

Wormer, though surprised by the sudden air ride, didn't panic, as he knew that all the undead in the land of necrotic smog were loyal to its ruler, so he figured the undead hornets had a good reason for carrying him into the sky. Though as Wormer looked down, he wished they hadn't, as he was more a creature of the earth and so was uncomfortable in the sky. Eventually the undead hornets carried him to their destination, which was the hornet doom sphere.

Wormer found himself being carried through the giant flying sphere, passing by many chambers and cells until he reached the one he needed to be in, he guessed, as he gazed at the grass pixie's farming elders, all sealed within a single wall of the hornet doom sphere. Wormer, being brought to where he needed to be, was then unceremoniously dropped on the floor before the sealed grass elders, and then the undead hornets proceeded to turn and fly away, going back to whatever they had been doing before.

The elders, all sealed in the wall, didn't react much to Wormer's presence, keeping their faces carefully blank and their thoughts to themselves; that is, for one of their number, the very one that had hired him to deal with the undead threat. " Wormer, you backstabbing worm!" Grekal roared out, squirming in her confinement with a renewed frenzy at perceiving Wormer's betrayal.

"Miss Grekal, it's good to see you too." Wormer said to which Grekal screamed back barely coherent threats that caused her fellow elders to look at her in shock. "While it appears I'm not much welcomed, am I?" Wormer stated with a small smile as another frenzy of threats came from Grekal to confirm just how unwelcome he was.

"Well, I'll hurry up so you don't have to deal with my company longer than you have to." Wormer stated loudly to the imprisoned elders, who focused their attention back on him and away from their frenzied colleague. They all stared at him, their full focus on him as their old minds tried to use their experience to figure out what exactly he was there for.

"Well, you see, my dear elders, you have lost the war, which I know is stating the obvious. But that doesn't mean it's the end for the grass pixie clans; it just means you now have a king." Wormer stated simply that the hard stares he got in response said they begged to disagree. "I'm sorry, but you must face facts quickly, for the longer you take, the longer you risk losing your grasslands to change." Wormer said to the imprisoned grass-farming pixie elders before him.

The elders look at him a moment, wondering what he was talking about, then it occurs to all nine of the elders at once that the changes that had come over the first clan's territory would now be happening to all of the different grass pixie clans territory. So if the grass pixie clans were to hope to have any pixie grasslands, then they would have to act soon to preserve what was their duty to care for before it was transformed completely.

Wormer spotted the elders understanding of the situation from the look in their eyes and so spoke on the situation. "So as you now realize, you must accept that the old ways are gone and accept the new regime if you are to preserve what is important." Wormer stated firmly, his echoing in the hall he was standing in as he looked each of the elders in the eye. They stared back at him in silence for a long moment before nodding their assent.

So it was that the elders of the farming pixies accepted the new status quo, and through them, the rest of the farmers of the grass pixie clans did too. A few undead hornets came over that apparently had been waiting for him to convince them as he had and were now getting the elders out of their cells built into the walls. He was being carried off and out of the giant flying sphere and back towards the ground.

Which Wormer guesses made sense since the ruler of the kingdom of necrotic smog wanted him to convince the prisoner of the new status quo; as far as Wormer knew, he wasn't expected to do anything else. The undead hornets did not drop him off on the ground directly below the giant flying sphere. No, they instead carried him towards another prison where other pixies were being held.

"I suppose they want me to pick up the pace." Wormer says to himself, figuring that his was being dropped if direct to cut the time required for him to walk there, thus speeding these talks along. Wormer found himself being dropped in front of a massive war machine whose mere presence seemed to radiate a kind of madness as it kept switching between rage and misery to add to the dark emotions going around. All of the nearby grass pixies were imprisoned in their own armor.

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Somehow the mad construct before him has turned the grass pixies own armor against them, though how it did this, Wormer wasn't sure he wanted to know. As the armors had pincers and mandibles being made from the trophies of hunts, and the living armors kept biting and pinching the air with a ferocity that bordered on madness, it showed that the control either wasn't well done or it was too well done, as the controller didn't look all that stable to begin with.

Wormer shook his head, as none of this was his business, and so he shouldn't let it distract him from his true purpose, which was to convince the prisoner to accept their status as citizens of a new undead kingdom. He was wondering where the elders were kept within this prison camp, but then had a few of the rabid living armors guide him over to the mad war machine, which lowered one of its catapult arms to allow him into its frame, where it was revealed to him where the grass pixies hunting elders were kept.

They were being kept trapped within the frame of the mad war machine that led the other smaller and more sane war machines. Wormer took a moment to find a spot within the frame where all the captured grass pixie elders could at least hear him and then began to speak. "I have come to tell you that the times of old are over and that you are now under the new regime." Wormer said to the angry glares of those grass pixie-hunting elders that could look at him.

Which was to be expected; the hunters were the defenders of their people. Their failure to lead their fellow hunters into victory as their elders had now doomed their people, at least from their perspective. "The farming grass pixies will soon be sent to take care of the grasslands that now belong to the king. They do this to maintain the grasslands, as is their duty. Will you abandon yours?" Wormer said, to which all the hunting grass pixie elders gave him a hard look.

"I will return to the fields." Gressel suddenly said, his voice firm, as he basically agreed to Wormer's request without fuss, much to the shock of his fellow hunting grass pixie elders. "Our kin need us to watch them as they tend to the fields, as we always gave; we cannot abandon them in these times, especially as what will come to stalk the grass now." Gressel said as a way of explanation as to why he had made his decision.

The other elders found themselves agreeing with his point. Since their clan's land had been a young kingdom of the undead, they could expect more undead to form, and quite worrisome, they might have to be concerned with rogue undead. So they needed to be out there with their kin, making sure the grasslands are safe for them to be in.

The other elders all have their assent confirming their agreement to be a part of the kingdom of necrotic smog. Not that they had a choice in the matter. So with their consent, the elders were slowly released from the frame by the mad war machine while Wormer carefully lowered himself to the ground.

Once on the ground, Wormer found himself being picked up by the rabid living armors and put on top of a war machine filled with rage. Which, once he was all the way on, took off eager to get him to the part prison camp within the kingdom of necrotic smog that held the third and final defeated grass pixies army.

The enraged war machine quickly took him to a place where green war beasts were constantly parading in circles for those that watched above them. Wormer was dropped off in front of a grass hydra that watched him with nine sets of eyes. Wormer looked around for the last set of elders he would have to speak to so that his task would be complete.

As if in response to his thoughts, the torso of the grass hydra opened up, showing him where the last of the elders were. So he walked in, and the door shut behind him, though Wormer wasn't concerned, figuring it would open again once he was done convincing the elders of the reality of their situation.

Wormer walked a few steps to find the grass pixie craftsman elders all in a circle, clearly trying to think of a way out of this situation using their vast experience and wisdom. Their eyes focused on him as he approached, but their sight held neither anger nor hopelessness; instead, they held curiosity. Wormer sat in the middle of their circle, thinking on his words for a moment. The silence stretched for a long moment before he finally spoke.

"The hunters and the farmers have already agreed to join the kingdom due to their duty. Will you?" Wormer asked, figuring he didn't have to try and convince them, as these were pixies of a far older age than him, and he was an elder himself who had been around long enough to see mortals live, grow, and die of old age several times over.

The grand elder, the one whose clan territory has been the first to fall, spoke after a long moment of silence. "We will join the others and be a part of this new kingdom, though it saddens us to do so. But sometimes you must admit you cannot fight against the changing of times no matter how much you wish to." The grand elder said in a sad and slow voice to which Wormer merely nodded to before getting up and leaving the crafting pixie elders the grass hydra torso opening to let him out as he had suspected it would.

Wormer made his way back slowly towards the underground entrance as all around him the kingdom of smog had busy movement as the servants of the ruler of the kingdom of necrotic smog paired up the nine grass pixie clans—hunters, farmers, and craftsmen—to be sent back to their clan territories under the watch of zombies and undead elementals. Wormer put the whole business out of his mind and picked up the pace back to the underground as he figured he had probably left his apprentices without supervision for too long.

"Hopefully they haven't somehow set fire to the underground." Wormer said with a nervous chuckle as he made his way back home and to his clan in the underground. Well, the grass pixies tried to find what their home was in this newly changed landscape.