Days were dim and nights were lit, but it was never bright nor dark. The air was wet and icy cold, but there was no snow. Food was poison and water steamed, and our stomachs groaned as we passed each by. Every step brought us closer to enemies we had no defense against, and our numbers dwindled by the hour. Some wandered into the fog, some were devoured by the horse-men, and some just stopped moving, as if their minds had died within their skulls and left their bodies to rot.

All the while the beast-kin haunted us, showing only their shadows in the walls of mist that bordered every hollow hill and barren plain. We were walking through a grave for the living, and staring into the face of death. I knew only one truth in those days; that if we ever escaped the horror of that sickened world, we would never be the same.

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My father, Ketza’Ku, led us through that accursed place and died on the shore of the Wandering Isle, within sight of a Stonearrow camp. I was made the Netherclaw chief at the age of nine, in honor of his memory. You ask me how I came by my name? This body of mine is not a vessel for a living soul, but for a tortured spirit that craves an end. The true Netherclaw, the Brighthowl and Nightflyer orcs who sought the light beyond the Smouldering Seas; I am their king, and we are a dead people. We are not survivors, we are a warning. We took up our old nomadic paths to serve as beacons and harbingers of the storm, so that others could see in our faces the mute terror that gnaws at the edges of life.

-Interview with the King of Graves, from The Fog of War by Erudan Penwright-