Our land is one of grasses, wind and the open sky. We measure our lands by the distance of day, or weeks, and the passing of seasons. Long days pass by, and we sing around our camp fires, love and laugh together; for what is the use of passing through to the earth without experiencing it to the fullest? I missed one of the greatest things in life, a thing we do well, and we love as much as our women and children. We love one thing more than this Earth and sky, we love War!
Only in battle are you truly alive. To feel the apprehension before, to delight in wetting the earth with slaughter in an hour, more times than in one day’s passing, then of the swift clash of arms, the tiredness, the splash of bright blood and the feeling of armour parting under a swift strike. What more than the sight of the surprise as you rip your axe free, to bury it deep in another blow, a finishing strike that sees another life leaving quickly dimming eyes.
To be alive after, to sing victory, to drink yourself to a stupor, and pass out with the realisation you did not die, you passed the test of arms, and that your body will not rot or burn with the ones that failed the test of war. In the winning, you absorb more, you take the women, and slay the men if they do not give themselves over to you and your own. For this is how we grow strong; we defeat utterly, kill many, then give servitude to those who accept it, making us stronger as a whole. For, amongst the steppes, there are many tribes of Khand, many Variags, and we seek to consolidate, to gather to our banners the greatest force.
One day all will fight under one, the strongest, and then we will have conquered the world. Now, that day, glorious day, will be the last, as what more is there for we Variags? What then? All do not see as I do, but the days pass and more are taken. Soon we will turn to the other lands, beyond our own. I yearn for this day, and it may be before we are full to brimming – when I am the tribal chief, we will march upon this Gondor, this Rohan, and teach Gorthaur what subservience is.
To the West, where the Rhun lies, beyond which lie the one they call ‘Lord’, Sauron, Gorthaur. They worship him as a god. Beyond them lie lands rich and fat, grasses of green, verdant and flush with weakness we do not feel ourselves. Settled lands, where we can see walls of stone that dwarf anything we have seen in our times-before. In the distant past, we have joined with the warbands of Rhun, and we have fought the ones with the silver armour, bearing the banner of black, with a white tree emblazoned. There is our test, for we have not yet beaten them , nor have the Easterlings destroyed them, even with the aid of the Southrons and their dark allies. Even the Blue-one’s treachery to his masters cannot aid them in this.
But there is more than this to us. There is the war between the unfamiliar concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. We have met with emissaries of both sides of this fickle coin, and heard the words they speak. The ones in Blue spoke with some jaded wisdom, and they kept their Power hidden, cloaked, but we knew, and they were tested – one failed in this testing, and was lost - Pallanto, his name – the other, Alatar, went to the others, of whom I shall speak. The ones in black came before us, emanating fear such as has never been felt, their power displayed in such vagrant might. Both were listened to – there are those amongst us that profess to their devotion to one side or the other, but the steppe was too vast to be bound by something this...organised. We are too free to become bound by an organised goal; this is why we live as we do. Why we love and laugh and war, and why we gather in more and more, for what is the use of simply sitting and planning, of contemplating the very nature of one’s existence, of the why and what-if. There is more than that, and we are the steppes. We are the Variags and we do not bow before anyone.
Only in battle are you truly alive. To feel the apprehension before, to delight in wetting the earth with slaughter in an hour, more times than in one day’s passing, then of the swift clash of arms, the tiredness, the splash of bright blood and the feeling of armour parting under a swift strike. What more than the sight of the surprise as you rip your axe free, to bury it deep in another blow, a finishing strike that sees another life leaving quickly dimming eyes.
To be alive after, to sing victory, to drink yourself to a stupor, and pass out with the realisation you did not die, you passed the test of arms, and that your body will not rot or burn with the ones that failed the test of war. In the winning, you absorb more, you take the women, and slay the men if they do not give themselves over to you and your own. For this is how we grow strong; we defeat utterly, kill many, then give servitude to those who accept it, making us stronger as a whole. For, amongst the steppes, there are many tribes of Khand, many Variags, and we seek to consolidate, to gather to our banners the greatest force.
One day all will fight under one, the strongest, and then we will have conquered the world. Now, that day, glorious day, will be the last, as what more is there for we Variags? What then? All do not see as I do, but the days pass and more are taken. Soon we will turn to the other lands, beyond our own. I yearn for this day, and it may be before we are full to brimming – when I am the tribal chief, we will march upon this Gondor, this Rohan, and teach Gorthaur what subservience is.
To the West, where the Rhun lies, beyond which lie the one they call ‘Lord’, Sauron, Gorthaur. They worship him as a god. Beyond them lie lands rich and fat, grasses of green, verdant and flush with weakness we do not feel ourselves. Settled lands, where we can see walls of stone that dwarf anything we have seen in our times-before. In the distant past, we have joined with the warbands of Rhun, and we have fought the ones with the silver armour, bearing the banner of black, with a white tree emblazoned. There is our test, for we have not yet beaten them , nor have the Easterlings destroyed them, even with the aid of the Southrons and their dark allies. Even the Blue-one’s treachery to his masters cannot aid them in this.
But there is more than this to us. There is the war between the unfamiliar concepts of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. We have met with emissaries of both sides of this fickle coin, and heard the words they speak. The ones in Blue spoke with some jaded wisdom, and they kept their Power hidden, cloaked, but we knew, and they were tested – one failed in this testing, and was lost - Pallanto, his name – the other, Alatar, went to the others, of whom I shall speak. The ones in black came before us, emanating fear such as has never been felt, their power displayed in such vagrant might. Both were listened to – there are those amongst us that profess to their devotion to one side or the other, but the steppe was too vast to be bound by something this...organised. We are too free to become bound by an organised goal; this is why we live as we do. Why we love and laugh and war, and why we gather in more and more, for what is the use of simply sitting and planning, of contemplating the very nature of one’s existence, of the why and what-if. There is more than that, and we are the steppes. We are the Variags and we do not bow before anyone.
Last edited by Squeaky on Sat Jul 03, 2010 3:05 am; edited 1 time in total
