The Orc Defiler, a Dev Diary

Lighting flashed across the sky, briefly casting the forest in a sickly green glow. The wood was quiet, as the battle that had been waged beneath its boughs moved on to another venue. The only sound, other than the steady hum of insects, was of a small fire in a desolate hollow. The green flames of the small campfire crackled and hissed against the jagged stones, their smoky tendrils licking greedily at the pot of bubbling yellow putrescence perched above.

Explore Middle-earth! The sound of the fire was punctuated by the gasping moans from a misshapen figure lying amongst the bones littering the ground; the stench of festering wounds signaling the life quickly sliding away from the twisted form.

From a dark corner of the hollow a Defiler emerged; light leather straps crossed his body and a massive bear skull sat upon his brow. His flesh was black as night and covered in red runes and scars carved from the long years of service to Angmar. In one hand he clutched a massive wooden staff, adorned with bits of bone hanging from stretched sinew, while the other toted a gourd filled with a foul-smelling concoction. Uttering a guttural word in the Black Tongue, he stepped toward the fire, sending grey filth into the air.

Leaning his staff against the curve of the hollow, the Defiler made his way to the shattered orc form amidst the bones. The fallen beast howled in rage and pain as his chest wound was pulled open by an uncaring hand. With the full breadth of the putrefying wound exposed, the Defiler worked quickly, pouring the contents of his gourd into the wound while uttering the dark phrases taught him by his master and the masters of his past. The fallen orc ceased to howl, and fell into a fitful sleep as vile liquid spilled from the wound, bubbling and sizzling as it knitted him back together.

As he moved toward the fire, the Defiler reached into the cauldron and filled his gourd with the thick grey-green slime and returned to the sleeping form of the orc, where he applied a dollop of the filth to each of the pustules on the orc's legs. Wound by wound, the disease retreated from the slime. It would be hours before the orc was mended whole once more, but the Defiler, done with his work, called out into the night.

Two Uruks, clad in black iron bearing the symbol of the Krahjarn tribe, appeared from the gloom and hoisted the wounded orc from the dirt floor. As they removed their fallen servant into the night, another of Mordírith's soldiers was deposited unceremoniously into the cave. With a dismissive wave to the troll delivering the new wounded, the Defiler retreated to the darkness of the hollow to scrape fungus from the walls and return to his night's work.