Hai'dar the Sun Dancer
Who is this? Another fool who laughs at death. There was a time when my people would have fed your blood to the sands for the crime of casting your shadow on these dunes. Alas, my Virakt no longer rules these sands. I shall leave you to the mercy of the new overlords. And if you should slay some of them before you die, it will make me glad indeed!
Who are these new masters?
Curse them! May their blood forever run as cold as midnight! They are the lackeys of the Burned Fool, the Masked God the Rain Bleeders call Morloch. Once they were Hateful Ones, the blood enemies of our race, the deluded things called Elves in the Rainlands. Chaos has warped them into hulking, brutish savages and revealed their inner ugliness to plain sight. The fir'khanim call them Orcs a word too pretty for their foulness.
The master of these "Orcs" came to our deserts, after he was freed from his prison, and tried to claim kinship with the Irekei. He told us how he, like us, had been reborn in the flames of Kryqho'khalin, the Dragon, and that he was the Warrior, the source of all our strength and skill at war. From behind his iron mask the Traitor God begged us to join him, to serve as his army and bathe the world in blood. But we were not deceived. The Irekei have a father: the Dragon, Terror of Terrors, who sleeps in the deeps until the ending of the world! We also have a mother, Khalikryst, Phoenix Goddess of the Sun, who transformed our flesh and perfected our race! We need no other Gods.
And the Blood Prophets laughed at the Masked God, for they remembered the truth: how Morloch had shook and wept when the Dragon arose, and hid in fear when his master the Meddling God called him. The Irekei have no use for cowards. Morloch was angered, and unleashed his new children upon us. The Orcs were weak, and many fell to our knives, but they numbered as the grains of sand, and their fury was like a sandstorm. Too much of our blood was shed, so my people left these sands. Someday, when the prophets deem the time is right, we shall return, and the spawn of Chaos will pay!
