The arena was packed with trolls. One by one, in a sick perversion of militaristic discipline turned into cringing mechanics, they lift their sidearms, their swords, their axes, their submachine guns - in sequence as they chant the name of FAISAL over and over again. Defying Venway had won King Faisal the Terrible the adoration of his disparate people - victims of generations of brainwashing and psychological sabotage at the hand of the Iron Nation propagandists. To the citizens of the Nation, the Mutiny Alliance was the prostitute-mother of all their hardships - and the king who defied them was a crusader, a hero. Whether or not he did it through butchering unsuspecting civilians or not.
Faisal stood at the bottom of the pit like some Fiendish ringleader, his sharp choice of clothing - a jet black and ice white tuxedo and a black top hat contrasting with his hideous trollish features devilishly as the burning torches surrounding everybody cast a hundred different mirages of luminescence and shadow across the congregation. Even as he speaks, the Iron Nation faithful continue to shout after every statement, every finale of bravado in the Grandmaster's nihilistic rhetoric, every as a epilogue to his every vociferous flare of fanaticiscm.
"If the Vennish politicians want WAR, then they will have it! If their prostitute allies want WAR, then they will have it! But it shall come with a heavy tithe of BLOOD spilt from the bodies of their citizens and their mercenaries should they dare, EVER, to violate the sovereignty of the Iron Nation. They believe us to be demented fools, when we are the only ones who do not bow before the black sceptre of Vennish 'authority.' We are persecuted by the puppets of the Vennish government and their criminal Mutiny Alliance for our DEFIANCE!"
The crowd explodes into noise. It was almost too sinister and malevolently timed to be natural. If the feat of puppeteering such a horrific gathering's synchronized responses to such a degree was not above the abilities of the typical troll - one would think that the crowd's monolithic and single-minded devotion to every word spoken by Faisal to be truly demonically-inspired.
And the audiance responds, after every sentence, now, with a deafening scream. A thousand voices audibly punishing reality with one, fanatical YEAH!
"Our defiance is a sword as sharp as an Archangel's blade!"
YEAH!
"Our resistance shall be a wall of iron!"
YEAH!
"...a temple of righteousness, an alter of faith..."
YEAH!
"...a sepulchre of FEVERISH LOVE TO THE MOTHERLAND!"
YEAH!
"A lion which shall rise from hearts of the people to devour the Beast rising out of the sea before us!"
YEAH!
"Cry out to the heavens and let our enemies hear the measure of our resolve, my people!" Faisal lifts his hands, his hideous trollish features basking in torchlight and contorted into a grin of exalted adreniline as he feels an entire people bend its knees to him, like a single entity of flesh, iron, and voice.
"I wish you to send a statement to Venway, a statement to the East, a statement to the entire WORLD! We will never back down from a confrontation with the so-called Venway Confederation! They will reap the poison of the thorns that they have pushed into every corner of the East, and through our endless measures of self-defence, we will crush these villains and their New World Order of mercenary nations and DEFINE a new age for the East with a storm of iron and fire and tempest and blood which will echo in ALL ETERNITY! What say you? Will you fight this war, on the front lines, and lead the world to FREEDOM?!"
The crowd's response was immediate and imperial in its totality and scope. The entire arena, in all of its pittish gloom and nihilistic auras, explodes into a riposte of cheering. Loudspeakers blaring the words out into to streets of Kislev are met with a rampage of cheering as traffic in the chaotic streets becomes a series of arteries clogged with carriages and vehicles. A halo of militant flares is cast over the Iron Nation capitol once again, as the tiny troll state prepares for what they believe will be the Final Battle of this apocalyptic age.
* * *
And in the shadows of chaos, Armand smiles with methodical aplomb. The Shadow elven sorcerer stands within a magick circle prepared for him in a cleverly concealed balcony overlooking the pit-like arena. As Faisal speaks, Armand's lips move silently - his own psyche having fully posessed the king's for the duration of the vociferous speech. As Armand lifts his hands into the air, chanting in a eerie silence and casting his head upwards, eyes locked into the penticle gleaming with an unholy blackness in the ceiling above him, Faisal instantly snaps into action. The troll's voice is consumed with a list of subliminal messages carved backwards into Armand's pale flesh with the Darkling's ritual daggers. By the end of the spell - which corresponds with the explosive grand finale of the speech, the king could have been reciting a cookie recipe and the crowd would still believed it was of divine origin.
"No mercy for the masses."
Armand's head thrashes forewards violently as he murmers the final key to unlocking the gates of the Abyss in Kislev - forging an unholy iron sceptre, by which Faisal the Terrible could rule his Nation to the bitter end - leading them into the mouth of hell even as they believed they charged into the light.
In the end, trolls and all of the lesser manbeasts they enslaved were excellent pawns. Extremely adept at war, though none too bright, they were only dangerous opponents to a large nation is inspired by a more sentinent force of evil - such as a Warlock Order operative.
A pity they would inevitably lose any war they entered with the Mutiny Alliance and its host of imperial friends. But Armand was planning his escape. And hell had to break loose before the level of chaos in the Northern seas was great enough for him to enact it.
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