[copied from: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6987051222&sid=1 - Vyp]((Hey guys, I just wrote a little mini story (or not so mini) for the enjoyment of SSL’s dwindling RP community. For those who find time to read through it, comments and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.))
Dust blew in billowing orange clouds across the sandy dunes of Durotar, bound for the everlasting pinnacle of slave trading that is Orgrimmar. Haloy, hot and flushed, stood muzzily at the center of the slave market and eyed her surroundings with apparent bewilderment, her interest piqued in the extreme. The sun’s scathing rays seared her head in gay abandon, and the sweltering heat cast a suffocating haze over the market. The space was unshaded, and was left to the mercy of the throbbing sun. The few female denizens fanned industriously at their faces with wicker-made fans and palm leaves.
Haloy was sweating profusely, she dabbed intermittently at her forehead with her sleeve in a futile attempt to stanch the oncoming stream of sweat. Her robe clung to her thighs and breasts in an inexorable, sweaty embrace, and she pulled at the cloth in exasperation. Jostling her way through the crowd, she bumped into rigid shoulders and stepped on numerous toes, and edged her way to the raised podium where the slaves were presumably auctioned.
Stalls and booths were dispersed incongruously across the market’s dirt floor, selling knick knacks, rusty weapons, slave collars, fresh fruit, coffee beans, salted fish, and the occasional gnome finger. Merchants and slave traders hawked their wares noisily over the rush of business, and the musky reek of sweat and excrement smothered the air. The slave pens squatted conveniently behind the podium, chained and barbed, housing undernourished gnomes, elves, humans, and a handful of draenei, all of whom had ribs that protruded alarmingly.
Haloy squeezed herself out of the crowd and found herself at the far-end of the market, not the least closer to the podium. Piles of fecal matter stood at her feet, surrounded by a mass of inquisitive flies. She swallowed the bile that rose to her throat and hastily covered the lower half of her face with a scented handkerchief. Retching in the midst of a crowd was the least of her troubles, she thought. Nonetheless, she dived back into the throng and groped her way frantically, searching for that irritable podium.
Arriving at her prescribed destination, she felt a dreadful sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, as if she was flung down a precipitous cliff. Opathu Two-Smile, the infamous slave trader, stood atop the podium, gesturing emphatically at a female elven slave that stood to his side. He had quite an impressive repertoire that boasted smuggling expeditions, exploitive bribery, and innumerable slave camps that spread across Azeroth faster than famine.
The slave was naked and caked with grime, save for a cloth that hung lazily around her waist. Two-Smile snapped his fingers impatiently and an obliging assistant emerged from the crowd, holding a blazing torch in one hand and a steel rod in the other. Two-Smile snatched the rod and nodded to the crowd, which had grown unsettlingly silent. He heated the rod’s end in the torch, awaiting the pending red-hot glow of the metal, and drove it into the slave’s flesh, just above the swell of her breast. The slave, wide-eyed and starving, let out an ear-splitting screech that surged through the market in waves. She was branded and immediately manhandled by her new master, a troll that grabbed her by the hair and shoved her head-first into a waiting carriage, shackles and all. Haloy, dazed as she was, recoiled inadvertently from this horrific spectacle and averted her eyes back to the slave trader. The crowd, on the other hand, found this extremely entertaining and cheered at the charismatic slave-trading orc, who bowed theatrically to audience and fans alike.
Doctor Fathius Archnazg never mentioned any form of slave-branding, and it belatedly dawned on her that the slave she was sent to purchase was also to be branded in the same manner. Overwhelmed by the day’s heat and the machinations of her current situation, Haloy savagely wiped at her sweaty face and raised a determined chin, ready to call out her price once the next slave was displayed. To her dismay, the next slave was a female draenei, filthy and frightened. Haloy could not help but feel pity and sympathy for the poor girl, a feeling she shamefully pushed away.
The auctioning proceeded and the draenei was sold at a generous price of 300 gold to an undead dressed in extravagant mage-like vestments. Unlike the elf, the draenei proved to be a predicament. She kicked and flailed at Two-Smile’s branding rod, and threw out an array of what Haloy guessed were obscenities in the common tongue. She was rapidly pinioned by two guards in anticipation of a more peaceful branding ceremony. Two-Smile raised the glowing rod and readied himself for the branding, the slave’s exposed flesh seemed ever so vulnerable. The crowd stood silent and watchful, transfixed by the orc’s unflinching demeanor.
To be continued …
[ Post edited by Haloy ]
Subject: The Slave Market - By Haloy 