The ravaged Capital

The capital city of the empire has lain in ruins for centuries.  At the end of the imperial period the capital was besieged vast horde of orcs.  The siege lasted for over a year.  The orcs easily defeated every imperial relief expedition organized but despite repeated attempts, were not able to storm the walls.

Finally, a young man whose name has been lost to time made a decision with repercussions that resonate down through to the modern age.  He feared death, and the longer the siege lasted the more certain his ultimate doom appeared so he decided that he would take whatever steps necessary to regain control of his own destiny.  If he was fated to die, than death should not be an end.  He began a search through the cavernous magical libraries of the city to find a way out for himself.  After weeks of searching he came across a book that had been buried in a locked vault.  The vault had been breached by a massive stone projectile launched in one of the periodic orc bombardments.

As he stared at the tome, bound in pale flesh and inked in a dark blood red ink, and his very humanity cried out to step away, to abandon this mad course of action and go back to man the walls, but he did not.  Instead he picked up the book and immediately heard a rasping whisper in the back of his mind and a brief moment of regret was the last sane thought in his head.

Soon afterwords, the orc camp was caught completely by surprise as the massive reinforced gates swung open.  The imperials had been unassailable beyond their mighty fortifications and the orc warlord had begun to doubt his position as daily he had reports of subordinate chiefs losing faith and striking out on their own in search of easier plunder.  Instead of a disciplined phalanx of imperial guardsmen, what greeted the eyes of the astonished orcs was a shambling horde of dead and decaying human bodies.

Taken completely by surprise, the orcs struggled to form a coherent defense but the undead were without fear and consumed with the need to come to grips, to rend and destroy and make someone pay for the monstrosity that had been wrought upon them by one of their own.

After the brief, one-sided battle, the remaining undead turned about and filed back into the city, the gates were shut behind them and that is the last time the living have laid eyes on the glory that once was the great city of Torre.