The origin of IMS (a fictional story)

[EwulSpif]

Hello everyone and welcome to the story of IMS (Iksar murder squad).
Creative feedback are optional and appreciated., so let’s dive in to it.

The Scale and the String.

Chapter I: The Gathering of the Dregs

The sun beat down on the Courtyard of Cabilis, reflecting off the stagnant green moats. Five young Iksars stood in a line, their scales dry and lacking the luster of the elite guards. They wore tattered cloth and carried rusted daggers. They were the bottom of the brood, called together by Elder Vyzh, a scarred veteran whose tail had been docked in a hundred battles.
"The Empire does not grow by sitting in the mud," Vyzh hissed, his golden eyes scanning their unproven faces. "You five... you are nothing. But you will travel to the lands of the soft-skins. Establish our reach. Or die trying. Do not return until the name of the Scale is whispered in fear."
Among them stood Sszar. He wasn't a leader yet, just a Shadowknight initiate with a rusted khukuri and a heart full of resentment. He looked at the others: Krazz, a Monk whose hands were still soft and unscarred; Voksh, a Necromancer who could barely call a flickering spark of undeath to his fingertips; and Gorg, a Beastlord with a mangy, toothless hatchling he called Fluffy.
"I’m not dying in this swamp," Sszar rasped, looking at his companions. "If the Elder wants a name, we give him one. Follow me, or get out of the way."

The Road to the North.

The journey across the ocean to Faydwer was a brutal lesson in survival. They weren't heroes; they were scavengers. In the damp tunnels of the Butcherblock Mountains, they fought off giant bats and scurrying rats just to keep their bellies full.
It was during a desperate fight against a group of Orc pawns that the change began. Krazz, backed into a corner, felt a strange rhythm in his blood. Instead of a clumsy jab, he spun his entire body, his leg snapping out in a perfect, practiced arc—a blow that shattered an Orc’s skull with the sound of a dry branch snapping. He looked at his foot, surprised by the sudden, violent clarity of the strike.
Voksh, meanwhile, stood over a dying Orc, whispering ancient, forbidden words. He caught the creature's dying breath in a small obsidian vial. As the soul passed, his withered hand glowed with a sickly green light, and he felt a sudden surge of stolen vitality pulse through his veins, mending his own bruised skin.
They were no longer whelps. They were hardening.

The Acquisition of the Instrument.

They reached Crushbone not as conquerors, but as opportunistic predators. They avoided the main gates, picking through the slave pens near the entrance. In a cramped, lightless cell, they found him. A Wood Elf, skeletal and covered in Orc-spit.
"Please," the Elf whimpered as Sszar kicked the cell door open. "Don't eat me."
Voksh looked at the Elf, then at a battered, three-stringed lute lying in the straw. A dark thought crossed the Necromancer's mind. "We need a catalyst," Voksh said. "A pulse to keep our blood moving."
Sszar hauled the Elf out by his tattered tunic. "What’s your name, monkey?"
"I... I am Lelyen," the Elf stammered.
"No," Sszar said, looking at the way the Elf’s knees knocked together, making a faint, rhythmic clicking in the silence. "You sound like coins in a pouch. You’re Jingles now."
Voksh handed the Elf the broken lute. "Play, Jingles. Make it hurt."
The Elf took the instrument with trembling hands. He began to pluck the strings, but his fear and the damaged wood produced something horrific. It was a dissonant, screeching wail—a twisted version of a battle chant. It should have been a song of courage, but through Jingles’ terror, it sounded like metal grinding on bone.
To the Iksars, however, it was perfect. The screeching notes acted as a focal point for their aggression, a jagged rhythm to strike to. As the first Orc Centurion charged them, the Squad moved in unison for the first time. They weren't a unit yet, but as the Elf’s agonizing music filled the corridor, they felt the first spark of what they were destined to become.
"Keep playing," Sszar commanded, his rusted blade dripping with Orc blood. "If the music stops, so does your life."

Stay tuned for more soon

[Duik]

Looked for the www.greatlinkhere.com link so i could dismiss.

Dismissed anyways.

[OriginalContentGuy]

Originally Posted by EwulSpif [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Hello everyone and welcome to the story of IMS (Iksar murder squad).

"It was a dark and stormy knight."

[EwulSpif]

Chapter II: The Teir’Dal’s Tithe

The throne of Crushbone was not made of gold.
It was made of arrogance and the stench of unwashed Orc.
Sszar stood in the center of the Great Hall. His breath was a jagged hiss in the humid air. Around him, the IMS held the line. They were covered in the black, oily blood of the Emperor’s guard.
Gorg stood over a pile of mangled pawns, his hands stained to the elbows. Fluffy sat nearby, licking gore from his talons with a rhythmic, wet sound.
They had not come for glory.
They had come for the end of the contract.
⸻
Emperor Crush lay at Sszar’s feet.
The Orc leader’s throat had been opened by a jagged piece of scavenged steel. He did not die with a war cry. He died with a gurgle, staring at a ceiling he no longer owned.
Sszar wiped his blade on the Emperor's tattered surcoat.
“A king of dirt,” Sszar remarked.
“Dirt is still territory,” Voksh countered.
The Necromancer moved among the fallen. He did not seek trophies. He sought essence. He knelt by a dying Royal Guard and placed a hand over the orc’s cooling heart.
“The spark is fading,” Voksh whispered.
He didn't cast a spell. He performed an extraction.
With a sharp, guttural word, Voksh tore the last flicker of vitality from the orc and thrust it toward Sszar. The dark energy hit the Shadowknight’s chest like a physical blow.
Sszar staggered. For a heartbeat, his amber eyes flared with a cold, violet light.
“What was that?” Sszar rasped, clutching his chest.
“A down payment,” Voksh replied. “On the darkness you have yet to earn.”
⸻
The tapestries behind the throne shifted.
Ambassador D’Vinn stepped into the light.
The Teir’Dal did not look at the bodies. He looked at the Iksars as if they were a new breed of vermin that had suddenly learned to use tools.
“Inelegant,” D’Vinn said. His voice was like silk over a razor blade. “But thorough.”
Sszar leveled his rusted blade at the Dark Elf’s throat.
“The Orcs are finished, Teir’Dal. Our debt to the Emperor is paid in his own blood.”
D’Vinn’s smile did not reach his eyes.
“You misunderstand your value, Iksar. You are not mercenaries. You are an investment.”
He tossed a heavy, stained map onto the blood-slicked floor.
“The Orcs were a blunt instrument. I require a scalpel. South of here, in the fog of Dagnor, lies the Estate of Unrest. It is a place of perpetual rot. Go there. Occupy the grounds. Feed on the dead until you become something I can actually use.”
⸻
Jingles struck a single, trembling note on his lute.
The sound was fragile. It echoed off the stone walls, hollow and afraid.
Sszar looked at the map, then at his squad.
They were scarred. They were exhausted. They were thousands of miles from the swamps of Cabilis.
“We go,” Sszar said.
He looked at D’Vinn.
“But if your ‘Estate’ is a grave, I will come back and make sure you share it.”
The Ambassador’s laugh followed them as they marched out of the fortress.
“I certainly hope so, lizard. I certainly hope so.”
⸻
The IMS left Crushbone behind.
They did not look back at the fires.
They moved toward the mountains, a line of green scales in the purple twilight.
They had a name now.
They had a destination.
And in the center of the line, Sszar felt the stolen life-force in his chest begin to itch.

[OriginalContentGuy]

Sszar whistled for a cab and when it came near the license plate said "FRESH" and there were dice in the mirror. If anything I could say that this cab was rare. But I thought "Nah, forget it, yo, holmes to Bel-Air"

[Skarne]

I like it!

[EwulSpif]

Chapter III: The Fog of Dagnor

The Butcherblock Mountains did not welcome them.
The granite slopes were a maze of cold stone and sudden drops, but the IMS did not slow down. They moved south, leaving the stench of burning Orc iron behind.
They were changing.
The scales on Sszar’s shoulders had begun to harden, stained a darker green by the miles they had traveled. He walked at the front, his claws wrapped around the leather hilt of a heavy iron mace. It was crude, but it was heavy enough to crack a skull.
And in his chest, the spark Voksh had stolen from the Orc guard remained. It didn't warm him. It felt like a stone made of dry ice, dragging his pulse down into something slow and deliberate.
⸻
They reached the rim of Dagnor’s Cauldron.
Below them, the world fell away into a jagged bowl of grey mist and stagnant, black water. The air was thick, carrying the smell of old salt and weeping soil.
On the far ridge, barely visible through the shifting fog, stood the Estate of Unrest.
Its white stone walls were ruined, covered in patches of dark, velvet mold. The towers leaned like broken fingers against a sky that had forgotten the sun.
“The architecture of the soft-skins is fragile,” Voksh murmured. His bone wand tapped against his leg in a dry, skeletal rhythm. “They build walls to keep the dead out. They do not realize the dead are already inside the mortar.”
Sszar looked down at the mist.
“Movement,” Krazz said.
The Monk didn't point. He simply dropped into a low, coiled stance. His hands, wrapped in the filthy linen of a fallen Orc centurion, were perfectly still.
⸻
From the shadows of the estate’s front yard, they emerged.
Not a patrol. Not a line.
A shambling stampede.
A dozen skeletal miners and restless apparitions, their bones clicking against the wet weeds as they caught the scent of living blood. They did not shout. They emitted a collective, steam-like hiss that filled the ravine.
In Cabilis, the squad would have broken. In Crushbone, they would have scrambled.
Now, Sszar merely gestured with his mace.
Gorg let go of Fluffy’s leather collar.
The drake did not bark. It launched forward like a green streak through the grass, snapping at the flank of the leading skeleton. It bit just enough to turn the horde’s mindless focus, trailing them in a tight, precise arc right into the bottleneck between two massive granite boulders.
“Process them,” Sszar commanded.
⸻
The impact was surgical.
Krazz moved first. A spinning, low sweep shattered the knee joints of two skeletons, sending them into the mud before their claws could find purchase. He stepped back instantly, allowing Sszar to fill the gap.
Sszar swung the mace.
The iron crushed the ribs of a decaying ghoul. The moment the metal split the bone, the cold stone in Sszar’s chest flared. A thin, violet thread of energy traveled down his arm and vanished into the iron head of the weapon.
The ghoul didn't just collapse; it withered into grey ash, its remaining vitality sucked raw.
Sszar felt his pulse leap. A sickeningly sweet rush of heat filled his throat.
“You are learning,” Voksh hissed from the rear. The Necromancer’s hands were already weaving, casting a thin shield of bone-dust over Sszar’s scarred back. “Do not fight the hunger. Let the iron drink.”
Another ghoul broke through, its rotting fingers reaching for Voksh’s throat.
Krazz did not strike. He simply dropped into the mud, holding his breath and stilling his pulse to zero. The mindless undead lost the scent of life, its head tilting in confusion for a fraction of a second—long enough for Gorg’s axe to split its spine from behind.
⸻
The yard fell silent again.
The stampede was gone, turned into small piles of gray calcium and torn rags in the weeds.
Jingles sat on a wet boulder near the gates. His fingers were wrapped in blood-stained linen, but he didn't stop moving them over his lute. He had tightened the silver dwarf-wire until the wood groaned.
The sound he made wasn't music. It was a low, mechanical hum that vibrated in their teeth—a sensory anchor that kept the IMS moving as a single mind through the blinding fog.
Sszar wiped gray bone-dust from his snout.
He looked up at the heavy oak doors of the house. The violet light in his eyes took a long time to fade.
“The yard is clear,” Sszar said.
He didn't look back at the squad. He knew they were behind him.
“We go inside.”

[EwulSpif]

Chapter IV: The Blood in the Foyer.

The oak doors did not creak when Sszar pushed them. They gave way with a soft, wet splinter, like a boot stepping on a bloated corpse.
Inside, the Estate of Unrest smelled of old grease, wet wool, and copper.
The foyer was a hollow ribcage of dark wood. A grand staircase curved upward into the blackness of the first floor, its banisters cracked and weeping dry rot. On the floor lay the remnants of velvet carpets, now reduced to a black sludge that clung to the IMS’s boots.

They did not rush. They stepped into the room and became part of the silence.
“The air is heavy,” Gorg muttered. His hand stayed on his axe hilt. Fluffy pressed close to his leg, the drake’s throat vibrating with a silent, rhythmic click.
“It is the weight of bad deaths,” Voksh said. He raised his bone wand, his hollow eyes tracing the shadows on the ceiling. “The soft-skins who died here did not want to leave. Their greed is still stuck to the walls.”
⸻
The sound came from the corridors leading off the main hall.
A wet, dragging scrape.
Three dark ghouls shambled into the dim light of the foyer. Their flesh was the color of bruised plums, torn open to reveal grey muscle beneath. They did not have the mindless hunger of the skeletons in the yard.
They had malice.
The lead ghoul carried a broken iron poker, its fingers fused to the metal by old fire. It looked at Sszar and let out a wet, rattling scream that tore through the quiet of the house.
Behind the squad, Jingles shifted his weight on a broken stool.
His fingers didn't hit a chord. They scraped across the silver dwarf-wire, producing a sharp, metallic screech that perfectly matched the ghoul’s frequency.
The sound did not soothe. It pinned.
The ghouls faltered for a fraction of a second, their heads jerking as the dissonant vibration disrupted their focus.
“Take them down,” Sszar hissed.
⸻
The foyer became a meat grinder.
The lead ghoul lunged, swinging the iron poker toward Sszar’s head. The Shadowknight did not parry. He stepped into the blow, letting the rusted iron shatter against his heavy shoulder plate.
The pain was clean. It fed the cold stone in his chest.
Sszar brought his mace down in a vertical arc, burying the spiked head directly into the ghoul’s collarbone. The violet spark surged, smelling of ozone and burnt hair as it tore through the creature’s rotting marrow.
To his left, Krazz was already moving.
He didn't use weapons. He used leverage. The Monk caught the second ghoul by its throat, using its own momentum to slam it into the stone hearth of the fireplace. There was a dull thud, followed by the sound of a skull cracking like an eggshell.
The third ghoul slipped past them, its black claws reaching for Voksh.
The Necromancer didn't move. He didn't blink.
He reached out and touched the ghoul’s forehead with his bare, scaled palm.
Vampiric Bite.
A sickening crunch echoed through the hall as Voksh’s magic tore into the ghoul's remaining flesh. The creature withered, drying up like salt-cured meat in seconds, while the shallow cuts on Voksh’s arms closed with a wet, black sheen.
⸻
The foyer was still again.
Three corpses lay in the sludge, their essence entirely harvested.
Voksh knelt beside the ghoul Sszar had crushed. The creature had been wearing something beneath the filth—a torn, heavy linen garment, thick with old stains that refused to fade.
The Necromancer pulled it free.
Bloodstained Tunic.
It was heavy, stiff with the dried vitality of a hundred victims. As Voksh threw it over his shoulders, the fabric seemed to tighten, the dark red stains pulsing faintly against his grey scales.
He looked taller. More ancient.
“It retains heat,” Voksh murmured, his claws brushing the dark cloth. “The mages of the soft-skins think this is a curse. To us, it is a reservoir.”
Sszar wiped black ichor from his mace onto his thigh. He looked up at the curved staircase.
From the darkness above, a new sound began to drift down.
A cold, aristocratic laughter. The sound of dry bones and old iron.
The King of the Balcony knew they were there.
Sszar gripped his weapon tighter.
“Let him laugh,” Sszar said. “He’s just naming his price.”

[EwulSpif]

Chapter V: The King of the Balcony.
The staircase groaned under the weight of three hundred pounds of scaled muscle.
The IMS moved up floor by floor, a silent, rhythmic ascent through corridors that smelled of dust and old linen. They did not stop to clear the side rooms. They did not look back. Every shadow that lunged from the doorways was met with the dull, mechanical crack of Krazz’s fists or the wet crunch of Gorg’s axe.
They were clearing a path.
At the end of the upper hallway stood a set of double doors, their bloated wood warped by the mountain mist. Beyond them lay the balcony.
Sszar did not pause. He kicked the doors open.
⸻
The night air of Dagnor’s Cauldron rushed into the room, cold and sharp.
The squad fanned out instantly into a practiced semi-circle, their boots clicking against the wet stone of the terrace. They did not strike. They waited for the signal.
The Skeleton Lord stood at the far edge of the balcony, his tattered royal surcoat fluttering in the wind. He did not look like the ghouls below. He stood straight, his ancient steel blade resting against his collarbone.
The undead king turned his head. The hollow sockets of his skull locked onto Sszar’s amber eyes.
A shiver, cold as a Kunark swamp, raced down Sszar’s spine. It was not fear. It was recognition.
The Lord threw his head back. A manic, dry-boned laughter erupted from his throat, echoing off the pale walls of the estate. Then, the skeleton raised a single, bony hand. The air between them warped, sucking all remaining light into his pale palm.
No sound. No warning.
**Harm Touch.**
⸻
It hit Sszar like a dark meteor.
It was not physical force; it was a concentrated blast of a thousand years of isolation and pure, unadulterated malice. The unholy energy ripped into his chest, blackening his green scales and tearing through his veins like acid.
Sszar’s knees buckled. He was thrown backward against the stone railing, his heart struggling to beat under the weight of the shadow pressure. Smoke rose from his charred armor.
Fluffy let out a low, vibrating growl, his hackles rising as he bared his canines, ready to spring. Gorg gripped his axe, his muscles coiling.
Sszar raised a shaking, blackened claw.
“Stay your hands,” the Shadowknight rasped.
His voice was different now. Deeper. Hollowed out, as if spoken from the bottom of a dry well.
He forced himself upright, his claws digging into the cracked masonry until the stone split. The darkness the Lord had sent to kill him did not dissipate. It met Sszar’s own deep, cold-blooded hatred—the fury of an exile, a dreg from Cabilis who refused to die in the mud.
The two forces melted together. The pain stopped destroying him. It became fuel.
Sszar leveled his mace at the king.
“This one... is mine.”
⸻
The duel was a brutal, back-and-forth symphony of splintering bone and grinding iron.
The Skeleton Lord moved with a speed that defied his ancient frame, his blade flickering like a serpent’s tongue. Sszar was losing ground, his blood staining the wet stone, but he did not retreat.
He grew colder. He grew heavier.
With every jagged cut, the hatred inside him burned deeper, turning into a black sun in his gut.
The Skeleton Lord lunged for a final, decapitating strike. Sszar did not dodge. He stepped directly into the blade, letting the ancient steel bite deep into his shoulder muscle, locking the weapon in place.
He looked the dead king in his empty eyes.
Sszar unleashed the darkness.
A wave of pure, concentrated malice erupted from his chest, traveling down his arm and slamming into the Lord. Sszar felt his own life force, which had been flickering out, suddenly roar back to life, replenished anew as he inhaled the very essence of his enemy.
The Skeleton Lord staggered, his ancient frame rattling as the stolen vitality withered what was left of his form.
Sszar gave him no time to recover.
Behind him, Jingles’ lute reached a high, agonizing drone. Sszar’s mace began to vibrate in sympathy, emitting a piercing scream as he swung it in a wide, punishing arc.
The iron head connected.
The Lord’s skull did not crack—it shattered like glass. Fragments of bone sprayed across the balcony, and the ancient crown clattered uselessly into the dust.
⸻
Silence returned to the estate.
Sszar stood over the remains, his chest heaving, his body glowing with a faint, predatory violet aura. He did not look at his wounds. He looked at his hands.
“I am the hunger now,” he whispered.
Voksh stepped from the doorway, his new bloodstained tunic pulsing in the darkness. A thin, skeletal smile touched his snout.
“The transition is complete,” the Necromancer noted quietly. “The dregs are gone. The Murder Squad has arrived.”
Sszar turned toward the interior of the house, his eyes burning with a cold, permanent violet light.
“We aren't done,” Sszar said. “The basement is next.”