Ba Satha

Ba Satha was born from the great Drake breeding pens of the City of Dreams in the Sorrowlakes, and his early life with his pack was one of great enjoyment. Trained as both sturdy pack animals and ferocious war beasts, Ba Satha and his kin were treated well by their Lizardmen handlers, and they shared strong bonds. Ba Satha would do anything to protect his masters and friends, and they would do the same for him. The outbreak of the Gaellen War ripped this idyllic life apart, with him and his fellows thrust into the bloody conflict. Handler and packmate alike were slaughtered with Telerian League steel, and Ba Satha survived through battle after battle by sheer luck. During one terrible clash, while defending his master, Ba Satha was struck with a mace and knocked unconscious. Hours later, he awoke to find himself alone, in a field of corpses. He rose, cried out for his friends, and roamed through the muck, bodies, and blood, hoping that even one of his broodmates or handlers still lived. He found no-one — only the cruel Knights Revenant and their flesh-pickers, who scoured the battlefields for fresh corpses for use in their rituals. Ba Satha was exhausted and terrified. He was captured easily. After being chained and dragged to a hidden outpost in the Stormwind Wastes, Ba Satha was subject to horrendous treatment. Injected with vile concoctions, tortured with nightmarish equipment, and forced to eat the flesh of his own kind, his suffering seemed unending. Yet Ba Satha still cried out for his friends, hoping that someone would finally come and lead him back home. Thinking they had finally broken his spirit, Ba Satha’s torturers carried out a deed that would have been barbaric even to other Knights Revenant, had they known about it. They implanted a soul into the Drake’s tired form, hoping he would relinquish his body to it. But it was not just any soul — the Knights Revenant had captured a Demonspawn, and they were curious what effect she would have on Ba Satha’s tortured being. Ba Satha writhed and screamed, as his soul and the Demonspawn’s struggled for dominance. As they fought, their body transmogrified, turning Ba Satha into a half-Demonic, half-Drake monstrosity. His wordless howls became guttural sobs, with his calls for help piercing the ears of all who watched this hellish experiment. To the surprise of Ba Satha’s captors, one soul did not dominate the other. Instead, the two merged, uniting behind the same bone-deep desire: escape. Once their synthesis was complete, Ba Satha was no longer an animal – they were a creature wholly unique to the world, with the strength of a Drake and the magic and cunning of a Demonspawn. As their agony finally faded and they adapted to their new form, Ba Satha rose from their haunches and turned on their captors. The Knights Revenant did not flee fast enough. Emerging from their prison, Ba Satha was torn as to where to go. They knew of other Demonspawn hiding in the Stormwind Wastes, but they were unsure how they would be received. Instead, they turned north, toward the Sorrowlakes – for the part of Ba Satha that remained a Drake hoped there would be friends there, and safety. Across parched fields, dust bowls, and feeble fords, Ba Satha advanced — limping past ravaged supply trains, ramshackle field hospitals, and mounds of dead. They used their Demonspawn powers to lend themselves strength, burning through magic to keep going. The part that was once a Demonspawn could not help but think what horror might be awaiting them, but the Drake in Ba Satha wanted to be home so badly that there was no turning from the path. When Ba Satha finally arrived, they did not find their friends. They did not find their enemies. All they found was a smoking ruin, a sea of bodies, and small pockets of Gaellens picking through it all — the remnants of the once great City of Dreams. Ba Satha dragged himself to what remained of their birthing pen and settled down in the rubble. They let out one last heart-rending scream, hoping some — any — of their broodmates or masters might emerge. But no one came. Even the Gaellens in the ruins were too forlorn, too devastated, at the sight of the destroyed city, to go to him. Exhausted, the bruised and battered Ba Satha let their twisted body collapse. They closed their eyes and hoped for peaceful dreams. They did not get them, but they awoke deciding they would not give up, and so they set out into the wider Sorrowlakes, searching for the family the Drake had lost. How long it would take, or how long the Demonspawn would tolerate this quest, they did not know.