Who Is Maccabeus?

((Hello all, just wanted to post my characters biography, so enjoy the birth of a madman.))

PART 1

In nursery rhymes, woodland cooks are only good for one thing – kissing drunken princesses or rescuing lost children. But in the old forests of Lordaeron, between the northern mountains of Stratholme and the old Blackened Woods territory, one cook intended to leave his forests echoing with the screams and sobs of the High Elven natives.

Deep in the Darrowmere Forest, before the arrival of the Scourge to Lordaeron, near what is today called the Noxious Glade, a cabin of logs and pine needles stood. It was the home of to a Camp Chef by the name of Maccabeus Puddingblack. Though generally viewed as a recluse, he had the reputation of a knowledgeable herbalist and hedge doctor. The few brave souls that sought him out were always pleasantly suspired to meet a smiling face and were quickly lulled by the chef’s rustic charm. His recipes were well known throughout the forests, and he was often employed to ladle up hearty stews and sauces to the hungry loggers at the Browman Mill. To the local townsfolk he was a harmless eccentric who knew as much about cooking as he did doctoring. But in truth, he was a monster consumed by hatred and racism; a product of the death and slaughter of the Second War.

Already a well regarded camp chef, Maccabeus was called up to defend Lordaeron during the Second War at the age of 27. He was forced to trade in his meat cleavers for a sword and shield, and his familiar lumber camp for an army camp. His years of fighting taught Maccabeus much in the way soldiering; however the grim crucible of death changed and warped the simple cook. He became fascinated with killing. He began to study the ways to prolong the experience, to bleed an enemy slowly before delivering the coup de grace. At first Maccabeus occupied himself on Orcs, but as his bloodlust became more refined he choose another race to practice his art on.

Maccabeus did not blame the Orcs for persecuting the war; they were orcs, orcs were killers - that was what they were born to do - and Maccabeus understood killers. No, Maccabeus blamed the High Elven nation who prolonged the war by not aiding their human allies. If Quel'Thalas and Anasterian Sunstrider had acted sooner, if the elves had honored their debts instead of dismissing their oaths to the Alliance, all of the bloodshed might have been prevented. Yes, Maccabeus twisted mind reasoned, if only the elves had done their part then he would have never have had to leave his wooded home, and would never have had discovered the terrible truth that he was a murderous psychopath.

High Elves became his new favored target. Maccabeus had always despised their arrogance and snobbery. While making his livelihood amongst the lumber camps boarding Quel'Thalas, Maccabeus had been the victim of elven Rangers and Pathstriders who waged a constant, clandestine battle against human loggers. While these skirmishes seldom lead to bloodshed, they often left the loggers humiliated and had cost Maccabeus precious ingredients and patrons. This disdain grew to a burning hatred and Maccabeus feed its fires with a new found delicacy: the livers and lungs of elven conscripts.

PART 2

At last, when the Second War was over, Maccabeus returned to the Darrowmere Forests with this serpent in his breast and a insatiable hunger in his gullet. He went back to his cabin and got his prized butcher knives out from beneath the hearth where he had hid them. And then and there, Maccabeus began to sharpen those blades even before he fixed himself a homecoming meal…soon after, elves from Quel'Lithien Lodge began to disappear from the forests.

The Second war had left much of Lordaeron ravaged and sacked. The Human kingdoms were in need of rebuilding and do this a massive amount new lumber had to be cut. Work began again in the forests of the north with an army of loggers cutting wood. To feed this number of loggers was many a foreman’s constant worry. However one lumber camp never seemed to run out of meat...at the Browman Mill Maccabeus made sure no logger went to bed hungry.

Maccabeus was careful to leave no traces of his murders behind. Having worked extensively with loggers, and then with rangers while in the army, Maccabeus was comfortable using his woodcraft to stalk his victims and escape without leaving a trail. At his cabin in the woods, he kept a root cellar for storing perishables, but in the days since his return from the war it had become his personal abattoir. Elven victims often woke to find themselves chained to a blood-soaked butchers table just as Maccabeus began to remove their livers for the next day’s stew. Finally, after boiling all the meat from their bones, Maccabeus would create a fabulous blood sausage using the victim’s intestines combined with rare spices he imported from goblin traders in the south. He called the dish ‘Logger’s Revenge’ and it was all the rage in the Lumber Camps of Darrowmere.

With supplies tight after the war, Maccabeus was not one to waste any portion of his elvish victims. Taking the leftover skeletons, Maccabeus ground them into a course meal and used the concoction as a fertilizer in his vegetable gardens. Over the years, he watched as potatoes and tomatoes sprouted into a bone-feed version of the local flora. In the intervening time between the fall of the Horde and the rise of the Scourge, Maccabeus filled his grounds with a many such aberrations, turning the farm into a mockery of a healthy garden.

As more and more elves began to disappear, members of the Quel'Lithien Lodge began to suspect that the lowly camp chef, who always greeted them with smiles and jests, might be up to something truly sinister. However, before the masters of the Lodge could act, the Plague swept through northern Lordaeron. Maccabeus was spared infection for some time; maintaining his isolation while his nearest neighbors fell sick. But the evil he had wrought, the cruelty and corruption he has forced upon the land, drew the Lich King's eye as a vulture to a corpse. One night while he slept, a noxious green fog drifted into Maccabeus’s clearing. It was an unnatural cloud of necromantic magic, and beneath the soil of the gardens something began to stir. Ghosts and Banshees, the sprits of the elves he had slain coalesced within the fog and converged on the sleeping Maccabeus. And it was with abject horror that Maccabeus awoke to find himself surrounded by the leering dead and their cries of vengeance…Maccabeus’s suffering lasted only till his dead body rose again in the service of the Scourge.

As a slave to the Ner'zhul’s omnipotent will, Maccabeus marched on the kingdom of the Elves, devouring those that fell beneath his claws. Barely sentient at first, the bloodthirsty core of the cook reveled in the elven massacre that was the battle for Quel'Thalas. However, as the Third War wore on, bits of Maccabeus’s unnatural hate drove him to resist the commands of the Lich King: it was his hate of the elves that started him down this bloody path, and in the end it would be his hate that freed him from the yoke of the scourge.

His chance came with the revolt of Sylvanas Windrunner. Maccabeus sided with the Banshee Queen against Arthas out of necessity, using his military experience to secure his freedom from the Scourge. However, after the final battle that broke the armies of the Dreadlords, Maccabeus fled Lordaeron, striking out on his own. Maccabeus was distrustful that Lady Sylvanas had the best interests of the Forsaken in her unbeating heart. After all she was an elf, and all elves are selfish and backstabbing.

PART 3

Over the next five years Maccabeus wandered the face of Azeroth, and by the time the Horde and the Alliance had struck their uneasy truce, he found himself in the great forests of Northern Kalimdor. It was here that he learned of another wood that needed clearing of its elven occupiers. Never before had Maccabeus seen a Night Elf, yet here in the forests of Ashenvale he knew the species well enough by their arrogance and shadowy tactics. Maccabeus quickly became embroiled in the battles of the Warsong Outriders and the Silverwing Sentinels, agreeing with the Orcs that it was their right to take from the land to and provide for their people...it seemed particularly just since it was a race of elves that were perpetuating the conflict. These battles at the side of his former enemy - the Warsong Clan, greatly improved his opinion of Orcs and their place in the Emerging world.

As Maccabeus’s reputation among the Warsong Outriders grew, he found employ with the orcs in their lumber camps. Drawing upon his days spent in and around lumber camps and loggers, he toiled during the day with the Peons among the trees; all the time hoping to draw the Night Elves from their groves with the steady sound of Warsong saws. Then when night came, he would done his warrior plate and march into the woods to kill any of the pointy-eared bastards he found sneaking around - hanging their body parts in the trees like some gruesome Winters Veil decoration. These were not the careful hunts of his living years; he had lost much of his affinity for tracking when his hearing had dulled and his nose had dried up. No, these were the rampages of a bloodthirsty monster, all pretense of secrecy gone now that open war existed with the elves of the Silverwing Sentinels.

It was while working in the lumber camps that word came that the High Elves, Now calling themselves Blood Elves, were to be inducted into the horde; Thrall had obviously been tricked by the deceitful creatures and it was obvious to Maccabeus that this was the work of Sylvanas Windrunner. Late that very night, between bites of Night Elf liver, Maccabeus realized something had to be done to stop Thrall from destroying the Horde. He knew, just as they had with the Human Kingdoms before, no alliance with the treacherous elves ever lasted a minute past the time it took to utter the promise.

Maccabeus understood that he must seek allies to open they eyes of the Orc Chieftain - or to remove him from power if that became necessary. If along the way he exposed Sylvanas for the Bitch Queen she was...all the better. At the Camps at night, among the Shamans and Warriors of the Warsong, rumors had reached Maccabeus’s decayed ears that a group of Horde was organizing to overthrow Thrall and his cronies. In Orgrimmar he learned they called themselves the Blacktooth Grin after that clan of ferocious orcs from the Second War and that they claimed Stonard for their own. Boarding a Zepplin to the Eastern Kingdoms he set off to Grom'gol Base Camp to find them.