https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/98bdb1/warhammer_3_ogres_and_logo_confirmed_yes_yes/

Seated outside of the cavern on a large slab of stone, Drakas thoughts meandered to what he had seen, and what he should do. The encampment below him, a bustling hive of activity as hunters returned from the wilds, blacksmiths beat hammers against anvils, and warriors trained themselves in the old ways of combat. Their cries, thrusts, and jabs, guided by the elders who had spent their whole lives fighting against the goblin tribes.

Recalling his own training under his granbaloon, a huge gray bearded giant of an ogrekan that had beat young ones down into the dust and called it a mercy. Drakas could still remember the ring he had fought him within. The flat white plains of the tundra, surrounding them as he stood face to face with his granba on a thick sheet of ice in the middle of a lake, encircled by younglings, their expressions filled with nervous tension.

…Mace arm straight out before him, the old ogre smiled at him, his bald scalp marked with tattoos that had been shaped into disconcerting eyes that watched Drakas from either side. Each vicious strike delivered with such power that it numbed his arm, when the old warrior cackled, and backhanded Drakas across the face with his fist. “Watch everything, youngling. Any part of me could become a weapon at any moment.” His gruff voice, misting in the cold mountain air as the old warrior shifted his position.

Breathless, sweating in the burning suns that brightened the sky, Drakas could not believe how fast his granba could move. The pain in the left side of his face still throbbed, along with a collection of other bruises, before he began to circle again, his feet lightly touching the bloodied patches of ice where other students had fallen. This test, as much about finding his footing as much as being aware of his surroundings, and being able to make each of his attacks fluid. So that no motion could be wasted.

Coming in at his granba’s weakened side where in a past war he had taken a terrible wound that had never fully healed properly, Drakas pounded relentlessly at the old warrior’s mace and shield, determined to get a hit on him, when the old warrior lightly spun away from him chuckling. “Good work, boy. Find an enemy's weakness and turn it against them.”

However Drakas’ advantage was soon lost as he growled an oath, and was forced to retreat backwards under granba’s fresh assault. The old warrior’s mace and shield worked together in unison to press him across the slippery surface, his voice like a hammer beating at him, “but never underestimate your opponent.”

Feeling himself almost slip on the ice, Drakas sensed a crack begin to form beneath him, and a plan immediately formed in his mind. With granba advancing towards him yet again, he used the momentum of the old warrior’s next attack to get out of his way, when the ice broke apart and his granbaloon fell. His wild cry of outrage, turned to shocked surprise as he splashed into the freezing cold water, before coming back up with a snarl, his mouth spitting out water, and blue eyes alight with fire.

Looking up at Drakas with a sudden savage smile, the old grizzled fighter snatched Drakas’ by the leg before he could react, and pulled him down into the cold, wet depths of the lake, his body fighting against the cold as every breath became hard.

His feet kicking upwards towards the spot where he had last seen the ice weakest, he broke through the surface. His granba laughing gleefully as he hauled him back out with one heavily muscle arm. “Well done, youngling, you will make a fine warrior. Let that be a lesson to you, young ones, always watch your footing.”

Grinning despite himself, as water spluttered out of his mouth, Drakas’ eyes lifted upward to search the crowd of would-be warriors, and found Rayela at the edge of the circle, smiling back at him with pride…

It had been a different time back then. One full of purpose, hope, and conviction. But now, as he studied his own people. He couldn’t help but think how many lives would be lost? How many more would bleed for freedom? And in that brief instant it was too much for him. He couldn’t breathe, and he couldn’t move, when a warm hand fell on his shoulders.

The demon’s voice echoing in his ear, “My promise is kept, champion.” Even as another voice spoke to him, “As always, you think too much, my heart.”

The kiss he felt against his left cheek, burned his skin as he felt the weight of the entire world suddenly lift up off of his shoulders, her ruby coloured eyes looking back at him as he turned around to face her. Her sweet intoxicating scent reminded him of everything he had lost as he felt his heart clench inside of him, and took her in his arms. “I have missed you.” The tears that spilled down onto her shoulders, causing her to laugh as she held him, her own tears warming his skin. “I did not think warriors were supposed to cry.”

“They do when they have something to celebrate.”

His insides warmed as she laughed again with joy, he forgot how terrified he had been to see her again. The worry he would feel nothing for her, and asked, “how did you know I was here?”

“How could I not know? Your name is on the lips of everyone in camp. The mighty warrior who slew mountain wolves alone, and marched here bleeding to fall in camp. Besides, Tershan never could keep his mouth shut,” she said with a gleeful smile.

Biting back his own smile at the antics of his one time close friend, he held her close to him for what seemed like an eternity. His mind filled with questions. He wanted to ask where she had been? What she had been doing? But as the suns slowly sunk in from the horizon, throwing it’s gorgeous array of light against them, he found he could not care.

Finally, after a while, she murmured into his chest, “there is something that you should know.”

Head pulled back away from him as she wrapped arms around herself, and looked out over the mountain’s glistening white slopes in the orange firelight, seeing the many plumes of smoke that filled the horizon, and the colorful wyverns that had begun to dance in the afternoon clouds. Named the Glorious Dance of Dragons, a celebration of another day nearing its end, it was a most welcoming sight to Drakas. When Rayela’s voice suddenly became tentative. “With you gone, my family believed it was time I had a new betrothed. I told them that I was not ready. But after a while, I began to lose hope, Drakas, and they…”

Already half sensing where this was going, Drakas wanted to stop her there, tell her that he did not care. That she had done what she had to survive on her own without him. But that part of him, that part of him that cried out to know who, forced him to be silent. “...I am Ulgak’s Chosen now. It is he that leads the gathered tribes. He believes there is much that you and he can work on together.”

Rage swelling through his veins at the mention of Ulgak, a fearsome warrior that took great pleasure in hurting others, Drakas wanted to scream in frustration, find the warrior and wring his neck. But instead he replied softly, “where is he?”

~*~

Silent as they meandered their way back down the mountain’s stone staircase, Drakas mind swirled to thoughts of Ulgak and Rayela together, his own mind him torturing with images, when he saw something that made him pause. Specks of black dust crawling forward out of the icey white expanse of the tundra, moving in columns that were not natural, and without thought he began to run.

Scrambling as he fell down the snowy slope in his haste to reach the bottom. He found the encampment below him in chaos, women and children crying out as they raced away to the safety of the caves. Men and women clutching makeshift weapons in hand as they hurried to the low stone wall, and with it a swelling hum that seemed to fill the air.

Neck hairs prickling with a dark sense of premonition, Drakas pushed his way through the fleeing crowds of people, Rayela right on his heels, and wondered if the dark ones had finally come to put an end to them.

Lips peeled back into a snarl at the thought of being captured again, he almost didn’t realize he was at the wall, where hundreds of his kin were gathered together into some semblance of military formations, their ragged ranks, far too spaced out. But Drakas supposed it was better than nothing as he noted the much larger contingent of ogrekans in their thick fur armor that made up the frontlines, veteran warriors and hunters that wore heavy beards against the winter storms, and braided top knots at the back of their heads.

With the hunters readying their longbows to fire, he saw more than a few uneasy faces among his brothers and sisters, their maces, shields, and axes swinging nervously back and forth, and wondered how many of them had actually killed anything?

Head shaking at the idea of so many unsullied in their ranks, he searched around him, and found Ulgak in the lead. Ulgak the Fearless, Ulgak the Bold, or as some liked to call him, Ulgak the Tyrant. The huge bearded warrior with his great battleaxe Wuzthrod in hand, let out a mighty roar at the advancing enemy army, his big belly rumbling with laughter as though it was the most wondrous thing he had ever seen. Their black armored ranks looked much like tiny black beetles that marched towards them through the snow in tight formations.

Teeth gritted together as he thrust his way to Ulgak’s side, the huge stone-faced warrior turned to look at Drakas with a rictus of a smile, his bearskin cloak making the warrior look three times his normal size as Ulgak laughed, “Drakas! You’re here! This will be a glorious battle, brother! We shall slaughter the enemy! And reclaim our homeland together! I know it! The gods have spoken to me!”

Half wondering if the fool had lost his mind, Drakas gazed around him at the faces of ogrekans that were far too young for battle, the elderly warriors with gray hair, and the women who had nothing but rusted fishing holes to defend themselves with, and replied, “we should send those who cannot fight back to the caves.”

Green eyes burning with a fiery light, Ulgak let out another sharp bark of laughter, “ever the same, Drakas, too soft, and weak hearted to understand the true complexities of battle. We need every fighter here if we are to win.” Drakas however had seen his fair share of battles, most of them with the dark mages, but some of them on his own on the Island on Bloodtides. Numbers had never mattered then, and it would not matter now.

Fists clenched together, he considered beating some sense into him, when he felt Rayela’s arm upon his shoulder, and forced himself to quench his mounting rage. He then spotted something that his people did not see, the tall slim form of a female, leading the horde of orcs, goblins, and giants towards them, her familiar white robes, blending in so well with the snow, he would have missed her if he not for her the blackened staff she held.

Suddenly breathless as he leapt over the low wall, he heard Ulgak’s cry of annoyance, heard Rayela’s voice call out to him to come back, but as his gaze locked onto the woman, he saw the diminutive goblin that walked by her side. He knew then, instinctively, that it was her, and whipped his head back towards the lines of ogrekans who were staring at him. “They are not our enemies! They are friends of mine! Allies in our fight against the dark ones!”

Startled as shock rippled up and down the crowds of milling warriors, Ulgak was next over the wall, his square block face tight with rage as he grabbed hold of Drakas, and spun him around. But Drakas, sick of looking at the warrior who had stolen Rayela from him, knocked his hands away, his body instinctively squaring up against him.

Burning green eyes meeting golden eyes that glinted with ice cold rage, Drakas was about to walk away, when Ulgak’s battleaxe twirled through the air towards him, it’s spinning cut almost lopping off his skull, and slicing a thin cut into his chin as Drakas growled.

Mace in his hand in the blink of an eye, he was atop the warrior in an instant, Harl’s Bane bursting with wild purple flames as he pressed the ogrekan backwards through the snow. The big warrior, too stupid to realize that he was outmatched, and that his strength was useless here as he tried to punch and kick him.

Deflecting each swing, he countered with strikes that cracked Ulgak’s ribs, broke his left arm, and when he fell down to his knees before him clutching his wounded arm, he punched the warrior hard in the chin, bloodying his mouth. He then moved in to kill him, his breath clouding in the air around him as every bit of emotion washed through him, jealousy, anger, and fury, but mostly the feeling of betrayal.

But as he stared down into Ulagk’s wide green eyes, he suddenly realized he could not do it, and despite the screams he thought he heard from behind him to stop, he struck the big ogre on the side of the head, knocking him out cold. He then turned to look at Shureen and Kirgin who stood a few feet away from him, and he had no words to say. But it seemed he didn’t need to as the priestess rushed in to press her head into his chest. “I thought you were dead.”

To which Drakas replied, “Not yet, but we still have a war to fight.” And felt her head shaking against him. “Must you always be so serious, you big lunkhead?”

“Not always,” he smiled.