Tetzel

Background Southshore and Human Supremacy

J ohann Tetzel was born and raised in Southshore, where, like his childhood friends Sally Whitemane and Renault Mograine, he grew increasingly concerned about the rumors of reanimated corpses springing up in the north.



His father, Gustaf, was a priest of the Argent Dawn and famous in some circles for his “forbidden experiment”: he kept Johann’s sister Lorelei’s ears plugged and raised her in a complete absence of sound to discover if human language was learned or innate — and if it was innate, what the “original” human speech was.

As it turned out, speech is learned, not innate — and the unfortunate Lorelei grew up both mute and mentally stunted. Gustaf then spent the rest of his life trying to rehabilitate her back into society.

Because of Gustaf’s experiment and presumed expertise in the matter, he was later called upon to help rehabilitate two feral adult night elves in Darnassus — a certain Isilyë and Yarralomë — who had famously been transformed into animals for a five year period in Darkshore, lost all memory of who they were, and were later discovered eating one of their children.

Gustaf’s family accompanied him on his mission to the elvish capital. It was there that Johann — then a teenager training to be a priest in the Argent Dawn like his father — experienced a profound change of heart about the non-human races.

He had always been under the impression that the night elves were among the noblest of races, but witnessing Isilyë and Yarralomë’s amoral savagery first hand made him reconsider the once implausible theory of his old friends Sally and Renault that night elves were in fact descended from trolls, that humans alone could be trusted in their apocalyptic struggle against the Scourge.

Years later, Gustaf took his family to Forest Song in Ashenvale to assess the mental and spiritual health of Isilyë and Yarralomë’s one surviving child, who was being raised there in secret as a protection against the intrusive public scrutiny her circumstances invited. He made a detailed study of her — the only record of her existence — before finally returning home to Southshore.

No sooner did they arrive than Johann took his still unpacked bags and headed straight to the Scarlet Monastery in Tirisfal to join Sally and Renault in the new anti-Scourge order called the Scarlet Crusade, of which Renault had suspiciously already been made a commander.





Undeath of a Salesman: The Scarlet Crusade

As estranged from reality as the Scarlet Crusade was often accused of being, it proved to be as earthly as any other human institution when it came to appointments to higher office.

Johann quickly discovered that he had a talent for preaching, and his success in this arena got him a commission from Grand Inquisitor Isillien to preach — and sell — various indulgences to the populace, most infamously the indulgence to buy one’s friends and relatives out of Shadow:

„Sobald das Geld im Kasten klingt, die Seele in den Himmel springt!“ “As soon as money in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory’s fire springs!”

Accusations of fraud never stuck; he simply made too much money for his benefactors for them to tolerate any dissent.

Later, when his childhood friend Sally — now an Inquisitor — sought to become the Scarlet Monastery’s High Inquisitor, Johann plied his talent for sales to raise money to pay off the debt she incurred while securing the acquisition of Isillien and the other Inquisitors.

His efforts were a huge success; Sally became High Inquisitor (and de facto supreme commander) of the Scarlet Monastery, and Johann himself was made an Inquisitor and, after some years of similar fund-raising service at the Monastery and in Hearthglen, sent to the besieged city of Tyr’s Hand to help pay for the ascendency of High General Brigitte Abbendis on the pretense of raising funds for the restoration of the Scarlet Basilica.



It was then that Johann’s streak of good fortune ran out.

One of his biggest sellers was a fraudulent elixir sold as a vaccine against undeath. It was, in fact, nothing more than grain alcohol. After the hysteria over the Andorhal grain scare subsided enough, certain grain resellers lobbied to relax restrictions, and as contaminated grain got into Tyr’s Hand and started turning people into zombies, panic took hold of the city and Tetzel found himself overwhelmed by demand for his elixir. But some of his elixir stock was also contaminated, which made more zombies, which increased demand for his elixir even more.

Almost overnight, the city that had for so long withstood the Scourge’s siege from without fell to undeath from within.

Only one man seemed unaffected by the plague of undeath: Johann himself.

It didn’t take long for the town to deduce that he alone had not taken the elixir, an oversight that was quickly and violently corrected by an angry mob that dragged him out in front of the Scarlet Basilica, force-fed him his own elixir, then savaged him when he rose into undeath — particularly his jaw, which was hacked and torn from his face and nailed to the basilica door.

Then they threw him into a cell while they deliberated on what to do with him. And with themselves.



Meanwhile, word of the fate of Tyr’s Hand quickly reached Light’s Hope Chapel, and a preemptive strike was ordered.



Johann watched helplessly as one of the invaders — a druid who had taken the form of a panther — clawed its way past his jailers. The cat then leapt into its normal form — a male night elf — to rifle through the jailers’ pockets in search of the cell keys.

Then, one by one, the elf opened each cell door and bludgeoned the undead prisoner inside to “true” death with his staff.

Finally he came to Johann’s cell.

The invasion already had Johann dazed with disbelief, but just as a man who lost an arm can sometimes still feel it tingling, so Johann felt his phantom jaw drop to the floor as he stared into the face of the advancing night elf and recognized where he saw it first.

It was Yarralomë, one of the two feral night elves that Johann’s father had tried to rehabilitate.

Yarralomë strode into the cell, raised his staff to jab it into Johann’s face … then froze as recognition took hold of him.

The two men stood in mutual horror for a time before Yarralomë broke the silence: “Are you Johann Tetzel?”

Johann nodded. It was all he could do in his mouthless condition.

“Do you know who I am?” Yarralomë asked.

Johann nodded again.

More awkward silence.

“What I owe your family,” Yarralomë finally said, “is beyond measure.” He lowered his staff. “I’m back in the world now. Serving the Circle again. Getting married even.”

What was left of Johann’s face registered surprise.

Yarralomë quickly outlined his nuptial plans for the vernal equinox to a Sentinel and crusader in the Argent Dawn named Lómion.

At this, Johann’s surprise contorted into alarm.

“Lómion” was the name the Sentinels gave to the one surviving child of Yarralomë’s incestuous union with his sister Isilyë. And because the deranged pair were eating Lómion’s brother when she was found, Johann’s family had to take an oath of silence about her identity when they were given access to her. And now, for all those precautions, Fate had led the child inexorably and perversely back to the father.

Johann frantically tried to warn Yarralomë, oath of silence be damned. But his jawlessness just made him sound as monstrous as he looked.

Yarralomë raised his staff and backed away. “It’s chaos outside; if you left now, no one would stop you,” he said, then added before leaving the room: “And Johann — you’re one of the monsters now. When next we meet, it will be as enemies.”

 I’m the monster?! Johann thought, his indignation overcoming his shock. If it weren’t for my family, you’d have eaten your precious bride-daughter by now, you troll!

Johann did as he was advised and fled Tyr’s Hand. But not before packing a few things first — including his late father’s book recording his experiences with Yarralomë, Isilyë, and Lómion.

Something told him he’d be needing it later.

Tetzel Forsaken

The shrill bark came like an unexpected slap to the face: “ HEY!!! ”

Tetzel looked up at the glaring blood elf mage. He was a scribe now in Undercity, the rotting, decrepit hive of his former enemy, and because of his new speaking disability, this was the best work he could get.



Here he was known only as “Tetzel” — shame and prudence kept him from divulging his full name — though he vowed to himself that someday, when he finally stands over the defeated, soon-to-be corpses of Yarralomë and his former friend Sally (who had put a bounty on his head in an effort to publicly distance herself from him), he would announce his full name again.

“Are you listening?” the customer shouted into his face. “Did you lose your ears as well as your mouth?”

Tetzel glared back at her as he penned on a separate sheet of paper:

 I was a man of rank before I came here. I do not respond well to being barked at.

“Oh,” said the blood elf apologetically as she kneeled down and put a sympathetic hand over his. “And what was your name?” she asked.

 Tetzel. Just Tetz—

The blood elf stayed his hand with hers. “Tetzel,” she said, her eyes full of concern, “When I see you write this way, I can’t help but wonder, ‘Does he know how much I don’t care?’  WRITE!!! ”

Tetzel weighed the probable outcomes of stabbing the snarling harpy with his quill, then slumped back in his chair and indicated that he was ready to resume taking dictation.

“So where were we?” the elf continued, now sweetly. “Reward: 10,000 gold pieces for the capture and delivery of the night elves Isilyë and Yarralomë. 5,000 gold pieces for any information that results in their apprehension. Last seen outside Auberdine in Darkshore. Must be al—”

Tetzel’s hand froze midway through this, and his gaze went far away.

The blood elf’s face flashed with surprised annoyance, then filled with the same spurious sympathy it did earlier. “Was I going too fast?” she asked.

Tetzel scrawled as fast as he could before the elf could follow up with some mean-spirited barb:

 GET YOUR MONEY TOGETHER O HARPY — TODAY FORTUNE SMILES ON BOTH OF US

The elf stared searchingly into his face a long time.

“Call me Ruinwen,” she smiled.

Apt Pupa

Ruinwen’s revenge was not as sweet as she had hoped for.

She had planned to destabilize Yarralomë by sending him proof on his wedding night that he had just married and coupled with his own daughter/niece, then abduct him, castrate and otherwise torture him, and learn Isilyë’s whereabouts before finally killing him. Instead, Yarralomë went berserk on learning what he done, killed his bride Lómion, then killed himself — all before Ruinwen could get to him.

Tetzel parted company with Ruinwen then, having been paid only half of the reward money for delivering half of the wanted night elves, and retreated into Tirisfal Glades, where he lived for some time as an herb-picking hermit.

One day, there was a knock at his door. It was Ruinwen, and she wanted Tetzel’s help again.

Lómion’s corpse, it turned out, had been carried off by the Scourge and transformed into a death knight of the Ebon Blade. But something had happened at the battle at Light’s Hope Chapel, and the Ebon Blade knights were now returning to their former masters.

Ruinwen wanted to send a neutral party to arrange a meeting between Lómion and Tetzel, in which the two would catch up, swap stories about being forced into undeath, and Tetzel would inform Lómion that her mother, Isilyë, was still alive somewhere, probably in Northrend. Ruinwen calculated that this would incite Lómion to find Isilyë herself, and, as long as Tetzel maintained friendly relations with Lómion, he could pass on Isilyë’s specific whereabouts to Ruinwen once he knew them.

But Tetzel was done working with Ruinwen, and whatever his dislike of Isilyë, he had no specific beef with Lómion strong enough to warrant feigning friendship with her in order to kill her mother. “I’m not a monster,” he told Ruinwen, then closed the door on her.



The next day, Tetzel began hearing a foreign voice in his head.

I know who you are, Johann, the voice would say.

When Tetzel ignored the voice, it became more insistent — and threatening.

What do you think they would do to you if they found out what you were?

“You don’t exist,” Tetzel gurgled. By the Light, I’m going insane, he thought.

You’re already insane, said the voice. But I’m going to cure you.

Tetzel could feel something in his head then. Something physical. And not his.

That’s me, said the voice. ''I’m a grub. My name is Virgil Grubbs. And I live in your head now.''

You’re a talking maggot?

''I’m a talking grub. And I’ll talk to the authorities if you don’t do exactly as I say.''

Tetzel began shaking his head violently to see if he could rattle whatever it was that he felt in his skull. Nothing. Then he tried banging his head against the wall. No avail. Finally, desperately, he jabbed a finger hard into his ear and kept pushing until his finger was deep in his skull. Something grabbed onto it, and when he tried to pull out, he couldn’t.

If you do that again, I’m keeping the finger, said the voice. Whatever was holding Tetzel’s finger let go.

The voice told Tetzel to go to an abandoned hut near the shore up north and open the chest he found there. When Tetzel refused, the thing in his skull began violently burrowing about his desiccated brain, which wasn’t so much painful as unbearably maddening. Tetzel finally complied, went to the hut, and opened the chest.

In it he found the robes of a Scarlet Inquisitor.

They’re your robes, said the voice. From Tyr’s Hand.

That’s impossible, thought Tetzel. How does a maggot procure clothes?

You’ll soon see there isn’t much I can’t do, said the voice. Now put them on.

Again, Tetzel refused, and again came the violent burrowing about his brain.

Tetzel put on the vestments.



Now face the chair.

Tetzel did as he was told.

Condemn it.

What?

Condemn it — as if it were a man accused.

“You are hereby condemned,” Tetzel gurgled.

Mean it.

“You are hereby condemned!”

Make me believe it.

“I declare you anathematized and judge you condemned to eternal Shadow!”

Though Tetzel was being forced to play this game, part of him was starting to enjoy it.

Now go downstairs, the voice commanded.

Tetzel strode down the stairs, and as he did so he noticed that he was standing straighter than before. But all thought of that vanished when he got to the basement and saw a man in Scarlet Crusade livery tied to a post there.

''This man is your enemy now. Condemn him.''

Again the refusal. And the burrowing. And the compliance.

Tetzel straightened himself out and faced the bound man. “Wherefore in the name of the Light, of Grand Inquisitor Isillien, and all the heroes of the Crusade,” he declared in what might have been a loud, clear voice but for his missing jaw, “In virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in this world and the next, we deprive this man and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Light, we separate him from the society of all uncontaminated humanity, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Church in this world and the next, we declare him anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal Shadow with all the reprobate; we deliver him to Fire to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.”

Well done, said the voice. Now — execute justice.

This time, the creature in Tetzel’s head had but to stir before Tetzel shouted indistinctly, picked up the ax that was waiting for him, and cleaved the man’s head off his neck.

Now — eat his brain.

Are you out of your mind, maggot? Tetzel threw down the ax.

Johann, the voice began menacingly.

Tetzel could see there was no way out of this — he couldn’t fight the maddening burrowing in his skull, couldn’t silence the voice. But nor could he bring himself to eat a man’s brain.

In a flash, he saw what he needed to do.

Tetzel bolted up the stairs and out of the hut, and even as the burrowing began he kept running blindly into the night, clutching his head, until he reached the cliffs overlooking the shore. And then he kept running until the vertigo of free fall overtook the intolerable squirming in his head. And then blackness.





Tetzel didn’t expect to open his eyes again. But open them he did.

He was still falling. But very, very slowly.

You can’t escape me that easily, Johann, said the voice. You can’t ever escape me.

For a second, Tetzel hoped that this had all been a dream, but the renewed squirm in his head snapped him out of hope and back into horror and despair.

I’m going to hurt you now, the voice said. ''Badly. It’s for your own good.''



Later that night, Tetzel staggered back into the hut where the man he had beheaded lay waiting for him in the basement.

He shuffled toward the corpse, zombie-like in his defeat, then stopped. Undead though he was, he wasn’t sure how to do this.

Pick up the rock, commanded the voice, and sure enough, a large rock that wasn’t there before now sat on the floor by the severed head. ''Use it to crush the head. Use it like those night elves did when they ate their young.''

Is that what this is about, maggot? Tetzel asked. This won’t make me a monster, only you.

Do it.

I am your instrument in this, maggot, thought Tetzel wearily. It is not I who does this, but you, and the crime of this is yours alone.

Tetzel kneeled to the floor, picked up the rock, and brought it down on the face of the condemned. And then, hesitantly, wincingly, he dug a finger into the man’s skull and brought a dollop of brain to his mouth.

At that moment, the entire world changed forever.

As the bloody pulp slid down Tetzel’s throat, his whole body tingled with renewed ... vitality. For a moment, he felt as if he were alive again, as if his long undeath had just been a horrible dream. He took another tentative scoop, then another, and before he could stop himself he brought the crushed skull to his mouth and was slurping blood and brains as fast as his jawless mouth could manage. Then he began ripping at the flesh, at the eyes, at the tongue, and when he had completely stripped the skull of anything remotely edible, his wide-eyed gaze fixed on the headless corpse.



This is who you are now.

Tetzel couldn’t be sure if this was the grub’s voice or his own.



''Tetzel! Wake up!''

Tetzel opened his eyes. The half-eaten cadaver was next to him, which made Tetzel instinctively look away — not because he was repulsed, but because he feared he might start convulsively digging into it again.

Time to get to work!

What work?

''The way you felt last night — there’s a way for you to feel that again. And soon. And you’ll be serving the living, not the dead.''

What are you talking about, maggot?

''The elf. The uncommonly attractive elf who was here. Go to her. Beg her to take you back. She alone is your salvation.''

Why her?

''In the omelet she’s making, a lot of eggs will be broken. Eggs no one will miss. As Tetzel mulled this over, the voice added: If word ever got out about your background, people in Tirisfal might react ... unpleasantly. But the elf won’t care. The Scarlet Crusade is not her fight.''

Tetzel sat pensively for a moment. Why do you care, maggot? he asked at last.

I’m your guardian grub! said the voice glibly.

There’s no such thing, maggot, Tetzel said, almost wistfully.

Grub, the voice corrected. And I have a name.

''What, “Virgil”? That’s a funny name for a larva,'' said Tetzel. Is that really what they call you?

They call me MISTER Grubbs! said the voice.

Fine, you’re Mr. Grubbs, said Tetzel.

And with that, the vague pressure from the squirming thing in Tetzel’s skull vanished as a rat-sized larva appeared from thin air on the ground in front of him, then leapt impossibly high up in the air and landed somewhere in the recesses of the cadaver.



“This is where we say good-bye, Johann,” said a thin, barely audible voice coming from within the cadaver. “I’m starving, and you need to talk to the elf. The pretty one.”

It seemed strange to Tetzel that a larval insect would twice reference the beauty of an elf or any other non-insect, but he was glad to leave the cruel tutelage of Mr. Grubbs behind him — and he knew now that he could never go back to a hermit’s life. Not after last night.



“Who are you?” asked the doorman.

“Tetzel.”

“She’s been expecting you,” said the doorman. “Come in.”

Tetzel stepped in ... and then froze in his tracks.

“Tetzel!” Ruinwen smiled from across the room. “I take it you’ve reconsidered my proposal.”

She was standing stark naked against a podium, quill in hand, eyes skyward. An equally naked Ruinwen was taking shape on a painter’s canvas in a corner of the room, while a goblin with no discernible function stood in another.



“This is a bad time,” Tetzel offered.

“Not at all,” said Ruinwen cheerfully. “I’m just being immortalized for posterity. Better to get it done now while I still look like this.”

“Of course,” Tetzel awkwardly agreed, his eyes trying to find somewhere in the room where Ruinwen’s lady bits — or artistic copies of them — were not vying for attention.

“And yes,” he continued, “I was wrong to have reservations about involving Lómion in this. She’s an abomination of Nature, pure and simple. And even if she weren’t —” Tetzel’s gaze went far away to those uncomfortable days spent in Darnassus with his father “— there’s that savagery that all night elves hide and which negates her non-combatant status.”

“So she has it coming, then?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Tetzel —” Without warning she turned her head sharply to the painter and barked “' PAINT!!! '”, then continued sweetly as ever: “— You see that goblin in the corner there? He deals guns to one of Isilyë’s associates. There’s a good chance I can find out where that conniving bitch is through him. So you see, I probably don’t need you anymore.”

Tetzel pondered the veracity of this a moment. “If that were true, madam, I doubt you would have received me.”

The room fell quiet but for the sound of brush strokes.

“‘M’lady,’” Ruinwen corrected.

“I’m sorry?”

“‘M’lady,’” she repeated. “Or ‘Lady’. Or ‘Lady Ruinwen’. Circumstances have prevented me from going back to Silvermoon to claim my inheritance, but I’m noble born.”

“Fine. You’re Lady Ruinwen,” said Tetzel.

Silence. Brushstrokes.

“It’s always good to have options,” Ruinwen declared at last. “Come back tomorrow, Tetzel. And be ready to travel.”

Tetzel turned and left. He was already starting to regret working for Ruinwen again, but then he remembered the sweet euphoria of brains in his mouth, and the thought of Ruinwen troubled him no more.



“Is he gone?” Ruinwen asked.

“Yes, Lady,” said the doorman.

“Alright, everyone out!” Ruinwen snapped. “' NOW!!! '”

The doorman, the painter, and the gun-dealing goblin cleared the room. Ruinwen’s imperious bearing gave way to woozy desperation as her eyes darted about the room for a bucket, a box, any sort of receptacle.

She tore open a drawer just in time to double over and retch with a force that surprised her.

Then again. And again. Then the dry heaves.

Sonofabitch! she thought when she saw that her hair had not escaped the streams.

She slumped down to the floor, exhausted and sore.

That damned Scarlet Crusader corpse, she concluded.

So delicious earlier today. So bitterly foul now.

Gear