Tag: orcs

With my fiction writing, I coined a saying: “When a Muse comes upon you, you don’t ask which one.”

Once again, it is Melpomene (tragedy).

Clear a Path

(continued from “The A’Taran-Orc War, Part 2“)

The Orcs who came down from the mountains had to focus on staving off starvation. The A’Tarans had not destroyed all the crops and livestock. Every surviving Orc went into the fields. A new governmental structure was birthed in the need to organize labor and food distribution. It was communal and local. It would grow into a diverse set of deliberative systems with a weak central government.

Warriorship was not abandoned, but it would never again be the foundation of rule and law.

(continued from “The A’Taran-Orc War, Part 1“)

The Orc Nation had no fixed defenses—had never needed them. Their remaining military forces were overwhelmed on the verdant plains of their heartland as the A’Taran horde swept east from the gate. The Orc capital city had no walls. The A’Tarans sacked it with great slaughter. The new Orc King died there, but more than that. The entire ruling class was wiped out. The remaining Orc people, shattered and leaderless, fled for their lives into the mountains beyond the capital.

Perhaps shocked by their own savagery, the A’Tarans did not pursue the Orcs further. They abandoned the Orc capital and returned to the gate.

The gate still existed, though. To protect the Empire, they would have to fortify the Rhydin side. And so they did, keeping a portion of the former Orc Nation. The horror of the war also reshaped the A’Taran psyche, but that is not my tale to tell.

For the Orcs, those thirty years brought even greater change….

(continues in “A New Orc Culture Rises From the Ashes of the Old“)

(continued from “On the A’Taran Race“)

Fate had brought the A’Taran to the planet Rhydin III via the dimensional gate. Cruelly, to an area recently conquered by an expanding nation of Orcs. The Orc Nation was for only Orcs; they killed or drove all other races out of their lost lands.

First contact between the Orcs and the A’Taran could only end in violence—and war. More prepared and eager for new conquests, the Orcs slew all the A’Taran in Rhydin and pushed through the gate into the Empire. The A’Taran could only retreat, trading land and blood for time. But time was all they needed.

While currently a peaceful people, the A’Taran had always had a warrior caste. Furthermore, the average A’Taran was taller and stronger than the average Orc. Faced with an invading enemy slaughtering without mercy, the entire A’Taran people rose to fight. The tide turned at the walled capital of the Empire. The Orc army was not repulsed; it was destroyed. The Orc King died there, as well.

The war now reversed completely. An A’Taran horde seeking revenge retook all lost territory and flooded back through the gate….

(continues in “The A’Taran-Orc War, Part 2“)

My primary roleplay collaborator, Brian, has a homebrewed race of anthropomorphic wolves called A’Taran. The race is divided between a star-spanning Hegemony and an unknown (to the Hegemony) splinter polity called The Empire. The Empire’s technology has devolved to a “Medieval” (fantasy) level. They had no knowledge of magic.

The Empire existed upon a single planet until about 35 years ago. That was when they came across an “alien” artifact: a dimensional gate. The first A’Tarans to venture through found themselves in a thick forest with an identical gate behind them. The gate proved both stable and two-way. The A’Tarans began logging the abundant trees, and established work camps.

The Empire had not seen war in living memory. The work camps had only a few proper guards, and their concern was only the possibility of troublesome wildlife. They were not prepared for what was about to befall them….

(continues in “The A’Taran-Orc War“)

The finale of the (someday-I-will-finish) Elmö’s Obligation story will lead to Xenograg recruiting a young orc martial artist as a henchman. He will then recruit others of his species into service with Xenograg, forming a small combat unit (~25). I had envisioned them as heavy cavalry, on horses, but willing to also fight on foot. Their primary duty was to be a bodyguard for Xenograg.

Then the Elmö’s Obligation story gained an unexpected detail while being written: the young bravo (to be named Ingraf) who Xenograg duels was originally to be human but is now hobgoblin. He, too, has a small following of his own people. While not a henchman, this hobgoblin will become a loyal retainer. He will likewise end up leading another small combat unit comprised of his people.

The usual depictions of these species is of hobgoblins being more disciplined than orcs; more soldier than warrior. So should Xenograg’s new heavy cavalry unit instead be the hobgoblins? Do I change the orcs to heavy infantry? Do I leave them both as cavalry, with the orcs being reduced to medium?

I forgot one detail: these orcs are unusual within their own people, specifically that they are martial artists, and are more disciplined from it.

Balin:

Don’t mind him, laddie. Thorin has more cause than most to hate orcs. After the dragon took the Lonely Mountain, King Thror tried to reclaim the ancient dwarf kingdom of Moria. But our enemy had got there first. Moria had been taken by legions of orcs, led by the most vile of all their race: Azog the Defiler. The giant Gundabad orc had sworn to wipe out the line of Durin.

He began by beheading the King. Thrain, Thorin’s father, was driven mad by grief. He went missing—taken prisoner or killed, we did not know. We were leaderless. Defeat and death were upon us.

That is when I saw him: a young dwarf prince facing down the Pale Orc. He stood alone against this terrible foe; his armour rent, wielding nothing but an oaken branch as a shield! Azog the Defiler learned that day that the line of Durin would not be so easily broken.

Our forces rallied and drove the orcs back. Our enemy had been defeated, but there was no feast. No song that night, for our dead were beyond the count of grief. We few had survived.

And I thought to myself then: there is one I could follow. There is one I could call King.

— “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” (2012)

Now Fingolfin, King of the North, and High King of the Noldor, seeing that his people were become numerous and strong, and that the Men allied to them were many and valiant, pondered once more an assault upon Angband; for he knew that they lived in danger while the circle of the siege was incomplete, and Morgoth was free to labour in his deep mines, devising what evils none could foretell ere he should reveal them. This counsel was wise according to the measure of his knowledge; for the Noldor did not yet comprehend the fullness of the power of Morgoth, nor understand that their unaided war upon him was without final hope, whether they hasted or delayed. But because the land was fair and their kingdoms wide, most of the Noldor were content with things as they were, trusting them to last, and slow to begin an assault in which many must surely perish were it in victory or in defeat. Therefore they were little disposed to hearken to Fingolfin, and the sons of Fëanor at that time least of all. Among the chieftains of the Noldor Angrod and Aegnor alone were of like mind with the King; for they dwelt in regions whence Thangorodrim could be descried, and the threat of Morgoth was present to their thought. Thus the designs of Fingolfin came to naught, and the land had peace yet for a while.

But when the sixth generation of Men after Bëor and Marach were not yet come to full manhood, it being then four hundred years and five and fifty since the coming of Fingolfin, the evil befell that he had long dreaded, and yet more dire and sudden than his darkest fear. For Morgoth had long prepared his force in secret, while ever the malice of his heart grew greater, and his hatred of the Noldor more bitter; and he desired not only to end his foes but to destroy also and defile the lands that they had taken and made fair. And it is said that his hate overcame his counsel, so that if he had but endured to wait longer, until his designs were full, then the Noldor would have perished utterly. But on his part he esteemed too lightly the valour of the Elves, and of Men he took yet no account.

There came a time of winter, when night was dark and without moon; and the wide plain of Ard-galen stretched dim beneath the cold stars, from the hill-forts of the Noldor to the feet of Thangorodrim. The watchfires burned low, and the guards were few; on the plain few were waking in the camps of the horsemen of Hithlum. Then suddenly Morgoth sent forth great rivers of flame that ran down swifter than Balrogs from Thangorodrim, and poured over all the plain; and the Mountains of Iron belched forth fires of many poisonous hues, and the fume of them stank upon the air, and was deadly. Thus Ard-galen perished, and fire devoured its grasses; and it became a burned and desolate waste, full of a choking dust, barren and lifeless. Thereafter its name was changed, and it was called Anfauglith, the Gasping Dust. Many charred bones had there their roofless grave; for many of the Noldor perished in that burning, who were caught by the running flame and could not fly to the hills. The heights of Dorthonion and Ered Wethrin held back the fiery torrents, but their woods upon the slopes that looked towards Angband were all kindled, and the smoke wrought confusion among the defenders. Thus began the fourth of the great battles, Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame.

In the front of that fire came Glaurung the golden, father of dragons, in his full might; and in his train were Balrogs, and behind them came the black armies of the orcs in multitudes such as the Noldor had never before seen or imagined. And they assaulted the fortresses of the Noldor, and broke the leaguer about Angband, and slew wherever they found them the Noldor and their allies, Grey-elves and Men. Many of the stoutest of the foes of Morgoth were destroyed in the first days of that war, bewildered and dispersed and unable to muster their strength. War ceased not wholly ever again in Beleriand; but the Battle of Sudden Flame is held to have ended with the coming of spring, when the onslaught of Morgoth grew less.

— The Silmarillion, Chapter 18