The Great Orcish Legend

Part 1
When the orcs came into being, they did so in the southern plains which are what is now Alara, the elves not yet being the dominant force in that land, how that came to be I will come to later. Early orcs, I'm afraid, were rather violent, preferring to prey upon others rather than fight back. Eventually the preyed upon came together and under the leadership of Ludguf The Simple and Shurat Finder of Paths fled to hills Kur Korgar on the far side of the southern marshes. Kur Korgar was a highly defensible position with only a narrow strip of land connecting it to the southern marshes all of which but the Korgar Isthmus was knee high water at its shallowest. Further Kur Korgar itself was deeply craggy so a opponent would be forced to besiege the villages of The Bright Aura Tribe. This was proven when both The Tribe of The Broken Skulls and The Northern Teeth attempted to enter Kur Korgar and both were expelled from the land.

Unable to defeat the guards of Kur Korgar The Tribe of The Broken Skulls and The Northern Teeth fought amongst themselves with The Northern Teeth driving The Broken Skulls off the southern plains. The Broken Skulls attempted once again to invade Kur Korgar and were again met by failure. They were forced to live in The Southern Marshes. This was also a failure for The Northern Teeth as they were left with no one to raid but the significantly stronger Twilight Twig Kin. It is into this world that came Oofgar The Great Deceiver. [Selphi notes: I will omit at this point the writer of the legend's lengthy rantings on the subject of Oofgar's origins. The claims are implausible.]

Oofgar convinced The Broken Skulls to become his devotees where upon he set about getting them into power in Kur Korgar. He did so by entirely bypassing the defences by the simple tactic of not attacking them. Instead he convinced The Northern Teeth to attack them by conjuring up legends of a golden land of riches and prosperity. He then used The Broken Skulls to attack them forcing them to flee from the combined efforts of The Broken Skulls and the defenders.

The Broken Skulls were forgiven for their past misdeeds and welcomed into Kur Korgar as heroes. But that night Oofgar met with the residents of Kur Korgar and convinced them that the real reason for the need for The Broken Skulls to step in was that their leader, Ludguf, was incompetent. Shurat got wind of this and informed Ludguf but Oofgar used Ludguf's presence to convince people that he believed they were disloyal which intern caused them to be disloyal and force Ludguf into the southern marshes with Surat on his heels.

Oofgar then sent a former trader of Kur Korgar north to meet with The Twig Kin and The Northern Teeth. They told The Twig Kin that The Northern Teeth had attacked Kur Korgar but were now devoting their attention elsewhere while they told The Northern Teeth that The Twig Kin had vast riches and considered them as savage raiders who were no longer brave enough to raid. The two sides went to war and Oofgar sent The Broken Skulls to help The Northern Teeth who then happily accepted his rule. [Sephi notes: more omissions. Oofgar tried repeatedly to defeat the Twig Kin but it turned out that they were not as green as they were orc looking. The rest of his life didn't really come to anything]

If it were Oofgar's delusions of grandeur that lead him to this point it were those same delusions that killed him. For it was that he decided to create a great palace known as Garzmal just off the Korgar Isthmus. To do this he rounded up the humans which at that time infested the swamp and placed them to work as slaves. It was one of these slaves who, when Oofgar inspected his palace dropped a brick upon his head.

Part 2
Oolaf's death left his empire in disarray. The Broken Skulls who had been his personal guard [Sephi notes: a job they did marvellously by the way] feared being banished again to the marsh so attempted to gain access to Kur Korgar. However The Bright Aura Tribe refused them entry citing Oolaf's orders to refuse entry to anyone unless he was with them. This continued for 3 days at this point Ludguf and Shurat returned and told The Broken Skulls that they wouldn't be granted entrance. The Broken Skulls told him that Oolaf would be furious to which Ludguf pointed out that Oolaf was dead. At this point The Broken Skulls gave up and went north.

When they arrived in the southern plains they persuaded The Northern Teeth that they needed The Broken Skulls as protection against The Twilight Twigs. The Twilight Twigs, seeing the build up of violent orcish tribes on their southern border decided to form an alliance with the Dwarves. The Teeth and Skulls tested their strength by attacking The Twigs with The Skulls attempting to pin them while The Teeth routed the dwarvern warriors. Their were however not enough Skulls to pin the Twigs and so they managed to force The Teeth to back down [Sephi notes: alternatively the dwarfs simply managed to rout The Northern Teeth on their own, the numbers were roughly the same and the dwarves were more disciplined so this is possible.]

However shortly after this engagement there came news that two tribes of great human archers had emerged in the southern marshes. The Northern Teeth decided to hire these and use them against The Twigs. First The Skulls and The Teeth switched places, The Teeth doing the pinning while The Skulls squared up against the dwarves. However The Skulls did not engage instead getting the archers to appear and forcing the dwarves to retreat. The Twigs were surrounded and forced into slavery by the victorious parties. The human archers meanwhile slunk back into the marsh.

Part 3
''Note from Selphi: The observant will notice that last time we ended upon The Teeth and, in particular, The Skulls capturing the entirety of The Twig Kin. And that the day before that we ended with a slave killing Oolaf. So will history repeat itself? Not quite as it turns out.''

Even the savage Teeth had their qualms about slavery however and so left most of the dirty work to the Skulls taking only a small number of leaders from the captured Twigs. This left The Skulls with a much greater number of Twigs than of their own kin, not a situation naturally sustainable and in this The Bright Auras saw an opportunity. If they could defeat The Skulls they could grow the population of Kur Korgar to the point where it would become not just a stronghold but a major power.

There was only one problem. Even with The Skulls stretched thing attempting to defend the indefensible they could easily defeat any meager force The Bright Auras could muster. So instead The Bright Auras hired human mercenaries, paying them not with money but with promises of Skull land. And so the two worked together in adhoc cross boarder campaigns freeing the Twigs to go and live in Kur Korgar.

By the end, the Skulls were a spent force. Never again would they hold territory of their own. The forces of Kur Korgar were however something entirely different. The Bright Aura Tribe had entirely subsumed The Twilight Twig Kin becoming The Sunset Ash Forces or just Kur Korgar. The humans had benefited to, a small but growing human nation had set up camp upon the Korgar Isthmus.

The Skulls briefly tried to raid the humans but having been defeated with the help of Kur Korgar turned instead to selling themselves as mercenaries. The trouble however was that the world had suddenly become incredibly stable and while the humans might make a break into orcish territory if they were helped by another force it was hard to see what force might help. It was at this point the Skulls, so much the architects of their own misfortune, sowed the seeds for the removal of the orcs from the southern plains.

The elves had so far been a disparate force but were suddenly united by a wave of orcish attacks and set out north from the marshes to defeat whatever orcs they could find. And they found The Teeth. The Teeth offered The Skulls food in return for driving of the elven attack. Now having to defend against elves and humans they provoked, The Skulls were forced to sign a peace accord ceding the southern half of the southern plains.

Side note from Selphi upon the elves
Yesterday the elves made a fleeting appearance in our story and so to explain what it was like for them, and to give some context to what the orcs will claim about the elves (while I will repeat the orcish version later, I find it somewhat unsatisfying and superstitious), I would like to insert a elven document from the era. Unfortunately that is easier said then done, elves of every variety are notoriously protective of their knowledge.

And so I was going to run with a interview with an elf (I will write that up as well) until, to my utmost surprise, I was granted access to the libraries of Alara. So here's a snipping of The Rise of Alara from Alaran History: The Complete Story which was in tern repeated in A Pocket Guide to The History of Alara (no it doesn't fit into any pocket I have every seen). The Rise of Alara wrote: It was now quite clear that Nephrak had emerged as the leader though her nature had yet to be determined. [Sephi notes: by WHOM exactly!?!] At this point The Treaty of The Three [Sephi notes: the three referring to the three participants: the humans, The Teeth, and the elves themselves, along with the three years since Nephrak came to power and the establishment of the three ‘civilised areas’ which is part of the reason the elves refuse to communicate with the western orcs but that is a story for another day] was signed establishing the borders between its signatories [Sephi notes: spectacularly uninformative, see previous comment] and thus recognising the elven state. However the idea that humans could avoid war quickly proved preposterous. They pushed further north into orcish territory forcing us to follow. At this point the Teeth laid down there weapons and the humans simply allowed them to slide through into the marsh. The Skulls however continued to fight until the bitter end even though they knew it could not do them any good. It was at this point Nephrak seized the Skulls. She showed her true colours, transforming them into the race of dark elves. Even the humans realised how dangerous and scary this was, though in their confusion they left behind the archer tribes who Nephrak also captured and transformed. So there you have it, the formation of Alara. I'll get on to how the orcs saw it in a later post.

Part 4
The Teeth and The Skulls had now almost sealed their fates. They had angered their southern brethren provoked the elves and angered the humans. But there was one place from which hope could still come - the dwarfs. The Teeth had accumulated large amounts of gold from various places and could use it to hire dwarven mercenaries while they remained in the kingdom's good books. How they left those books is a tragedy not because of its largeness but because of its smallness.

While the Twigs that had been captured by The Skulls had all been freed, The Teeth still held Guarg and a group of Twigs led by Gujek the betrayed set out to free him. But the Teeth issued an ultimatum, they would only release him when the elves were driven back. Gujek instead left and so infront of all the Twigs Guarg had his throat slit by The Teeth. Now Guarg was a friend of the Dwarves and while they were too caught up in their own problems [meta: any ideas what these could be] they were no longer willing to help The Teeth at any price and so the stage was set for the downfall of orcish civilisation in the southern plains.

Gujek joined the humans and persuaded them to launch an attack on The Teeth and so, with the help of the elves they pushed north and forced The Teeth to surrender. After the humans had disarmed them they were allowed to cross over back into the marsh. The Skulls however refused to surrender and so the humans argued over what to do about them but when they had finally come to a decision they found that The Skulls had disapeared of their own accord, presumably into elven land.