Nation/Kingdom Name: Overlordship of Malorgoth
Government Type: Tribal Chiefdom, Several Clans United Under A Warchief, Vassal States
Coat of Arms or Banner: A yellow clawed hand with a blue eye at its centre, on black field.
Capital: KhargorEthnic Groups/Species: 55% Orcs, 15% Half Orcs, 10% Fire Giant, 10% Tabaxi, 5% Human, 5% Desert Dwarf
Religions: Orcish Shamanism (85%), Creole Religion (10%), 5% Flayed God
Imports Ore, Coal, Timber, Meat, Foodstuffs, Spirits, Spices, Gemstones, Elemental Crystals, Dragon Skins, Wine
Exports Spiced Bloodmead, Rum, Ivory, Weapons, Armour, Siege Weapons, Sulphur, Naphta Oil, Desert Monster Venom
Hallmarks: Peaceful Lowlander Orcs, War-like Highlander Orcs, Lush Desert
Signature Weapon: Irakk - A thick, cleaver-like sword designed to chop, sever and smash through anything in its way. Can be made in one or two-handed varieties.
National Dish: Roast Pork, marinated in honey and desert herbs, cooked in one pot with tubers, carrots and various mushrooms.
Interesting Things About Malorgoth
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Two cultures of Orcs share rule over this warm and colourful peninsula. The land is dry but the slightest amount of river water or rainfall turns it richly fertile. The parched hills bloom, and groves of flame hued cacti and blossoming rose meadows feed huge mound-hives of crimson bees, a source of exceptional honey, raw material for the spiced bloodmead for which the land is so famed. This is a land of fire. Natural asphalt wells and sulphur springs broil and hiss. Gas flares from cracks in the soil, sometimes causing brush fires that fill the dusk horizon with smoke.
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The lowlander Orcs have always been gentle, living alongside the narrow, lush Ejo’Kajar River growing rice, cactus fruits and rearing herds of ostrich and boar beneath the palms in the shadow of their pyramid temples. Their thatched sandstone and wood buildings are warmly painted, draped with daubed hides, the skulls and carapaces of desert beasts. The most beautiful dwellings are nearest the marshes’ edge or along the sandy coast, like great palaces woven from reeds that sometimes float on the water’s surface. After hard, hot days of work they smoke and recline in fragrant gardens of jasmine, marigolds and geraniums. Their society may appear primitive to human eyes, but it is peaceful.
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The highland Orcs are not. Ruling from crooked citadels in the hills they protect their domain from their former Dominion masters, forging brutal weapons and tough armour of black steel with the aid of the cave-dwelling fire giants. The arid crags are rich with dark iron and gold. In return for protecting them from threats on the surface, the Desert Dwarves mine this material from deep underground for the Orcs, allowing them to create beautiful golden black armour.
Characters of Malorgoth
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The Highland Clans are the Lost Legion, and fight for their right to survive. The sins of the past can never be cleansed, and the ways of peace remain new and unfamiliar to them, but the Orcs are stoic, patient, and disciplined to the last. On some distant shore of time, they may yet find redemption.
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The name of the Corpseburner is spurned, idols are broken, and spirits of the forge appeased with sacrament of ore, sweat and craftwork, as the hungry nameless demons of desert and storms are warded away by their shamans’ ceaseless rituals. They do not ever burn their dead, instead they mummify their fallen, clad them in gilt armour, and raise them as ancestral guardians to defend their homes.
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A legion of Malorgoth gleams under the burning sky, with their blistering plate-mail and horned, beaked greathelms, the dead are indistinguishable from those yet to seize honour -through- death. Beneath the banners of nine clans, they set themselves to war against the demons and their traitorous Blacksoul cousins, riding on the backs of wargs, elephants and armoured giants and cyclopses strapped with catapults and ballistae. Those who ask why the numerically and martially stronger highlanders do not simply use their might to conquer their weakling lowland neighbours often find themselves fed to the wolves. Guilt and remorse are the lodestones of Malorgoth’s culture, and they will never be conquerors, nor slaves again.
Places of Interest:
The Black Castles of Ordhan
One of the peculiar protectorates of Malorgoth are a string of tropical islands covered in plantations of sugar cane and cocoa overseen by graceful black castles with terraces of ornate gardens. The people here are humans and half-orcs. Squires spar in orange-scented courtyards, as astrologians ask questions of the stars from bladed spires.
These are the Knights of the Manticore, the last survivors of the fallen kingdom of Ordhan. The Malorgothics kindly offered them the isles after clearing out the former rulers, a house of dark elves who used them as slaving bases, and they have since served as loyal allies, even if the order’s power on the political stage is middling.
Individually however, their Dread Knights are widely feared by both the righteous and the wicked. Clad in menacing Malorgothic plate-mail, their single-minded pursuit of evil spares neither prince nor pauper.
In the old ages, when light was stronger, these paladins once fought for justice and hope. Now, they fight only to avenge the fallen, to mercilessly run through the wicked and all who harbour or enable them. The evil they meet upon evil is indescribably brutal, to the point few regard them as heroes save those few fortunate souls they rescue.
While they tend to limit their conquests to demon cults and allies of the dark powers, this is out of courtesy instead of code. When the shadow recedes, no legal or ethical barrier can bind them. Those who wilfully cause harm to children are subject to the worst fates. One in every ten of the Order’s war banners and cloaks are stitched from their silently screaming, soul-bound skins.
Any prolonged battle against warlocks or demons will inevitably draw Dread Knights seeking vengeance. They otherwise fight alongside their Orc allies as an elite, mounted vanguard.
Sazrali, City of Cats
The easternmost point of Malorgoth is home to a colourful port city whose bell towers, minarets and muxrabija-lined streets are covered in flamboyantly painted tiles. Just outside the walls are miles of crisp white beaches, and within are canals and bazaars filled with intrigue and merriment. Wine and rum flow copiously, and the festivals of the city are renowned for their wildness. Arenas, opera houses and gambling parlours throng with visiting nobles and the aspiring nouveau riche. The main inhabitants are Tabaxi and other catfolk, leading some to call it ‘The City of Cats’. The current sultanate is keen to invite tourists, using the Orcs’ brutal reputation to maintain the peace. What happens in Sazrali stays in Sazrali.
Khargor, Forge of Destruction
Marking the location where lowlander and highlander territory meet is a broad escarpment where the Ejo’Kajar suddenly descends. At the edge of the wide, raging waterfall a massive fortress is carved out of the nearby cliff, its razor-like brass spires reaching high towards the heavens. Smoke and hammering belches from the war foundries, and there is a constant roar and clank of turning waterwheels and chains. Its beast pits clang and screech with the sound of monstrosities tamed (or simply dragged) from the wastes. The Orcs battle in arenas that hang upon the cliff’s edge, with the losers often plummeting to feed the vultures. The lowlanders have built peaceful farms and villages in the wide savannah below, but the uplands are a vast dry staging ground where war drums continually beat.
Politics And War
- Who rules the nation?
The current Warchief of the Malorgothic Orcs is Shazraga Gorewart of the Ashfang Clan. Corpulent, red bearded and porcine, his foes fear his massive stomach and penchant for cannibalising those who displease him, and his friends are wary of his lecherous hunger for hairy Dwarf women, of which seven are his mistresses. His wife bears it with uncanny grace, devoting herself to a chess obsession. He has a soft spot for painting and ballet he goes to great lengths to hide.
The rest of the Orcs are tribes ruled by chieftains who are determined through ritual combat overseen by shaman. All challenges are to the death. The protectorates under the Orcs’ control are normally allowed their own local leadership, in return for providing the Orcs with whatever resources they need. Bad things happen to those who can’t provide.
- What is their army like?
They may be on the side of light, but they are in no way nice or gentle. The armies of Malorgoth largely consist of faceless legions of heavy infantry armed with hammers, axes, polearms and tower shields. Explosive mines are layered to secure the flanks, dropped from scout airships.
Wyvern and wolf-riders strapped with explosives, armed with bows, javelins and slings fan out and pin their approaching opponents’ down, and harry them to the anvil of their infantry, often feinting retreats, and choosing to explode themselves than accept capture.
Lightly armoured berserkers armed with axes, hammers and hatchet-swords are thrown forth as a second-wave, followed by war-beasts as varied as trolls, tyrannosaurs and giant scorpions.
Impractically brutal war-machines drawn by massive beasts incorporating cannons, ballistae and trebuchets slam bombs and pots of burning naphta and acid at on-coming opponents. Ranks of flame-throwers and acid spewers take their places on the flanks and offer area denial.
Within range, the Orcs use heavy crossbows to halt their foes’ charges and ready their halberds and pikes. They give no ground and do not retreat. Even if foes breach past these lines, the grunts’ shields are tall and broad, and their weapons heavy and crushing.
A Malorgothic infantry formation moves like a black, jagged tortoise, brutally hacking and smashing at any foes that come into range. Shaman will enchant these weapons to burn with ice, flare with fire and lightning. They are not reckless, they are cold and precise.
Where possible, armoured riders and fast-moving monsters will continually pour around the main infantry to introduce their foes’ faces to their blades. They are exceptionally disciplined and drilled, their wills are strong enough to give demons pause. While these armies are good in defence, they struggle with prolonged melees, especially in the desert heat.
Inspirations/Cultural Analogues:
The Warcraft 2 & 3 era Horde, Peter Jackson’s Orcs (especially the Uruk-Hai), Ancient Egypt, Southern Africa, Warhammer’s Badlands, Bronze Age Sumeria, Late 20th Century Syria, How Bovril Tastes