· FACTIONS ·

War

Before the First Age began, Rathos fashioned the orcs with one aim: War. No effort wasted on beauty, none on sentimentality or ethics. They were made to reproduce rapidly and fight with abandon. In the morning of the First Age, they spread rapidly over the land, hunting and fighting into the lands of the neighboring woodlands of the elves. The orcs were expanding, and needed new hunting grounds and grazing lands for their cattle. Shek Mogka led his orcs to victory over the border forces of the elves, and slashed and burned the forest for cattle country, making it unusable to the elves. This was an offense the elves could not forgive, and Gaia held back the clouds from the grasslands of the orcs. A drought set in. Grasslands turned to dusty deserts, rivers to dry rockbeds, and many thousands of orcs, even whole tribes, were wiped out. Starving, Shek’s battle horde was too weak to go to war. The empire of Light offered help, on condition that the orcs would become subject to Light’s dominion. Shek refused to dishonor his people and his God. Instead, Shek gathered together his greatest warriors, and led them on a desperate raid, into Eldor Forest, the source of Gaia’s power on the world. Only its destruction would lift Gaia’s curse from his lands. By the will of Rathos, the orcs fought their way deep into the heart of the woodlands of the elves, one by one felled by arrows, until at last, pursued by the armies of elves, Shek and forty orc warriors reached Eldor Forest, and with torches set it alight. The elves surrounded the warriors amidst the flames of the towering trees, and Shek’s band killed a thousand more elves before dying valiantly in battle. The rains came, and restored the deserts to grasslands again. The orcs returned to power, and commenced their endless wars with Light and Nature.