The Darklands are a brutal badlands in the far south of
Cathlaea. Thick jungle and fog-shrouded swamps surround rocky promontaries, valleys and mountains. The rough, barren terrain is dotted with the broken remnants of vast towers, which were once the fortresses of the Dark Lords. The lands around these fallen citadels are tainted by dark magic worked within them, and by the corrupt, yet still divine blood shed upon them. They were not, for the most part, rendered barren by the uprising, but their very nature is hostile to their inhabitants, and the flora and fauna of the region throng with abberations and monstrosities.
This bleak country is occupied by the remnants of the original
Orc Legion, under the banner of the The Orc Kingdoms. The Orcs of the Kingdoms consider the taint on the Darklands to be their doing, and thus their penance to overcome. In this endeavour, they have forced life back into the land and built great and powerful kingdoms, ruled by pairings of an orok Queen and uruk King, the one responsible for military and foreign policy, the other for pastoral and domestic rule, and supported by a powerful priesthood of the ancestor cults. The leading cities of the Kingdoms provide support for fortified towns and farmsteads, which in turn protect areas of tamed land. Beyond these areas, the Darklands are wild, rife with monstrous plants and animals.
The First Diaspora
In the early years after the Uprising, the orcs shared the Darklands with many
Goblinoids of the
Horde. There was much resentment in the goblinoids, however, as they had always been deemed lesser than the orcs, and many orcs perpetuated the divisions between the races, pushing the goblinoids into menial jobs. Between 20 and 28AU, therefore, more than 90% of the goblinoids in the Darklands decamped to join their erstwhile comrades in the
Domain of War. The resulting loss of their labour pool forced a significant shift in the social economics of the Darklands.
The Second Diaspora
In the first century of its independence, the population of the Darklands boomed. Between 109 and 136, a series of expeditions, set out north in search of new lands. The smallest of these consisted of one or two dozen orcs, including children; the largest over a hundred. Some stopped in the Riverlands east of the
Great Shield, but most continued north and established the northern kingdoms in the
Auroran Wastes.
The Orc Kingdoms
The kingdoms vary greatly in their customs and laws, but all retain some form of the ancient dual monarchy, with a Queen and a King - although those specific titles are not used - dividing responsibility for foreign and domestic affairs, and blend conservatism and progressiveness. Having rejected their creators and all other gods, the Orcs of the Kingdoms have a powerful sense of self-determination, but conversely the ancestor cult which forms the backbone of society resists change. Broadly, new is acceptible, so long as it builds on and adapts the old, instead of replacing it.
The most marked commonality is that almost all Kingdoms are divided into administrative districts called hundreds. A hundred is the area assessed to be capable of raising one hundred skilled fighters - either hunters or warriors - in times of need, and beholden to provide half that number to the kingdom's forces in the event of war. By a wide variety of means, each hundred chooses, appoints or elects both a Captain and a Hunter of the Hundred, an orok and an uruk who leads the civic government and represents the district at court.
The ancestor cults are quite different from those of northern and
Cainan orcs. While there are some traditional speakers for the ancestors, their role is more commonly taken by ancestor priests called Lorespeakers, who lead the reverance of the ancestors in the manner of a religion. There is some clash between the lorespeakers and speakers for the ancestors, with the latter insisting that the voice of the ancestors must be heard directly, and the former insisting that the message is more important than the speaker. The cults share some of their spiritual role with the
Woodcutters.
The Kingdoms tend to be more conservative than the more integrated tribes, especially as regards the traditional gender roles: warrior and hunter. While there is no pressure for an orc who identifies as uruk to be a hunter, or an orog to be a warrior, but it is considered unusual for a warrior not to be orog, or a hunter not to be uruk. The organised militaries of the Kingdoms adhere particularly closely to these roles, with exceptions almost unheard of among the highguards. The Orders of Purifiers are much less conservative, being inherently outide the social order. The roles of lorespeaker and woodcutter are not traditionally proscribed, and nor are the many civilian roles which have evolved since the fall of the Dark Lords.
Even these civilians are not entirely non-combatant, of course, given the hostility of the Darklands, and especially in rural areas, every orc learns to fight. In the cities, especially those surrounded by secure territory, there is more scope for civilians to develop specialised trades, pursue mercantile activities and, as in civilised areas everywhere, turn to crime. While there will always be entrepreneurs, most crime in the Darklands is regulated by large gangs, called thief tribes, who enforce their own rules with brutal and unforgiving efficiency. Loyalty is their watchword, although that loyalty typically runs more in one direction than the other. While junior members of the thief tribes often live much of their lives hidden in plain sight, the senior thieves distance themselves from ordinary society, wearing distinctive colours and tattoos. The formal ancestor cults strongly disapprove of auch anti-social activities, but many of the thief tribes nonetheless have their own speakers, and are in their way quite spiritual.
After millennia of back and forth, the established kingdoms are:
- Ragged Coast - The western coast is wracked by storms, and lined with jagged rocks and reefs. It is ruled from Blades' Breaking, the first port of the Darklands.
- Cinderlands - The badlands north of the Ragged Coast grow wild with strangling creepers, despite the baking climate. The orcs of the Ashfort and its dependencies struggle against the heat, the creepers and incursions from the Ophionic Empire to tame the land.
- Howling Plains - Home of the last great packs of wargs and dire wolves, the dry plains are ruled by the spirit masters of Empty Tomb and defended by some of the deadliest cavalry in the world.
- Lowlands - Damp and marshy, the Lowlands are home to the great boars of the Darklands. Ruled from Hollow, a city built on the inside of a great, round hill, the need for constant drainage has produced a particularly strong line of artificers.
- Saltmire - Between the Jagged Coast and the Salt Delta, the low-lying sands of the Saltmire are home to salvagers and shellfishers. The great keep in the leading city of Chainwall was built from the shackles of a multitude of freed slaves after the fall of the Dark Lords.
- Deep Forest - Deceptively beautiful, the Deep Forest is home to many monsters, and the orcs that hunt them. The capital of the kingdom is the border fortress of Spears' Rest in the southern foothills of the Great Shield.
- Border Marsh - East of the Saltmire, the Narrow Sea mingles with the rivers out of the Great Shield in the saline marshes of the Salt Delta, extending back into the expanse of swamp which guards the borders with the Domain of War. The capital of the Marsh is the port of Lastcut.
- Black Desert - The one region of the Darklands that still defies the efforts of the Kingdoms, the dark, cold sands of the Black Desert surround the ancient domains of the Giver of Banners. Many Purifiers patrol the desert borders, but few venture into the heart of the desert.
- High Country - The orcs of Northguard defend the highlands between the Black Desert and the Ophionic Empire from Yuan-ti aggression. The warbat roosts of Nighthall, in the foothills of the Great Shield, are also a part of the High Country.
Notable Groups
Military Forces
Each Kingdom has its own military, with regular combat troops, military engineers and warmages under the control of the Queen, and scouts, hunters, military intelligencers and specialists answering to the King. The forces of the various kingdoms are not modelled on the Legion organisations that proceeded them, but are informed by them in terms of resources, and in a conscious rejection of any direct Legion influence. Modern orc forces favour scale or chainmail over ring, kite shield over tower or round, spear over glaive and curved slashing blades over the wedge-shaped machetes of Legion infantry, and the axe over the straight, double-edged longswords of the Legion cavalry.
While orc militaries are mustered and trained from the hundreds, in the field they are organised into fires, camps and banners. A fire consists of the troops who share a fire in camp, usually 10-20 individuals - hunters and specialists are organised in smaller units than warriors - of whom around four fifths are combatants, and the remainder support staff. A camp is 5-10 fires, and a banner up to 10 camps.
Titles within the Kingdoms are typically based on the tools of their trade, and military titles are no exception. The following are not universal, but are widely used, with most kingdoms having a range of finer distinctions within the various ranks. Infantry are blades, cavalry lances and hunters and scouts bows; officers are batons and specialists wands or rods. NCOs and officers add the scale of their command to their title, for example a firesblade is a junior NCO responsible for the troops at a fire, while a campsbaton is the commanding officer of a camp.
Officers in the orc militaries pride themselves on their professionalism, and are appointed based on service, achievement and examination to differentiate them from the Legion's culture of favour. Additionally, all military chaplains are lorespeakers and fall under the authority of the ancestor cult, not the military command. Grandbatons are officers given responsibility for several banners, and both grandbatons and bannerbatons will have general staffs including officers with the rank of staffbaton or first staffbaton who have no direct command authority.
High Guards
The High Guards - the Kingsblade and the Queenspear - are the personal guards of the king and queen. The Kingsblade is usually responsible for royal and diplomatic protection, while the Queenspear are an elite or prestige military force.
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