Difference between revisions of "Orc Origins"

Revision as of 20:09, 24 April 2019

Orc Origins is a book by Marissa Blackwell. It can be found in the Royal Library in Empo Sar.

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Orc Origins
by Marissa Blackwell

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Origins 

The first creatures to be referred to as 'orcs' were created many years ago during the Great War. War tore the world of Erasan apart and the once great continent became divided. Orcs were formed by the Dark One himself; the third of the great Gods, and formed not solely from his own design, but through the perversion and mutilation of great numbers of elves. However as with the later, more subtle tainting of elves into drow, the change of elf to the orc we know today was a very gradual one. Despite the Dark Lord's defeat and the demise of his power; the hatred that first corrupted elves still runs deep in the veins of the orcs and many of them lived on. 

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The Fall 

After the fall of their master and creator, the Dark Lord, at the end of the War of Shadows, most of the orcs fled from the broken mainland, seeking refuge from their enemies across the seas. Most perished during these desperate voyages. Only few survived to reach islands newly formed by the splitting of the continent. But those who did were amongst the strongest and wisest. Some colonies instead took refuge in the deepest and darkest of caverns, however these were a minority, and few of those which have been sighted since would be readily identified as orcs.
 
On these islands the orcs gathered their strength and gradually increased their numbers; readying themselves for a future return to the continents. As a result of their close blood ties with elves, the first orcs can be considered to be immortal, although of course like elves, this characteristic only takes away the possibility of dying from old age. Even as the effect of elven ties becomes more diluted with every generation, natural orc lifetimes are still much longer than regular human lifetimes. However considering the generally destructive and aggressive nature of orcs, this characteristic is rarely utilised by any not belonging to the first or second generation of orcs. With each generation of isolation from the rest of the world, the orcs became less and less like their noble predecessors. As a result, some but not many of the 

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first orcs who fled the continent after the battle of the Dark Lord were still alive to return with the rest of the surviving colonies years later.

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Return to the Continents 

The first orcs to return to the inner continents and settle upon the newly formed continent of Aerath arrived on the east coast several hundred years after the fall of the Dark Lord. Their presence on the outer islands had gone mainly unnoticed (or at least ignored), even by the Gods, though on their return to Aerath, they no longer hid their presence. Burning forests, polluting and damming rivers, creating great mines and building towers and fortifications around their new homes. Groups of orcs still occasionally return from the outer islands even today, blood—thirsty and bolder than before.