The Whelming of the Orcs

HE fecund orcs’ birthrate allowed them to recover from even the bloodiest civil strife or dragon raid; orcs even grew so numerous as to force the whelming of raiding hordes every dozen summers or so. These great, undisciplined hosts of warriors would build or seize ships and sail away south to plunder and slay. Few ever returned, the survivors spreading out across the warmer, richer southern Realms, and so the overcrowding of Vastar was regularly relieved.

To build their crude, ramshackle ships the orcs felled the timber of The Vast until none remained and they had to seize it from the elven shores across the Reach. The orcs soon found that if they sailed across the storm-torn Reach without securing a landing place first, they were doomed to a swift death under elven arrows and magic, ere they could land. So in the years between hordes army after army crossed the River Lis, then known by its elven name of ‘Nuathlis,’ at the northern end of the Reach. Time after time these armies found elves waiting for them. Hails of arrows falling on orcs slogging through the marshy banks of the Lis brought great slaughter, earning the Lis the nickname ‘Blood River,’ still used by orcs today.

In this, and in crude farming, fishing, and mountain hunting to feed themselves (leavened with mining and the forging of weapons), the orcs of Vastar occupied their time. Proud and reckless, they often mounted raids to seize goods in short supply, but never raided to weaken enemies gathering strength nearby, nor worked any diplomacy or trade with the surrounding lands.

Next – The underground invasion of the Dwarves

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