They saved the world once, and the world has not bothered to remember
Thousands of years before humans crossed the Thunder Sea, the orcs were already ancient on Khorvaire. They were not a single civilisation — they were scattered tribes, fierce and independent, occupying the western reaches of the continent alongside the goblinoid Empire of Dhakaan. The Dhakaani, with their disciplined armies and their contempt for peoples they considered barbaric, drove the orc tribes into the harshest and most unwanted lands: the swamps of the Shadow Marches, the blasted Demon Wastes, and the depths of the Ironroot Mountains. This displacement defined everything that followed.
In the Shadow Marches, more than fifteen thousand years ago, the black dragon Vvaraak arrived and changed the course of orcish history — and, by extension, the history of the world. Vvaraak was a rogue member of the Chamber who had foreseen, through her study of the Draconic Prophecy, a catastrophic threat that could only be stopped by the younger races. The Conclave of Argonnessen refused to act; Vvaraak came alone. She taught the orcs of the Shadow Marches the secret language of the natural world — the first druidic magic on Khorvaire — and charged them to remain vigilant against the disaster to come. Her students became the Gatekeepers, and when the daelkyr invaded from Xoriat thousands of years later, unleashing mind flayers, beholders, and horrors beyond naming, the Gatekeepers sealed the planar gates and bound the daelkyr in the depths of Khyber. The invasion destroyed the Empire of Dhakaan. It nearly destroyed the world. The orcs stopped it.
The rest of Khorvaire has largely forgotten this. The humans who later settled in the Shadow Marches found a people they considered primitive — swamp-dwellers with druidic traditions and no written language. The orcs who saved the world did not write chronicles or build monuments; they maintained seals and watched the stars. Their reward for preventing the apocalypse was obscurity, and when their descendants emerged into the wider world through House Tharashk, they were greeted not as the heirs of civilisation's saviours but as exotics from the margins.
Orcs are powerfully built, standing six feet or taller with broad shoulders, heavy musculature, and prominent lower canines that jut from the jaw in a way that most Five Nations citizens find intimidating. Their skin tones range from grey-green to deep olive to brown, and their hair is typically black or dark brown, worn in styles that vary by culture — the Gatekeeper druids favour long, braided hair decorated with bone and stone beads, while the Ghaash'kala crop theirs short for practicality in the endless fighting of the Labyrinth. Orcs reach maturity around fourteen and live approximately seventy-five years, with a period of physical prime that extends through most of their adult life — an orc at fifty is still a formidable warrior.
Orcish biology is adapted for harsh environments: they possess darkvision, a heightened metabolism that provides bursts of aggressive energy when threatened, and a physical resilience that allows them to continue fighting through injuries that would incapacitate a human. Their senses — particularly smell and low-light vision — are sharper than the human norm, reflecting a heritage as hunters and scouts in the deep swamps of the Shadow Marches and the blasted canyons of the Demon Wastes.
Orc-kin display a blend of human and orcish traits, after millenia of interbreeding that followed the arrival of human settlers from Sarlona on Khorvaire's western shores and were welcomed by native orcs. They are typically taller and heavier than humans, with the prominent jaw and physical resilience of their orc parentage and the adaptability and social range of their human heritage. Orc-kin mature at the same rate as humans and live to roughly eighty years. They carry the orcish darkvision and the capacity for sudden ferocity under threat, and in the Shadow Marches, where human-orc intermarriage has been common for centuries, they are so thoroughly integrated that the distinction between orc, true half-orc, and human-presenting is treated as a spectrum rather than a boundary.
Three major orc cultures have survived into the present age, each shaped by the land they were pushed into and the threats they chose to face.
The orcs and orc-kin of the Shadow Marches represent the largest population and the one most connected to the wider world. The Marches are a land of swamps and manifest zones — tied to Xoriat and Kythri, the planes of madness and chaos — where time moves strangely, flora and fauna twist into unnatural shapes, and the ruins of the daelkyr war linger beneath the murky water. The population is split between two cultures: the clans, which blend human and orc traditions and maintain towns built on stilts, working with steel and trading with the outside world; and the tribes, which maintain nomadic traditions predating humanity, making their tools from stone, bone, and hide and following paths their ancestors walked for millennia. Certain Marcher clans contain humans, orcs, and half-orcs in roughly equal numbers, bound together by the marriages that first cemented the bond between the native orcs and the human settlers who arrived centuries ago.
The great schism within Marcher orc society is between the Gatekeepers and the cults of the Dragon Below. The Gatekeepers maintain the seals that keep the daelkyr imprisoned and fight aberrations wherever they emerge — their hunters patrol the deep swamps, watching for signs of Xoriat's influence, and their senior druids maintain the Siberys observatories that allow them to read the movements of the heavens and detect perilous planar alignments. The cults of the Dragon Below worship the very forces the Gatekeepers fought to contain, embracing the madness of the daelkyr and the dark things in Khyber. Centuries of conflict between these two factions have diminished both sides, and the Gatekeepers are now fewer than a thousand members — a dwindling order guarding seals that most of the world does not know exist.
The Ghaash'kala are orc tribes sworn to contain the evils of the Demon Wastes — a duty they have performed for as long as the Gatekeepers. They guard the Labyrinth, a series of canyons that separate the Demon Wastes from the Eldeen Reaches, fighting an endless war against the Carrion Tribes and the fiends that spawn from Khyber's portals. The Ghaash'kala worship Kalok Shash, the "Binding Flame" — fundamentally the same force as the Silver Flame, but expressed through a harsher, older tradition that predates the Church of the Silver Flame by thousands of years. All able-bodied Ghaash'kala fight. There is no civilian population in the traditional sense; every member of the community is a warrior, a priest, or both. The Ghaash'kala consider the peoples south of the Wastes to be naive and soft, but they protect them regardless, because that is the duty. Humans from the Carrion Tribes or the Eldeen Reaches sometimes hear the call of Kalok Shash and join the Ghaash'kala, producing a significant orc-kin population.
INTERCEPTED FIELD REPORT — DARK LANTERNS, WESTERN DIVISION
PRIORITY. The Ghaash'kala have turned back another Carrion Tribe incursion at the Labyrinth — third this season. No Brelish casualties. No Brelish involvement. No Brelish acknowledgment. These orcs have been holding the line against literal fiends for longer than Galifar has existed, and we cannot even be bothered to send them supplies. Recommend reassessment of western intelligence priorities.
The Jhorash'tar are orc tribes of the Ironroot Mountains — the remnants of populations displaced when the dwarven exiles of Sol Udar expanded across the surface of the range. The Jhorash'tar have been slowly crowded into the least hospitable regions of the mountains over millennia, and their resentment of the Mror dwarves runs deep. Their spiritual tradition, the Path of Bones, centres on bonecasters — priests who speak with the dead and conjure ancestral spirits, decorating their dwellings with the bones of fallen warriors whose ghosts are believed to guard the living. The Jhorash'tar do not work metal, though some will use dwarven weapons acquired through trade or raid. Their elite warriors, the bonesworn, channel ancestral fury in battle. A few dwarven clans have attempted to incorporate the Jhorash'tar into Mror society; others want them eradicated. The Jhorash'tar themselves have no interest in being incorporated into anything — they want their mountains back.
The Mark of Finding appears among orcs and orc-kin of House Tharashk, and it is the primary mechanism through which orcs have entered the wider world. The mark sharpens the senses and guides the hunter to prey — whether that prey is a fugitive, a dragonshard deposit, or a lost artifact. House Tharashk licenses inquisitives and bounty hunters, and its Finder's Guild has expanded into dragonshard prospecting, giving the house new wealth and influence as dragonshards are the lifeblood of the magical economy. Tharashk is the youngest of the dragonmarked houses and the least interested in the customs of the older houses; its three founding clans — Aashta, Velderan, and Torm — remain distinct, and heirs usually keep their clan names rather than adopting "d'Tharashk."
Strangely, the Mark of Finding appears only on half-orcs — neither full-blooded orcs nor humans of Tharashk bloodlines can develop it. This biological quirk makes half-orcs essential to the house's operations, giving them a unique status within the dragonmarked system and ensuring that the mixed heritage of the Shadow Marches is reflected at the highest levels of Tharashk's institutional power.
KALAASH'ARNA, THARASHK INQUISITIVE
"My ancestors hunted dragonshard fields in the Marches when your ancestors were still crossing the Thunder Sea. My grandmother's grandmother helped seal a gate to Xoriat — do you know what that means? It means that everything you have, every city you've built, every kingdom you've founded, exists because an orc said 'no' to a god of madness and made it stick. So when you call me a simpleton from the swamps, I want you to understand exactly how much history you're ignoring."
Orc religion is old, diverse, and almost entirely invisible to the Five Nations.
The Gatekeepers are the oldest druidic tradition on Khorvaire — taught by Vvaraak over fifteen thousand years ago and maintained through an unbroken chain of practice that predates every human institution on the continent. Gatekeeper druids wear garments of deep red, trimmed with deerskin and rabbit fur, favour the axe, and tattoo a stylised dragon head on the skin of their most senior members. They revere Vvaraak as a prophet and maintain the seals that prevent the daelkyr from returning to the surface — a task that requires annual ceremonies of enormous magical expenditure. The Gatekeepers gave rise to every other druidic tradition on Khorvaire: the Wardens of the Wood, the Greensingers, and the Ashbound all descend from Vvaraak's teachings, adapted and reinterpreted over millennia.
GATEKEEPER OATH — SPOKEN AT INITIATION, SHADOW MARCHES "In the name of Vvaraak, I swear to protect the natural world from that which would corrupt it. I will guard the seals. I will watch the skies. I will not use my gifts to inflict disease, madness, or poison — not even against the enemies of all life. I will remain vigilant against the threat that was, the threat that is, and the threat that is yet to come."
The Ghaash'kala worship Kalok Shash, the Binding Flame — a tradition that identifies the same divine force as the Silver Flame but expresses it through a warrior culture focused on combating supernatural evil through direct and relentless violence. Their faith is older than the Church of the Silver Flame by thousands of years, and they have no interest in the institutional religion of Thrane.
The Jhorash'tar follow the Path of Bones — a spiritual tradition centred on ancestral spirits, bone divination, and the belief that the dead linger and continue to guide the living through whispers and dreams.
The cults of the Dragon Below represent the dark mirror of Gatekeeper tradition — orcs who embraced the madness of the daelkyr rather than fighting it, worshipping fiends and aberrations in the deep places beneath the Marches.
With the rise of House Tharashk, orcs and orc-kin have spread across the Five Nations in increasing numbers. In general, the people of the Five Nations know very little about orc culture or history. When a citizen of Sharn imagines an orc-kin, they picture a Tharashk bounty hunter or a dogged inquisitive — competent, tough, possibly dangerous, probably from somewhere out west. A few ignorant sorts still hold the stereotype of a "simpleton from the swamps," but this is increasingly rare as Tharashk's reputation for excellence in investigation and prospecting grows. Tharashk has also expanded into the mercenary trade, brokering the services of monstrous warriors from Droaam, which has created some unease — the image of an orc managing a team of ogre bodyguards does not settle every stomach.
Orcs and orc-kin who have no connection to House Tharashk are rarer in the Five Nations but not unknown. Some are veterans of the Last War, recruited as mercenaries and now settled. Others are Gatekeeper hunters pursuing aberrant threats beyond the boundaries of the Shadow Marches. A few are Dragon Below cultists, and their motivations are considerably less benign.
The central injustice of orcish history on Khorvaire is that the people who saved the world are perceived as marginal. The Gatekeepers sealed the daelkyr. The Ghaash'kala hold the line against literal fiends. These are not minor contributions — without the Gatekeepers, there would be no Five Nations, no Galifar, no modern civilisation. And yet the average Five Nations citizen, if they think about orcs at all, thinks of swamp-dwellers and bounty hunters, not the guardians of reality.
This invisibility is partly structural — the Gatekeepers maintain their vigil quietly, the Ghaash'kala operate in a wasteland nobody visits, and the Shadow Marches are not a recognised nation — and partly the product of the same colonial dynamics that shaped human-goblinoid relations. Humans arrived, found a people they considered primitive, and built their understanding of orcs around that first impression. House Tharashk has done more to change this perception than anything else in recent history, but even Tharashk's success is framed in Five Nations terms: the orcs are useful because they find things, not because they once prevented the end of the world.
Among the Mror dwarves, the Jhorash'tar are seen as a nuisance at best and a threat at worst — savage raiders from the peaks who refuse to integrate. The Jhorash'tar, for their part, see the dwarves as invaders who stole their mountains and have the gall to call themselves the original inhabitants.
The Gatekeeper seals are weakening. There are too few druids to maintain them all, and the annual ceremonies that reinfuse the seals with power are increasingly strained. If the seals fail — if Dyrrn the Corruptor breaks free, if Xoriat achieves coterminous alignment — the consequences would dwarf the Last War. The Mourning destroyed one nation. A daelkyr incursion could destroy the world. The Gatekeepers know this. They have been trying to recruit new members, emphasising the thrill of hunting aberrations rather than the solemnity of the obligation, but most young orcs prefer the excitement of Tharashk bounty work or the promise of gold in the Five Nations. The order is ageing, and the threat it guards against has not.
House Tharashk is the primary vector through which orc-kin engage with the wider world, and the house's expansion is creating tensions on multiple fronts. Tharashk's move into the mercenary trade puts it in direct competition with House Deneith, and the brokering of monstrous mercenaries from Droaam has drawn suspicion from every nation that fought the Last War. Within the Marches, Tharashk's urban expansion and mining operations risk disrupting Gatekeeper seals, and the house's leadership — a Triumvirate representing its three founding clans — must balance profit against the possibility of releasing ancient evils.
The Ghaash'kala are fighting a war that has lasted for millennia and shows no sign of ending. They receive no support from the nations they protect, and their numbers are slowly declining. A Ghaash'kala character who ventures south carries a burden that nobody around them can fully understand — the knowledge that somewhere behind them, the Labyrinth is being held by fewer warriors than there were last year, and the year before that, and that the fiends on the other side are eternal.
And beneath all of it runs the question that Vvaraak left unanswered: was the daelkyr invasion the catastrophe she foresaw, or was it only the prelude? The Gatekeepers were charged to remain vigilant against "the threat that is yet to come." If the daelkyr were only the beginning — if something worse is approaching — then the dwindling order that holds the seals may be the only thing standing between the world and whatever comes next.