Chapter 38 - The Restless Orcs
I slowly entered the dead dungeon's entrance and made my way through the first few passages. The way further in was obstructed by debris and rock from the caverns that collapsed after the dungeon’s mana wasn’t there to support the inorganic structure. I searched through all the unobstructed passages and slowly explored the graveyard seeking the perfect place to start the portal summoning spell.
After a while of searching around, I found a nook in a nearby wall by accident, to be distracted in searching for the perfect placement I ended up tripping over a root coming from the mentioned gap. I followed the rough root through the gap, observing the unnatural dark veins crisscrossing over the rotting bark.
The gap opened up in a largish cave with a tree standing in the center, rather than what was left of it. Only the remaining stump hinted at the tree's colossal circumference, which was unnatural for a cave not even 10 (30 foot) meters in height. I didn’t ponder about the tree's size for long and instead inspected the dark veins that found their origin in a gash that had ripped of the top of the timber.
After not finding anything in the physical realm that would hint at the gash's origin I took a closer look at the energy in the cave. Looking over the present energies I made a shocking discovery reminding me of a recent instance, the fight with the shoggoth. I found hints of its dark energies still swirling around the hidden cavern and clues of the influence of the intimidating entity.
Combing the just gained information with some of the things I knew I was able to construct a rough reconstruction of what happened here. I assumed that after one of “The First” had killed the Rogue Dungeon and ascended into the 10th Tier, similar to the point of mana I ascended, it created a tier 2 mana. This then probably called forth a creature similar to the one that attacked me which was then killed or extinguished by the mysterious entity.
I could only hope that the shoggoth was somehow able to kill the assassin that broke the rogue dungeons core, though I had a feeling that this wasn’t the case. There were still a lot of mysteries connected with the origin of the dark energy and the mysterious entity banishing them into another realm but every bit of information helped. I could already see a future in which the major population started to ascend into Tier 10 and fought with hundreds of different shoggoths.
As strong as this mysterious benefactor may be, thousands if not millions of these wretched creatures would overwhelm it eventually, and then we all would be doomed. I hoped that this would be a far future in which we already knew how to deal with them, but the exponentially rising mana levels that hastened evolution were moving the date of this apocalypse closer and closer.
With nothing else to find out from the scenery, I instead got back to a side cavern close to the dungeon's entrance, I didn’t want to risk any energies interfering with the portal and would rather risk it being discovered easier. Using instincts bestowed upon me during my evolution I called forth a portal linking my dungeon to the graveyard of the rogue one.
The passive energy of the place, ordered by the mere presence of one of my kind, flooded into the runes that were beginning to form on the floor. I felt the local space mana go haywire as the mana formed a lance piercing the fabric of the world. The lances pointed tip ripped through numerous dimensions and locations until, with my guiding hands, it opened a portal home.
Slowly the space mana calmed down and repaired the ripped tunnel before any creatures could intrude upon this dimension and solidified the portal. Shimmering with an ethereal glimmer the other side of the door showed itself in all its glory, my dungeon. The Portal opened up into a special side room I had created beforehand, making the portal exclusive to my use, at least for now.
A direct way from exulcastra and the subterranean kingdoms into the Orcish Tribedoms hills was a colossal benefit that would be wasted if only I used it. Once I was sure the portal was safe and sound I would open it up for strategic purposes, with the end goal being a portal for commoners as nobles benefiting the whole alliance. First, though I had to stabilize the situation in the Tribedom, only then could we reveal that we had a direct way into the hearth of their domain.
I sealed up the place with some illusion and earth magic and made my way to the Capital, I was already a bit late and orcs weren’t known to be patient people, rather the exact opposite.
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Some days later I sighed the outskirts of the capital on the horizon, though the smell already informed me that I was close to it a day ago. While the orcs and their subspecies sure were a civilized and intelligent race, they still were some of the most primal of the known sentients, at least in the department of hygiene. War and the science around it was a totally different topic, in this specialization, you could compare them to the dwarves with their smithing and the elves with their alchemy and druidism, true masters of their art.
Most pseudo heroes and warriors might tell you a tale of them defeating a tidal wave of beast-like orcs single-handedly, though in this case, you can be sure that man has never in his life lifted a blade, nor even been in a battle. The people that we're able, to tell the truth about an orcish assault would be quite hard to get to talk to you because they were dead.
Their tale would be something like. We could smell them a week before they came, and hear them a day before their arrival, in horrific and horrendous machinations of metal and flesh and they stood along the horizon. Grins adorning their faces like they were just told the mead was free today and with a glint in their eye like a dwarf standing before an ingot of orichalcum.
The walls protecting the village were naught against their battering rams and the arrows didn’t even nick the shell of their siege towers. The sentinels and wall guards were taken down by modified and corrupted beasts of the deepest of depths and the militia were trampled and squished by gigantic trolls and ogres. The children cowered in fear in their mothers' embrace while the men died outside the barricaded doors and windows.
Though while most of a tale would end with the women raped and the kids hung orcs were different in this department. Sure they would pillage and sometimes even burn, though any woman and child without a blade or bow in hand were spared and let go. While vicious they were no unintelligent brutes, the village needed people to build again so that the orcs could come again.
Some signs hinting at the orc’s warmongerish tendencies were clear to the trained eye and I easily spotted them while flying over the capital. The sentinels already knew of my arrival and didn’t dare to attack one of the council members of the alliance, they loved a good fight but they weren’t stupid. I touched down when I came closer to the inner districts, housing the generals, strategists, and scientists, the upper echelon of orc society.
Behind me, the dense huts and villages obstructed relatively empty training camps and the shutdown of weapon and creature workshops. It felt unnatural to see the orcs live so free of and war or battle and I could see hints of uneasiness adorning the faces of the public. I took detours while I made my way into the chieftain’s hut, observing life in the gigantic campsite of a capital. The closer one got to the settlement's center, where the streets were guarded by gigantic ogres and patrols the deeper the scowls the weapon merchants and creature smith wore.
Before I could even see my final destination I already heard the shouts and roars of the assembled generals and chieftains. Steeling myself for a hard discussion to come I greeted the guards and made my way into the chaotic mess of a meeting.
Upon entering and just taking a breath to welcome the assembled members, I was surprised by a powerful uppercut from the left, throwing me against the hut’s exquisite leather walls made from some powerful beast. Annoyed at immediately getting punched upon entering the tent I was just about to get out of character and relief some of the buildup anger when I noticed the eerie silence.
The group of orcs was starring at me with mixed emotions, on the one side embarrassment and a bit of fear over having punched a prominent council member, and on the other side battle lust and anger at not being able to fight out their conflict. Seeing that I had the attention I before wanted to get by shouting I gulped down my own anger and simply went with the flow. While I was still young in dungeon terms my decades of diplomatic and conversational experience guided me to my next action.
Standing up and dusting me off I made sure to hide my face from them for a second. Finishing my “dusting off” I lifted my head, a gigantic smile adorning my face, and shouted in the round.
“Oy, and you‘re supposed to be a Chieftain”
While at first my response utterly dumbfounded the orcs, I could see their shoulders slowly relaxing and the held breath escaping their lungs. With a mighty and round laugh from the orc that just punched me, who also was the current “king” of the tribedom, the night was saved and the meeting could begin for good.
Over a heavy meal consisting of a fatty roasted dire boar and a full mug of vicious ale, I tried to get to know the orcish members of the Alliance a bit better. Officially I was here to discuss matters of trade and travel as well as adventurers and delvers and while I surely talked about those topics and discussed problems and possibilities that presented themselves the real reason for my journey was the rising chaos in the Tribedom.
As I had already witnessed in my flight towards the capital, the orcs were getting more restless and aggressive as well as lazy the further in one got from the borders. Finding the reason for this chaos was why I was here and I already had an idea that just needed some confirmation for me to go on my diplomatic journey into the elven territories.
To get behind the reason I used a tricky little aspect of my avatar body. As the body I found myself in was not fully connected to my mind I wasn’t able to get intoxicated by the increasing amount of alcohol the party consumed. My body certainly felt the effect but with a calm and unaffected mind and some magic, I purified my blood and was back to sober in seconds.
The orcs themselves certainly held on for longer, their larger and alcohol-tempered bodies allowing them to put in a lot more ale. But still, once the full moon was above us the diplomatic meeting had transformed into a group of a bunch of green drunkards. With their guards about me down and having accepted me it was time to get behind the real reason for this unrest in the orcish society.
I went about the half-conscious group of alcohol reeking orcs talking here and there and making friendly jokes, trying to find one really drunk that would say something he would later regret if he even remembered. After a while of talking around, I quickly found my guy, in a side room of the tent a smaller orc tactician that was caught up in a drinking game lounged like a gazel just waiting to be caught.
Not being a picky lion I quickly pounced on the opportunity and entwined the lanky tactician in a conversation. While at first only gibberish escaped the man mouthed I quickly got him to talk clearly with me, talking about his annoying wive larger than the average giant orc and the rising uneasiness. He told me about how his to wive was once a great warrior that once went out weekly assaulting some village or taking up a fight with local bandits.
After which she would always come home sweaty and needy and … At this point I interrupted the man getting the gist of what he was saying and not wanting to delve deeper into the orcs fetishes. He continued to story and told me that lately, she was not able to relieve her more brute side and indulge in any brutal fights making her a woman with a short temper, a lethal combination for any man.
Slowly, while listening to the man's concerns I was able to piece together the orcs problems. The happier people on the brutal borders to the thunder islands and the undead filled plains, the peaceful capital and the restless tribespeople, the uninspired weapon tinkerers and creature biologists, slowly my suspicion was taking shape and proving itself true. As it seems, while the orc surely was a civilized and intelligent race, the peaceful lifestyle the alliance forced upon them with their times of peace, were not for them.
Liking the increased amount of travelers and the goods the merchants brought with them stilled their desires for some time, though it didn’t suffice for long, it was a question of when not if the orcs had enough of the peaceful life and would break the alliance to ease their lust. My job now was to somehow find a way through which I to still the orcs lust while simultaneously not hurting the alliance, a difficult task to be sure but one perfectly fitted for me.
The most obvious of the solutions would be opening up the new portal into my dungeon to the public to allow the orcs to relieve their battle lust in my dungeon, though this would not be enough for everyone. The Portal was positioned in the rough center of the tribedom, but still, a lot of orcs would take weeks to reach it by foot if not even months, so I had to find something else and I already had an idea.
During the journey into the north on which I met Arthur the aranea king I too came into contact with the Beastmen nomads. They, same as with the orcs, were the more primal kind of the sentient races, though they learned to live with it in a relatively peaceful way. There they used duels and mostly nonlethal battles to solve conflicts amongst each other, from if the boy had stolen the apple or not to if the princess should marry this prince instead of the other.
While copying this method perfectly wouldn’t work for the orcs, conflicts being so frequent that if introduced they would fight day in day out, instead, I had to adapt the solution a bit. Instead of solving anything with their battles, I theorized a tribedom in which Orcs would fight in massive arenas using personal might, constructs, and wisdom to earn glory and pride. Two things are of utmost importance in orc culture, deciding marriage right as well as the orcs societal standing.
Having found a viable solution I quickly drew up plans overnight and eagerly discussed them with the hungover chieftains and generals. Trying to shut me up and get some piece from my voice, that had gone shrill in excitement, they quickly agreed to my proposal and promised to integrate my ideas. While the plan would be integrated I would provide my dungeon to the green skins, its reveal I had already discussed with the other council members and they agreed that this was needed to not risk the tribedom splitting apart.
With a job done, a portal placed and some information about the undead plague gained I made my way to the next location in my diplomatic Journey, the elven Jungle!!!
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