The End of an Age

The Orcs had one last Kingdom after they had been driven out of their mountain fast by King Uffawick the Sword-Hand and his Paladin army. The Orcs had retreated far into the great Blackwald and built wooden castles and wooden cities there, in violation of the edict of the Speaker of the Sun (The god-King of the Elves) and for a time they were able to grow in numbers and train a new and fearsome Orcish Army. Their new Castle and City they name Kara'Garth the Great and they brought in captive hill dwarves as their farmers and herders. The fifteen Kingdoms ignored the Orcs and fought each other in endless wars to create a Second Empire. Castles became more complex than ever and city walls became thicker and thicker. The Barons found themselves invested with more power than their kings and their domains often crossed Kingdoms. The Paladin orders slowly disbanded as the need arose for more mounted, plate wearing Knights. The Barons spent no expense in hiring mercenaries, as archers and swordsmen. The Holy Church began a massive Cathedral and Monastary building campaign and the High Polemarch of the Church began a concerted effort to bring the Kingdoms under his rule. He summoned the remaining Paladins and organized them into the Order of the White Rose. The new Order went to their Monastaries and Abbies under the guise of peaceful monks and began to train and wait for the order to take over the Kingdoms and the baronies. At this critical juncture in history, a man came out of an isolated village in the south of the continent and began to show all the marks of being the next (and long awaited) Ethnarch. He gathered common men to his side and began to denounce the High Polemarch as a complete fraud and displeasing to the creator of men. He walked the continent, preaching thousands of sermons and finally met the High Polemarch. The High Polemarch fled in terror at the Light that the Ethnarch exuded and the Ethnarch took his seat as the head of the Church and called the Barons and Kings to himself. They obeyed and he ordered them to unite the Kingdoms into a Second Empire. He also commanded that the barons hand their armies back to the Kings, as what the other Ethnarch meant when he created the barons at the end of the First Empire. The Kings held a council there and Markus Augsburg was made Emperor. The Kings demoted themselves to be Electors and the last official act of the Ethnarch was to appoint new bishops and a council of Twelve Polemarchs to oversee the Church. He also kept the Paladins to himself and ordered that, on his demise, the Paladins would be under the control of the Emperor and the Twelve Polemarchs. The Ethnarch walked out and went back to his native village and continued to heal and preach from there. Emperor Augsburg then went to a nice area which contained rolling, unsettled green hills and ordered that the city of Augsburg be built there. Augsburg Castle was at the center of the city and everything was white to symbolize peace. The city grew as merchants from all over the Empire (and nobles) flocked there to build shops and homes. The whole city was built of white stone and was made as modern as possible for the time. The city soon boasted five churches, two Cathedrals, one University, seven abbys and a Parlimentarian Hall for the Imperial Reichstag. The armies were given to the Emperor and the Kings were also made the Marshalls of the Imperial Army. The Yarl of Nordlandia and the Yarl of Vyirmark heard of the creation of this new Empire and they formed an alliance with the Second Empire. The Yarl of Nordlandia gave his daughter in marriage to the Emperor Augsburg and the Yarl of Vyirmark sent his sons to study at the University at Augsburg. Then the Orcs, now having reached over a million Orcish Warriors, surged out of the Blackwald and attacked the Castles and cities of the Second Empire. The Emperor gathered his 2 million strong army and met the Orcish force at Dunfire and beat them soundly. The remaining Orcs fled into the forest but were picked off by the archer forces of the Speaker of the Sun. The Imperial Army then marched on the Orcish Kingdom and put Baron Galwick as the Governor and left a garrison there. Baron Galwick had the Orcs rebuild the city as a stone city and tore down the outlaying castles, as demanded by the Speaker. Thus the Orcs came under human rule. They were made serfs of the humans and over the next centuries, except for one revolt led by Orc'Mar, never again took up arms. They began to lose size and strength and gradually began to look more and more humanoid. They even gained in intellect as well. 


The End.