The History of Fissa: Part 2

THE SECOND GREAT ORCAN HORDE

One hundred years ago, or a hundred years later, depending on your temporal point of view, after seemingly being crushed into the very rocks of Fissa, the great Orc horde rose again.

Despite Theranthor’s absolute and uncontested rule and the introduction of her first clutch onto the world, Theranthor’s reign came to a sudden end.

Seemingly out of nowhere they reappeared. A massed army of all the reunified tribes. Thousands upon thousands of them: The Bone Crunchers, The Meat Drippers, The Blood Bottlers amongst countless others and led by the greatest of all the tribes; the Broken Lancers.

And at their head, the legendary Never-was-chief; Aurelious.

Even now, no-one knows where they were hiding or how their numbers grew so vast.

Even the normally shrewd Dragon tyrant was caught unprepared. Her armies stretched thin throughout the world.

They converged upon her mountain fortress from all directions. Well armed and armoured against her and wielding fantastic weapons of mass destruction.

After her legions of Dragon-borns and Black cloaks were defeated, the mighty dragon, sensing her doom, tried to fly from the battle, only to be brought back down with ballistas and gigantic metallic nets.

These weapons have been divined to have been supplied by the ingenious Gnomes of Snafang. Even after another century though, the Gnomes, have neither confirmed nor denied this.

After she was snared, it was the mighty Bodan of the Broken Lancers, most mighty of all the orcs, who made the final blow. Boden, second only to his chief Orestis. With magical battle-axe held high above his powerful shoulders, he chopped through the Blue dragon’s neck in just three mighty blows sending arcs of lightning in every direction.

It was then that the dimensional rift faltered. For two hundred years the rift between dimensions had been held open by the ancient dragon’s magic but at her death, the very sky moaned in protest.

Soon a void opened up in the heavens and the massive dragon’s carcass and her draconic army, both dead and alive, were dragged upwards and through it before it crashed shut.

All over the world, similar rifts opened up and violently pulled in any that didn’t belong.

Theranthor’s few surviving children managed to hold on, as though they were born of the dragon, they were birthed on Fissa.

Some say that a handful of the dragon-born and demonic Tieflings managed to find a way to cling to this world but, other than in rumours, neither race has been seen for decades.

The Dragon Tyrant: Theranthor is now, for the Humans and Halflings, nothing but a half forgotten memory. A story to scare naughty children with at bedtime.

The other, longer lived races still remember though. Still remember and shudder.

Some of them had parents who lived through these terrible times. The most ancient races: The Elves and Dwarves saw them for themselves.

The orcs though, rather than be embraced as the heroes of the world, fell immediately back into their barbaric, warmongering ways. The great unification of the tribes splintered immediately and within a few years, as was their god: Gruumsh's will, they began waring upon each other again.

A century later, the only physical reminder left of that time, is the massive skeletal head of the ancient dragon, displayed as a symbol of power in the land of the orcan Broken Lancers.