BigSaltyDog

  Chapter 2: Dark Origins and Salty’s Oath Long before the banners of man fluttered across the fields of Ever’s Vale, the land belonged to the ancient tribes—the wild, unbroken races of stone, river, and fire. Among them, the Orcs reigned supreme, carving their strongholds into the bones of the earth. They lived by the code of the Great Howl: take, conquer, endure. It was not cruelty that drove them, but survival born of a world that showed no mercy. When men came from beyond the Eastern Seas, clad in strange metals and bearing gods that demanded worship, they claimed the fertile plains and holy forests for their own. Treaties were offered with smiling mouths and sharpened knives, and when the Orcs refused to kneel, their lands were taken by fire and sword. Centuries of bloodshed followed. Now, to the Orc mind, men were not neighbours, but thieves—plunderers who had desecrated their ancestors’ graves. Hatred festered deep, its roots thick as oak and black as pitch. But something...