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🩸 What we been up to? Same as usual. Fightin', and winnin'! [Maddyn]

This thread contains significant descriptions of violence, gore, or body horror.
Timestamp
Era XXVI Post Fractum
Location
Khardran Mountains/Sherian
There was lots of stuff to fight these days. That was good for the boyz. Nothing worse than a buncha boyz sitting around with nothing to do. True, the boyz could (and often did) just fight among themselves in that sort of situation. But it wasn't really optimal, now, was it, orcs fighting orcs. Because orcs were made for two things: fighting, and winning. And it was really hard to achieve both when it was a matter of orcs fighting other orcs.

The good news, then, was that there was plenty of other stuff to go out and crush.

Humans! All right, not so much the uumies these days. They'd built their big walls and hunkered down and seemed content to just watch the orcs go around blowing stuff up, as long as it wasn't their uumie stuff being blown up. Eh, sod 'em. Wasn't any fun running at a wall, after all. The uumie situation was a definite stalemate. In the east, there was the greenskins with Fortress Vers, and the heavy fortifications that the Imperials had erected across from it, and the no-man's-land from the giant kraken that had splattered in the way. In the west, a similar situation of fortified borders had arisen. The only real Imperial vulnerability was the Khardran Pass, given the uumies didn't seem keen on trying to march into the mountains themselves to try and deal with the orcs. If it weren't for the fact that there were other targets to be had, that might have been a much bigger problem for the uumies.

Because there were all these skelly boyz, see. Reclaiming Orckon had been a project and a half, taking down all them undead. Hordes and hordes of them, just shuffling about the place. Not the most interesting fight, really, but it was cathartic. Go out there, cut a swathe through them, come back with all them bones. Always a good supply of skulls for decoration these days, really. And there was just more and more and more of them the further south you went. Granted, not all of them were dumb. Some of them were those, eh... think-y types. You'd think they were uumies, 'cept for the fact that they were all... undead-y. The ones holed up in places like Taralon, too, might have had a bigger problem on their hands, if it weren't for the others the orcs had mostly found themselves fighting as of late.

Them squeaky boyz. Dunno where they came from, but the orcs had been kept busy whacking 'em everywhere they showed up. First overrunning the Vorgan Mines, which remained a constant battle of control over that territory. Then just scurrying out everywhere in the Khardran Mountains from the feel of it. Fight 'em over here, beat 'em over there, they go running back into their holes, they come scurrying out somewhere else. Repeat! Beat 'em on the surface but they's sneaky, hard to fight them in the dark and underground. Sneaky, cunning, not a proper fight once the orcs wandered into squeaky-boy territory. That, too, had resulted in something of a bloody stalemate, for all that the Warlord had been thinking hard about ways to deal with them. More cost-effective ways to crush those furballs!

So that was the thing. The uumies and the skelly-boyz had been spared the brunt of greenskin attention, because the Warlord and his boyz had so many of those black-rat squeakers to fight! Bit of an annoying fight at times, but a fight was a fight! Putting out fires all over orc territory with the way they popped up out of nowhere. Usually win on the surface, usually lose in the dark underground. Hrm.

Before the Warlord could start enacting plans to turn the tides, though? Eh... them squeaky boyz up and disappeared. Or at least there sure were a heck of a lot less of them as of late. Didn't feel like the orcs had won or nothing. What, the squeaky boyz run off and do something else? Bah!

Whatever. The Warlord would continue to check in on some of the plans he'd started up.

Here was one right now. Relying more on goblin fighting. Orcs were simple and strong! Squeakers were cunning and vicious. Mmm. Not a great matchup sometimes. But hey... goblins. Goblins were cunning and sneaky and vicious, too. And able to see in the dark and all that stuff. Not strong like an orc, sure. But stabby in their own way. See, a normal orc might see a goblin and think, hey. Free snack. But that's why the Warlord was the Warlord. He was the big brain thinker. Train up some gobbos to do some fighting, that'd free up the boyz to go smash other things!

So, the Warlord would visit the barracks where some of the first goblin recruits had been assembled. See how they were shaping up. The motivation was simple enough, really. The gobbos were getting punted down those shafts and tunnels either way. Know that there was a rodenti presence somewhere? Send the goblins in. When do the goblins get to come back? When all the rodenti were gone! Either way they were going to have to fight. Might as well train so that they'd maybe win and get to come back, right? Then they'd earn the right to breed - because if anything could match the swarms of rodenti, surely it was the little green buggers. What stopped the gobbo population from exploding? Probably it getting continually culled by their orc betters!

Get out there and fight! If you come back, maybe you'll be treated better! Pretty generous, as far as rewards for gobbos went!

There were a handful of goblins in the Warlord's employ that actually knew a thing or two about fighting (and thus, were treated much better than dirt). Get them to train the other gobbos! Get the greenskins some goblin warriors to get down there and fight the rodenti on equal terms in the dark underground!
 
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‘ere we go ‘ere we go ‘ere we go! There was always a fight to be had in the Khardran and the Sherian, it was just a matter of sometimes, had to go a bit further out of one’s way to find it was all. Undead, Orcs, Rodenti, Humans. The good fight never really stopped, for all that there really weren’t all that many Greenskins not under the Warlord WAAAAAAAGH!’s banner. A few wretched little tribes all the way to the far north of Khardra itself were all that remained - a couple Mobz led by a Nob or two that were barely half WAAAAAAAGH!’s size.

The Greenskins beneath Orckon remained, awaiting a time for when they could be awakened once more now that they’d survived the very worst of the Black Wind that the Ancient Aelyrian’s had sent to scour the Khardran and Sherian. The Weirdboyz awaited, the Shamans still maintaining the old rites as the Warlord that was a Shaman and a Weirdboy too had yet to awaken the true strength of the Horde.

Gobbos! Little wretched things, and the Night Goblins were the worst of it. Not so much hardened by the attacks with the rat-things so much as drugged up on their fungus wines and psychedelics and so? No shortage at all of the fanatical wielders of the ball and chain, or the gobbo catapaults that never really seemed to work quite right - but there was always more goblins to be found. The battle wagons in the Nightlands were an utter mess but still, the Greenskins kept on innovating!

Shaping up? Oh, as WAAAAAAAGH! surveyed the barracks, there was the ever present risk that the massive Orc might accidentally (or deliberately) step on one. Weedy, hunched and conniving, the Forest Goblins were faring a little better. Their green hides covered in the blue whorls that supposedly protected them against danger and the feral wolves they rode into battle gluttoned on Undead that lay between Orckon, Narim and Vers.

From Verongorn Keep to the Orckon Forest, of Drawermar Hold, Everdark Keep and the Vorgon Mines; WAAAAAAAGH! maintained the heartlands of the Sherian and the Khardran. Only the coastline truly remained contested.
 
Gobbos.

A normal orc might never consider relying on a goblin in a fight. The Warlord saw promise in the more diminutive greenskins, though. It was all about using them right, though. Never trust them to hold a line in an open field, for instance - you wanted solid orc boyz for that. Never leave them to just do their own thing unsupervised - they didn't have the discipline for that. Have some boyz herd them into action? That worked. Push them into a corner where they were forced to fight proper? See: sending the gobbos in to clear the tunnels of ratta.

Yeah, you needed to think good to know how to use a gobbo well. Good thing the Warlord did exactly that. That's why he was the Big Boss! (Also 'cuz he was the biggest, of course. That's how it worked.)

Satisfied with how the goblin training seemed to be going, it was time to go and visit Plan... uh, the Other One.

Namely, they had a buncha shamans and weirdboyz and such. And some of them were ele... elem... elemer... the ones that could do stuff with the earth! And also the fire and water and air or whatever, but earth was the important one at the moment. Because obviously the rodenti were moving around in the earth a whole bunch, and having people that could move it around and do stuff with it was important.

The problem, though, was that messing around with it too much wasn't no good, either. For instance, the mines - collapse tunnels, and you potentially lost passages to ore veins, had to dig them back out again. Too careless and you wound up with sinkholes and other collapses that could destroy everything above.

He'd told the handful of shamans he had to start focusing on the earth stuff. Tracking movement - that was a good one. Being able to get advance warning that rodenti were moving, where they might pop out. Get some boyz over there quick and bash 'em over the head before they could scurry about and make trouble.

How'sit lookin'? As per usual, he'd go and check in with the shamans to see if they'd detected anything suspicious as of late. It'd been real quiet recently. The Warlord was pretty sure his shamans weren't just incompetent. The gobbos they'd been sending down had been coming back, the lot of them, without a fight. Had those squeakers really just pulled back?
 
All the Gobbos! Bred almost as fast as the Rat-men did too, which was all kinds of handy when the vermin had a penchant for sending poison through the various tunnels in the Nightlands beneath the Khardran or simply collapsing tunnels wholesale. Neither side seeming to place all that much value on lives.

If ever another Necromancer discovered just how many bodies were buried beneath the Khardran, things were going to get all kinds of dicey however. As it was, even the Necromancer Weirdboyz within the Horde were quite inclined to let them stay buried and forgotten rather than risk the potential escalation of an Undead arms race.

No sense giving the Rat-men a good idea - who knew just how strong their Weirdboyz were! Might ruin a good fight!

Mountain Goblins were a bit of a mess, far more Kobold than Orc and all kinds of nervous with what was going on. Morale wasn’t great, but then with Gobbos’ it was always pretty wretched anyway. How would anyone even notice the difference?

Weirdboyz!

Tracking the Ratmen! They’d long since identified that the Weirdboyz for the Ratta were actually not Ratta. One and all, they’d eventually pieced together that the Shamans of the Rat-men were actually the runty white Mousai. Every now and again though WAAAAAAAGH’s Boyz ran into one with a set of horns and then things got dicey fast. At least two seemed to exist within the Khardran, and each had necessitated that either WAAAAAAAGH or Jii’awg take to the field to help contain the damage.

The Necromancer though was increasingly getting antsy. Very much not a fan of the state of affairs around Narim and Taralon. Elf Pirates off the coast of the Vorgon Mines.

Squeakers had definitely pulled back, which begged the question: Why.
 
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On the one hand, the squeakers were a little more interesting than the skelly-boys, who didn't really have much variety. Oh, sure, there was supposed to be some super-spooky death guy in charge of them or whatever, the Warlord's necromancer being very adamant that whoever they were, they were very powerful and very spooky. Hadn't ran into the sod anywhere, though, and the shuffling skelly-boys really didn't provide all that much in the way of a challenge. Just a lot of them. Squeakers had a bit of variety to them! Black ones and white ones and horned ones!

On the other hand... well, no, there wasn't really anything else to say. Good fightin'!

That the necromancer was getting all wound up was nothing new, though. Weirdboyz being weird! Still, it was true that there were other matters brewing in the countryside while the greenskins had been busy smashing in the faces of the squeakers. The Warlord was hesitant to lean too much on the reserves of manpower that had been interred, however. More boyz meant more fightin' to be done, but more boyz were harder to organize. And unorganized boyz were, well, kinda crap. Maintaining discipline and cohesion, the Warlord had found, was essential for producing quality fightin' boyz. And that was a problem that even the big brain thinking Warlord had yet to fully be able to tackle and solve.

Eh, he'd figure it out eventually. S'why he was the Big Boss Warlord.

On the one hand, the skitter-boyz pulling back was pretty suspect. Where'd they go? Why'd they disappear? Felt like the greenskins were gonna get sucker punch'd if they weren't careful. But at the same time, that could also mean that they now had resources freed up to deal with other things. Properly resettle into Orckon. Deal with those smart skellies in Tarawhatever. Strike further south into Sherian, like that Narim place. Take advantage and reclaim the Vorgan Mines, make sure those squeakers were properly cleared out. Go and see if the Imperial uumies wanted to have another scrap, maybe.

Hrrrrrm.

It was too dangerous to commit to something without knowing what was up with the squeakers, though. Again - avoid the sucker punch. Well, if they wasn't fightin' the greenskins... where the heck else could they go? Further down? Maybe. Further up? Naw, that ain't how directions work. Well, the only other ways to go were...

...

The Warlord had some of the big nobz set up patrols. Ostensibly to make sure the squeakers weren't causing trouble throughout the territory. And that was certainly part of the plan, yeah. But that's what made the Warlord so brilliant - those patrols could multi-task. Send them to the borders of the Khardrans and spy on the uumies while they were at it. See what those uumies were up to. Monitor 'em. Been a while since the greenskins had dealt with the uumies, after all. Good to scout 'em. Pay attention to what they were doing.

See if there was any... funny business going on. If those fuzzy rats had pulled back, maybe it was because they'd found something else they wanted to scrap with. And around here, there was the Khardra boyz, the skelly-boyz, and the uumies. Didn't seem like the skellies were gettin' bothered, so it could be the Khardra boyz were getting swarmed. But there was an awful lot of uumie land around the mountains...
 
Thirty thousand Boyz waiting to be awakened, WAAAAAAAGH very much having reserves for all that there really wasn’t all that much of the Good Fight about. There was simply no escaping that the hardest days of the Warlord’s own conquests within the Sherian and Khardran had been from pummelling the various Nobz in line and bringing the Horde together. Undead, Ratta, Other Undead, and the creatures of the Unseelie such as the Gnomes that WAAAAAAAGH had encountered so long ago. Throw in a Liche and the main problem seemed to be that those willing to fight were all already dead.

Where to bring da fight?!

Uumies!

Off to the far west, the Imperial’s still had several thousand Guardsmen as they’d had for years now. Time though had led towards their starting to build proper fortifications finally in lie of ditches and spikes everywhere. Off to the east and Phondra, things remained much as they had - a garrison force where the priority on both ends was in maintaining the Khardran Pass. The Imperial’s weren’t looking for a fight so much as making sure each day was pretty much the same as the one before it - boring, safe and uninteresting.

The Rat-men had pulled back, but the two armies set on the Sherian’s border hadn’t made so much as a hint of movement in turn. Both forces in their own way seemed more interested in what was coming from the coastline - the poncy Elves having been raiding much sides of the Sherian and while they’d yet to hit the massive hulks that were the Orc ships - the Elf Corsairs had shown no fear of WAAAAAAAGH’s Horde either.

Beneath Khardra itself, the Night Goblins and the Rodenti were still very much going at it. But it was a minor squabble, no worse off than anything that had taken place over the last decade and more since the Black Wind. There simply just wasn’t enough food within the Khardran to even bother fighting over - not when the Imperial lands tended to be far richer for that kind of thing.
 
Hrm.

Uumies didn't seem to be up to nuffin'.

Couldn't tell where the squeakers had gone.

Something didn't add up here. Not unless the rats had gone after the Khardra boyz or something. And the Warlord's dealings with Khardra suggested that they were just as well-equipped as his own to deal with something like that. A very secure, if rather insular horde of greenskins up there - the last bastion of what used to be based out of Orckon.

Buncha poncy fancy elves sailing around. Hadn't been no bother, but then again, the Warlord could count the number of actual ships he had on one hand. (Had all his fingers on that hand and everything.) No way the squeakers were occupied with that. Sounded like the uumies were having trouble, though?

Well now hang on. If the uumies were fighting them poncy elvish boat boyz... maybe that was the sort of distraction the squeakers were looking for to make trouble with the uumies? Uumies were rich, after all. The Warlord would know - he'd taken over a few of their towns in Sherian. Good for tribute and such. Food and materials the greenskins weren't interested. Ever seen an orc farm? Nah, leave that to the uumies.

But wait, 'old on. Wasn't as if the boat boyz could be attacking all that many places. Needed water for boats. Was the distraction really enough for the rat-boyz to take advantage of? Mmmm... but 'old on to that 'old on. One of the reasons why the Warlord had deliberately refrained from tossing rocks at the uumies was because he was smart, see. He knew that there were a lot of uumies. He had smart boyz who had maps and such and cor, the uumies had a lot of land. Meant there were lots of uumies. Wouldn't be a problem if they were fighting in the mountains but the Warlord had territory in the flatlands of Sherian.

But these squeakers, they don't have that problem, do they? They could attack the uumies and then scurry back underground. They had an advantage if they wanted to take the fight to the uumies. Even a minor opening was enough for them to potentially give the uumies a nice, good sucker punch.

Hrm. Lots of thinking. Big Boss type thinking. But the real Big Boss question was...

...what of it?

All right. The Warlord mustered together an expedition force of boyz and gobbos. He'd send them out to the Vorgan Mines - the squeakers had plagued the lower tunnels for quite some time now and really reduced the output that the mines were capable of producing. It'd become contested territory. Time to be productive with their time. If the squeakers had really pulled back, then it was time for the greenskins to expand and fortify their borders. Reclaim lost ground. But the Warlord would only invest a little bit into certain areas at a time. That way, if the squeakers were just waiting around to throw a sucker punch back, the Warlord hadn't committed all his boyz to a single place yet.

Patience. That's what made him the Big Boss! (Also because he was the biggest.)
 
Stable! Imperials acting like nothing much was happening outside the Elvish Pirates. Rat-men all scurried off, giving only token resistance and conflict as if they’d found some much easier pickings in recent times. It wasn’t so much that nobody wanted to go have a good scrap with the Warlord of the Khardran so much as, no, nobody really did want to antagonise the massive Orc and his Horde.

Elf Pirates were definitely a bother to the Imperials around Phondra, and the shoreline of the far, far west had a large number of wrecks still infested with Undead. Over all, Orcs made dreadfully poor slaves and so? The Dark Elves to the east were quite content to ignore the Warlord’s efforts around the Vorgon Mines and avoid any unnecessarily bloodshed.

What was a Warlord to do, when he could already see the sucker punch coming. It was just a matter for the Boss of the Weirdboyz to figure out where the Rat-men were looking to sucker punch when it evidently wasn’t the Greenskins.

Someone, somewhere, was clearly about to get quite the scrap and the Orcs were being rudely ignored and left uninvited.

Muster the Horde! Well, a small portion of it anyway. But given how few interesting scraps there’d been? Lots of Orcs keen, even if the Gobbos were having a ‘not again’ given how much they’d been pushed already with the Rat-men. Into the Vorgon Mines, and ever forwards, ever onwards into the Nightlands!
 
The Warlord felt like with the apparently low chance of there even being a scrap, there wasn't much point in going himself.

That was what made the Big Boss the Big Boss. He knew that he didn't have to do everything himself. There were some tasks that just were beneath him. The boyz could handle it! And if they couldn't... sod 'em!

Oi you! He'd have one of the Nobz lead the expedition. One of the smarter, bigger Nobz, because this job needed some brains. Gather some boyz and gobbos and get out there! Get wunna da weird earth boyz to go along with too, just in case. The squeakers seemed like a diminished threat, but no need to underestimate them or nuffin.

The Nobz' goal was clear. Verify that the squeakers had pulled out of the area, and if so, re-secure the mine! Make sure to figure out what was down there in terms of passages and such. If the rats were gone then it was time to move back in, and set up defensive positions. Weren't gonna let the furballs take it so easily a second time! That's why the Nob had to be smart - they needed to figure out how many boyz were needed to properly secure the mines! Figure outwhere the good defensive spots and checkpoints were! Send a message back to the Warlord for how many needed to be sent out!

Hey! Idiot! Make sure to account for the boyz already posted to the mine, too!

Now, if the squeakers turned out to still be down there in force... scrap a bit for good measure, then come back 'ere and let the Warlord know! Big Boss, yadda yadda - knowing stuff was good! Knowing stuff made you smart!
 
Delegation! The sign of the canny Boss! But then WAAAAAAAGH was first and foremost a Weirdboy; the mantle well earned as one of the most powerful practitioners of Song within not only the realm of the Warlord but also much of the Medonian Continent. In the East, it was likely that only a certain Sea Elf Bard marked by Sophronia herself could contest WAAAAAAAGH now.

Trust was all well and good, but verification mattered especially when dealing with the sneaks that tended to be drawn to the Nightlands.

Not that the Nob was all that keen, even with the prospective fight - the tunnels within the Sherian really weren’t designed for an Orc’s stature. WAAAAAAAGH himself barely able to stand in quite a lot of the sections of the Nightlands as he’d had the misfortune of experiencing during the initial capture of the Vorgon Mines and when encountering the abominable mind controlling creature that had lurked in the darkness beyond.

Down into the darkness the Boyz went!

Hours passed before the first Night Goblins returned. First checkpoint? Five Boyz, or Ten Gobbos were requested. Going deeper! No Rat-men encountered yet, though quite a lot of their mess left behind. Tunnels positively reeked of them - stale and rank.
 
See, that was the thing.

The Warlord delegated to the Nob.

The Nob could delegate to others, too.

Fascinating, wasn't it? What a system!

Right then. Expedition sent out to the Vorgan Mines. The Warlord busied himself with Warlord things. There were things to think about, orders to bark, so on and so forth.

Ah, word was back? Aight. Since it didn't seem like it was too deep into the tunnels, the Warlord would send along some requested boyz. More than that, in fact. Send along twice as many gobbos - clean up that rat mess! Didn't need that stuff mucking about! It'd just get in the way of future mining operations or patrols through those tunnels!

---

And in the meantime, make sure to maintain those patrols! The Warlord wanted to make sure they were vigilant! Keep an eye on the uumies! Watch out for any sign of those squeakers! Nobody sucker punch'd an orc!
 
Vorgon Mines! Every now and again, there was a request for more Boyz or Gobbos, but bit by bit, the Nob and the Mob were making their way through the network of ancient tunnels. Diligent, boring work as the Greenskins were constantly looking got a scrap that never came. But they’d also learned after the last few years not to be too brazen and headstrong when it came to fighting the Rat-men. Skitterish and weak, their habit of collapsing or poisoning tunnels rather than fighting the good fight was just not the way any Orc Boy wanted to go out.

That kind of pointless death could be left for the Gobbos.

Which as Patrols were sent out abroad, along with in the beginnings of the Nightlands that could be accessed from the Vorgon Mines? WAAAAAAAGH eventually got word of what the Rodenti had done before leaving the Orc realms. Namely, the Nightlands looked to have been boobytrapped heavily - lots of supporting structures removed, poisonous gas pumped into other tunnels and the area largely treated as of the Rat-men not only were abandoning the Sherian but also making sure that the Greenskins couldn’t come follow them.

At least, when accessed via the Vorgon Mines. The routes within the Khardran Mountains were far too extensive to be ever truly shut off from the Nightlands as they spread out into Prime Province, the Sherian, Centripax and Northumbria and Vesta. Only those within Maeve remained troublesome due to the Imperial presence around the Daltina Gem Mines in particular - the wealth of the ummies and the Khardran Pass itself seeming to be the only true points of interest that the Imperial’s cared to defend.
 
Boyz and gobbos trickled towards the Vorgan Mines as the greenskin presence in the area was firmly re-established. The squeakers had always had the element of surprise on their hands - after all, who the heck would suspect that there was a bunch of stuff under the earth? You dug for ores and metal and stuff, you didn't expect to find some furrball waiting to stab you.

Well, now they knew there were stabby furballs down there. Wouldn't be so easy the second time! Shore up those defenses, beef up security, and leave a lot of work to the goblins!

Buncha mess to clean up too from the sound of it. Sounded like it'd take a fair amount of time before the mines were fully re-operational, but they were already in a better state with the rats gone. Definitely the sort of thing to continue to invest manpower in, although for now it'd likely be more a matter of consolidating whatever they could. Next step would be to expand out further and deal with the territory the rats had mucked up.

The situation there seemed more or less table, for now.

No notable movement along Imperial lines.

Still no sign of where those squeakers were headed.

Right then. He'd assign a few more patrols to run through the northern territories than usual - the areas that butted up against the domain of the orcs in Khardra. Those gits up there were a potential avenue that the squeakers were running towards, best to keep an eye on what was going on up there. See if there was any information to be gained.

In the meantime, he'd gather together a few of the smartest boyz he had. Some of them were smart like him - others were those weird Orckon sorta orcs, the 'civilized' boyz who were a bit too much like uumies for the Warlord's liking. That did make them useful in their own way at times, though. They'd have a map in front of them, and the task itself was simple.

"Lessay weez da squeakers," the orc grunted, jabbing his finger into the map. "And we got all dis uumie land we can hit. What's da target? What's da big hoard we goin' aftuh?"

Just because those rats weren't around to bother the orcs anymore didn't mean they weren't still a bother. Knowing where those squeakers were going, anticipating what their next move was, could open things up for the greenskins. They could know where the boyz could be sent safely, for instance.

If the rodents were moving against Khardra, that was pretty easy. There wasn't much besides Khardra. Almost certain they weren't going further south. If they'd pulled out of the mines, it was possible the Warlord's holdings in western Sherian were potentially at risk, but the east was likely safe. And there hadn't been any word yet in the mountain territories.

But there was a lotta uumie land. That seemed like the most likely target at the moment. What might the enemy be massing towards?
 
North of the Khardran Pass, things were a bit more touch and go. Or at least, the Khardran Pass itself was a bit of a hot-bed of activity now. The caravans that had moved from Candaceburg and into Maeve tended to then filter slowly but steadily throughout the Imperium and allow for a stable distribution of grains for all the Provinces to the west. Now? WAAAAAAAGH’s scouts were finding that the Orcs and Goblins of Khardra were far more inclined to start raiding the caravans - drawing the Imperial Legion’s attention in turn.

The north of Khardra it seemed, at least on the surface, was having a bit of a food shortage and being forced to take what they needed from the ummies.

In the meantime?

Boyz from the Past! Weird, even without the Shaman-like tendencies, and some being a little bit too familiar with the workings of the Imperium. Every now and again WAAAAAAAGH had found a Greenskin here and there that had even been to places far, far to the north and west. Of islands with scaled lizards that could fly and places where the small cats and dogs actually walked upright like an Orc. Strange, nonsensical places but every now and again such as in places like Breecetown WAAAAAAAGH found glimmers of truth within the tall tales.

Map!

Food. Land. Slaves. The constants were all about resources and who got what.

“Ummie food comes from here.” with a vague gesture somewhere above Phondra. It came through the Khardran Pass, so beyond that? Little was known.

“Ummie furs and iron come from over here.” with a vague gesture somewhere beyond the Khardran Mountains. Lots of space.

“Do the Rat-men need one or other or both?” the Orc questioned out loud. Furs and Irons made for War, but nobody could last all that long either without Food. Which, in low enough quantities did make for a lot of Gobbos ending up on the menu in hard times. But did the Rat-men have the same view on ‘rations’?
 
The Khardra boyz having some trouble, eh? Tuck that information away for thinking. See, that was Warlord thinking. Vulnerabilities in an enemy! Potential weaknesses to be taken advantage of! But that, too, was the problem with being as big as him and the boyz had gotten. Lots of enemies to fight! Hard to commit fully to any single one!

All right, now, let's see here.

Food.

Furs and iron.

Mmm.

Thinking. Hmmm.

Mmmmhmmm.

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

"Both, but da food's probably more important." Yeh. If the squeakers couldn't eat, they could hardly fight, now, could they? And there sure were a heck of a lot of them. Sure, it was harder to fight without iron, but definitely not impossible. Had enough bodies and you could probably overrun an enemy anyway. But running out of food was a death sentence for a fighting force. That might be the reasoning behind why the rats had all pulled back suddenly. Not enough food? Well that was something they needed to sort out right quick. And it did seem like food was something that the uumies had in abundance...

And if so many of the rats were gone, they were going to hit something big. Which meant... somewhere to the north? Yeah, that did match up with their withdrawal from the south. Hrrrrrm.

"Let's go wiff dis, den."

They'd take the opportunity afforded them to secure their positions in the south. They'd already gotten started on reclaiming the Vorgan Mines. The Warlord would push manpower towards properly reclaiming Orckon - the city had more or less had the undead cleared out of it, but it hadn't actually been reoccupied. Time to start getting boyz in and turning it into a proper dakka-dakka fortress like Vers. No, no, a little different. Vers was more fighty, Orckon could be more, eh... fight-prepare-y!

Also, take some time to make sure that the western settlements that paid tribute to the greenskins to not get their faces smashed in were nice and cozy, too. Good source of food and other boring stuff you needed to fight with! Boring jobs for boring uumies, so that the boyz could spend all their time fighting instead! Heheh.

For now, the Warlord would focus on that. But he wanted to make sure to keep an eye out on the Khardra boyz. The Warlord's territory encompassed a decent section of the northern Khardran Mountains, above the Khardran Pass - Garde was the northernmost fortified 'point' of his territory. Occasional raids by the Khardra orcs in the Pass were fine, but if they were trying to muscle in, then the Warlord was gonna hafta go and slap 'em one. If those squeakers had sodded off to fight the uumies, then left 'em! Meant that the Warlord was free to deal with the stuff that wasn't rats and uumies!
 
A Cunning Plan.

Only, WAAAAAAAGH wasn’t a fox, and while the goblins might well have smelled like a being known as a ‘Baldric’, the Greenskins were remaining quite solidly in ‘Weirdboy’ territory. This was pretty advanced stuff for even the Shamans and the Mekz and the odd Orcs that had been awoken from Orckon and the Slumber that had preserved them from the Black Wind of the Ancient Aelyrians.

Orckon remained. All it truly needed was bodies, and infrastructure - both of which WAAAAAAAGH had accumulated over the years. Once the remaining Orcs beneath Orckon were awakened? Well, easily enough Greenskins to ensure that the heartlands of the Sherian were his and would likely remain so short of the Undead in Narim and Taralon working together. Even the Ummie forces stationed at the west and east of the Province were insufficient to root out the Greenskin threat now - merely hold the line.

Off to the west, things were much of muchness. The towns around Breecetown remained locked within their unpleasant fate. Beyond the Imperial border, and so subjected to either the dealings with WAAAAAAGH or the Undead - they’d chosen (as if it’d been a choice) to go with the Warlord. Morale remained pitiful, even for Ummies, but they laboured and toiled for the good of the Horde still.

A token rumour though that something had unsettled the Undead that tended towards the western shore where most of the Elvish and Imperial ships wrecked upon; the driftwood beaches long since covered with the ruins of the Imperial Fleet that had been sent to assist Narim during the Sherian War.

Khardra!So far, Garde remained uncontested. Only the Khardran Pass was where the fighting was happening. Definitely more frequent than they’d ever been in the past, sticking mostly to the western side of the pass rather than the east.
 
It was always good to have multiple bases. Orckon would just be the newest in the set of bases that the orcs held. Fort Orok and Fort Goff situated in the Khardran Mountains. Vers in eastern Sherian. And now Orckon in the center, which would really serve as a lynchpin when it came to holding greenskin influence in the area. The Warlord liked the sound of that.

Get some boyz in there! Get some smiths in there! Much easier for the mines to supply Orckon, for sure! Get some tanners and cooks in there! Distribute production so that the boyz could get their arms and armaments from all sorts of places! Much easier to grab some gear and go fightin', without having to wait for it to be carted from far away!

Mountains were definitely great for fight-y forts. Hard to attack, easy to defend. But the lowland settlements were definitely easier on logistics. Easier to move stuff around!

So, with the situation in the south still developing, the Warlord decided that until Orckon was really properly consolidated and settled into a base, that they shouldn't try and strike too much deeper into Sherian. Instead, it was probably better to mop up the situation in the north. The citadel of Garde was fine, but those Khardra boyz were skulking about in the Warlord's territory and he wasn't about to let them get away with that.

Send out some scouts! What sorta numbers were the Khardra boyz running in the Pass? Were these small and fast raids? Or had they brought along a proper looting party?
 
Kommandos! Only, Khardra had their own, even if they weren’t anywhere near as competent as WAAAAAAAGH’s own Blood Axes. Kunning though they were, Khardra’s own Kommandos seemed to be more based off having seen and heard what the Blood Axes were like before joining WAAAAAAGH’s Horde.

The face paint was all off; definitely nor stealthy! Looked more like good old fashioned war paint. But the attempt was made. Far more inclined to make use of dulled black choppas rather than axes.

Accompanying them were good old fashioned Boyz. Kommandos go in, make sure the various Ummie Caravan wasn’t able to retreat or advance - avalanche! Traps! Spike-pits! And then the Boyz would descend upon the caravans and make short work of the looting and pillaging. Rather simple affair, but against Ummies? Highly effective really.

Off to the south around the Vorgon Mines, clean up continued. Most of the old nests of Rat-men had been thoroughly cleaned out. A few tunnels were still poisoned - mapped out and caution markers laid down. The few that had been trapped to collapse? Shored up and all in all? Once more the Mines were solidly in WAAAAAAAGH’S hands.
 
Progress in the south remained good.

Now, to deal with these Khardra lads. It didn't seem like there were really all that many of them. Probably not worthy of a proper WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH of an expedition north or anything. Just a bit of a counter-raid operation was all.

The Khardra boyz could raid the uumies all they wanted, but zoggit, don't traipse through the Warlord's territory to do it. There was plenty of uumie land surrounding the Khardran Mountains, and plenty of it adjacent to the Khardra Empire's borders. The heck were they doing coming all the way over here?

Naaaaw, the Warlord did get it somewhat, though. Didn't mean the Khardra boyz weren't gonna get their faces smashed in for trespass, though.

Aight, here's what we gonna do. The Warlord's go personally for this one, been a bit since he'd had a good scrap. Too much delegatin' ain't no good neither. Bring along some Kommandos. Grab some Nobz, they grab some boyz.

Kommandos against Kommandos.

Boyz against Boyz.

Simple enough, yeah? The Warlord's sneaky Kommandos could go and deal with their sneaky Kommandos (because they were probably better at that than the straightforward boyz and all) and then the rest of them would krump their boyz, since that was just gonna be a nice straightforward brawl. Yeh, good plan.

Gather 'em up and head out! Find their camp and smash it!
 
Human settlements to the West still going just fine, atrocious morale aside. To the south, the focus on the Vorgan Mines remained a constant case of dealing with the damage the Rat-men had created. The poisonous gas ended up being a case of bring in the Weirdboyz! (Necromancer request), before said Shaman ended up taking control of all the poisonous clouds and toxins that existed within the Vorgon Mines before carrying it all up to the surface. Without the tunnels of the Nightlands and the mines keeping it contained?

One gigantic noxious cloud rising above the mines and leaving it as someone elses problem. Sure there was the risk of future acid rain or the like, but it was just as likely to hit the ummies or the Undead so - good odds really! Praise Orok!

To the North, the Blood Axes in particular were keeping track of what the Khardran Kommados were up to.

Darkness fell upon the Khardran and with it, the moonless skies covered by a thick blank of cloud that obscured the twin moons from all sight. An hour was all it took before the Nob of the Blood Axes slunk out of the shadows and towards WAAAAAAAGH. Beady red eyes, the crimson bandana about the wiry Orc’s head and a cloak of a dozen shades of blotchy grey slung across the Orc’s hunched shoulders.

“Da jobs done Boss.” the Nob replied with a rasping chuckle, “Five fists of Boyz at da camp, no Weirdboyz.” the Orc explained, motioning for WAAAAAAGH to follow when he was ready to hit the camp further beyond on the other side of the pass.
 
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