The Elder Wars

Approximate span: c. 18,000–11,000 years before AF 1.

The Elder Wars are a long sequence of conflicts that shatter the old orc–troll–ogre political world and sharply reduce the population and power of the first elder peoples across much of Vareth.

They are not a single war or a clean racial conflict. Coalitions remain mixed. Orcs fight other orcs, troll states destroy rival troll states, ogre hearths serve competing rulers, and smaller peoples are recruited, enslaved, displaced, or drawn into the fighting.

The devastation comes through repetition. Wars that once might have ended with tribute, hostages, or a change of ruler increasingly destroy the settlements, food supplies, populations, and political relationships needed for recovery.

The Wars of the Empty Hearths

The Wars of the Empty Hearths begin as overlapping struggles among powerful interior states and confederations.

Succession disputes, old territorial claims, competition for farmland and grazing land, control of roads and mountain passes, ownership of captives, and attempts to force neighboring communities into permanent submission all contribute.

As the conflicts expand, neutrality becomes increasingly difficult.

Armies seize winter stores, drive away livestock, destroy bridges, block passes, burn settlements, and force populations from contested land. Slavery expands as defeated communities are divided among victorious rulers, sold elsewhere, or moved to strengthen distant settlements.

Hostages from ruling families become important tools of alliance and submission. When agreements collapse, those hostages are often among the first to die.

The wars take their name from settlements left standing but empty after their inhabitants are killed, enslaved, scattered, or prevented from returning.

Expansion of Orc Power

Some of the most aggressive powers of the wars are orc-led confederations.

Successful chiefs gather warriors, wives, slaves, dependents, and subordinate households around themselves. Conquest brings livestock, land, captives, and new fighting strength, allowing successful rulers to expand rapidly.

The same social structure makes these confederations unstable.

A powerful chief may leave many sons by different wives. Each may have the support of his mother’s kin, his own warriors, and households that prospered under him. A disputed succession can therefore divide one powerful confederation into several armies almost immediately.

As necromancy begins appearing in troll warfare, orc armies become increasingly determined to recover and cremate their dead rather than leave bodies behind.

Rise of Necromancy

Troll shamans already practice rites involving ancestors, spirits, curses, healing, and the dead. Many troll cultures also preserve important ancestors through mummification.

During the Elder Wars, some shamans begin forcing those traditions beyond communication and remembrance.

The earliest necromancers compel preserved or recently dead bodies to speak, point, carry objects, guard places, or obey simple commands.

Military use follows quickly.

Battlefield corpses are made to march, carry equipment, trigger defenses, or attack former allies. Enemy dead become weapons as well as instruments of terror.

Acceptance differs between troll states. Some rulers condemn the practice, while others employ necromancers openly once their military value becomes clear.

Necromancy creates a particularly bitter divide with orcs. To many orcs, forcing a dead warrior into another master’s service is one of the worst humiliations an enemy can inflict.

The Cost to Ogres

Ogres suffer disproportionately as the wars intensify.

Their physical strength makes them highly valued in assaults, sieges, gate-breaking, heavy infantry, and the defense of narrow routes. Rulers repeatedly commit them to the most violent fighting.

Their losses are much harder to replace.

Ogre communities support fewer adults than populations of smaller peoples, and each adult requires substantial food and resources. The destruction of a single large hearth can erase a significant part of a local population.

Their limited magical strength becomes another disadvantage. Ogre shamans exist, but they are comparatively rare. As orc shamans and troll necromancers become more important on the battlefield, ogre forces increasingly depend on magical support from allies.

Whole ogre lineages disappear during the Elder Wars.

The First Great Conquest

Generations into the conflicts, an orc conqueror succeeds in building the largest dominion of the elder period.

The dominion is mixed rather than exclusively orc. It includes subject troll states, allied ogre hearths, goblin auxiliaries, tributary settlements, enslaved populations, and local rulers permitted to retain authority in exchange for obedience.

Conquered communities may be required to provide warriors, hostages, labor, livestock, goods, land, or slaves.

Successful commanders are rewarded with captured wealth, territory, and marriages into powerful households.

For a time, the system succeeds.

Roads are held, tribute flows, rival states are defeated or absorbed, and old feuds are suppressed by a ruler powerful enough to punish both sides.

Then the conqueror dies.

The Succession Catastrophe

No uncontested successor emerges.

Sons by different wives claim the inheritance. Brothers of the dead ruler assert their own rights. Generals command armies that no longer agree on whom they serve. Subject rulers stop sending tribute. Hostages are murdered. Enslaved populations revolt.

The dominion tears itself apart.

The resulting wars become even more destructive than the conquests that created it.

Orc cities are sacked by rival orc armies. Troll tributaries destroy occupation garrisons and increasingly use necromancy against their former masters. Ogre hearths that supported defeated claimants are exterminated. Goblin communities change allegiance, flee, revolt, or occupy settlements abandoned during the fighting.

Some regions change hands repeatedly until there is little left worth conquering.

Collapse of the Old Interior

The succession wars finish what the earlier conflicts began.

Large parts of the old interior lose the population and political stability needed to sustain the previous network of mixed powers.

Orc populations recover more quickly than troll or ogre populations, but many major central confederations disappear.

Large troll populations move east through existing settlement and trade networks, strengthening communities toward the Ruun.

Ogre numbers collapse most severely. Many surviving hearths become isolated, join stronger neighboring powers, or migrate away from devastated regions.

Across central Vareth, abandoned settlements, ruined roads, old fortifications, mass graves, displaced populations, and overlapping territorial claims remain after the armies are gone.

The interconnected elder world survives only in fragments.