Orcs & Goblins
Waagh! Da Orcs!
Orcs and Goblins are a scourge upon the lands. They are ferocious raiders that spread war to every corner of the world. So eager for battle are they that, when lacking a foe, they will gladly attack each other. Should they ever stop fighting themselves and unite into a cohesive force, they would sweep away all opposition in a brutal tide of violence.
Might Makes Right
Throughout the known world, tribes of brutal and belligerent Orcs and Goblins prosper. From the inhospitable wildernesses of the Badlands, to the lush pastures of Bretonnia and the dense forests of the Empire, no corner of the Old World has gone untouched by their scourge. These tribes are made up of mobs, each consisting of a single type of warrior. Orc mobs, Goblin mobs, wolf rider mobs, and so forth.
Orcs and Goblins take tremendous pride in the mob they belong to and the tribe their mob is part of, for it comes easily to them to believe that they and their mates are the best and, by extension, that those they hang around with are just as good as they are.
This belief in their own superiority makes the average Orc or Goblin almost impossible to lead, for they instinctively resist the ideas of others and will only follow those that can readily prove their strength and prowess. Thus, mobs are led by the biggest and toughest of their number, known to their fellows as ‘da Boss’, and tribes are led by the biggest and strongest Boss, generally known as a warboss.
Though it takes an impressive brute to lead a tribe, and all admire a leader possessed of the ability to push an opponent’s nose through his brainpan, a dose of low cunning is also useful. This is particularly true amongst Goblinoids, for there will always be a challenger eager to advance by quite literally stabbing their rivals in the back. Thus, Bosses and Warbosses are suspicious creatures, forever alert for signs of treachery amongst their subordinates and always prepared to batter someone to a bloody pulp in response to even the most minor challenge to their superiority.
Ultimately, all Orcs and Goblins are united by a simple desire – to fight alongside a powerful Boss and follow a mighty Warboss who has built a reputation for leading his tribe to glorious victories. This is partly because they all want to be on the winning side, but mainly because no mob wants to miss a good scrap. The biggest Warbosses lead their tribes to so many victories and cause such commotion throughout the land that lesser tribes flock from far away to join the mighty commander, and a great Waagh! is born – a tidal wave of destruction feared throughout the civilized nations of Men, Dwarfs and Elves.
Tribal Life
Orcs and Goblins are often encountered together in the same tribe. Amongst their kind, this is the natural order of life – the strong ruling over the weak. The larger and more powerful an Orc mob, the more eager its members will be to keep mobs of Goblins around as their presence means the Orcs are never short of someone to intimidate and bully into doing the most unpleasant chores. As Orcs despise almost everything except fighting, Goblins do all the mundane jobs around camp, such as gathering fuel for fires, erecting crude huts and other jobs too dangerous or dirty for any right thinking Orc to contemplate. In return for their work, Goblins gain the protection of their larger kin.
Beyond the natural dominance of strong over weak, there is little semblance of order in an Orc and Goblin tribe. Things change constantly and often in a hurry. The wilds in which most tribes live are dangerous places, subject to attack by all manner of foes and monsters, including other Orcs and Goblins. Tribes alter constantly as old mobs leave to seek their own way, new mobs join and Warbosses fall as stronger challenges rise up to take over. It has been said that, should all the Orcs and Goblins unite, they could conquer the world, but should they try, they would succeed only in fighting themselves to extinction.
When there is no enemy to focus their aggression on, Orcs and Goblins spend an inordinate amount of time fighting each other. Thus, the tribes that last the longest and that rise to supremacy within the wildernesses are the biggest, strongest and most cunning.
Tribes grow when they conquer smaller ones, as most often the winners slay all the opposing commanders and force the remaining warriors to join the tribe. At other times the process of absorbing the small tribe is much more literal, with the winners actually eating the vanquished. How the defeated are dealt with depends on many factors, from how hungry the victors are, to how well the opposition fought, or some other, more mysterious whim of the Warboss.
Warriors that have been recently recruited into a new tribe will try to fit in, often adopting some of the common colours, symbols or icons of their new group, though rarely are individuals welcome into the ranks of an already established mob. Instead, new mobs join existing tribes, often retaining symbols of their old allegiance and brining with them habits and mannerisms picked up from mobs now vanquished. In this way, strange beliefs and cultural oddities are passed from tribe to tribe, adapted and built upon. Seldom are the outlandish ways of any tribe truly forgotten after its demise.
Due to their wide variety of beliefs and the staggering range of cultural sects and sub-sects Orcs and Goblins are given to display, the only thing that can be called uniform about their tribes is their disparate and ragtag appearance. Flea-bitten Wolf Riders ride to war beside disciplined and well-armoured Black Orc mobs who, in turn, fight side-by-side with mad, cackling Night Goblins. This kind of muddled disorder is exacerbated during a large Waagh!, when many tribes trek great distances to join the throng.
Brutal, But Cunning
Though Orc and Goblin tribes grow by absorbing already established mobs into their midst, their core will always consist of a number of mobs that share a common ancestry and origin with the Warboss. Most often, these will be mobs of Orcs or Black Orcs fighting on foot wielding a variety of weapons ranging form stout thrusting spears to crude warbows, mobs of boar-riding cavalry known as ‘Boar Boys]. or ostentatious charioteers that clatter about the place bellowing loudly to ensure everyone has seen them.
In tribes that contain no Goblins, the Orcs are more belligerent that usual, and full-on fights break out in Orc-only camps with alarming regularity. These struggles determine the pecking order, with the lowliest warriors doing all the work usually left to the Goblins, while the victors loll about. No Orc can bear any peaceful or productive task for very long, causing further violence to erupt. This environment ensures that Orc-only tribes are small, but very battle-hardened. It also means their camps lack even the crude amenities that ingenious Goblin labour normally provides, such as simple skin huts, stockades to fence in the boars or, perhaps worst of all, any consideration given to the placement of the latrines.
Such tribes tend to attract large numbers of monsters such as Trolls and Giants. Indeed, it is not unknown for tribes renowned for their brutality to absorb whole family groups of savage Trolls into their ranks.
Amongst Goblin tribes, swarming mobs of infantry are common. These are accompanied by mobs of cavalry mounted upon huge wolves or massive spiders rather than the War Boars favored by their larger cousins.
The massed infantry mobs of the Night Goblin tribes, drunk on fungus wine, are given to sporadic bouts of cackling and gibbering. Hidden amongst their ranks are fanatical fighters that consume mad cap mushrooms prior to battle – turning them into deadly whirlwinds of destruction. These gibbering hordes of malevolence are accompanied to war by large herds of subterranean Cave Squigs and wild mobs of Squig Hoppers.
Such quirks of Goblin culture are indicative of their environments. Those tribes that favour Giant Wolves can be found on the open plains of the wilderness. Those that harness Giant Spiders dwell in the deep forests of the Old World, where such monstrous creatures thrive. Whilst Night Goblins dwell in the deepest caves, far below the towering Worlds Edge Mountains, untroubled by the sun.
On occasion, a tribe may consist solely of mobs of a particular type, reflecting the preferences of its Warboss or an adaptation to an unusual habitat. On the plains of the badlands, for example, nomadic tribes are common, consisting almost entirely of mounted mobs of Boar Boys, Wolf Riders and raucous charioteers. Amongst these nomadic groups are Orc tribes that contain only Boar Boys, or Goblin tribes made up exclusively of Wolf Riders.
As tribes grow, most Warbosses are not particularly fussy about who joins their ranks, often welcoming a wide array of weirdos into the midst. For the most part this works surprisingly well – good ideas catch on quickly, beneficial customs and beliefs are eagerly adopted, whilst dangerous or unpopular traits are quickly dealt with by the ever present violence of tribal life.
In Savage Lands…
Far from the baroque palaces and towering city walls of the Empire, beyond the crenelated towers and gleaming castles of Bretonnia, the civilized races’ grip upon the Old World loosens. In unconquered lands, where great beasts roam, violent tribes of Orcs, Goblins, Trolls and worse dwell, their numbers ever increasing, their lust for violence never diminishing.
The Badlands
Wicked creatures have dominated the lands between the Worlds Edge Mountains and the Dragonback Mountains since time immemorial, it is well-known that to cross blood River and venture into the Badlands is to leave the safety of civilization behind.
The people of the Old World dread the area and only the most desperate would attempt to settle there, for there can be no safe haven in lands so dominated by dark forces. Yet dwell here they do. The scattered towns and villages that dot the nothern shores of the Black Gulf, between the heights of the Dragonback Mountains and the shadow of Barak Varr, cling desperately to the barren soil. Here resides those renegades and rogues unable to find shelter, even in the lawless lands of the Border Princes to the north, a violent and battle-torn land of petty fiefdoms that is almost perpetually ravaged by war.
To the south, lies the foul and foetid expanse known as the Marshes of Madness. These mist-covered swamps are trackless and nigh impossible to cross. Yet, despite the treacherous nature of these ghastly marshes, many Goblin tribes dwell there, skulking in great stilted huts that rise precariously from the deep mire.
Further south, the qugmire give way to low hills, dry plains and, finally, desert. Here, upon the shifting sands, where the Badlands meet the Land of the dead and many nomadic Orc tribes rampage, crude stone idols stand beside the eroded monuments of a long dead civilisation. These statues, raised long ago to ward against the fould spirits that plague the cursed realm to the south, mark the southernmost border of the Badlands.
The landscape of the Badlands is harst; it is a place of boulder strewn moors and arid steppes. Ancient ruins, barrows and cairns testify that once the land was more fertile, but now stand as a grim tribute to some long gone nations. These days the inhabitants are Orcs and Goblins, Trolls and Giants. Tribes of these creatures beyond counting fight endlessly for space, for the land’s meagre resources, and for the simple love of violence.
These tribes roam the plains, making ramshackle camps and squatting in crude strongholds to stake their dominance in their constant battle for territory. The ever-shifting borders of innumerable tribal realsm are marked with picket lines of spiked skulls, gory battle trophies or the vast symbols of mighty Warbosses carved into the rocky outcroppings. All across the Badlands, effigies of Gork and Mork cast long shdows over the plains. Some are sculpted in stone, others shaped out of piled bones and worse things…
Looters & Raiders
Orcs and Goblin tribes have always been nomadic to some degree, only settling in a place for long enough to thoroughly pillage the surrounding area before moving on. But some take this to the extreme, mounting War Boars and Giant Wolves before riding to the horizon in search of new stomping grounds.
Beasts of Burden
When the first ORc and Goblin tribes seettled in the Badlands, it was apparent that slogging across the landscape on foot was not the most effective way to traverse this desolate wasteland. Thus did they learn to harness the wildlife indigenous to the region. The Orcs found a kinship with giant boars who, much like them are ill-tempered and aggressive creatures, whilst the Goblins summoned all their cunning to bring Giant Wovles to heel – both rider and mount benefitting from the speed and cruel intellect of the other.
Mounted upon enormous razor-tusked boards, the Orcs had found mounts that well-stuited their simple brutality, quickly discovering that their own massive bulk combined with taht of a charging swine to devastating effect. Those Goblins that survived the perilous task of taming a Giant Wolf found their mounts to be fleet-footed and vicious, making them ideal scouts and outriders for emerging Nomadic Waaghs!, harrying the flanks of the enemy before falling into an orderly retreat when things began to look dangrous.
Cohorts of mounted Orcs and Goblins began to gather together and raid much further afield than rpeviously possible, returning sporadically with vast hordes of ill-gotten loot and shiny trinkets from far-off lands as trophies of their victories. Each time these warbands returned, their ranks would swell with ORcs and Goblins, inspired by stories of ferocious battles with mysterious warriors and all the strange treasures that might await them.
Full Tilt
When a Nomadic Waagh! first moves into a new area, its arrival is hearalded by Goblin Wolf Riders. these sneaky outriders will scout the area, hunting likely victims and on the lookout for loot, before making a hasty return to the rest of the tribe. With a target established, the Orcs and Goblins will eagerly race into battle, the ground trembling under the weight of stomping hooves and rumbling chariot wheels.
The vanguard of a Nomadic Waagh! is filled wit hteh Warboss toughest warriros and their bad-tempered moutns, thundering towards the enemy with weapons held ready. Ramshackle chariots pulled by pairs of boars follow closely behind, barrelling into the ranks of their foes with enough momentum to shatter bone and crumple armour. Whilst the Orcs charge headlong into the fray, Wolf Riders and wolf-drawn chariots race around the flanks of the enemy, eager to hunt down any hastily deployed war machines or vulnerable missile troops. Some of the more cunning and opportunistic Goblins will lag behind the battlelines entirely, hoping to pillage the battlefield before their large Orchis cousins claim all the best loot for themselves.
Tough they started out in the Badlands, there have been tales of these Nomadic Waaghs! journeying thoughout the known world. The fortified towns of the Border Princes are regularly subjected to attacks as mounted warbands of raucous Orcs and Goblins make their way north, to the lands of Bretonnia and the Empire, or eastwards, into the shattered hellscape of the Darklands and beyond.