WARMACHINE LORE: Nightmares and Boogeymen: the Orgoth

Hey, folks, Voices here again with another look at Western Immoren. Since I just had to broach the subject in the first Profiles in Badassery post, I figured I should go ahead and follow up with a closer look at the Orgoth…or at least what we–the consuming public–know about ’em. So get ready for guys in armor that has leering embossed demon faces all over it! The Orgoth are invading…AGAIN!

Prior to 600 BR, there was no knowledge of the people known as the “Orgoth.” In that year, blackships landed on the Immorese shores and disgorged thousands of bloodthirsty warriors; these soldiers and the fell warwitches that supported them swept aside all resistance in a conquest lasting not quite 170 years, until they controlled almost all Western Immoren (Rhul and Caspia held out by the strength of their defenses, Ios was completely closed, and Toruk personally annihilated the fleet sent to subdue Cryx) by the year 433 BR. Such was the might of the Orgoth that they are even said to have slain a dragon, though the name of this wyrm is unrecorded and the fate of its athanc was to rehatch a wyrmling that destroyed the temple it was placed in.

After several hundred years of abject slavery or total isolation, the spirit of the Immorese people found renewed strength in a new dream: liberation. Slowly, networks of resistance fighters built up, assembling arms and biding their time. It was during this time of underground resistance that a resistance alchemist discovered the two-part alchemical compound now known as blasting powder; it was also during this time that the Dark Twin Thamar gifted humanity with arcane magic (circa 150 BR).

The Orgoth had the same taste in interior decorating that they did in armor filigree…

The underground went public in 1 AR, a year after the city of Fharin threw off Orgoth shackles in an unplanned revolt that occurred in response to a demanded tithe of 8,000 people. But the Fellowship did not last, when its leaders were captured and executed in 7 AR along with a million other Immorese in a brutal restoration of order. The Rebellion went back underground, continuing to work at the industries of freedom; and by the 80s AR, working firearms became a common reality after the development of the pinlock firing mechanism. The rebels began to strike at the Orgoth, and slowly, regions and cities began to be liberated through a combination of tactics, magic, explosives, and guns that the Orgoth found they could only barely match. Still, it was years before the liberation began in earnest. The Mechanikal Revolution of the second century (100-199 AR) finally started providing the tools that would end the Occupation, culminating in the Colossals; and in the latter 170s, these weapons took to the field, adding their weight to the irregularly-fought and increasingly victorious liberation of Immoren.