Black Eye story

The End Of Peace

Rahul I, Lord Protector of the Northern Alliance, concluded peace with enemy orcs during the 4th year of his leadership. He ended a 15-year war with Black-Eye Karun, ruler of the enemy orcs. A peace treaty between the Alliance and the orcs settled their territorial disputes.

So impressed was Rahul with the intelligence, prowess and leadership of Black-Eye Karun that he invited him to become a Lord Companion of the Northern Alliance. After much deliberation Black-Eye Karun decided to accept the offer. However, on the way to the city of Dwarven Doors - the headquarters of the Northern Alliance - Karun and his small group of bodyguards were attacked and slain to the last man. There were no survivors to confirm the incident, but it soon became believed among the orcs that the Northern Alliance had deliberately set up this ambush in order to break the unity of the orcs by slaying their strongest leader.

The peace treaty still held however, partially because the treaty - although arranged by the Northern Alliance - was between the local earls and the orcish tribes and didn't have any direct connection with the Northern Alliance. The other - and perhaps the main - reason why the treaty held was that with the death of the Black Eye, the unity of the orcs was shattered and they once again descended into inner squabbling. Thus the years that followed were relatively peaceful and prosperous - at least, for the humans.

In the thirteenth year of the Lord Protectorship of Howgarth III - the successor of Rahul I - tension began to rise between orcish tribes and human earldoms in the Northlands. Famine led humans to colonize some orcish lands and push orcs into desolated hill country. The few orcish tribes who had remained part of the Alliance, feeling the pressure, either left Alliance territory or revolted and were destroyed.

Retaliating, the orcs systematically slaughtered human colonies and villages on their lands. Then, Earl Lanbec'h - the most powerful human warlord of the North - determined to abolish the orcish menace raised an army and conferred leadership of it to his son-in-law Baron Albert.

Baron Albert personally led a small vanguard with the mission to establish a base inside orcish lands.

By nightfall his troops reached a mountainous region under the authority of orcish leader Kapou'e, the son of the Black-Eye.