Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

Some Thoughts on The Historical Accuracy of The Great Orcish Legend
I would like to insert here some rough thoughts I have upon to what extent The Great Orcish Legend can be viewed as historically accurate. This is rendered difficult as the legend at no point mentions any dates, Orcs not keeping much by the way of records especially in their early history, the library of Alara proving more difficult to use than first anticipated, and my lack of access to the tools needed for a historical climate study or DNA analysis.

It is certainly true that Orcish artefacts have been found in the southern planes in what is now the elven nation of Alara. These include not just weapons and tools but also houses built to an Orcish design meaning that they must have stayed there for a long period. Additionally, these seem to be some of the earliest - if not the earliest - Orcish finds. Further, it stands to reason that the Orcs would be able to keep a disorganised Elven race off the southern planes.


Above, a picture of an early orcish house found in Alara.

Garzmal is a real place - the ruins of it can be seen to this day. However, while I am not an expert archaeologist, I would like to raise some doubts that this Garzmal could be the palace mentioned in the story - if such a palace ever existed. It has substantial architectural differences to the Orcish dwellings found on the southern planes (being many times bigger for one) and it is notable that unlike them it was not buried under a layer of soil.

However, the removal of the Orcs from the southern planes must have happened over a period of centuries. The events of the legend (if not interrupted by long pauses) should have taken years at the most. One can attempt to pin the legend to such a time scale - and thereby disprove it - by pointing to various recurring names and the length of the Orcish lifespan (which is a little below that of humans).

However, where these names are given* varies based on the version of the legend. As such all that can be disproven is that all of the versions attributed to, say, ‘Ludguf’ were performed by a single person. We can't even definitively say that there was no person ‘Ludguf’ was based upon.

Another angle from which the legend might be attacked is to claim that it is overly simplified. As mentioned before, many of the processes that have been placed by the legend into a single defining event must have taken place over the course of many years (depending on the event 10s to 1000s). And as mentioned the people here are likely amalgams of several different people.

Additionally, the motivations are likely to have been rather simplified and the roles of those characters substantially expanded to create heroes for the legend. Further, it seems probable that many of the tribes mentioned - if not all - are collections of a large number of different tribes that were loosely organised or had no contact at all with each other.

Personally, I think while the legend may be assumed to be broadly true, the later attack (of oversimplification) seems very likely to be valid.

Footnotes
* Interestingly, while whether or not a character is named varies with sometimes very few to no names being given, the named Orc never seems to change.

rappyragon_from_HKDG wrote:

clarence112 wrote:

I've been continually thinking of ideas the entire time
None of them really seemed big enough to post though

Seconding what CherryCat10 said about wanting a bullet list of them.

• Since dragon souls persist after their body dies, a group has taken it upon themselves to collect dormant dragon souls and organize them into a “library” where others can talk to them. I don't know where this library should be yet.
  
• There's an update to Kerfzels I forgot about that I'll try to post soon, covering some more details about their biology.
  - Also I might have forgotten to post much about them in the first place, so I'll do that too in the same post just to keep everything consolidated.
  
• I've written another in-universe story covering some of Ayotben's past. It's a bit dark so I'll probably have to re-word it a bit before I can post it here.
  
• There's more but I can't remember it right now.
  

rappyragon_from_HKDG wrote:

Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

-snip-

-snip-
You did excellently with writing from Selphi's perspective! This passage sounds just like something he would say.

clarence112 wrote:

You did excellently with writing from Selphi's perspective! This passage sounds just like something he would say.

CherryCat10 wrote:

I’m kinda a artist ? I mostly draw animals, but I can probably do that.

StrixCattus wrote:

I could try to draw some artefacts as well. Is there anything specific you had in mind?

Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

The Great Orcish Legend wrote:

The Southern Planes were divided into two regions with the elves in the east and the humans in the west. Meanwhile, civilisation in Kur Korgar continued to thrive and indeed the area became overpopulated leading two groups to leave to find life elsewhere. The first group lead by Gujek set off north to try to settle upon a part of the human portion of the southern planes. The humans agreed (on the condition that it was temporary) as the elves had broken off all contact and the humans feared that they were preparing to invade.*
The second group lead by Gormuk found the remains of The Teeth. They struck a deal with The Teeth that The Teeth would accept their rule and in return for every member of the group permanently stationed in the village The Teeth would be able to send a member to Kur Korgar. Gormuk stationed a hundred men in the village but argued that as 50 of them were only temporary The Teeth could only send 50 men to Kur Korgar.
The Teeth objected to this and it almost came to a fight to which Gormuk responded by moving the temporary forces out of Teeth land and onto a hill 2 days away which he had a fort built on. Under the rule of Gormuk The Teeth were pressed into service building the first stilt houses. Meanwhile, those Teeth that had moved to Kur Korgar were also facing difficulties. Upon their arrival, The Sunset Ash Forces passed a citizenship law that restricted the rights of the new Teeth arrivals.
Gormuk then began construction of a new village which members of The Teeth were recruited into. Gormuk argued that the new village was not covered by the agreement causing some members of The Teeth (called The Free Teeth) to branch off and go and found their own village outside of Gormuk's control. This initially faired poorly as they had located it as far from Gormuk as possible and as they had very little support and few of them knew anything but farming.

Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

The Great Orcish Legend wrote:

Gormuk had by this time essentially become the ruler of his own kingdom which, while still a part of what was now the Sunash Republic operated by a very different set of rules. He got Gujek to return and help garrison the fort and when the stilt village was nearing completion he had the Teeth sent to Kur Korgar to be sold into slavery. The citizens of Kur Korgar had mixed feelings on this as while the Teeth already in Kur Korgar were treated as second class citizens actual slavery was alien to them. The discussion quickly became heated.
While this was going on, Gujek was allowed to return to the humans. Immediately upon seeing him, the humans, apparently motivated by their increased power and confidence that the elves would not reappear, complained that Gormuk's stilt village and castle were actually on the Southern Planes and therefore should belong to the humans. Gujek was sent to Gormuk, now in the castle, to repeat this who sent Gujek to Kur Korgar to gather reinforcements. Gormuk also had the village abandoned at its occupants shelter inside the castle.
The council of The Sunash Republic (sometimes replaced by Ludguf. I have gone with this version as Ludguf cannot possibly be alive at this point, Selphi) responded by conscripting the Teeth, paying and equipping them well. A few days later the human invaders appeared. The orcs sheltered from their archer's arrows inside the walls of their fort. When the human's melee units charged in, the orcs charged out, easily defeating the smaller number of human warriors and killing their marshal.
When the human's king heard of it, he was furious and assembled a larger army. Again the two forces locked into combat and while the human force was larger and the archers were now fighting hand to hand it was still becoming somewhat spread out. Seeing this, the Teeth launched an opportunistic push and killed the human's king along with a large chunk of his personal guard.
They returned triumphant and the council decided based upon their valiance to make all Teeth in Sunash citizens of the republic, despite Gormuk's opposition.

I did actually find in Kur Korgar a large stone. Unfortunately, I can't fully understand the language it is written in and many of the words are quite weathered. It is about one sentence long and mentions “Gormuk”, “Gujek” and “humans”. It might be referencing this event but it could equally be an entirely different Gormuk who also existed in early orc society, had interactions with humans, and had enough power to have a 5 meter stone carved in his honour.¹
However apparently he was not appreciated by everyone, in much smaller text and roughly carved near the bottom of the stone there is a smaller note, most likely some kind of graffiti. I will try to write about some more notes from this time but it's very hard to put them into context. Orc is phonetic so I understand how they are pronounced (mostly) but the words are completely different so all I can guarantee are the proper nouns.

Finding evidence of these villages is almost certainly impossible. They were clearly made out of wood and so will have rotted away. The fort's structure was also probably made out of wood² but the earthworks could still be identifiable. That said distinguishing an early fort from a later one will likely prove difficult without significantly more information about the evolution of orcish pottery.

• Human civil war
  
• Elves civil war
  
• Group of orcs leave for the desert to the west
  
• Group of orcs leave to the forest to the east
  

Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

The Great Orcish Legend wrote:

In response to the council’s freeing the teeth, Gormuk declared that his lands were independent. While he was careful about the framing, declaring that it was merely a reaffirmation and stating that the castle was on Sunash land, this angered Gujek and the Teeth in Kur Korgar.
Gormuk didn’t have to do this as his next move was going to be to sell the houses in the village to Sunash citizens then charge them exorbitant fees until they had to sell the house back to him for a much lower price and move back to Kur Korgar.
Regardless Gujek and the Teeth proceeded to Gormuk’s villages where Gujek persuaded the rulers Gormuk had installed to let the Teeth take over and to instead follow him back to the castle where Gormuk was.
There they demanded Gormuk hand himself over to be tried on charges of slavery, lying, and just generally being a bad person. Gormuk refused so they lay siege to the castle and starved him out. He was then imprisoned by the Teeth.

UnicornDragon55 wrote:

Name: You can call me uni, dragon, U.D, whatever!
Activity: Very active.
Job: Wherever I'm needed, but I specialize in writing and character design!
Examples:
Here's some of my writing: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/576401098/
And here's some characters I made, as featured in a now-closed auditions project: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/556017059/
Lmk if you need any more info or examples of my work!

SonicFanX123_321 wrote:

no idea if this is active but here goes nothing:

Application form:
Name: sf
Activity: 9/10, not active on school days
Job: graphics design
Examples: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/588358856/ https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/560987196/ (everything aside from the cursor and player i made) https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/543384020/ everything is mine, im thinking of doing a pixel-art style but ill see

hopefully i get accepted

Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

Various languages used by the ancient orcs
At this point The Great Orcish Legend, in my view, deteriorates significantly in historical reliability becoming a pourquoi story about why the Orcs live in stilt houses. I draw this due to the archaeological record apparently showing something different and because it is contradicted by what seem to be writings depicting a similar sequence of events but one that fits much better with the archaeological record.
High Orcish
Not to make things simple, the orcs have blessed us with three separate languages. The first is what I am going to refer to as ‘High Orcish’. This is the predominant language, and is found on tablets all over Kur Korgar. It is also, annoyingly, pretty much unknown besides the alphabet and a few words that have either not changed or are mentioned with enough context in the second language to be understood. This alphabet is fairly similar to the previously mentioned inscription but has been optimised over time for the clay tablets - suggesting that these may not have been the original material for the language.
While this is pure speculation, for my two pennies I think the language was first used with paint and cave walls, or perhaps just stones, on the planes. But without a wall that provides some sort of smoking gun, it seems unlikely to ever be proven.
I think that this language was likely used by the Orcs descended from the Sunset Ash forces and by the upper class members of the Teeth, in part because it was the language the Herhordanen were written in. These are somewhat hard to explain, they aren't laws as you or I would understand them, they start with a lengthy preamble laying out various facts, sometimes they are just preamble. I considered judgement but that's to law like. I have opted in the end for resolution, in a similar manner to the UN's.
These resolutions were made and copied on clay and I have found them in a wide variety of places - orc villages where they are worshiped (this is part of The Great Orcish Legend which I will explain when I come to it), buried in grave sites around Kur Korgar, a small number in Elven museums (though elves have historically been quite disinterested in them), in the possession of humans who like their decorative properties - I am particularly indebted to one such collector who allowed me to make a copy of their library.
Indeed the prodigious volume of texts that survive seems pretty clear evidence that Orcish society had not immediately collapsed as the legend suggests that it had.
Ancient Western Orcish
Speaking of the second language, this is ‘Ancient Western Orcish’ - it is the distance ancestor of the the languages spoken in the west of the southern swamps. These texts use the same alphabet to the High Orcish ones but remain somewhat known to a group of Orcish wise folk, and a group of elves actually got a lot of them translated a few decades ago and I have managed to track down a copy of there book.
This was likely used by members of the Teeth who were less connected to the governance of the Sunash Republic. These might be worse educated, or poorer, or perhaps just less pretentious. Most of these documents seem to be to do with business administration and contracts but a couple of them rather helpfully discuss various Herhordanen so we can get an idea of what they meant. They also provide a few insights of there own into the orcish society of the time.
Ancient Orcan Elvish
After the orcs resumed contact with the elves (see later) they didn't just learn magic from them but also their own writing system, which they wrote a rather strange language in. Orcan Elvish has very limited apparent influence from either. It has basically nothing in common with any living Orcish dialect nor Ancient Western Orcish. The greatest single influence is High Orcish and it has very little to do with that. It also picks up a little from elvish and a few features that might be understood to be human.
Based upon structure I would say that it is native to the orcs. There have been a bunch of theories proposed for this. The first is that it was an Orcish language that coexisted with High and Ancient Western, perhaps a residual language of the The Twilight Twig Kin. Another is that it is a mix of High, Ancient Western, and a bunch of other Orcish languages that developed its own features over time as well as borrowing from human and elvish. A third suggests that it was given by the gods or other supernatural entities.
A fourth (and quite an interesting one) is derived from a Western Orcish text that described someone “talking in battle tongue as those in the Southern Planes were want to do”. Essentially this, like the second, viewed it as a mix but as a mix created for the army to enable cohesion with recently absorbed orc and then human tribes.¹
Regardless of which you believe, it is an isolate and so it is pretty surprising that it is the only old Orcish language that we consistently know. This is because it was preserved well by the elves. I asked one why this was and the answer seemed to boil down to it being preserved as a tribute to the orcs who fought against Nephrak.
To this end they have made copies of the parchment originals, which otherwise would not have survived due to degrading, and even created a dictionary for them to be read with. There are no doubt one or two errors in these but still incredibly impressive.
This language is exclusively found on the planes near Alara and conversely no texts in either of the two other languages have been found here. It is probable that messages were exchanged (in the model I have suggested these would be in High Orcish) and some of these may be the ones found in the Elven museums.


1 Another I have heard is that it is based on an ancient Elven magical language. This is implausible, there are libraries of elven documents from this era and not a single one so much as mentions such a language. Some suggest forming sentences in particular ways but none mention such a language. Further at least 7 of the documents I have seen date from before the Orcs learnt magic from the elves, one specifically dealing with that topic.

Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

Rather frustratingly, despite the appearance of a number of readily understandable texts, the deterioration in the reliability of The Great Orcish Legend comes before then leaving a gap that could only really be filled by understanding Old High Orcish texts. Again it is worth pointing out that there aren't any independent historians at this point and histories written around Kur Korgar are very short on account of being largely written on clay tablets.
But to address the elephant in the room - the collapse (or lack there of) of Orcish society. The Great Orcish Legend holds that there was a massive rainfall causing mass crop failure. At the same time the residents of Kur Korgar developed god like powers and ascended to the heavens. The rest of Orc society then collapses. While I have abbreviated it, the whole thing isn't much longer and the remainder mostly concerns itself with the trials and tribulations of post flood Orcish society.
The texts and archaeological record… less so. While as I mention there is a gap, one text (written in the Western language) discusses the maintenance of granaries created due to the increase in rainfall. Another, likely originally some sort of memorial to a merchant family, discusses how they along with everyone else abandoned their village due to the floods and moved first to another village, then to “the” ancient castle, and then to Kur Korgar. It seems a number of villages were similarly abandoned.
A third is an Orcan Elvish text, this is what might be known as a ‘band’¹ history. A number of members of this band were descended from people who had fled flooded villages, a lot about 4 generations before but some more recently. The increase in precipitation was also logged anecdotally and scientifically by the Isdalaranide. There are a number of theories about what caused the rail fall, the most prominent one being some sort of magical disaster, either a spell gone wrong or a displeased god.
The second thing to note is that there seems to have been a change to the government structure. Most tellings of the legend make the ‘council’ out to be a group formed from all members of Kur Korgar who choose to attend but the Herhordanen seem to have been written by a group called the council of 9 (later the council of 13) which is a representative democracy. It may be tempting to dismiss the legend version as a fairy tale but a large number of orc villages actually work like this.
Trying to figure out what happened to cause this is hard, and requires combining a handful of fragmentary sources. The best overview I came across is a list of ancestors which describes someone as having “fought against monster, and man, and merchant”. I gathered that some sort of evil creatures appeared (perhaps from the same spell as caused the flooding) and the Orcs launched a campaign against them. According to one source² this campaign strayed on to human land and the humans believed that they were using the beasts as an excuse to annex the land - something that source denies but may well be true.
A treaty was signed granting the Sunash Republic access to the land they had taken in the process. Shortly afterwards the humans attacked the republic (presumably breaking the treaty). The war went disastrously largely due to a disease that broke out along the orc's border with the humans. Due to that, a group of merchants, military leaders and administrators took control of Kur Korgar. This resulted in a street clash between there followers and followers of administrators and leaders who preferred the old regime.
Eventually a deal was struck that there would be an elected council consisting of 6 Sunset Ash members and 3 former Teeth. This suggests a low level of mixing but another text describes them as Kur Korgar members and village members respectively instead, suggesting that they were assigned geographically and merely named after the previous inhabitants of that region.

1 On the planes, from adolescence Orcs lived in tight knit bands, special friendship groups that were significantly more important than family.
2 An extract from a letter from a father to a son going of to fight humans advising him on how to act, reading “Be [{aware?} the humans believe we started the conflicts when we fought the {evil creatures?} on their territory. They {? - presumably think} this was a landgrab.”

Selphi Markam's Compendium of Events of Historical Significance wrote:

The first event that we have a solid record of is the war with the human Vraraerineian Kingdom. The kingdom was requested to provide a volume of crops due to flooding at a certain price and used this as an opportunity to attack. The Council decided to meet this with overwhelming strength and mustered a army to respond. The battle goes well for the orcs with the exception of a small group of humans who seem to be able to throw people around in the air. Regardless, these people are overwhelmed and Sunash's food supply is resolved for the foreseeable future.
A large amount of discussion over what to do about this ensues are eventually it was decided that Garlornuk-Gormuk decided to go to the elves to find out what they knew. Quite a lot it turned out. The elves, specifically The Order of The Ishdalaranide, decided to teach him magic due to the threat posed by the ‘dark queen’ including a method they had to dispel other people's magic.
At the same time, a group of humans from the human Tonad Kingdom fleeing the invasion of the ‘dark queen’ arrived in orc lands and asked for refuge. Ludnuk, the commander of the orcs there and the second in command to Garlornuk, accepted them in and sent a message to The Council informing them of the whole situation. The Council sent a letter back saying that the ‘dark queen’ was probably nothing worth worrying about and that they really did not appreciate the extra mouths to feet so the humans should be moved on.
At this point Garlornuk-Gormuk hearing the news of the defeat of Tonad returned and arranged that several other orcs should study magic with the Ishdalaranide. He then wrote a letter to The Council demanding that the Tonad citizens be allowed to stay that was apparently quite impassioned. A version in Orcan Elvish survives, though its own creators admit that this is rather inaccurate due to the massive language differences. A probably more literal translation in Ancient Western Orcish also exists in part but large amounts of the stone containing it were damaged in a battle a few hundred years ago and have not been recovered.