Sordid History of Sarnak

**IF YOU'RE IN MY 3.5 GAME DON'T READ THIS YOU SHITWEASEL**

Huge, brutal stone slabs make up the structure of this buried city. There are few broken slabs - most have fallen, smashing, crushing and flattening anything in their path. There is little ornamentation, most things being almost entirely defined by function rather than form. You see strange patterns in the stonework surrounding this area, small bubbles in the stone, strange mixings of the rock stratas. Even in the darkness, you see the looming silhouette of some sort of government building, or perhaps a church. Sounds echoes cleanly, with little debris to warp and twist the sound. The air is dry, still, dead. You feel that this area would struck dumb onlookers when filled with life, no-doubt the product of some highly organised society, nearly entirely driven by goals and desire.

Unbeknownst to most, this ruin is of Sarnak, a great capital of the race of Orks. They had risen to prominence in the area, developing advanced culture many years ago. They had thrown off the primitive shackles of their god, earning his enmity and that of their more primitive cousins around them. Echoing the current times, they had established a city state unto itself, controlling various smaller outpost settlements around them. The worked stone was dug from where the glacier now lays, as was their metal. They had begun subjugating and civilizing their cousins, well on the path to Empire and dominion. However, the coming of Man curbed this forever.

Man sailed across in his ships, hardy people with dreams of settlement and riches. It has been lost to time what drove them from their homeland. When they made landfall, they fought the primitive Orcish tribes warring amongst themselves on the coast. Establishing their own settlements, they beat back the Orcs using their superior understanding of total war. Thus it was for several hundred years, until the humans had made a significant enclave of their own, a network of villages and towns, forts and keeps.

The Orcs of Sarnak were aware of the Men, and were unsure of how to proceed. The Men bred at a rate equal to the Orcs, but were far more united - if they leveraged all of their fighting men, the professional troops of Sarnak would be easily outnumbered. Attempts to muster their tribal kin had been met with outright refusal by the Shaman class, who held true to the wishes of their dark Gods. The expansions of Man were certain to encroach on the territories soon. Facing doom, the citizens of Sarnak girded themselves for war.

The war came and it was terrible. Horrendous losses on both sides, with the continuous raids of the tribal Orcs compounding the issues that quickly arose. The Human forces were initially taken aback by these organised Orcs, but pushed on through through this difficulty. Their sheer numbers and experience in fighting eventually forced the Orcs of Sarnak to retreat behind their huge stone fortifications. It was then their spurned god showed his true hand. The tribal Orc shamans conducted a ritual to plunge Sarnak beneath the earth, sealing away the inhabitants from the surface and from memory. This also denied Man the wealth of Sarnak, leading them to greedily raze the area for it's natural wealth, creating the badlands that now lay at the foot of the Chill. Meanwhile, the remaining tribal Orcs were forced into the aforementioned glacier, where they have remained since.