Currently my DMing is going on the back burner for a while and im currently using the time to develop areas for my campaign, so im looking at writing up thoughts and ideas on some of the more 'wild' areas.
While looking at the Stonehold area there doesnt seem to be alot written.
Ive got LGG, FtA, WoG and the Five Shall Be One, (and Annas great map) is there anything else i could look at for development ideas?
About Garel Enkdal, FsbO says its a city of 25 000 orcs. The total pop of all Stonehold is 55 000 according to LGG. Im not sure how i see this working as surely the orcs could overwhelm Stonehold easily. Im currently thinking that Garel Enkdal could be a Holy Orc site with maybe 1-2 000 orcs there at one time and the remaining spread out over the surrounding mountains in small tribes.
Does anyone know of any reference to Orc Holy sites or something that may be useful?
...While looking at the Stonehold area there doesnt seem to be alot written.
Ive got LGG, FtA, WoG and the Five Shall Be One, (and Annas great map) is there anything else i could look at for development ideas?...
-IIRC, Howl from the North has some stuff. For the years 577-579, see Dragon #57.
ZardukZarakhil wrote:
...About Garel Enkdal, FsbO says its a city of 25 000 orcs. The total pop of all Stonehold is 55 000 according to LGG. Im not sure how i see this working as surely the orcs could overwhelm Stonehold easily...
-IIRC, Garel Enkdal's population is men, women and children, so they're outnumbered, and Stonefisters are pretty tough.
The one feature of Garel Enkdal that stands out to me is the Blackwell. Expanding its role and significance to the faithful of Gruumsh could provide an explanation for the great size of that city. Perhaps Garel Enkdal is a pilgrimage site of some sort.
While mostly limited to being a storage device in Five Shall Be One, it might be consistent to consider it an artifact in its own right with powers appropriate to your campaign, usable by the faithful. Perhaps there just wasn't a powerful enough priest of Gruumsh during the events of the Five Shall Be One adventure to fully utilize its power.
Cities of Legend - Skarr: City of Orcs from Mongoose is a pretty good example of an orc city. It's not exactly D&D; it uses Mongoose's Runequest-like house system for stats, but the stats are skippable and it also makes use of the d20 System Reference Document for access to D&D creatures like the darkmantle. Skarr (or Skaar, as its spelled in the book itself) has three major religions: a Gruumsh-like orc god (but they give him a missing finger instead of a missing eye, which isn't as badass or as Sauronesque), a generic demon lord (who could be replaced with Graz'zt, Baphomet, Shax, or some other named demon), and an evil water elemental dwelling in a subterranean lake. I think Skaar works best as a basis for Stoneheim in the Pomarj (the history of the city is very close to Stoneheim's as written, just turn Warlord Thak into Turrosh Mak and set it prior to the Greyhawk Wars), but it would work decently as a basic template for Garel Enkdal, too.
Five Shall Be One gives a solid outline for what Garel Enkdal is like, but it doesn't really tell us why it's holy in the eyes of the orcs. There are some interesting relics there: not just the Blackwell, but the Black Obelisk and the Idol of Gruumsh are all worth the orcish faithful making pilgrimages for, I think. Maybe at some point in the past, the Hold of Stonefist/Stonehold region was an orcish kingdom, and Garel Enkdal was its capital; that might explain why it has so many powerful relics. Perhaps there are legends of the god himself setting foot there, creating the Blackwell by thrusting his spear into the ground.
Monster Mythology wrote:
In the beginning all the gods met and drew lots for the parts of the world where their races would dwell. The elven gods drew the lot which gave them green forests and bright woodland, the dwarf gods drew the lot which gave them the riches of the mountains, the gnomish gods got the sunlit, rocky hills, and the halfling gods picked the lot which gave them the rolling fields and meadows. The human gods drew the lot which allowed the humans to dwell where they pleased, in any environment. Then the assembled gods turned to the orcish gods and laughed loud and long. "All the lots are taken!", they said tauntingly. "Where will your people dwell, One-Eye? There is no place left!"
There was silence upon the world then, as Gruumsh One-Eye lifted his great iron spear and stretched it over the world. The shaft blotted out the sun, over a great part of the lands as he spoke. "No! You lie! You have rigged the drawing of lots, hoping to cheat me and my followers. But One-Eye never sleeps; One-Eye sees all. There is a place for orcs to dwell... here!", he bellowed, and his spear pierced the mountains, opening mighty rifts and chasms. "And here!", and the spearhead split the hills and made them shake, covering them in dust. "And here again!", and the black spear gouged the meadows, and made them bare.
"There!" roared He-who-Watches triumphantly, and his voice carried to the ends of the world. "There is where the orcs shall dwell! And they shall survive, and multiply, and grow stronger. And a day will come when they cover the world, and they shall slay all of your collected peoples! Orcs shall inherit the world you sought to cheat me of!"
My theory is that there are places on Oerth that the orcs believe bear the literal marks of Gruumsh's spear. The Blackwell might be one of those marks. Probably another is in the Lortmils, though the dwarves have a holy site of their own there.
Fury in the Wastelands - The Orcs of Tellene is a sourcebook meant for the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting, but it has a detailed look on orcish culture and it includes a subrace called black orcs. Larger and stronger than common orcs, black orcs are all male and created artificially by orcish priests, who drag them fully-formed from slimy pools of darkness. The Blackwell in Garel Enkdal might be one of these.
Thanks guys, the Dragon article was a nice read.
I really like those ideas for making Garel Enkdal a Orc pilgramage site using the Blackwell (primarily), something like it being Gruumsh's Blood collected from when he lost his eye, and it gives a tangible benefit to those orcs who go there.
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