The Ork plunged straight down from above.
Doherty had never felt such fury, such tragic resolve.
In just a few short hours, the Half-Orc had suffered a terrible upheaval. To find a chance of survival for the dying Chieftain Haug, he had led the tribe's finest young men out, his heart heavy with helplessness.
The Orks' world was incomparably cruel.
"The strong must ruthlessly humiliate the weak."
-Gruumsh, chief god of the Orks (Note: Corellon, chief god of the Elves, had blinded him in one eye.)
The Orks had never had an empire, nor had there ever been an Ork emperor. Aside from a handful of legendary Ork warlords-figures like Oborn Many-Arrows, a legendary warlord and Chosen of Gruumsh, who could establish a small tribal nation of their own-the vast majority of Orks lived under the most primitive tribal system.
They were bloody, violent, savage, and vicious. In mortal eyes, Orks were engines of destruction, bloodthirsty butchers. Little did those mortals know that Orks saw one another in exactly the same way.
One of the most iconic Ork customs was scalping. Anyone who could peel the scalp of an Ork from another tribe cleanly off their head would receive an Ironfang War Boar as a reward.
Doherty's Bloodsword Tribe was a weak tribe, an Ork tribe that intermarried with human tribes. It had survived this long solely because of Chieftain Haug's two-handed battle-axe.
But Orks grew old, and they aged quickly. When Doherty had been lifted from his swaddling clothes, Chieftain Haug had still been in his prime. By the time Doherty reached adulthood, Haug was already withered with age, and the tribe stood on the brink of extinction.
At that thought, Doherty felt nothing but endless fury.
Those who had come adventuring with him were the tribe's strongest, most