The pre-Cataclysmic histories of the ancient Lloroi Empire yield only
a few mentions of the Ogre race, such as the war of 146 B.C (Before the
Cataclysm), in which a punitive raid worked such slaughter upon the Ogre
enemy that the human heart were capable of pitying a foe so strange and
savage, it would respond so to the Lloroi's cold-blood report of butchery.
Seemingly the Ogre kind had been inimical to the Imperial order from earliest
recorded history -- and effectively so, seemingly, for occasional defeats
notwithstanding, their heartland was never encompassed within the vast
Lloroi dominions. For the most part, the imperial armies depended
on stout fortifications to keep the Ogres at bay. Travelers have
described the ruins of an ancient rampart running north and south in the
Great Forest of Neuth, which once was the terminus of imperial sway in
the West. The empire was either unable or unwilling to begin either
a war of subjugation or of extermination with the Ogre race. That
says much for the respect that these giant primitives inspired in their
courtly foes.
The great Cataclysm destroyed the imperial order utterly, but it cannot
have much altered the Ogres' barbarous way of life. The earliest
post?Cataclysmic tales of the Ogres come from the Elves, who are their
closest civilized neighbors. Doubtless Neuth would have suffered
greatly, except that the Ogres have no inclination to chase small creatures
through the tight and troublesome forests of Elfland. The Elves kept
a close watch upon the proximate brutes, but in the traditional Elven fashion,
they showed not interest in them and have not studied them in any way before
modern times.
The Mivioran tell a chilling story of an early encounter with the Ogres
in their own land. In the third century after the Cataclysm,
Mivior's ancestors, refugees from the continent of Reiken, made their first
landfall upon the unknown Minarian continent after a long, storm?tossed
voyage. As fate would have it, at first landfall brought them to
camp upon the Ogreland coast.
Exhausted weeks of danger and privation in clumsy ships, the refugees could
not wait to pole ashore, thank the gods who had delivered them from the
treacherous see, and find fresh food. To this end, they sent Lord
Gattusil, a brave young nobleman who had distinguished himself in combat
with the Luwamnas, along with ten others to forage among the hills and
scrub inland from the beach.
As they attained the line of bushes, the foragers discovered large footprints
in the sand, as well as a roasting pit large enough to cook an ox.
The coast was clearly inhabited and by rude folk of astonishing size.
The neb started back to warn their people, but it was already too late.
They heard shouting and when again able to see the strand, saw that a dozen
giants had thundered out of the wilderness and attacked the refugees with
rough clubs and large hurled stones.
The resourceful Lord Gattusil ordered his men to make a clamor and to launch
their hunting arrows into the backs of the giants. The distraction
worked and the enraged Ogres turned from the fugitives on shore to pursue
their attackers in the rear, perhaps supposing, not being a sea-faring
people, that the Miviorans pinned down on the peninsula would keep until
they returned. The foragers plunged into the thickets closely followed
by a roaring pack. Meanwhile, the beleaguered refugees piled into
their to regain their boats and poled out to the moored ships. Safe
off shore, the vessels waited for a long while, as Ogres glowered menacingly
from the beach, but they saw no signal from the group of foragers to demonstrate
that they had survived, and at last elected to sail away from the loathsome
coast.
Leima, a noblewoman betrothed to Gattusil, beat her beast with despair
when the fleet leaders announced their decision to abandon the foragers,
whom they assumed were already dead. Rather than live bereft of her
lover, Leima leaped into the sea to drown herself. The legend says
that she survived however, turned into a bird by the pity of the god Tukultae,
and has forever after flown from the shore inland and back again, crying
endlessly, "Gattusil, Gattusil, Gattusil!" The Miviorans still celebrate
their sad first landing in Minaria by eating a repast of stale provisions
and by releasing a bird called the "leima." It serves to remind the
young of their nation's impoverished founding, and the sacrifices of the
early refugees.
The Miviorans moved on south, but the Ogres remained. Others who
have seen the strange inhabitants of Ogreland have been at least as impressed
as the early Miviorans were, and well they might. An Ogre stands
twice as tall as a Troll, and unless we except the fabled giants of Uhlig
in faraway Girion, that makes it the largest of human-like creatures.
Their bodies are stout and so roped with hard muscles that their hide seems
to be stuffed with stones and cables. Their skin is pale, like yellowed
parchment, their scalp bald, and their ears are pointed. The creatures'
man?crushing jaws appear to be more than a size too large for their heads.
The Ogre's strength is tremendous. A stone twice as large as a man's
head might be hurled hundreds of feet away. It is possibly because
of their great strength rather than absence of intelligence that Ogres
have the poorest material culture of all the manlike beings. The
crafts and goods of the Goblins equal those of their human neighbors to
the north; the Trolls forge wonderful tools, weapons and body ornaments.
The Ogres is happy enough with a club hacked by stone axe from a modest-size
tree trunk, or a crude spear, sometimes, but not always, tipped with a
rough-shaped stone point. He wears little else but a simple kilt
made out of the skin of some large animal and seems to crave no adornment
save some member of the body of a slain opponent, animal or Ogre, of which
victory he is particularly proud.
No scholar has studied the Ogres in their own country, due to the obvious
danger, but there are accounts, sometimes second hand, of shipwrecked sailors
in Ogreland. They have also been observed at odd intervals, in the
country north of Addat, as the ambition of kings have lately led to the
recruitment of small bands of Ogres for their civilized conflicts.
Addat is a city where mothers do not frighten their children by warning
them against the Ogres coming to get them, for this is a threat that frightens
even adults; the Ogre threat to Addat has always been very real and immediate.
The natural habitat of the Ogres is hilly shrub country. While Ogre
have increasingly of late entered the forested terrain of Neuth, they seem
to have no inclination to make such territory their own. Reports
filed by border patrols often blame Ogres for slaughtering livestock, destroying
homes and carrying off Elves, but nowhere have Ogre depredations reached
as far as Lake Melting Star except lately, as auxiliary hirelings in the
pay of Neuth's enemies.
Popular story would have it that Ogres often sport several heads, that
they are poorly endowed with either mercy or common sense, and all are
man-eaters.
The historiographer despairs to extract reliable information from vulgar
legend. For example, the site of Maelg, near Coel in Hothior, is
associated with the legend of a titanic being haling form Ogreland.
This Ogre had for some reason conceived a savage dislike of Coel and its
folk and he made up his mind to dam the river Ebbing and thus precipitate
a flood upon the villagers. Carrying a hugh shovelful of earth with
which to effect his purpose, he approached the place, but missed his way.
Encountering a roving cobbler, he asked the man where Coel was and when
the cobbler inquire as to why he wanted to go there, divulged his destructive
intention to him. The terrified shoemaker told the giant that he
would never reach Coel as it was such a distance away. "Look here,"
he said opening the bag of worn shoes he was working on, "I've worn out
all these shoes coming this far from Coel." The Ogre, already worn
out from carrying is great shovelful of earth, cast it away in disappointment
and at the present time that mound is known as the Branant."
Possibly such stories recall periods of the early post-Cataclysm, or even
the era of the Abominations, when manlike existed in helplessness against
the brute forces of both Nature and marauders, some of them not human.
Unable to win by his own strength, he overcame with his wits.
The north of Hothior is layered over with Ogre legends. That Ogres
roamed more widely than they do at present is a possibility. A long
mound at Hael, near Wend, is called "The Giant's Grave." The legend
ran that an Ogre once haunted a nearby mill, where he ground men's bones
to bake his bread. He met a man in the field, but instead of butchering
him brought him he brought him to his mill as a servant. One day,
as the Ogre slept, he ran a long cooking spit through the monster's eye
into his brain, ending his reign of terror.
Northeast of Addat, the shire of Allcro may be regarded as the home of
the Ogres par excellence. NO other part of Minaria dan present such
an array of titanic lore as does this patch of hill and scrub, which must
be very like the heartland of the Ogre race. Within the country scores
of mounds are indicated by legend as the graves of gigantic beings, while
a number of standing stones and vast boulders are associated with the Ogres
or serve as their memorials. The names of Allcroan giants such as
Lightningfist, Quorog, Wirtsilks, and Hurler resound though the primitive
sagas of regions romance. Tradition avers that these titans were
of the self-save stock as those defeated by Halli, the monster-slaying
hero of early Mivior.
In fact, the best of the sources maintain that the Ogre craves meat
above all other foods ?? though he is observed to eat moss and wild fruit
when game is scarce. That an Ogre may eat a human being seems to
be true, but it is rarely witness -- except in odd incidence as the battle
of Citheroe, when a auxiliary band recruited by Archon Nualt's agents ran
wild after victory and devoured many of the wounded Elves left upon the
field while Nualt's human troop watched tremblingly. But androphagia
is rare among Ogres which comprise auxiliary units, especially Ogsbogg's.
In any case, human beings are very rare in Ogreland and so their death
at the jaws of Ogres must be very infrequent -- though a number of pirates
may have met that cruel fate.
Freebooters are said not to scruple to maroon their fellows who break the
piratical articles. The Memoir of Yonn Darban purports to be the
account of one such outcast who attempted to spy on Bilge Rat in the cause
of his arch rival, and so was put ashore, where he lived for four months
before escaping in a dugout carved with nothing but the edge of a broken
rock. Ogreland, by the way, is very close to Trelaine's Island --
a fact that, we expect, keeps Bilge Rat's men exceptionally loyal, as a
whole.
The damage that an Ogre has been seen to absorb is phenomenal. Some
believe that Ogres are regenerative, like the Trolls, but others contest
this, saying that a blind or limbless Ogres is summarily slaughtered by
his own band. Nonetheless, there is a wide-spread belief that Nature
makes good the lack of surgeons in Ogreland with a capacity for swift healing.
As far as our information allows us to conjecture, Ogre females are somewhat
smaller than the male, but still very fierce, in fact murderously protective
of their ugly cubs. Ogres seems not to be a prolific race, and travel
in bands usually not larger than twenty, consisting, usually, of near kin.
Only males seem to venture out of the Ogres' natural range, and not for
extended periods -- a peculiarity for which Minaria is very grateful.
Elfland's main authority on Ogres, Diarnan, has identified three main groups
-- tribes in a rough sense -- of Ogres??the Goleuddydd (Skull Crushers),
the Ynyslannog (Flesh Maulers) and the Maenystrad (Bone Mashers).
It may be that these are simply the tribes dwelling farthest east, and
there may be more. Regardless, Ogre tribes wander widely within their
own cold territory. In some border areas humans will not see an Ogre
for years; at other times, more than one tribe threatens to spill out into
Minaria proper at once.
We have referred to the Ogre threat against Elfland, but the greatest harm
the Ogres have done Neuth is, oddly, rather indirect. The Elves say
that humans formerly lived on the fringe of Cirdalriada (western Minaria).
But as the Ogre population increased, and an unfortunate forest fire stripped
away the thick woods which once kept the Ogres at bay, they warred on these
tribesmen and forced them to migrate east. One of these groups, called
by the Elves the Sion Hac, conquered Elfland in the reign of Dalan and
harshly dominated it for four generations, creating a resentment and a
fear of the human world which has transfigured all of subsequent Elven
history.
The Ogres themselves would be a formidable conquering army wherever they
chose to go, if they could bury tribal animosities and unite against their
neighbors of other races. Fortunately for Minaria, when Ogres of
one tribe met Ogres of another, blood flows. Even so, individual
tribes have made a few destructive raids eastward. In the eleventh
century, the Goleuddydd destroyed Addat while Mivior was weakened by the
invasion of the "Abominations of the Air and the Horrors of the Air."
The leadership of the Ogres at that time must have been unusual, for before
Ogsbogg, Ogres were not identified with siege warfare. They tend
to avoid fortified positions that resist the first mad rush, as they avoid
forests. None the less, the city did fall to the Ogres and the stories
of the atrocities they committed in the Mivioran north collected by the
scholar Mosinon of Mivior are truly horrifying. Nearly a century
passed after the raid before Addat regained its former level of population
and prosperity. Some say that the Ogres ranged widely over western
Minaria during the years of the Abominations worst menace, but such stories
may be apocryphal, and the chaos ensured that only story and legend remains
in testimony.
Undoubtedly, the Ogres most familiar to Minarians are the mercenary giant
Ogsbogg and his followers. Since his youth, Ogsbogg seems to have
stood out as an uncommonly reasonable Ogre. This may have something
to do with the solitary life that Ogsbogg was leading when he encountered
Elven fur?trappers on the borders of Cirdalriada, in a petrified forest
called Stumphole. They were terrified, as you may expect, but instead
of attacking them, Ogsbogg offered to share his roast elk. It was
not long before they entered into friendly relations and Ogsbogg learned
their language. They wanted him to bring in the pelts of great and
dangerous beasts, but found that the Ogre prized very little except food,
herds of cattle being most agreeable to him.
The elders of his tribe ?? the Ynyslannog ?? are said to have censured
his unseemly conduct and made his exile official -- but Ogsbogg's innovations
found favor with a group of younger, free?thinking Ogres.
Then came Boewenn's War. Some of Ogsbogg's trading friends called
at Stumphole, but now they were soldiers in the Elven army and interested
in something other than furs. They had sized up Ogsbogg as a formidable
engine of war and offered him the opportunity to see the world beyond Cirdalriada.
This interested the young Ogre. After all, by going to war in the
world of men, he would only be doing what the Goleuddydd boasted that they
had done long ago.
So Ogsbogg agreed to accompany the Elves on their desperate campaign against
all their human neighbors. At the siege of Addat, the Ogre's skill
at pulling down ramparts with the aid of a mighty ship's anchor on a chain
surely shortened the siege by many weeks. He is unproven that Ogsbogg
took part in the terrible massacre of the city's population which followed
victory; the Elven scourging of Addat must have at least equaled the ghastly
fate of the city in its destruction by Ogres almost two hundred years before.
The Elven High Prince Boewenn visited the action and, though he despised
other races, Ogsbogg's service at Addat seems to have impressed his opportunistic
side. He equated the Ogre with a useful trained war?beast, not an
intelligent rival to be feared. He did not scruple to send him to
General Droncain, who was preparing to attack the Invisible School of Thaumaturgy.
Ogsbogg had not care for Boewenn's imperious attitude but found he did
enjoy civilized warfare. It was like a sport, like Ogre raids against
enemy bands, but the novelty and the color was so much more involving than
the repetitious spearing and clubbing of Ogre warfare.
Ogsbogg returned to Stumphole briefly to recruit his Ogre friends into
a war for band the next and more difficult stage of the campaign, the defeat
of the Eaters of Wisdom. The warrior-Ogre led his followers to the
High Marches. Once Droncain's mages removed the protective spell
from the school of the Eaters of Wisdom, the Ogre troop breached the wall
with a gigantic battering ram.
Eventually, Boewenn was defeated and Ogsbogg returned to the anger of his
tribe. The elders were scandalized by his sale of his strength and
his corruption of impressionable companions. Banished from Cirdalriada,
he set up camp in the petrified forest of Stump Hole Valley. Since
then he has gathered a band of like?thinking Ogres around him and has sold
his services to most of the kings of Minaria at one time or another.
Ogsbogg's example has brought some small change to Ogreland. Envying
his success, some maverick bands of Ogres have been enticed into auxiliary
service with civilized armies. These occasions continue to be rare,
however, and to date few ambassadors have had the courage to risk life
and limb among the blood?thirsty brutes.