The Broken Tusks

Where the eastern steppes fall into badlands of red stone and wind-scoured mesas, there lies a kingdom that no cartographer marks without dread. The orcs call it the Broken Tusks, a name that is both boast and curse, for it was born of ruin and raised upon the bones of its own kind.

The orcs of Masada have always been feared as raiders and warbands, but the Broken Tusks are different. They are not a horde without anchor, nor a scattering of clans held together only by plunder. They are a kingdom forged in blood, bound beneath a single banner, and ruled by the will of one warlord who took the title The Ashen Khan.

The Ashen Khan

A century ago, the steppes were a graveyard of orc clans, shattered by Concordant levies, scattered by Antioch legions, and plagued by gnollish rivals. Then came the Khan. No one agrees on his origin. Some claim he was born beneath an eclipse, his skin marked by ash. Others say he was a slave who slew his masters and raised an army from the broken. Whatever the truth, he united the clans by fire and oath, demanding not fealty but purpose.

Under his rule, the orcs ceased to be wandering raiders. They became builders. They raised fortresses of red stone on high mesas, ringed with palisades of jagged bone. They carved roads across the badlands to link their holdings. They forged a capital at Karuk-Thul, the City of Spears, where thousands gather to offer tribute. To the Khan, survival was no longer theft. It was dominion.

Society of the Broken Tusks

Orcoid society under the Broken Tusks is both brutal and ordered. Strength is revered, but strength must serve the whole. The weak are not slain but bound into service as laborers, herdsmen, and smiths. Those who show cunning rise as tacticians and overseers. Those who prove themselves in battle may ascend to the rank of Tusklords, commanders of warbands sworn directly to the Khan.

At the heart of this society is the Trial of the Tusk, a rite all orcs undergo at adulthood. Each must break a boar’s tusk in combat and carve from it their first blade. To fail is shame. To succeed is to bear a weapon that is both tool and symbol, a reminder that strength is won, not given.

The Broken Tusks are not without culture. Their bards, called Ash-Singers, preserve history through drums and chants that echo across the mesas. Their artisans carve bone and stone into jagged totems, each one a warning to outsiders and a testament to endurance. Though outsiders see only savagery, within the Tusks there is order as harsh as the land itself.

Faith of Fire and Fang

The orcs do not kneel to Antioch’s flame nor to the Concordat’s oaths. Their faith is older, tangled with the beasts of the steppe and the memory of ancestors. They revere the Great Boar, a beast-god of tusk and fury, whose spirit they believe taught their kind to endure famine and storm. Offerings of blood and bone are cast into fire before hunts and raids, asking the Boar to guide their tusks true.

Yet among the Khan’s priests there is a darker strain, a cult of blood-mystics who whisper of Vereth the Devouring Root, or Thalhaz of the Rot. The Khan tolerates them, for their visions bring victories, but many fear that their influence gnaws at the heart of the Tusks, twisting their hunger into something more unnatural.

Relations with the World

The Broken Tusks are enemies to all, but indispensable to none. They raid Concordant freeholds when the harvest fails. They test Antioch’s eastern walls, clashing against legions in brutal wars of attrition. Yet they also trade, in their own fashion. Captives, livestock, and weapons flow out of Karuk-Thul, while iron, grain, and tools flow in from smugglers willing to brave the steppes.

Neither great power has been able to destroy them. Antioch burns their fortresses, only for them to rise again. The Concordat drives them back, only to see them return in greater numbers. To fight the Tusks is to fight the land itself: harsh, unyielding, and endless.

The Kingdom’s Future

The Broken Tusks endure by will alone, but questions linger. The Ashen Khan has ruled for nearly a century, and some whisper he cannot die. His heirs claw for influence, Tusklords scheme, and the cultists of the Devouring Root spread their shadow deeper each year. Should the Khan fall, the Tusks may splinter again into feuding clans. Or they may erupt outward, sweeping over Concordant fields and Antioch’s walls alike.

For now, they remain. A kingdom of fang and ash, carved from ruin, waiting for the moment when the world’s attention falters. When that day comes, the Broken Tusks will not raid. They will conquer.