Laeroth

An alliance of oaths, not a nation of orcs¶

The Laeroth are the largest orcish power in Valdrin and they are not the orcish people. The distinction matters more here than under any other banner, and the Laeroth themselves are the strictest about it.

Laeroth is a confederation of clans bound by oath. A clan joins by swearing, and it can be refused, and it has been. There are orc clans on three coasts that have never sworn, orcish villages in the hill country that answer to nobody, and at least two rival confederations of respectable size whose entire founding grievance is a Laeroth oath they declined. To speak of orcs and mean Laeroth is a mistake that Aethrassian chanceries make constantly and Laeroth war-speakers correct with a patience that is itself a form of contempt.

What makes Laeroth the great power is not numbers of orcs. It is the oath, which turns out to be the most durable political instrument anyone in Valdrin has built.

The warcamp that became a city¶

Laeroth colonies begin as camps and are judged by whether they are still standing in a year. Each new land is a proving ground where the untested become warriors or bones, and the distinction is made quickly.

Ashmaw was a camp once. So was every settlement the confederation holds. There is no Laeroth founding ceremony and no charter, because a place becomes Laeroth by surviving, and the moment of survival is not an event anyone can date. What arrives instead, some years in, is a wall that was not planned, then a quarter that was not planned, and then the camp is a city and nobody has said so out loud.

This ground answers to us now, or we answer for it.

Oath spoken at the raising of a Laeroth camp

The oath, in detail¶

Outsiders arrive expecting a mob and meet a body of law more exacting than their own.

Clan oaths are intricate and binding. They specify what is owed in war, in famine, in a bad succession, and in the specific case of a clan that has been reduced below the strength to keep its own. They are recited rather than written, they are long, and every adult in a sworn clan is expected to know the whole of the part that touches them. An orc who breaks one is not punished. He is simply no longer anyone, and no orc will say his name afterward to fill the silence.

This is why the confederation does not fracture the way its rivals keep predicting. There is no Laeroth throne to fight over. There is a set of obligations, held by clans who have each independently concluded that the obligations are worth more than whatever they might win by dropping them.

What the god left them¶

The state creed is Idurism, and it is not a policy choice. It is the verdict of a people who were tortured out of one shape and into another by something that called itself holy, and who concluded that gods are lies and that only the dying is real.

The practical effect on statecraft is total. There is nothing to appeal to in a Laeroth war-speaker. No shared sanctity, no oath sworn on a god either party respects, no threat of damnation and no offer of grace. Every agreement Laeroth has ever kept, it kept because it swore to, and the swearing was to other orcs.

A people who were betrayed by a god are not going to be impressed by a governor.

Governing under this flag¶

The fastest-growing population in Valdrin and the hungriest. Your workforce will replace its own losses faster than any rival can, and it will eat the difference and then some.

Loyalty is real and it runs through clan structures that predate your charter and will outlast it. You are not the authority in a Laeroth settlement. You are a party to an arrangement, and the arrangement is being kept precisely as sworn and not one inch further. Almost every neighbour dislikes you on principle, so plan for raids from the first moon rather than the third.

What the rolls record¶

Standing with other powers¶

Denied to its settlers¶

This people never builds: Wood Gatherer, Grove Shifter, Deep Mine.