Durgaz's Stuff he knows

***EYES ONLY*** This is a specialized "lorebook" of all things that would be immediately available (without skill checks) for the character. Things will be posted as they come up or are asked about. Players other than this character SHOULD NOT read this information.

Players can and SHOULD add to this page the things they KNOW from the stories and events they've been in. Please break it down into the sections noted below - Feel free to add sections as you like.

You may also ask for any information, and based on situation or skill checks that info will/or will not be placed on this page.

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PEOPLE

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PLACES

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THINGS

A Soldier's Knowledge

Logistics / Supplies

Shadow Camps

• One orc needs about 1/2 pound (1 trail ration) of food per day, just like all other medium-sized creatures.
• Oruks and worgs will require four times that (worgs will not have time or security to hunt)
• Goblins and such less,
• so on average a camp might need a 1/2 pound per head per day. Assuming a campaign of 1 arc, that's going to be 15 pounds per head. All this will have to be taken with the expedition. Resupply through an unsecured forest is not a good option. Add to this spare weapons, armor parts, and all other stuff necessary to keep a soldier up and about, and let's call it 25 pounds.
• Add to the orc his own equipment of vardatch, javelins, armor, shield, and he can still easily lug all that himself. So far, no need for a supply train.

Numbers

Shadow Camp troop counts

• According to some, the necessary ratio to effectively combat irregular forces with conventional troops is 20 to one.
• According to Midnight canon, 100 orcs die per elf. This of course, counts in friendly casualties, accidents, diseases, infighting and what not that occurs in the larger battle grounds like the Burning Line.
• Still, assuming a 20 to one ratio, and assuming some 200 elves are available to oppose a camp's troops, that would demand 4,000 troops to effectively take and hold a new campaign city. It's the holding part that's tricky, especially in a cut-off a location which the locals have intimate knowledge of.

Orc Encampments

Shadow Camps Structures

• Traditiaonally Shadow camps are fairly chaotic unless you're talking about orc legions where the discipline and training are far better. Chaotic does not mean stupid. You can't be stupid and survive in Erethor and even orcs new to Erethor have been told and respect the dangers of the wood.
• Camps may sprawl out, but there will be pickets, possible traps emplaced, and the leaders will have the best position/most defensible spot in the camp.

The Advance

Shadow Camp Advancement Example

• Getting to a ruined city such as Althorin will probably demand no more than the 700 or so troops you have allocated to your advance, especially since the elves are incapable of facing the orcs in head-on engagements. They would instead harry from the flanks as they always do, identifying and taking out hot targets like scouts, woodland-capable cavalry (wolves) and legates with snipers or magic. For the average grunt, the advance should seem easy. Any specialized shock troops like a fiendish troll probably won't see any use, and won't even be targeted as it is far too tough to take down.

Holding the Prize

Shadow Camp holding campaign Example

• This is where things get tough. The elves know Althorin and the area around it, and can be supplied both from the Gamaril delta and the Pirate Princes. Those same seaward raiders are probably part of the reason there is a land-line to River's Fangs in the first place (the other part being the Shadow's lack of seaborne resources in the first place). The orcs will soon find themselves cut off, without an enemy, and stumbling through the forest trying to secure the road. In Althorin, they will be raided and sabotaged by elves moving through the ruins. Any seaside activity will be hampered by the Norfalls.

Tactics and Stretegies

If I Was the Elf, following the above Example
Elves don't do straight fighting. Like any good outnumbered people being invaded, they are sneaky.

• Temporarily evacuate Althorin. Get as many supplies out as possible, scattering them throughout the forest. Booby trap the ruins thoroughly with both mundane and magical surprises. Make certain that contact is maintained with the Pirate Princes through other landing spots.
• Immediately initiate skirmishing with the orcs. Using a mixture of unexperienced troops and true veterans, attempt to lure out the expedition's mobile and intelligence-gathering forces. Allow the expedition to advance blindly, but also with a false sense of purpose and victory.
• Surround Althorin. Use about half the elven force to cause the orcs to feel “boxed in”. The other half should be kept in reserve or spent sustaining efforts against the road. Use snipers and kill-teams to take down any leading or special figures, and keep attempting to lure them out with fake raids.
• Slowly withdraw from Althorin. As long as they attempt to hold the ruins, the ors are on the defensive. While the orcs keep staying paranoid, sallying now and then, keep moving forces back to harassing the road, occasionally rotating troops back to Althorin so there is always change there, and the shadow forces don't pick up a pattern. Keep harassing them until they give up, or just hold them there indefinitely.

If I Was the Orc, following the above Example
As long as the orcs are advancing, their doing their job. When they stop and hunker down, they lose.

• Acquire secondary objectives. Orcs are best when they are assaulting something, or simply doing something. Anything is better than sitting still, even if doing so means less casualties. Therefore, establish projects such as carving a road to the ruins, making checkpoints and so forth.
• Force the elves to spread out. With their significant numerical advantage, and the availability of reserves, the orcs can divide into several forces, stage probing attacks and feints, and generally force the elves to keep moving in multiple directions. Casualty rates are not that important.
• Assault enemy strongpoints. Attempting skirmish warfare with untrained troops against elves is futile. Instead, strong points found during previous probes should be pursued. Keep orc presence in Althorin at an absolute minimum. The town can always be retaken, and supplies are available from River's Fangs and Fallport anyway.
• Keep requesting more troops. Fighting a guerrilla force means constantly pushing them, despite the casualties suffered, something Grial Fey-Killer is proving on the Burning Line. As long as the road stays open, don't try to limit casualties. The elves will be drained faster than the orcs. Keep the enemy divided and moving.

HISTORY

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MYTHS, LEGENDS, STORIES, AND BELIEFS

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LANGUAGE

"The hosts of Izrador contain far more sorts of foul creatures than just orcs, and none of these have the orcs’ facility with language. As a result, the armies and agents of Izrador use a language the dwarves call Black Tongue. It is a simple tongue that even the most dim-witted ogre is able to master. They use this language when encamped, on patrol, or fighting together. Many of the non-orc races of Izrador’s horde have begun using the language exclusively, even when among only their own kind. Because of its simplicity, Black Tongue can only be used at pidgin competence." - Midnight: Second Edition, pp. 160

As described in the main Midnight campaign book, Black Tongue is an extremely simple language that is nonetheless useable to convey everything that the Shadow's non-orcish minions might need to communicate with one another. Since no further information on the language appears in any Midnight supplements (so far as I know), I have come up with the following on my own.

Black Tongue has no alphabet per se, but every word in its lexicon is made up of 104 distinct syllables (Agh, Bur, Il, Ish, Krim, Pat, Ren, Ul, Vor, Zha and Zum, to name a few), which can be combined in thousands of different ways. "Aghbur" is a word, as are "Ishzum" and "Ulren". No single word is more than four syllables long, although compound words are common. There are words for only fourteen numbers: 1 through 10, 50, 100, 500 and 1000, as well as for a few other specific numbers, such as "a dozen" or "a fist".

Spending time around Kyuad and Zal'Kazzir has made Durgaz interested in the possibilities presented by written language. He briefly considered asking Zal or Kyuad to teach him to read Courtier or Colonial, but decided against it, instead trying to puzzle out the fundamentals of the written word by himself. In the process, he has created something entirely new: a heretofore nonexistent written variant of Black Tongue, the simplest language he knows.

The actual creation of the alphabet was simple: assigning a unique symbol to each of the 104 syllables that make up the Black Tongue. Examples:

Agh: @
Bur: #
Il: %
Ish: ^
Krim: $
Pat: &
Ren: *
Shi: ]
Ul: (
Vor: !
Zha: )
Zum: ?

Thus, "Agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!" (Out of darkness bind them!) becomes: @ #?^] $&(

Over the past few weeks on his "off-time", Durgaz has been steadily compiling a master key of the symbols he has devised for each syllable in the Black Tongue and inscribing it on the giant worg hide he got from Ossion using a heated dagger-point. The 104 symbols were easy to write down. Clarifying the meaning of each one was harder. The solution was to use a rebus-puzzle approach, of sorts -- under the spot where all 104 symbols were written down, he has recorded two columns containing, in each row, a simple picture of something followed by the symbols representing its syllables.

Example: A picture of a shield, called a "zhabur" in Black Tongue, followed by the symbols for "Zha" and "Bur": )#
And on the next row: a picture of a boro, called an "ishipat" in Black Tongue, followed by the symbols for "Ish", "Shi" and "Pat": ^]&

Assuming that the words are picked so as not to overlap too much in terms of what syllables they use, and assuming at least two syllables per word, the entire "dictionary" can be summed up in somewhere between thirty and fifty rows. And anyone with a familiarity with Black Tongue, and knowing that each symbol represents a syllable, can pick up the hide and easily figure out what syllable is represented by what symbol. Looking at the two examples above, it's easy to figure out that, say, "zhapat" would be )&.

Surprisingly simple. The trickiest part, honestly, would be memorizing the 104 symbols, and Durgaz will specifically be choosing symbols that are vaguely relatable to common words using the syllables they represent. (He's not, obviously, actually using number signs and brackets.) The best part is that it should be useable to communicate anything that can be spoken in Black Tongue, thanks to the sheer simplicity of the language. Thank the ogres for making that necessary.

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PORTAL  |  THE SOUTHIES  |  DURGAZ  |  ERANON  |  ZAL'KAZZIR  |  KYUAD / Bill