Karlock

was an advisor to the orcish warchief Urlek Thar during the 3rd century A.U., and the founder of the Orcish Directorate.
== History ==
Urlek Thaar (a distant descendant of Rurik Thaar, the celebrated Orcish adventurer) began as a successful warchief on a single world, his ambition limited to sacking the civilized cities; from the earliest days of his conquests, however, he had been advised by KarlockThe half-orcish Karlock was educated by the Knights of Adarnum and quite probably the bastard son of an Adarnan Knight-Captain. Ironically, the Directorate and the Shantine were close allies in the Fialta-Shantine wars, until Shantine capitulation led the Directorate, in apparent disgust, to look for more resilient allies., a half-orc scholar who had once spent considerable time on a different world as an aide to a Human physician who dedicated himself to the health of the Orcish tribes. Karlock was rescued as an child by physician, who spared him from the zealot's sword during a campaign with the Knights of Adarnum. The physician took in Karlock and found him a child of surprising intelligence — he aimed to educate the boy, and as the horrors of the knights' campaign against the orcs mounted, he resolved to atone for his part in it by serving as a doctor in an Orcish clan. However, Karlock's time with "civilized" people had taught him their fear of the Orc. He was only spared that fear as a well-spoken half orc of relatively small size and closer-to-human appearance, and fear was instead contempt. When the physician helped an Orcish woman deliver an Ogre-child (always rare, and usually killed by complications from birth), it became clear that the tribe would take its birth as an omen, and likely conquer its neighbors until the ogre and its tribe became large enough to threaten the walled cities of men.
The Directorate was founded by Karlock, a half-orc strategist and adviser to the Orcish conqueror Urlek Thaar in the aftermath of the 3rd century A.U.'s Great Orcish-Fialta War (also known as Urlek's War), an unusually successful orcish invasion of Fialta space (which also triggered the formation of the Thalranese Marches)
Karlock seized power from the orcish warlords and used the pressures of war to depopulate the old orcish cultural leadership and shamanic warrior class. He and his inner circle set about building a new type of orcish society, one which was post-theistic (rejecting favored orc gods such as Korbog and other “savage deities”) and racially revisionist (at a time when most orcs either lived on the fringes of known space or as slaves and second-class citizens under the great powers) – a state built by orcs, for orcs and to be ruled by orcs.
== Notes ==
Category:Non-Player Characters
Category:Deceased