Winomadle

Winomadle Orcish coastal fishing Kingdom with a strong dwarvish minority.

Seamoody, Squidsought, growlee and ogrebridge

Winomadle has been defined in recent centuries by bad luck. The orcish port city was begun, as legends state, by those orcs who were at the end of the twilight of the elves. The legend says these were the orcs who wise enough to realise the folly of Grek’s journey to the south coast and the founding of Ringiff. The first established town was Seamoody, and shortly thereafter a violent power struggle crowned the first king Brujab Throat Burster of the town and land beyond. Though the waters are much much colder, they are teeming with large and hardy sea life. Seals, Whales and the giant squids that have become emblematic of Winomadle. The cogwinters are devastating here, with the cold winds from the mountains blasting the coast, but encouraging even rarer sea life to risk the surface for food. A second town was built to capitalize on the migration of fish in the changing seasons, but Squidsought became a lot more than just that. As the country boomed in its early days, orcs flocked to the eastern coast, the king decreed the construction of the town of Ogrebridge to grab land around the torgil river, and then a few centuries later, Growlee, a village for the bolstering and training of orcish soldiers and raiders.

the last great war, Winomadle quickly pledged their allegiance to the allied, some of the goblinoid and gnomish combatants being delighted to add orcs to their ranks. This was, as many military historians will tell you, simply because Ringiff had joined the Army of the bear after being assailed by Varsit and Caraniv. The battles between Winomadle’s harpooning fleets and the Ringiff navy were legendary, and by the end of the war the two forces had some of the highest causalities because the orcs offered each other no quarter. In the period after the defeat of the allied, where most of the army of the bear and some lucky members of the defeated profited, Winomadle was rendered destitute. Most of their fishing vessels and whaling equipment had been destroyed, along with the able bodied sailors who drowned with their ships. Winter after winter passed, and the situation only worsened. The fishers and whalers who could still function often turned to piracy rather than return empty handed.

Seamoody is haunted by its own fallen grandeur, entire esplanades of empty store fronts, built to be reminiscent of the ornate half timbered yalmiront architecture. Abandoned taverns open to the sea front covered in dust and weathered by salt spray. The town filled only with the elderly and the children as the young desperate stevedores wait on the docks for any ship to come in. The current king Bokk Zhogzall can be found amongst them, heaving palettes and barrels with his subjects, speaking with captains and attempting to balance the books himself as he goes. At night, all the dock workers, stevedores and on land seamen and women settle for the night in the one remaining tavern, a singular oil lit building in a sea of darkness where the Seamoodians and their king drink away their sorrows of the cheap watered down grog barrels they can still afford.

It would seem to a traveller that Squidsought is doing the best of the towns of Winomadle. The town is more inhabited than Seamoody, even with some businesses open to outside trade. These include the very popular fried food restaurant ‘Pickman’s portion.’ the boisterous and musical pub ‘In the mouth’ and the water proof and cold weather outfitters ‘Naryl’s of low temp.’ The longer a hypothetical traveller spends there however, the longer they notice little problems with the town. The bands in the pubs play the same three songs every night, the orcs of Squidsought are glassy eyed and vacant when not being spoken to. Squidsought was known as Seamoody two or seamoody too for the first five years of existence, until a whaling vessel caught an enormous cephalopod of unknown origin during the madness of sixir and the ragnnloth war that followed. The blubber, the oil from the beasts head and the other treasures made of its corpse renamed the town and sparked the remaining towns ships to continue hunting for larger and larger prey out below the depths. Records are scant, but a vessel called ‘The Wilmarth’ captained by the popular orc Kewgi returned with a catch, supposedly even larger than the squid. In the week after the Wilmarth returned, the church of Kushinda on the Squidsought shorefront was burned to the ground and the shrine to etolik that commemorated those lost at sea was chipped away. Pamphlets were distrubuted that the captain of the Wilmarth, Kewgi, now referring to herself as Kewgi The Deranged would be holding a town meeting in the galley of her ship. Since then Squidsought has changed, barely responding to the king of Winomadle, building strange shrines on the coasts and rejecting help from other towns about the multiple disappearances of townsfolk. Dark stories have spread across the east coast of the missing travellers who spent a night in Squidsought.

Ogrebridge has a large dwarven population and some halfling families who were attracted to the land by the mineral deposits within the Torgil river as it flowed into the eastern coast cogsea. The town gets its name from a story from local history, when Brujab Throat Burster the first king of winomadle came across the fork in the river he found a larger than average ogre bathing in it. Content to let the ogre continue he announced that he would be building a town near the grasslands, and the ogre could run a bath house there if he liked. The ogre took this as some sort of insult, perhaps from an ogre tribe that did not encourage bathing, and hurled profanity at Brujab until the orc king now in risk of having his name besmirched jumped from his rhino and went to fight him. Brujab was young and fresh from his victory that declared him king and made short work of the ogre. He then, seeing an opportunity to have a lasting legacy of his brutality, commissioned his artisans to take the beings ribcage and fashion the beams of a bridge out of them with brick and mortar. The bridge still stands across the river torgil, but as a relic as it isn’t particularly safe to travel across. Although the metals and minerals flow through the town are harvested, the process to refine them is both costly and takes a long amount of time, so many of the initial dwarves and orcs have moved on from the town. Those who remain are either lucky with their sifting equipment or are possessed of will to chase the sunken cost fallacy.

Growlee is the smallest of the Winomadle towns, but given the emptiness of Seamoody and Ogrebridge, It makes little difference in terms of population. King Oddog Knee-Mutilator who tried to fashion himself as a son of the recently deceased Arghig, built the town following the template of Petalskol in Varsit and the newly constructed Courage in Ragnnloth. While the knights and marine soldiers were formidable in their day, they were almost depleted by the end of the last great war. An almost barren fortress, some stables and a few scattered private huts owned by veterans are all that remains. The Growlee order still produces some formidable fighters, but far less than an army. Most orcs of Winomadle are tested, trained and then set out to become mercenaries elsewhere. The trainers are the elderly and the injured, victims of smaller skirmishes or defending Growlee and Winomadle for the last seventy five years. The current chamberlain of the keep is Dhug The Loyal and his husband the dwarf rune knight mage Doldahr Ferthuraln, but the responsibilities are little more than keeping possession of the keys and occasionally allocating students to trainers.

As mentioned the cold waters around winomadle team with carp, seals, whales, giant squid, krakens and even more mysterious deep water leviathans. Ecologists and explorers have discovered a large cave system beneath the waves, and some have come in contact with the elusive Kuo toa, seemingly wilder than their brethren in Jiomak, who live submerged under the rough borders of the nation. While no tritons have ever been spotted, larger aquatic humanoids have risen from the depths but lack accurate descriptions.