The Goreic Warfighters

The **Goreic Warfighters,** also known as the **Gores**, the **Gay-Gores,** or the **Norsemen** are a loose confederation of tribes that worship the Faith of the Family. Unparalleled in their savagery and brutality, the Gores are objectively the best warriors the world has ever seen, with every Gore trained to use weapons of war from the first moment they can walk. Those who are unable to handle them are thrown from cliffs or otherwise sacrificed, and their mother is re-impregnated. Goreic tribes are constantly in conflict with each other, as rival warlords compete to establish once and for all who will be worthy of uniting the quarreling tribes under one banner. Once this is done, the warlord will often lead his army on a terribly destructive raiding campaign. These raiding campaigns are often extremely costly for their targets, but it is likely the warlord will be among the first casualties as they are required by Goreic custom to lead the charge. A warlord's death will almost certainly shatter the army back into squabbling tribes once more, and the cycle will continue.

## History

For a thousand years and a few centuries more the Holy Hierarchy dominated the known world. The only test to their military might were the various unsophisticated Dark Hide tribes that roamed the Dead Lands, territory so diseased and barren that the Glaze never bothered to step foot upon it. When the Tribes would raid and rape a weak little county district village, the Glaze would send their fire breathing dragons that launched hellfire missiles down upon the petty dark hides that scatter back into their diseased landscape. There was simply no military might on the planet that could rival the Holy Hierarchy and their advanced technology. So they thought.

In the North, the strong are tested and the weak die. The would-be Gores have lived isolated and divided for centuries, but this would come to an end as the ancient Blade Druids planted a seed in the Earth that would later grow into the largest and mightiest tree, launching into the sky in a matter of decades. As a beacon that promised a fruitful forest, the various scattered hunter-gatherers came together to establish tribes in honor of this great tree. When the Blade Druids returned to tend to their creation, they established communication with these visitors, carving sigils into stones that would eventually set the basis of the Goreic common language. Over time these Druids would correct the small minds of the Northmen to not see the tree as a god itself, but to see it as a way to speak to the true gods.

A set of five deities were carved in stone and left for the Northmen to ponder for the generations to follow. These deities were known as the Family, with each member of the Family holding their own powers over the world and nature. Now that the Northmen had united under a single faith, the remaining Blade Druids were forcefully seized by the Warchiefs and sacrificed to the Great Tree in an attempt to communicate with the Family. Their call was answered with a vision of a far reaching land of fertility. The Gores witnessed fields of flowers, trees that bore shiny fruit, farms of crops with food that did not fight back. Then they saw the defenders of this land, weak slender bodies commanded by plump fat pink creatures who called themselves Lords. The land was ripe for the taking.

The years that followed launched a series of raids upon the barely defended county districts of the Holy Hierarchy. When the dragons flew over with fire and retribution, the Gores would have already returned to the North to reap the benefits of their slaughter. Tales and stories spread across the Hierarchy of brutal savages with pale skin, slaughtering all in their path while chanting the name of Satan. The nobles did not truly see them as a threat, but merely as a funny little annoyance. One noble coined the term 'those Gay Gores' that would eventually catch on to the rest of the nobility. It was only when a number of peasants from the County Districts began to convert to the Faith of the Family that the Hierarchy saw the Gores as a threat. In response, the Minister of Faith sent out a mass crusade of a hundred thousand militants and powderboys to slaughter the Northmen. All hundred thousand of these crusaders would return, as heads on spikes.

With the complete devastation of the Faith Minister's Crusade, the Holy Hierarchy responded tenfold and sparked an age of absolute war that would be known as the Gore Wars. Every time the Minister would send forth an army into the brutal North, none would return alive. Even with their great firepower, the Gores knew the land well and would only strike when they could win. When it seemed that the various Crusades were too costly to field against the Goreic Kingdoms, the Glazic nobles decided to instead target their most prized symbol, the Great Tree. Dragonfire melted the entire forest, and the tree was left forever scorched, scarred, dead. The Gores could no longer communicate with their gods, and with this decisive strike the great Goreic Kingdoms fell.

So great the fury and hatred of the Glaze was that even when the Undergod slipped into the realm of men to bring destruction, the Gores mounted their efforts alongside the Undergod to help in the destruction of the Holy Hierarchy. Hundreds of thousands of warriors were willing to die slaughtering the cowardly Glazics even if it meant ensuring the extinction of the human race. This halted when the Undergod slipped out of the realm for just a brief moment, and in these months of dead silence the catalysts sprinkled down upon the dead Great Tree, giving it a small slither of life. Hope was restored to the followers of the Family for the first time, and the few surviving Gores came together to stand by their glorious symbol to defend it until death.

It would take years of sacrifice to completely restore the Great Tree to what it once was. Indeed they would have to soak the dead soil with the fresh blood of thousands, if not millions, before they could speak to their gods once again. Though the objective of the Gores was clear, they were divided now more than ever. The Gores would never again follow a single king, no man sitting upon a bark throne, as there would be no gods to instruct him. Once again the Gores returned to their brutal nature, following only the most ruthless of warlords to bring them to glory. The men of the North now ready themselves to bring vengeance upon the cowardly and weak men of the Light, then restore their tree and lost kingdoms to glory.

## Society

Goreic society consists exclusively of rival tribes, constantly at each other's throats. The Gores are a non-literate culture, and no effort is made to advance or preserve knowledge that is not related to warfare. In contradiction to this is the fact that the Gores are also the most technologically advanced known civilization. In the past, Goreic warfighters have been seen operating many Old World contraptions, such as ancient firearms, armored vehicles, helicopters, and even rudimentary power armor. Much of this equipment is perhaps centuries or even millennia old, and with such low literacy rates it is currently unknown how the Gores maintain a fleet of these machines of war. Despite operating such advanced machinery, the Gores still prefer honorable melee combat, only resorting to such engines of war during sieges or in times of crisis. However, not all Gores are so keen to using advanced technology, as evidenced by the existence of the Old Ways, a subfaith of the Family where all modern progress is discarded and its believers live entirely off the land using primitive technology.

The Gores are also deeply devoted to religion, worshipping the Family and the Old Tree, with most tribes having their own patron deity. Most strangely of all, the Gores appear to have some sort of psychic or telepathic bond to a pocket dimension known to outsiders simply as the Goreic Forest.