The Thunder Hills

The Coastline of Lightning Bay

*"Gunpowder and Gold,* seme. *Gunpowder and Gold."*

- **A Guildsman explaining the lifeblood of The Thunder Hills.**

*The* *Thunder HIlls*  was the Mandate name given to the region of South Derrleon occupied by a heavy Orc presence. Originally known as *Euria-Ibar*, or "Valley of The Rains" in the Orcish tongue, even the inhabitants have switched much of their terminology for those used by the rest of the West. Infamous for its crop of boomberries, the single most vital component to creating gunpowder, The Thunder Hills was once a lush and vibrant land cared for greatly by its peoples but now is dominated by plantations above and refineries below, all dedicated to the boomberry crop.

The Thunder Hills is a plutocratic region where Guilds hold massive sway over political, economic, and social power. Such Guilds are aristocratic in nature, where they are often named for and arranged around powerful families that are involved with boomberry growth, production, and trade. Nearly all of Orcish society revolves around the influence of The Guilds - to be "outside the family" as the local phrase puts it is akin to being a pariah of the worst sort. Further, these Guilds and society as a whole are split along two levels: Agros (those Above Ground) and Begros (those Below Ground). Agros tend to the boomberry plantations, managing the crop, and are also the most directly involved with The Mandate for overland and martitime trade. Begros manage the refineries, mining saltpeter and mixing it with ground boomberries to create black powder - the single most powerful-yet-widespread military weapon to date. They also are heavily involved in engineering and the sciences, finding new uses for gunpowder and other technological discoveries.

Despite their key strategic importance to The Mandate, the Guilds of The Thunder Hills are not entirely looked on favorably by their Derrleonian neighbors. To say nothing of those that despise what boomberry crops do to the environment (as well as the mass industrialization and machinery needed to refine them), all parties recognize that there is a power disparity at play. The Guilds require the vast mercantile fleets and trade networks of The Mandate in order to profit from the distribution and sale of gunpowder, and The Mandate needs the industrial capacity and yield of gunpowder in order to maintain a military edge over their rivals to The East. Further, The Thunder Hills is known to employ smugglers and other means to sell gunpowder outside of Mandate regulations and control.

All these factors combined lead to The Thunder Hills being a rather explosive locale. Socially its people are in the midst of great change and upheaval, Politically it is playing a dangerous game between great powers, and Economically it is the wealthiest and most corrupt it has ever been, The entire region is a figurative and literal powder keg, and all of Lieterra holds its breath to make sure not one of these sparks catches flame.

## Euria-Ibar

In the days before The Mandate, before the proliferation of the boomberry crop, the Orcs of old lived within the wild jungle of *Euria-Ibar*. Theirs was a clannish society, dedicated to the veneration of the stars and aspects of the natural world. The violent weather of their homeland in turn made them a rugged, fierce peoples, forced to contend with gales, thunderstorms, and even hurricanes on a frequent basis. They built strong, solid cities that could contend with winds, and lifted them high so they did not flood easily. With food in abundance but land being valuable depending upon how badly the storms affected it, competition amongst early Orcish clans was fierce.

The Clans themselves were arranged around Elders - those who could guide and shape the winds to keep their people dry and fed. Such communion with nature was seen as a blessing from the stars and signs of great wisdom and leadership. The Elders of each clan met once per year within a great Conclave to help settle matters of import to all the inhabitants of *Euria-Ibar*, helping keep hostilities between the clans reserved to mostly posturing, raiding, and small skirmishes. With a sanctity towards the natural world and the afterlife, as well as the harsh land being a foe in and of itself, conflict never reached a large scale amongst the Orc clans of old - total war was unheard of and battle was more for the sake of personal glory and prestige than it was about conquest and domination.

For the longest time, this was Orcish life: communal, tribal, and natural.

Then the first cave of boomberries were found. The boomberry was originally quite small and sickly looking, its black vines and fruit being seen as an ill omen. However, when experimentation revealed that they could generate enormous amounts of heat and energy when exposed to fire, Clans began to see the potential of such a weapon. Though every current Guild claims it was their Founding Family that first brought the boomberry to prominence within Orcish society (and Lieterra as a whole, eventually), the true name is lost to time. What is known is that after a particularly bad monsoon season, conflict broke out across the Thunder Hills for control of the few regions that were not devastated by the rainfall. With the need for land greater than it had ever been, some Clans resorted to primitive grenades and bombs, filling clay or iron flasks with the berries, coating them with pitch, and then igniting and throwing them at enemies.

Warfare had changed. Simple warriors could now wield destructive force on par with that of those with command of magic. When the monsoons and the fighting had ended, the victors did not merely abscond with cattle and loot as they had before, but instead settled onto the lands they had won. They came to dominate the defeated clans, establishing hierarchies over them. Heady with newfound power, these aggressive clans refused to partake in the next Conclave and, when diplomacy broke down entirely, further war was inevitable. For the first time, Orcs did not fight for prizes and repute, but for true expansion, conquest, and ideology. To exacerbate the issue, some clans had begun seeding boomberry vines into the Hills themselves, finding they grew in almost any soil and even faster when exposed to direct sun and water. The final key ingredient came from alchemical experimentation, combining the ground pulp of the berry with saltpeter - an oxidizer that ensured an even, forceful burn - to create true blackpowder. With the means to easily create a more powerful version of the weapon that had been decisive in the last conflict, the more aggressive clans easily won out over their kin, going so far as to invent primitive firearms by the war's end.

The old order was burned away quickly. Boomberry fields began to spread throughout The Thunder Hills, choking out the lush, natural vegetation. The Elders and their conclaves were replaced by those that enriched themselves on war booty and territorial gains during the fighting, warlords that arranged themselves into a new level of aristocracy. Vast swaths of jungle were cleared out to make more land livable, and Orcs began securing and colonizing territory just outside of The Valley of The Rains to help grow and feed their burgeoning country. Whatever groups they did not drive out entirely were forcibly integrated into Orcish society - a society undergoing a rapid and terrifying shift from a mostly agrarian, isolated grouping of tribes into an industrial, expansionist nation-state.

By the time Drow ships, marines, and traders made overtures to the inhabitants of South Derrleon, they did not find a collection of clans too busy struggling with one another to be able to deal with outside threats, but instead met with The Guilds: a powerful, new force that would forever reshape the future of Lieterra.

## The Guilded Age

The Monsoon Wars had left The Thunder Hills a misshapen mess. Societal upheaval led to near constant revolts, uprisings, and succession wars between clans and warlords alike. The growth of boomberry fields left the population realizing that they would have to decide between firepower and food, and their leaders almost always inevitably chose firepower. With the Elders gone, there was no means to effectively govern and unite the Thunder Hills as a whole, as each warlord and clan thought itself the last, best hope for the Orcs.

The Guild Charter was the saving grace needed: equal parts a unifying constitution and commercial agreement, restoring peace to the Hills at the cost of everything that once was.