Ord

Logo of the Ord faction in the Romance of the Nine Empires card game

An Ord is a humanoid, sentient, blue-skinned animal. They are trans-dimensional travelers and have interacted with many different places across the Omniverse, including Fartherall. In Countermay, they are one of the nine major factions who are vying for control over said continent, known there as "the Ord of the Floating Isle."

History

Fartherall

The Second Age: The Age of Wonder

Through great rifts in the sky, the Ord appear in their flying vessels. They seize an island and raise it into the sky and build a thriving civilization in general peace with the other two "Elder Races" of Fartherall — the Ald and Olom.

Magic, the language of the universe, is studied and chronicled. War is virtually unknown and, when it does occur, is a curiosity and a limited exercise. It is a mini-age of unparalleled peace and prosperity, a time when the Elder Races achieve great technological, philosophical, and arcane understanding. However, the Elder Races grow complacent, and the Olom especially ignore their worship of the gods. Meanwhile, in the wild places of the world, the Wyrmbroods grow.

Driven mad by hunger and a lack of space, the Wyrmbroods attack the Olom. The three Elder Races unite against the Heirs of the Draagan. War blankets the world.

The alliance of Elder Races attempts to bring Death back from the dead to turn against the Wyrmhorde. They harvest a golden apple from the Tree of Life, the roots of which grow through many worlds. But the apple that reaches Death is rotten, and she arises undead, no ally to those who raised her.

Death is displeased and whispers to the mortal children of the Olom, turning them against their parents. The alliance of the Elder Races shatters. The Wyrmbroods annihilate the Olom, driving them to extinction, and then—as is the way with dragons—turn on and devour one another. The handful of remaining broods return to the wild places of the world, greatly weakened.

At the beginning of the late Second Age (or early Third Age, depending on the scholar), the ogres, one of the five Children of Olom, pursue the Wyrmbroods into the mountains. The Ord seize control of the territories abandoned by the Wyrms, vastly increasing their domain.

The Ord and Ald clash over territory and who will guide the legacy races in their development. This erupts war between the two remaining Elder Races, and frames the backdrop of the modern races’ advancement.

In exchange for allying with them in their war against the Ald, the Ord promise to give the giants—the strongest and largest of the Olom legacy, who have claimed dominion over the other Children of Olom—the secret to immortality. The giants agree, and the Ord share the secret: immortality can be achieved by siphoning the life force and youth out of another, a process that ages its victims to death. The giants turn their enslaved races into sacrificial herds to extend their lives.

Against the combined might of the Ord and the giants, the Ald find themselves losing the war. Their numbers dwindle, as no more Ald are being born. Since they emerged from the First Wood, the children of the Ald have been born elves or gnomes, inheriting only a fraction of their parents’ agelessness and magic. The Ald make plans to withdraw from the world with their legacy races.

However, the elves—who have known no other home, and do not wish to leave—share arcane secrets with the enslaved Olom legacy races. With their aid, they break free from the giants and ally with the Ald. The humans and dwarves throw themselves against the giants until they have torn down the giants’ society and driven them nearly to extinction.

With the giants gone, the remaining Children of Olom throw their might behind the Ald. Together, they topple the Ord. The Ord reopen the rifts in the sky and flee the world. To cover their escape, they drop their abandoned floating island back into the sea. It lands off the coast of the First Wood. The ensuing tsunami obliterates a quarter of the primordial forest and devastates the Ald.

The Third Age: The Age of Legends

But not all of the Ord escape. The tidal wave knocks a number of their fleeing vessels out of the sky. The dwarves capture the survivors and drag them and the wrecks of their ships into the deep places of the world. There, they enslave the Ord and strip them of their secrets and language. They conduct tortuous experiment on the captives, warping and transmuting those strong enough to survive into ideal enslaved workers: powerful, short-lived, with built-in weaknesses. The dwarves build their massive Underkingdom on the backs of these enslaved people — the sole legacy race of the Ord — who they call orcs.

Countermay

"No people in Countermay are more alien than the Ord, not even the Tuatha, not even the Displaced. Blue-skinned and pale-haired, with tapered ears and gem-like eyes, they arrived through a rift in the sky on great airships. Their first act was to uproot an island and raise it into the clouds, where they settled. Why they came, no one knows, but it is clear that this is not the first world they’ve visited, and likely will not be the last. Their technology, powered by a strange combination of steam and crystal, is unlike anything seen in Arcanix or from Esh, a magic all their own. Extremely xenophobic and jealous of their technologies, the Ord keep to themselves. They generally avoid getting involved with the other empires, but are swift to attack when conflict is inevitable. Though it’s unknown why they first came to Countermay, it is generally agreed upon—by the empires below, at least—that they decided to stay once the God-King appeared to the Shad-Hujem. Why? Only the Ord know, and they’re not talking."

In The Gamers: Hands of Fate

During the 2013 R9E US Nationals, quarterfinalist Sandy Moore was playing an Ord deck and a couple of actual Ord were looking for him for unknown reasons, speaking an alien language.

ORD 1: Kathas Sandudz hopjokudz?

NATALIE WARNER: Whoa, sorry, what?

ORD 2: Mastiul lor bruskagax kit hopjoko Sando aka!

NATALIE: Dudes, those costumes are unreal! Seriously, you went all out.

ORD 2: (to Ord 1) Gibbagek omad tag aka!

ORD 1: Cheggagax gadzur kazagax lorzudz va!