“The only good greenskin is a dead one!” - Knight Commander Heirod Vestal Al-Citan, appointed leader of the first northern crusade.

“They fell upon us in the late afternoon, when most of our warriors and hunters were still out on the hunt, and came with great ferocity,” said an old orcish male to Aideen as she carefully tended to his badly shattered legs. His legs had been trampled by a horse and the bone was shattered in several places. Only an orc’s natural vitality allowed him to persevere through the long journey northwards without amputating his legs to stave off gangrene and infection.

“What were they like, elder?” asked Aideen as she tended to the old orc’s injury. Since the journey north had taken nearly a month, his shattered bones had fused once more, but even with the help of splints and his clan’s healer, it still fused poorly, which rendered him unable to walk even now. Aideen had to take her time since she needed to carefully break and set the bones properly, which took more time than simply mending a break.

“They were fully armed and armored, clad in metal from head to toe, on swift steeds,” said the old orc. He was the former warchief of the Featherclaws, who had retired from his position when he began to feel his age around half a decade ago. Even so, the old orc still acquitted himself admirably in the defense of his clan, as he took down three of the invaders before he fell and was trampled on. “Us old ones and the young ones in the clan did what we could to repel them, but had our warriors not manage to return in time, I think they would have likely slaughtered our people to an orc.”

Orcish warfare, conflicts between clans and the likes, were generally limited to their warriors, with neither side laying a hand on the old and young of the clan. Even if a clan was to perish, the old and young would simply be taken in by the victorious clan and considered theirs without even a blink from either side. As such, to mount an attack on the old and young was anathema to the orcish sense of honor, and was one of the few things that would truly enrage them.

It was no surprise that the old and young of Clan Featherclaws sold themselves dearly in the defense of their clan.

Even if the raid was supposed to be some sort of revenge - the human attackers had retreated in good order once the warriors returned and had driven them off in rage - it would have been a misplaced one. The last time the Featherclaws conducted a raid into human lands was during a time when the elder before Aideen was still a young orc. In general raids into human lands were rare, and only the southernmost clans would even think about it.

“Do you have anything that might identify them, elder? Perhaps I might have come across it in my journeys,” said Aideen to the old orc as she finished healing his legs and the old man took a tentative, if somewhat shaky step. Even a month of forced bedrest and the degradation of muscles that followed gave the orc visibly little trouble, whereas a human might have needed to take their time to make their muscles remember how to walk after such an ordeal.

“We do. We kept the metal armor and weapons from their dead for our own use, but also kept their patterned fabrics just in case,” said the old orc with a nod as he grasped a sturdy wooden staff and used it as a walking stick to help his shaky steps. He was visibly elated to be walking again, though, and gave Aideen a grateful nod for it. “If you would come with me, human healer, I shall show them to you myself.”

“I’ll take that offer then, elder,” replied Aideen with a nod of her own. The old orc was the last of the Featherclaws’ injured people, and from the stories they all told her while she healed them, Aideen had gotten a decent picture of the incident. From what the orcs described, the attackers seemed to be knights of all things, since in most of the human lands only they could afford a full set of armor on top of a steed.

“Call me Rocir, everlasting one. If what I heard from the Bloodfangs are right, I have no business being called an elder by you anyway,” replied the old orc with a grin that bared his sizable tusks. It might have been a somewhat fearsome sight to most, but Aideen was used to how Therians grinned, and they had even scarier grins with all too many sharp teeth in display as well.

“Rocir, then,” said Aideen, who took note of the steel armor and weapons worn and carried by some of the warriors of the Featherclaws, who by now mostly gave her respectul nods. She noted the fine quality of the equipment, even if many of them were damaged, and further confirmed her suspicions that whoever had attacked the orcs must have had some noticeable wealth to afford them.

“These are what those humans wore over their armor,” said Rocir as he emptied a sack full of bloodied and stained tabards on the ground. Aideen carefully unfolded them and checked them for emblems she recognized. It had not taken long for her to identify several emblems she recognized, and she soon understood that her assessment of the situation had been too conservative altogether.

“This might be problematic,” she muttered.

“What do you mean, everlasting one?” asked Rocir as he tilted his head in a questioning look.

“These emblems here, don’t mean as much. They’re from small states further away from here, and whatever force they mustered couldn’t be that great in size,” said Aideen as she pointed to a couple tabards that bore emblems she had seen in the Holy Kingdom and Ezram respectively. Then she pointed to a few other tabards she had lined up and continued. “Those on the other hand, mean trouble. They’re from at least four different provinces of the Clangeddin Empire.”

“The Empire is far larger in scale and force, and much closer as well. That all of them seemed to have sent knights over likely meant that there is a coalition of armies headed this way.”