The Orcasword

From the Sea of Ash comes a sword of bone. A war-tool shaped from the bodies of long-lost, now legendary, beings. Creatures and beasts now seen only in dreams or inked into the lapis-bright pages of ancient books.  

The Physical Makeup Of The Sword

  The Orcasword is thick, huge. Truly a weight to wield, whomsoever might attempt it, somewhere between a greatsword and a two-handed axe. It takes strength and size to carry comfortably and, while it can strike, parry and pierce, its most obvious use is as a swinging blade, using mass, size, and the terrible sharpness of its uneven teeth to bite through armor and remove the flesh. The sword is bone. Its core, its blade, and haft are carved from the smooth, rock hard bone of some unimaginable and extinct sea-beast. While the surface has been stained pale-ivory by the passage of time, and uncounted gallons of blood has washed its surface, beneath it all it remains pale as a chess-piece and as smooth and a fine china cup.   This bone core has been carved into the grinning, grimacing form of some forgotten, perhaps even imaginary, sea-predator. Something with the features of an animal, but imbued with the spirit of a demon. The sword grins, but not with joy. A blood-smile.   Around the rim of this pale haft are bound and driven-in, serrated and triangular teeth that, in silhouette, would look almost like a mountain rage drawn by a child. Upon the cutting edges of that smile marches a quality of sharpness unseen in other sword's. As infinitesimally fine as crystal or obsidian, the teeth tear and rend at a scale below that of sight, as if they were colonies of teeth, or carried some invisible spirit of savagery or harm.   When the blade bites home it bites, hooks dig in and seems to gnaw on flesh. And the blade bites deep, with each swing, bursting through bonds and armor. Blood slicks the ivory-pale haft and that ash-white bone absorbs it like a sponge.   At the end of the haft, the sword has bound a pommel-horn. Again, the product of some ancient, extinct, creature, the curved and cracked horn forms a crescent moon tipped with piercing shards fit to unlace mail and punch through armor plate. Each aspect of the sword does harm, from tip to tail, back and forth, swung, thrust reversed or hammered home, it twitches and shivers in the hand like a mad dog or rabid man, hovering and circling an enemies guard before crashing through it, smashing aside any parry, ignoring all defense and simply driving forward, seeking flesh.    

Its Powers

  Such is the savagery and horror of the Orcasword.   But if this violent madness was its only gift, it would be no treasure at all, or at least, would be one despised by human-kind. The sword has two strands to its makeup and to the powers it bestows. The first, of unrelenting berserk fury and an inevitable bloody end. But the second is a dream of a sea forgotten by civilized people, and a distant turquoise hope, glimmering like a gem in the subconscious mind of man. The last memory of a long-parched ocean, or a sign that out there, beyond the Waste, one still lives.   Firstly though, the sword gives the gift of unending savagery.   For those who wield it, their blood will not spill, nor their bone breaks asunder, while the Orcasword still bites. As long as they fight, and hit, and the sword swings home, they live.   This remains true for all its wielders, but for those more fully and elegantly attuned to its nature, the sword will both give, and take, much more. For them, so long as they swing and strike, for so long as their wrath rages and grows, their strength and speed shall build and wax ever-greater. Rage, strength, speed and blood, all feeding on, and multiplying with, each other like a chorus of Wrath, so that a wielder of the Orcasword can become almost a terrible semi-undead golem of flesh, bone, and hate, whirling in a dance of death, cleaving enemies apart in single blows, trailing their own torn muscles and skin like ripped red flags.   Until the enemies, victims, opponents, or former friends, run out, and they collapse in a splatter of blood and broken bone like a butchers bomb.   Few weapons or treasures could be more deadly in a massed melee, or more injurious and risky to the wielder’s hand.   The second strand of the Orcaswords song, and the other side of its history, is quite different.   For the sword is a relic of the Sea, build and bound from the bones of its predators and carrying, in however a violent form, the dream of its being.   Blackwater is bounded only by the Waste, and the Sea of Ash. True Oceans, or the dream of them, are relics and memories of a different time. Almost visions.   To those who wield it, the Sword sings of the sea. When they sleep, they dream of ancient oceans, limitless, abyssal, turquoise, and night-dark. Of unending water. Of storms and jewel-speckled coasts of alien shores, unknown lands bounded by gales and harrying typhoons.   Beneath and within this sea, are predators; creatures with the smiles and minds of demons, though bound in flesh, and strange echoing horrors without end. Of inhuman, indifferent, relentless predation, Flesh feasting on flesh without conscience or pause. For the ocean is a boundary to terror as well as wonder.   But still, there is beauty also, and boundlessness, and possibility almost unknown in fallen Uud.   These dreams, a shared vision coming with the cloak of night, can be passed on by the carriers of the Orcasword, in poetry, performance, writing, and song. A vision and a dream so pure that it affects (or infects) those who witness it, should they wish it, and introduces them to a combined paracosm of shared adventure. And so the Orcasword can be held by those of surprising character, those bound to art, but impelled, subtly or directly, to violence by the blades bleak spell.   It is for this Sea-Dream, this dream of a blue world, that poets, artists, and creators seek the Orcasword, and for this reason that a slow, low conflict goes on in the culture of Blackwater over ownership and control of it.   It goes and returns, inevitably, like the tide.      

Histories Of The Orcasword

  The sword appears first on the borders of Blackwater, in the hands of some Orc or Orcish Warlord. A Chief of Grey Legions and a master of Horrors, leading a monstrous accumulation out of the Waste.   Here, hearts fall, for those who recognize the Relic borne by the leader of this barbarian horde know that the only way they will be defeated is through great cunning, ruthlessness, violence, and sacrifice.   To enter massed battle against the wielder of the Orcasword is, perhaps, to be lost, for the greater the melee and the more souls the sword drinks, the more destruction it may wreak,   Yet, a scene of such military intensity may be the only sound means for the destruction of its holder, for as the blood-tide rises, whoever holds the Orcasword must dive deeper into the violence and terror of war, growing ever more wrathful, ever more invincible, ever more terrible as the chaos rises.   And so their doom is formed, for, having hurled themselves heedlessly into victorious combat, writing their name in tears of flesh and calligraphy of blood, they must also receive such wounds, one by one, cut by cut, unnoticed as the second’s pass.   And once every enemy is dead, and no-one lies before them to kill. What can they do but die?   There are other ways to take the Orcasword; its wielders have been shot to death with arrows, grabbed by golems, frozen in ice, wrestled into submission by superlative Vantar monks, and drowned.   But turn as it must, time leads the Orcasword into the hands of those who will not use it, and will not, perhaps cannot, destroy it.   (Whether such items can even be destroyed is argued over greatly, some claim that Fate itself leads to their inevitable preservation, others that sheer magical might returns them to exist no matter the force of their annihilation.)   The beautiful, but terrible shark-dream of the Orcasword is so powerful that only the wisest may guard it. In different ages, the sword has been watched over by monasteries of the calmest monks, hidden in pools where wise salmon turn gentle circles overhead, trapped within enchanted mirrors to be released only by the light of an unseen moon, and in many other ways, places and means.   But the blade itself impels men to acts of violence. And the dream of the sword is deep.   On an unthought blood-deep level, Humanity misses its ancient boundary. Blackwater now is caged by ash and fear, the dream of the ocean, existing now only in fragments of half-forgotten memory, carried by poetry and song, is strong.   Ultimately and eventually, whether by fate or by design, one will seek the sword, and encounter it.   Rarely is this one a warrior. Instead, they are someone of capacity, vision, talent, and the ability to inspire others. They dream deeply, and they desire what cannot be found. They hunger for the forgotten sea, and perhaps this leads them to its last and greatest relic in the lands of Humanity.   They wield the Orcasword, awkwardly at first, for they are rarely strong. And for a time, all is well. They sing the song of the Sea, and re-introduce Humanity to its forgotten past, and give it hope for an unknown future. And perhaps this alone makes it worth it in the end.   But the sword is the sword, and the Demon-Smile of that forgotten monster never closes. One way or another, no matter how long they fight to control it, the blood-tide rises.   Perhaps Orcs try to take the weapon, for thy revere it greatly as a symbol of leadership, kingship, and unending wrath; the despoiler of nations. Perhaps others seek it. Or maybe the Adventurer with the blade of ancient bone simply gets into one fight too many.   It’s never simply one fight.   Or to tell a greater truth, it’s only ever "one more fight". One more adventure, one more challenging until the Sword can be returned to its peaceful guardians, and once again be hidden from the eyes and minds of mortal flesh.   Just one more...