Orog, Cerilian

Orogs are a subterranean race of miners and warriors that inhabit Cerilia's mountain ranges. Their dark fortresses and holds can be found concealed in remote gorges and hidden in great underground caverns. The Orogs consider all other races to be their enemies, and live in a state of perpetual warfare. In recent years the Orogs have established several strongholds on the surface including the Blood Skull Barony and the lands of the Iron Hand tribes.

Orogs stand taller than humans but have short stocky legs, a thick barrel-chested torso, long powerful arms and a somewhat ape-like face with a short stubbed muzzle and flat nostrils. Orogs have hairless skin like a human which is coloured from leathery grey to black.

Orogs are excellent miners and metal and stone workers, they commonly wear heavy banded mail and display tribal colors on cloaks, surcoats or standards. Despite their brutish appearance orogs are very intelligent and have a firm grasp of tactics and strategies.

In the distant past Orogs were surface dwellers, but they were driven underground by genocidal wars against the dwarves. The Orogs managed to survive by adapting to their new environment, Orogs plant and gather fungi, fish and manage livestock underground and supplement this meagre fare with foods foraged from the surface or looted from other races.

Orogs consider warriors to be the greatest members of their society aside from their rare priests, and the Orog laborers are treated barely better than the slaves of the Orogs.

Orogs follow two deities, Torazan and the Drake. Torazan is an ancient demon of some sort, summoned by Azrai to aid him against the human gods during the initial conquest of Aduria. Whether Torazan fought at Deismaar is unknown as few records survive from the cataclysmic battle and even survivors stories are contradictory as the gods battle warped reality itself. The Drake is one of the the Gorgon's few surviving children. The Drake survived his father's assassins after the Gorgon discovered his immortality and came to see his progeny not as the start of a dynasty, but as future rivals. The Drake and now dwells deep in the Underdark, using his powerful magic to expand the Orog caverns and create viable cavern systems where his people might dwell. The Drake's survival is a testimony to both his cunning and his powerful magic; few others have survived the Gorgon's wrath at all much less for so many centuries.

Some scholars say that a lesser race known as Orcs dwell amongst some orog clans as their slaves and servants, other scholars scoff at this saying that the so-called orcs are merely the young of the race.