July 26, 2024
Hi everyone,
As we continue to develop the Grimdark Future setting, we have updated the Army Forge lore sections for 3 factions: Dwarf Guilds, Orc Marauders, and DAO Union
These updates will give you a glimpse at some of the things in the future, now going deeper into one of the major events that shaped the Sirius Sector, and that kick started the story line of the Grimdark Future setting as we know it today.
With the re-working of the lore, we have fundamentally changed parts of the stories of the Dwarf Guilds, Orc Marauders, and DAO Union, and we hope you enjoy this new iteration on the factions. From now on, these updated versions are the new canon, so you can forget about how they worked before.
Alright, enough talk, here's the new updated lore sections!
Dwarf Guilds
"Dwarves are short humanoids, united under the banner of a conglomerate of mega-companies. Their armies are made up of slow warriors with powerful weaponry, which rely on having a solid long-term plan to make up for their low mobility.
The Dwarf Guilds rapidly expanded outwards from their home world, hoping to claim ever more of the galaxy’s resources. These ambitions eventually resulted in them starting a war that they could not win. Desperation led them to activate a machine that would end up destroying much of the Sirius Sector. Now the scattered survivors seek to rebuild with the same ambition of their predecessors.
The Dwarves originated on a mineral rich but inhospitable world. In order to escape the harsh conditions of the surface, their civilization developed underground where conditions were more stable. As their civilization continued to grow, they started to discover and innovate new uses for the ores and resources they uncovered as they dug their cities. Guilds of miners arose to stake claims on these ores, and soon, Guild Lords became the richest and most powerful Dwarves on their planets, holding absolute control of the ore which their society depended on.
The Guilds were driven by a demand for constant growth and competition with rival Guilds, causing them to mine ever deeper into their home world’s crust. The Guilds continued until they had stripped their world nearly bare, before turning toward space. They expanded rapidly outwards, their wealth grew as Guilds competed to stake claims over new systems.
This rapid expansion only slowed when the Dwarves began to encounter more powerful factions. After some initial tension, the Dwarves struck up an alliance with the Elves. The Elves conceded a number of border worlds to the Dwarves while trade between the factions of Sirius flourished. Noticing the disunity of the Orcs, the Guilds used a Orc raids as a pretext to being expanding into their territory.
After their initial success, the Guilds became more ambitious and began to expand deep into Orc territory. The Orcs united against them and quickly began to turn the tide. The Dwarves became desperate to recover what resources they could as they retreated, stripping many planets bare. Dwarves became increasingly desperate for resources and sought to create a wormhole that would allow them to rapidly extract resources from distant worlds, even other galaxies.
When they activated their machine, something went terribly wrong. The Radiance Cascade tore through much of Sirius in an instant, destroying most of their worlds and killing most of those residing in Guild territory. These survivors were largely miners working on systems at the edge of their space. Following the Cascade, the Guilds moved quickly to evacuate survivors and adapt to a space born life.
Most Dwarves now live on mobile mining fleets. These fleets travel through their territory extracting everything they can from a system before abandoning it. The Dwarves have also taken an interest in the Zone, contending that they have exclusive rights of salvage there.
How will you extract your fortune from the Sirius Sector?"
Orc Marauders
"Orc Marauders are hulking humanoid aliens, whose society is divided into a number of warring clans and bands. Orc Marauders lack precision weapons or heavy armour and instead rely on their fast vehicles, large numbers and ferocity to defeat their foes.
Orc Clans have been in conflict since the beginning of their history. Only the threat of the expansionist Dwarven Guilds could make the Orcs unite. These Orcs felt a pride they never had before, only for the Guilds to activate the Radiance Cascade. In an instant, their leaders, most of their worlds and even their greatest enemy were destroyed. Now, the scattered Orcs strive to rebuild what was lost.
The Orcs came from a barren and harsh world where their survival was a constant struggle. These Orcs became used to lives of hardship, fighting the elements and each other. For these Orcs, honour, strength and their clans were the most important parts of their lives. Clans would work together to share their meagre resources, fighting everyone else. Larger groups rarely lasted, instead Orcs put their faith in personal trust and bonds. Without a worthy leader, larger groups would dissolve back into clans and return to fighting each other.
Despite their lack of unity, the Orcs would eventually make it to space, where they found worlds where they could thrive. Clans moved quickly to spread out and claim their territories. By the time the Elves met the Orcs, they had already settled a large portion of Sirius. Orc clans' conflicts and raids would often spill into Elf territory, and so the Elves began to strike deals with certain clans to encourage the Orcs to fight among themselves.
This changed when the Elves offered their border worlds to the Dwarves. Tensions rose quickly as the Orcs’ new neighbours responded to raids by conquering entire systems in retaliation. As Dwarves began expanding more aggressively, the Orc Clans were forced to set aside their differences and unite. These combined Orc forces proved more powerful than anyone had anticipated and the Dwarves were forced to retreat.
United for the first time in their history, the Orcs felt a renewed sense of pride as they drove into Dwarven territory. On the edge of defeat, the Dwarves used an invention which scourged the sector, in an event known as the Radiance Cascade. It destroyed numerous worlds and both Orc and Dwarven fleets. With their leadership and most of their leaders lost in an instant, the Orcs were suddenly scattered into a number of Clans. Many of their former worlds were settled by human arrivals, brought to Sirius by the Dwarven invention. The Orc clans were forced to retreat into the edge of their former territory.
Though decimated and scattered by the Cascade, the Orcs remain proud. Some hope to reunite the Clans through conquest while others still hope to discover those lost in the Cascade.
How will you reunite the scattered clans?"
DAO Union
"The DAO Union are a species of aliens equipped with advanced weapons and drones. Their armies rely on advanced ranged weaponry and mobility to keep enemies at bay.
Those in the DAOU have embraced logic as the core of their society, rejecting selfish impulses. They came to depend upon machine logic to make sensible and impartial choices, which earned them a reputation as mediators in Sirius. It was only when this logic nearly resulted in their total redundancy that they began to question it. Rejecting AI, those in the DAOU now seek to build a better society for themselves.
From its very foundation, DAO society required every role and member to co-operate in order to survive. Much thought was put into how best to divide both work and resources between the DAO people. As their society advanced, they embraced logic as a core tenet. The wisest DAO served as Sages, who divided the necessary work and resources as efficiently and logically as possible. Everyone in this society had a precise role to fill, and together they formed the DAO Union.
As technology progressed, the Sages created artificial intelligences in order to manage their society. Initially, these AIs were merely an expansion of their extensive bureaucracy, processing data with far greater efficiency than had previously been imagined possible. The Sages gradually expanded the AIs’ role, as they became convinced that AIs would be able to maximize efficiency without falling prey to the bias and error.
Under the guidance of these systems, the DAOU expanded beyond their home system. As the scale of their society continued to grow, their AIs grew increasingly interconnected and complex. Many came to trust in the AI implicitly, as it came to organize in their lives everything from manufacturing to diplomacy.
The DAOU avoided the worst of the Radiance Cascade due to their distance, but their AI began to act differently. Slowly, it began to deemed a number of citizens “redundant”, assigning machines to their former roles. This caused social unrest as many DAO people found themselves suddenly without the jobs that once gave them purpose.
This continued until the AI locked out the Sages, claiming their input was no longer required. This caused outrage throughout the DAOU and many began to sabotage infrastructure to undermine the system. The AI was not ready for this spontaneous reaction and acted too late to save itself. After this, the Sages ruled AI should never be able to perform a DAO's role.
This conflict was highly destructive to DAO society. Many felt despondent at the loss of the AI which had once given their lives direction. Sages stepped up once more, salvaging what records and infrastructure they could to guide reconstruction. Most of those living in the DAOU find their purpose in their job and social role, which have been highly systematized. Yet some feel that they are just repeating the logic that nearly drove their people into obsolescence.
How will you bring direction to a disordered galaxy?"
That's it for now, we hope you enjoy the updated lore, and there is much more to come in the future! :)
Happy Wargaming!
– OPR Team
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