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 )                                                                         (
(                             NewOrigins Events                             )
 )                             January, Year 2                             (
(                                                                           )
 )    Numerous scouts have heard about an encounter between two armies     (
(     happened in the forests of Birmington Forest where many soldiers      )
 )    will never fight again. This battle will be known as Battle near     (
(                         the ocean of Dunham Sea.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     Handful traders are worried about a fight between hostile forces      )
 )    happened in the desert of Birmingmoor Desert where many soldiers     (
(     will never fight again. This battle will be known as Siege of the     )
 )                           Fort Building [1].                            (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    Some traders are rumoring about the village of Ogdor that lies in    (
(      the Great Birmington Desert desert, where a rebels annihilated       )
 )                                 guards.                                 (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )     A few scouts are worried about the village of Entellalizo that      (
(     lies in the Great Durbuz Desert desert, where a faction expelled      )
 )                                 guards.                                 (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    Many adventurers have heard about the city of Ampeleryx that lies    (
(        in the Great Autarkaros Desert desert, where an opposition         )
 )                            decimated guards.                            (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )      Several refugees have heard about daredevils who attempted to      (
(     annihilated Lizard Men (2241) roaming the desert of Great Ialihn      )
 )     Desert near ocean of Boldur Sea. But all of them were slain by      (
(                                their prey.                                )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(        Several druids have heard about rangers who have slew Giant        )
 )     Scorpions (303) near ocean of Lanktor Ocean. Freeing the desert     (
(               of Great Antanoatos Desert from their dread.                )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(          In the desert of Great Antanoatos Desert, near ocean of          )
 )      Antanoakos Sea, Demon (292) who continue to cause anxiety to       (
(                            local inhabitants.                             )
 )                                                                         (
(                          .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                          )
 )                                                                         (
(     In the ocean of Winaer River, near mountains of Antanoatres Peak,     )
 )     Pirates (278) who continue to cause fear to local inhabitants.      (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )       In the desert of Great Ametanimos Desert, near mountains of       (
(     Ametanimos Mountain, Sandlings (870) who continue to cause horror     )
 )                          to local inhabitants.                          (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )    In the desert of Great Perikeros Desert, near forests of Koehine     (
(        Forest, Sandlings (794) who continue to cause fear to local        )
 )                              inhabitants.                               (
(                                                                           )
 )                         .:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.                         (
(                                                                           )
 )       In the desert of Great Perikeros Desert, near mountains of        (
(       Ibinmor Heights, Family of Ogres (731) who continue to cause        )
 )                      terror to local inhabitants.                       (
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Hello, forest,
A dense forest
Full of fairy tales and wonders!
What are you making a noise about with the leaves
On a dark, stormy night?
What are you whispering to us at dawn,
All covered in dew, like in silver?

Who is hiding in your wilderness –
What kind of beast?
What bird?
Open everything, don't hide it:
You see, we are our own!

Sphinx, sandlings, mages and warriors working together. If that's not friendship I don't know what is.

We see sphinx everywhere. Don't know why everyone is afraid of them. After all, they're mostly a big pussycat. They haven't bothered us at all...

Englefart looked at his calendar. 

"What an exciting time of year!" he thought. "I wonder if the Gnomesmith will bring me anything nice.

“Our funds are stable, our men fed.”
“Studies are progressing too.”
“We need to expand.”

Do not understimate trade my fellow brothers. Trade wood and iron for food. Leave luxury spcies to the trade guild.

A year has gone, doesn't time fly

"This is a thing I've never known before
It's called easy livin'" - song a bard.

Once there comes a moment, when we can sustain all those monsters. Once.

Finally the Sphinx have left our area. Will we remain safe now? I doubt it.

Cute little scorpions came to our camp. Nice addition to the famous garlic soup!

finally some trading coming in with some silver income. too bad no VODK available nearby, men are slowly getting angry. Can we establish some new trade routes for it?

Hmmm... so many neighbors and so small number of cities around...

A new city ? how come ?

These gnomes need to be pushed to keep learning!

Where the bandits have gone?

The next thing I saw was this. When the lamb had opened one of the seven seals, I heard one of the four living creatures say in a voice like thunder, 'Come!'
But I'd rather jump away !

The ogre fell fast under coordinated viking onslaught. And ice wurms were nowhere to be seen. That could be a good sign or a bad sign.
But further out the desert swarmed with monsters although latest observations showed that they did not visit cities. That motivated vikings to hurry with last preparations for city conquer. Guards still didn't know what was coming for them. Large horde of vikings.

The time has come, mused the Prime Exarch, to unite with my brothers in arms.
We shall leave these lands to fall where they may.

====
Orcs
====


Our Eldest's Column
-------------------

Many of the little folk have had the good fortune to meet some orcs in the last couple months.  They seem to be integrating themselves comfortably among the little folk.  I hear from the priests that the orcs are fitting in even better than expected.


Pillaging Column
----------------

Our Eldest politely suggested a pillaging column.  The little folk have no direct experience to tell us how well pillaging works for the pillagers as the pass; our attempt to pillage have all been met with laughter.  We do have some experience gleaning after our kind neighbors pillage the lands for us, though, so this month we can report about that here to get this column started.  The month after the pillagers pass, wages are less than subsistence, or sometimes right at subsistence.  Some starvation is normal.  No alms are given the month of the pillaging, and very few alms the month after.  The population falls.  The native population is easily recruited.


Letters Column
--------------

The Times' editor should know that last month's article by little folk about orcish women is a lie.  Orcs are cursed.  There are no orcish women.  Orcish men breed with captured slaves of other races, and all of their offspring are male.  This curse means orcs must be evil slavers or die.  Slavery is bad.  No slavery is good.  To save our world from bad slavery, all orcs must die.  We demand from the Times an acknowledgement of the lie and a retraction.


Women's Column
--------------

Our new orcish children are just not as timid as our goblin children were.  The little orcish boys all want to pretend that they have joined Hagen's army at the frontier, fighting in Thane's "Nazg Gul", not hosting pretending to be tea parties like respectable little folk.  The little folk are making more toy swords, and fewer toy tea sets this month. 


LFLF Column
-----------

The little folk liberation front, ever ahead of the slow pokey old little folk intelligence agencies, have already discovered that at least some of the armies that fight with Hagen to bind evil everywhere do speak orcish.  Indeed, we believe that is the tongue of the soldiers that were in the vanguard of that attack.  Twelve times their number of well trained swordsmen could not touch them; I wonder how fearsome they are when they use metal weapons instead?


Linguists Column
----------------

Our Eldest asks us to learn the Orcish speech.  It hurts our ears to hear, our tongues to speak, our eyes to see, and our hands to write, but to help Our Eldest, we try anyway.  I fear our sacrifice comes too early, though, for the texts the provided to us by the linguists are obviously written by an unskilled student or students; the translations claimed cannot possibly be correct.  We know these proposed definitions of Orcish words are false, because a single language cannot support so many words for "assist another in their passage to the next plane of existence."  These translations claim Orcish has one word for "assist many others at the same time", a different word for "assist as part of government sanctioned activity", a third word for "assist casually, with little effort", a fourth word for "assist in the way of the snake", a fifth word for "assist without the beneficiary knowing he or she is being assisted", a sixth word for "assist using a tool with no sharp edges", and so on.  But what we know today of the psychology of language acquisition proves this is impossible.  How would children ever use these words often enough to practice and learn them?  How would adults use more than one of these words in a lifetime?  We suspect the linguists have mistaken the same word in multiple dialects for multiple shades of meaning in a single trade tongue.  A trade tongue can assign shades of meaning to individual words from multiple dialects, but only when the different shades of meaning are useful frequently enough to prevent coalescence into a single word.  The variations of shade of meaning that these translators have ascribed to the same word in multiple Orcish dialects exist solely in the (disturbingly macabre) imagination of the uneducated linguist or linguists who wrote this useless translation.


Religion Column
---------------

Orcs are different than the stereotypes we had about them before they joined us.  Orcs are just as religious as goblins and gnomes, maybe even more so.  The little orcish children pay more attention in our church schools than the little goblin and gnomish children do.  This was unexpected.

Little folk orcish children's evening prayer:
    Tari amase wahr als ish usi tai Hagen Thane's nazg gul itt hab te summ ula Hagen
    Durbuk ustipte gimbatuluk krimpatul thrakuk suruhsi summuhsi urbu nazg ishi


Obituaries
----------

Aenbecan, head of the Little Folk Musical Intelligence Agency died last month, in fighting at Hymnoaros.  He survived as long as Good Mr. Hagen was present, but died the instant Good Mr. Hagen vanished.  Without Aenbecan's wise counsel, we know not how this came to happen.  Did some new evil arise in Hymnoaros that defeated or drove off Good Mr. Hagen, and accidentally trampled Aenbecan on its way to the fight?  Were Good Mr. Hagen's allies untrustworthy?  Is Good Mr. Hagen himself untrustworthy?  Did Aenbecan just listen to some deathly bad music?  No one knows.  Aenbecan long sung us the news from Hymnoaros; Aenbecan has sung his last song.  Hymnoaros is silent.

An Evil Hand
--------------
The Tundra is a dangerous place.  That is to be expected.  Nowhere in this land is without risk.  Until this month we had thought it random - monsters roaming the world each with their own agenda.  Now though, we are not so sure.  

In the night, a group of Yeti came down from the northern snows and slew many of our brave trainees as they slept.  Just as we moved to react, Sandlings emerged from the frozen Tundra to the south in a coordinated assault.  We fought them off, sending the surviving Yeti running.  Still, nothing can explain such coordination between mortal enemies other than some dark purpose directing all the monsters of the land.  Keep yourselves safe - this world is united against us.

The council of wizards look at itself in the mirror. The sole wizard was in fact wondering where his apprentices were. Some delay involving deserts and camels, apparently. It would be easier just to get a big pile of cash and recruit local leaders, but apparently the only way the Children of the Four Winds could afford good leaders was to find a wasteland someone had pillaged and persuade the most enterprising survivors to relocate.

No need for dirt! Alwe lived, Alwe lives, Alwe will live forever! 
And I'll find a lover of holes and pull his holes on his head!

We are walking over the corpses of the Romans. We do not need their deaths, but it is the duty of a Son to follow His Father! To Optanitos!

-Our scouts have discovered the second lair of the ice dragon.

13 factions have already left this world for first year! A plague epidemic?

"How much longer?" shouted Merewulf. When will we finally drive the guards out of the city?

The locals keep saying that this is the harshest winter in history. For Utuk'ku, it feels like late spring. So much work to do to bring back the ice.

These little brats annoy me more and more with every passing month. Horridious sounds they call music are the reason why so many monsters migrate from the east. Something has to be done.

Usually gnolls are quite hesitant to travel oven oceans, maybe we can convince them to travel over rivers.
Empire development is slow but steady, we need to increase the pace.

Torwin found a piece of paper on his desk. It was a letter from their neighbor. A long one considering trade and development. Why not? 

The desert may be vast, but no quests can be found.

I love you every day
Inside I'm on fire.
You throw firewood again
And I'm burning to the end.

Empirez broght vodka to moja!
We let live emprez boyz.

"Would you believe me if I said" started the first sphinx, "that one of us always lies, and one of us always tells the truth?"

The goblin paused, and spat on the hot sand.  It immediately started to pale and dry up.

"If dat woz da case, guv'nah, den you'd be da sphinx wot never tells a porky, righ'?  Cuz by telling us dat fings was dat way, you'd be telling da troof."

"Would you consider," responded the second sphinx, "that a question is not a statement, and is neither true nor false?"

"Buggeration," replied the goblin, "I hadn't thought of that."

The sphinxoi smiled hungry smiles.

"Would you prefer to ask us a single question that we shall answer before attempting to guess which of us might be the liar and which the honest one?  Or would you prefer us to just eat you now?" purred the first one.

The second sphinx cocked it's head towards it's colleague.  "Is that the rumble of a hungry belly I hear?  Do you think goblin goes well with ketchup?"

The goblin felt the Fendahl really was going to have some explaining to do at this rate.

It is frozen up north and the realm of giants.

Scouts blocked on multiple hexes. The neighbors really aren't that welcoming....

They say that articles are written for money.
Of course it is, for what else?
And of course, there are those who are willing to sacrifice their strength and time to bring a little magic of words into this world.
And let's be grateful to them!

He went through the gate. For a moment it was like falling into a hole. Then blackness. Nothing. Not a single sensation at all. He moved. No obstruction to his limbs, in none of the directions. It was like floating. Falling. Flying. And none of these things. He was touching himself, and there at least he found sensation. Still, a most perturbatory experience. It ended after eternity; but maybe it was only a month later, enough for lesser men to grow crazy.

A light forest, smelling of pine and olives, under a blue sky dotted with sheepy clouds. He waited some time, savouring the sensations of up and down. Of the sun on his skin, the breeze in his ears.

He only opened his eyes when he heard foot steps. Or rather hoove steps. Some centaurs had entered the glade, carefully, slowly. They were carrying spears, but not in a menacing way, gleaming point towards the sky.

He started to smile.

The Roman Empire is crumbling...

Peter looks up from the scroll he is trying to decipher and surveys his domain and nods approvingly.  All is progressing well, though there are a couple of areas of concern, and he hopes that these will not turn into problems.  Rubbing his eyes, he returns to the scroll, wishing that he could read more than just the pictures.

...they say Holden doesn't exist and is always a bad person...

In desert oasis they tell stories that Holden was once a brave conqueror but now he is just an old man with the sword. Same people also tell that you have to fear the little folk, so what do they know.

Well armed Etaireia plunder the shores of the Lanktos Sea.  They move around the shore, travelling in the same direction the sun travels.  The village is safe from the band to its east, but if those plunderers are joined by the pirate fleets of the Lanktos, the village will surely fall.

If you hear Holden, run!
If you see Holden, die!
if you think about Holden, get drunk!

Among the followers of the Holden Witness Sect, heresy is developing. Heretics claim that it is not necessary to use eggs for rituals. In their opinion, the meaning of Holden's Holy Deed is a prank, the result of which was the humiliation of the strongest.

Here comes the game again.

Vile Pinguin timidly hides a fat body in the desert... over silver plain of sea, Holden's body proudly flies

We are all Holden.