Orc Steppes
West of Velmir, burned grass and black war-mounds stretch beneath the Red Wind. Orc and goblin hosts return from these steppes in cycles of raid, honor, appetite and command heard in the weather itself.
Where War Replaces Time
The western steppes are described first by what is missing: shade, stable borders and unburned grass. Ash moves where crops should grow, and black mounds left by the Green War mark places the land has not forgiven. Orcs and goblins were driven from Velmir during that conflict and pushed beyond the marshes, but exile did not end the war. It changed its rhythm. The raids return under the Red Wind, so regularly that Gildglade has seasonal rites for the days when the steppe begins to move.
The Red Wind is not merely weather in steppe culture. It is an idol of war, fire and booty, interpreted by shamans as command. Orc war-priests hear obligation in it; goblin technomagisters translate the same "order" into devices, pyrotechnics and opportunistic machinery. This shared cult does not erase the difference between the peoples. The world-bible makes the contrast almost cruelly precise: orcs are bodies whose personal Time has been replaced by a surrogate rhythm of core, war and repetition, while goblins still possess flowing Time but have Body, Memory and choice narrowed by the Golden Curse toward immediate advantage. One remembers honor too rigidly; the other calculates too quickly.
That mismatch is why the steppes can threaten kingdoms without becoming one. Orcs and goblins are dangerous together - brute force and engineering, duty and appetite - yet the same incompatible Functions resist durable centralization. The source even notes that if one banner ever truly united them, their combined hosts could trample a kingdom. Velmir survives partly because an orc is too stubborn and a goblin too cunning to accept the same master for long. Hurg the Thunder-Voiced, supreme shaman of the Red Wind, is influential precisely because his word is treated as the steppe speaking, not because he sits on a universal throne.
For the people east of the frontier, the Red Wind has become a civic alarm. Braziers are lit at crossroads so fire can "speak with the wind faster than rumor," and poor households hang burned grass on their doors in the hope that sons will leave as warriors rather than captives. The steppe therefore exists inside Gildglade even when no raider is visible. It is a geography measured in anticipation.
