The Red Wastes were no place for the weak. It was a land of endless fire-kissed dunes and jagged obsidian spires, where the sun bled crimson upon the cracked earth. The wind howled like a dying beast, carrying the scent of sulfur and death. And within this forsaken land, the Ashblood Orcs reigned.
Unlike their lesser kin—the Grey Orcs of Gor-Thalok, bred for endurance, or the Green Orcs of the Marsh Lands, swift and cunning—the Ashblood were something else entirely. They were neither army nor mere warriors. They were war incarnate, forged in the heart of the Wastes, their flesh hardened by the unrelenting sun, their bones thick as ironwood. A single Ashblood could break a man with one hand, cleave a warhorse in two, or rip through a line of shielded soldiers like parchment.
They did not march in disciplined formations nor adhere to the tactics of lesser beings. Their warbands moved like a crimson tide, each warrior an unstoppable force of carnage. And they never left the Red Wastes. They had no need to. The Azerite mines were their sacred charge, and any who dared cross into their territory soon learned that there were fates worse than death.
The first warning was always the silence. The winds that once howled through the cracked land would fall still. The heat, unbearable moments before, would seem to smother the air with an unnatural weight. Then came the sound—a deep, guttural chant, like thunder rolling beneath the earth.
The intruders, whoever they were—mercenaries seeking wealth, warlords seeking conquest, fools seeking fortune—would barely have time to react before the Ashblood descended. They did not fight with hesitation. There were no words, no parley. Only war.
Blades carved through flesh, axes shattered bone, and the Wastes drank deep of the blood spilled upon them. There was no mercy, no prisoners. The Ashblood did not stop until the last of the intruders lay broken upon the sand, their corpses left to the carrion birds and the unforgiving sun.
The only thing that mattered to the Ashblood, beyond war and slaughter, was Azerite.
Under the iron rule of High Warlord Khargul the Ashen, the Ashblood orcs guarded the Azerite mines with a devotion that bordered on madness. To them, Azerite was not mere ore, not wealth, nor a resource to be mined and spent. It was the blood of their legacy, the lifeblood of the Wastes, the source of their strength. And for that, they would kill, they would maim, they would desecrate the flesh of any who dared trespass upon their sacred ground.
To the Ashblood, Azerite was divine, and the mines were temples of war. Their shamans, draped in flayed skins, painted their bodies with its shimmering dust, whispering guttural prayers to the spirits of the Wastes. The deeper veins, where the Azerite pulsed like molten fire, were never touched by tools—only by sacrifice. Prisoners, intruders, even weaklings among their own kind were dragged before the sacred ore and split open upon the stones, their still-beating hearts placed upon the glowing rock as an offering. The Ashblood believed that only through death could they keep the Azerite's power from fading, that its glow must be fed by the agony of the unworthy.
And so the rituals continued, year after year, the Wastes growing ever redder, the air thick with the scent of burnt flesh and iron. Skulls were impaled upon rusted spears, their empty sockets forever gazing upon the mines they had sought to steal. To some, it was horror beyond comprehension. To the Ashblood, it was order.
High Warlord Khargul did not tolerate weakness. His rule was absolute, his fury unrelenting. It was said he was born in the heart of the Wastes, his umbilical cord severed with a blade forged of pure Azerite. His very veins pulsed with its glow, and his eyes burned with the hunger of war. Under his rule, the Ashblood tightened their grip on the Red Wastes, their hatred for outsiders festering into something darker.
It was not enough to slay trespassers. Now, they hunted them. Raiders spilled beyond the borders, dragging back the foolish and the bold, their bodies broken but not yet dead. The Ashblood did not simply kill their enemies. They made them part of the Wastes.
Legends whispered of the Pillars of Suffering, great monoliths of stone and bone where the unlucky were crucified, their bodies left to rot beneath the blazing sun. Some were bound in chains of Azerite, their flesh blistering from its raw energy, forced to witness the very mines they had sought to steal before death claimed them.
And when the Wastes called for more, when the Azerite shimmered with an unnatural hunger, the great pyres were lit. The sky would glow a sickly red as the Ashblood gathered, their chants rising like a storm. Bound captives were marched toward the fire pits, their screams swallowed by the roaring flames. The Ashblood did not cheer, did not revel. They simply watched, their duty fulfilled, their gods appeased.
For the Ashblood, there was no greater purpose. No glory beyond their lands. No conquest beyond the Red Wastes. There was only Azerite. Only war. And only death. There was no war more hopeless than the war against the Ashblood.
Across Sol-Mayora, the mainland of shattered kingdoms and warring tribes, their name was spoken in whispers. Across Sol-Minora, the lands beyond the sea where empires thrived and scholars dismissed the horrors of the Wastes as superstition, even the bravest sailors refused to land near Ashblood shores. Kings trembled at rumors of their warbands, priests invoked their gods against the Ashblood's taint, and even the most hardened warlords knew—there was no victory to be had against the Wastes.
Their unholy rituals were feared beyond death itself, for what the Ashblood did to their victims was beyond slaughter. Their sacrificial rites were no mere butchery, no act of war or cruelty. They were a violation of the soul.
The Grey Orcs of Gor-Thalok knew this horror best. Their lands bordered the Red Wastes, and though they prided themselves on strength, on endurance, they were nothing before the fury of the Ashblood. Time and time again, war was waged. The Grey Orcs would gather their might, rally their warriors, and charge into the Wastes in a desperate bid to end the horror at their doorstep. And time and time again, they failed.
For the Ashblood did not fight wars as others did. They did not retreat, they did not surrender, they did not falter. They welcomed battle as a sacred offering, their warriors howling praises to the Red Wastes as they tore through their foes. The Grey Orcs did not fall in honorable combat; they were taken. Dragged, screaming, beyond the dunes, into the dark heart of the Ashblood domain. Every body and soul that fell before the Ashblood did not simply perish. They were given.
Their broken forms were dragged across the Wastes, their screams swallowed by the dry winds. Those still alive were not granted mercy. Mercy was weakness. The Ashblood had no use for the weak. Only the suffering could fuel the Wastes. And so, they were taken to the Pillars of Suffering.
Dark monoliths of bloodstained stone, they rose from the cracked ground like the blackened fingers of some forgotten god. No man, no orc, no beast knew who built them—only that they had always been. Ancient, eternal, hungry.
The Ashblood did not worship gods of light, nor deities of war. They worshiped the hunger. The nameless force bound to the Wastes, the spirit that whispered in the Azerite veins, that demanded blood with every Yamibi. And so, every Yamibi, the madness began anew.
When the sun dipped low and the sky bled red, the Ashblood gathered beneath the towering Pillars, their bodies painted in dark, dried blood. The sacrifices were brought forth—warriors, thieves, prisoners of Gor-Thalok, or simply the weak among their own kind, those who had faltered in battle or failed to prove themselves worthy of the Wastes. Their fates were always the same.
Some were skinned alive, their flesh woven into banners that would flutter in the wind until the sun turned them to dust. Others were lashed to the stone with Azerite chains, their bodies thrashing as the raw energy burned into their souls, warping their very essence into something not meant for this world. But the worst fate of all was to be bound to the Pillars themselves.
Nails of black iron, each the length of a dagger, were driven through wrists and ankles. The condemned did not die quickly. The Pillars did not allow it. Their bodies withered, their flesh blackened, yet their souls remained, trapped in endless agony. Their mouths opened in silent screams, eyes wide with madness, as their essence was drained, pulled into the Pillars' cold embrace. For every soul consumed, the Ashblood's madness grew.
It was said that on the nights of Yamibi, when the wind carried the sound of their dying wails across the Wastes, even the strongest warriors of Gor-Thalok dared not approach the border. They knew the truth.
The Ashblood did not fight for power, nor for conquest. They fought because they were bound. Bound to the Wastes, hunger, to the endless call of the Pillars.