Plot summary
The story follows a group of orcs who always find themselves on the front lines of battle against the carefully prepared and always triumphant forces of good. The orcs decided to organize themselves and fight back. As a satire of high fantasy the novel mocks most of the conventions of the genre from using traditional villainous races, orcs, as the protagonists, to having the noble characters have much less than noble motivations and secrets.
The opening of the book plays up the orc warleader sent to reclaim a weapons cache in preparation for the 'Last Battle' between good and evil, which is well on its way. They are assisted by a pair of halflings whose cute demeanor is contrasted with extremely violent acts.
The orcs uncover a dragon's hoard of modern military weaponry, which is endowed with a geas that transforms their minds into replicas of the stereotypical United States Marine Corps mindset, during the Vietnam War. Gentle continues the storyline through the Last Battle and the orcs' integration into society, along with a military threat that rivals the orcs themselves.
Warhammer Fantasy is a fictional fantasy universe created by Games Workshop and used in many of its games, including the table top wargame Warhammer Fantasy Battle, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP) pen-and-paper role-playing game, and a number of video games: the MMORPG Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, the strategy games Total War: Warhammer, Total War: Warhammer II and Total War: Warhammer III and the two first-person shooter games in the Warhammer Vermintide series, Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2.
Drizzt Do'Urden is a fictional character appearing in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game. Drizzt was created by author R. A. Salvatore as a supporting character in the Icewind Dale Trilogy. Salvatore created him on a whim when his publisher needed him to replace one of the characters in an early version of the first book, The Crystal Shard. Drizzt has since become a popular heroic character of the Forgotten Realms setting, and has been featured as the main character of a long series of books, starting chronologically with The Dark Elf Trilogy. As an atypical drow, Drizzt has forsaken both the evil ways of his people and their home in the Underdark, in the drow city of Menzoberranzan.
Warcraft is a franchise of video games, novels, and other media created by Blizzard Entertainment. The series is made up of five core games: Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, World of Warcraft, and Hearthstone. The first three of these core games are in the real-time strategy genre, where opposing players command virtual armies in battle against each other or a computer-controlled enemy. The fourth and best-selling title of the franchise is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), where players control their character and interact with each other in a virtual world. Warcraft is one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time, having grossed $11.2 billion in lifetime revenue, as of 2018.
Warhammer is a tabletop miniature wargame with a medieval fantasy theme. The game was created by Bryan Ansell, Richard Halliwell, and Rick Priestley; it was published by the Games Workshop company.
Mary Rosalyn Gentle is a UK science fiction and fantasy author.
The Thousand Orcs is a fantasy novel by American writer R. A. Salvatore, the first book in his series The Hunter's Blades Trilogy. In it, Drizzt Do'Urden is separated from his friends while orcs, giants, and a few drow are determined to destroy everything in their path.
Birthright is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting that was first released by TSR in 1995. It is based on the continent of Cerilia on the world of Aebrynis, in which the players take on the role of the divinely-empowered rulers, with emphasis on the political rulership level of gameplay. The setting revolves around the concept of bloodlines: divine power gained by heroes and passed to their descendants. Characters with a bloodline create an aura of command known as Regency, which is measured in the game using regency points or RP. Using regency, characters acquire a domain composed of provinces and holdings. The development of these domains is as much a part of the game as development of the characters. The game uses three-month domain turns to model actions of rulers over nations in much the same way as Dungeons & Dragons uses combat rounds to simulate time to model the characters' actions in battle. In 1996, Birthright won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement of 1995.
Kendermore is a fantasy novel in the Dragonlance series. Originally published in 1989, Kendermore was written by Mary Kirchoff and is volume two of The Preludes subseries of the Dragonlance saga. It has also been reprinted in April 2003.
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II is a 2006 real-time strategy video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. Being second part of the Middle-Earth strategy game, it is based on the fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and its live-action film series adaptation. It is the sequel to Electronic Arts' 2004 title The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. Along with the standard edition, a Collector's Edition of the game was released, containing bonus material and a documentary about the game's development.
The Hunter's Blades Trilogy is a fantasy trilogy by American writer R.A. Salvatore. It follows the Paths of Darkness series and is composed of three books: The Thousand Orcs, The Lone Drow, and The Two Swords. The Two Swords was Salvatore's 17th work concerning one of his most famous characters, Drizzt Do'Urden. In this series, Drizzt tries to stop an orc king from spreading chaos and war. The series reached the New York Times bestseller list and is followed by the installments of the Transitions series.
The Lord of the Rings: War of the Ring is a 2003 real-time strategy game (RTS) developed by Liquid Entertainment and published by Sierra Entertainment, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal Games. Set in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional Middle-earth, it expands upon the events of the War of the Ring as told in his fantasy novel, The Lord of the Rings.
Orcs: First Blood is a series of books written by Stan Nicholls. It includes: Bodyguard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder and Warriors of the Tempest. The books focus on the conflicts between a group of orcs and humans, but through the unconventional view of the orcs. The trilogy, first printed in the United Kingdom by Victor Gollancz Ltd, has become international bestseller, with over one million copies sold and the first two books, Bodyguard of Lightning and Legion of Thunder, received Best Novel nominations at the 1999 British Fantasy Awards. The sequel of Orcs: First Blood is Orcs: Bad Blood, which includes Bad Blood: Weapons of Magical Destruction, Bad Blood: Army of Shadows and Bad Blood: Inferno.
The Sovereign Stone series is a trilogy of fantasy novels: Well of Darkness (2000), Guardians of the Lost (2001), and Journey into the Void (2003), set in the same universe of the Sovereign Stone Role-playing game. Both the books and the game were primarily written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.
The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game is a role-playing game based on The Wheel of Time, an epic fantasy series by American author Robert Jordan.
Dragon Raja is the first series of fantasy novels written by Lee Yeongdo, one of the most famous fantasy novelists in South Korea. The books chronicle the adventures of a 17-year-old boy Hutch Nedval(also spelled as Hoochie Nedval), his mentor Karl Heltant and his friend Sanson Percival, all of whom are from the poor town of Fief Heltant in the Kingdom of Bysus. The main story arc, told in the first-person by Hoochie, concerns the three's quest to rescue their people from the black dragon Amurtaht by finding money to pay the ransom; then to find and protect a lost dragon raja girl, who would serve as the bridge between people and dragons and stop a crimson dragon that terrorized the continent 20 years ago.
Transitions is a series of fantasy novels by R. A. Salvatore, the famous science fiction and fantasy author, consisting of three novels: The Orc King, The Pirate King, and The Ghost King. It continues the tale of the famous renegade drow Drizzt Do'Urden and his friends. This series is a follow-up to The Hunter's Blades Trilogy. Like the rest of the saga, it is set in the Forgotten Realms, a popular Dungeons & Dragons role-playing setting.
Wulfgar, son of Beornegar, is the barbarian hero of Icewind Dale in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, and one of the Companions of the Hall along with Drizzt Do'Urden, Catti-brie, Regis the halfling, and Bruenor Battlehammer. He is the creation of R.A. Salvatore.
An Orc is a fictional humanoid monster like a goblin. Orcs were brought into modern usage by the fantasy writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, especially The Lord of the Rings. In Tolkien's works, Orcs are a brutish, aggressive, ugly, and malevolent race of monsters, contrasting with the benevolent Elves and serving an evil power, though they share a human sense of morality. There is a suggestion, among several somewhat contradictory origin stories, that they are a corrupted race of elves.
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings have often been accused of embodying outmoded attitudes to race. However, scholars have noted that he was influenced by Victorian attitudes to race and to a literary tradition of monsters, and that he was anti-racist both in peacetime and during the two World Wars.
Thrall is a fictional character who appears in the Warcraft series of video games by Blizzard Entertainment. Within the series, Thrall is an orc shaman who served for a time as a Warchief of the Horde, one of the major factions of the Warcraft universe, as well as the leader of a shaman faction dedicated to preserving the balance between elemental forces in the world of Azeroth known as the Earthen Ring. Originally introduced in promotional material released by Blizzard Entertainment as the protagonist of the canceled video game Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, which was co-developed by Blizzard and Animation Magic from 1996 until 1998, Thrall's first proper appearance is in the 2001 novelization of the canceled video game's narrative authored by American novelist Christie Golden. The novel's story is set during his youth, where he is depicted as a slave who was raised by an abusive human military officer, but eventually rebelled and escaped captivity.
