📜 Codex Entry: The Fractured Years (5–12 A.A.)

groundedleaderacad
May 26
3 min read

Updated: May 27

“Memory failed long before the blade was drawn.”

Archived from the Records of Dreamer’s Ridge

Filed by Order of the Guild of Seers – Restricted Tier: Amber

Classification: Pre-War Collapse | Accord Disintegration | Root Infiltration

Summary

In the wake of the Accord of Ash and Blood (2 A.A.), the hope of lasting Orcish unity faltered. For a time, the world stood still—bound not by iron, but by unspoken dread. The demon lords were gone, but the echoes of their dominion remained.

From 5 to 12 A.A., the fragile coalition of the Twelve Signatories unraveled from within. These were not years of open warfare—but of silence, betrayal, and fragmentation.

We remember this era as The Fractured Years.And of the Twelve who signed the Accord…Seven fell.

The Seven That Fell

Each of the following factions succumbed during the Fractured Years—whether through corruption, collapse, or quiet absorption. Their demise was not immediate. It was slow. Rooted. Intentional.

1. The Pale Flame Covenant

“Let flame die. Let memory endure.”

A reclusive circle of ash-marked seers who believed that flame—and the passion it represented—must fade for memory to remain intact. They rejected names, signing the Accord only in burnt glyphs.

It is believed they were later absorbed into the early Guild of Seers, though some claim they were purged quietly, their scrolls buried beneath Dreamer’s Ridge.

Known for: Silence. Ash theology. Refusal to prophesy.

2. The Red Hand Covenant

“The past is a wound. Let it bleed.”

Radical Ember priests who wove blood ritual into remembrance ceremonies. For them, pain was clarity, and suffering the price of truth.

Altars discovered decades later revealed vinework carvings and Blackened Root sigils beneath their sacrificial stones.

Known for: Blood rites, violent repentance, early prophetic fragmentation.

3. The Bonekeepers of Kul-Moruun

“Nothing is forgotten that is buried with reverence.”

Caretakers of the ancestral dead and custodians of demon-tainted relics. The Bonekeepers refused to destroy any remnant, believing that even corruption had to be remembered, not erased.

When pressured to destroy forbidden artifacts, they sealed themselves into their own crypts. No Bonekeeper has been seen since.

Known for: Ancestral tombs, reliquary preservation, sealed death-warrens.

4. The Writ-Bearers of Ulgar’tharn

“We do not tell the truth—we carve it.”

Rune-binders and scribes of stone, who sought to record every moment of the Demon War into glyph and granite.

As their obsession grew, their inscriptions became paradoxical—binding truths alongside falsehoods. Their fall was internal: they could no longer agree on what had actually happened.

Legacy: Their runeforms survive in modern Hasgramic architecture and law.

5. The Fragmented Horn

“We do not belong. But we still bleed.”

A nomadic band of exiles, orcs marked by former demonic servitude and rejected by the central factions. They signed the Accord under a broken antler crest.

Within a decade, they had dissolved into other factions or vanished entirely. Blackened Root remnants in the Deep South still echo their songs.

Known for: Wailing hymns, transient shrines, lost dialects.

6. The Silent Circle

“We see nothing. That is how we survive.”

Post-war seers who burned away their own sight to avoid ever serving another demon. They rejected all visions, refusing even to interpret flame or dream.

They signed the Accord with a blank glyph—a mark no flame could read.

They disappeared in 10 A.A. during a convocation beneath Ashspire. All that remained was a circle of unburnt ash.

Known for: Blind prophecy, psychic suppression, voluntary silence.

7. The Forgewalkers

“We do not forget. We reforge.”

Memory-smiths and artificers who sought to reform corrupted relics into weapons of redemption.

Their craft invited corruption. Some welcomed it. Others thought they could resist it. In the end, they vanished overnight—their forges still warm, their hammers still glowing.

Known for: Soulbound steel, sacred salvage, relic fusion.

Consequences

By 12 A.A., only five of the original Twelve remained intact. Yet none were untouched. The Ember Oath no longer united—it confused. Factions recalled different versions of the same events. Sacred texts conflicted. Even seers contradicted one another.

"We forgot not because we were weak... but because something stronger helped us forget."

In this confusion, the Blackened Root flourished. It did not destroy the Accord. It made the Accord irrelevant.

Final Note from the Archivist

By the time the Weeping Shard was cast into the fire at the Tavern of Flames in 13 A.A., the world was already broken. The shared vision that followed did not create conflict.

It simply made the hidden fractures visible.

Next Archive:

📖 Codex Entry: The Vision at the Tavern of Flames (13 A.A.)→ “The Oath is not finished. One still waits.”