The Orcs
An off-world people whose newly crowned king dies with a shipful of children in an orbital killing disguised as crossfire.
Story so far
The orcs enter the epilogue as victims. Their new king was aboard a small yacht in Earth orbit with other children when the shooting began during Faction Wars, and York vaporized it with a point-defense NPB fired from the Homecoming Queen on Rosetta's instructions.
No one suspects. Because the killing happened while everyone had started shooting at each other and the behemoth appeared to flee with the other transports, the assumption across the galaxy is that the orcs were caught in the crossfire. The news feeds mentioned the unfortunate deaths of children, then moved on to the new Prime Minister, a crashed The Dream cruiser and the destruction of a mantis system. Their succession has been decapitated and their loss folded quietly into the noise of a collapsing order.
Role
A bereaved off-world faction whose royal line was deliberately extinguished without their knowledge.
Relationships
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
Sources — 14 recorded facts, by chapter
- Faction that once marched down Larracos's streets while the Reavers jumped the funnel, and still lost.
- Faction whose warlord leads from the front rather than the flag room, holding the plains' only prebuilt castle.
- Donut's previous benchmark for terrible people, displaced by the Reavers' treatment of their pets.
- Enemy team absent from the southern trenches and fighting instead on the heavily contested northern front.
- Faction pressing the Posse's northern border, whose frontier Li Jun is currently patrolling.
- Newly castle-holding, newly isolated orcs, leaderless and friendless after Rust's death.
- The faction whose crew boarded a dead station and pushed a button that unmade a star system.
- Stalwart's faction, whose newly crowned king draws the open contempt of every other warlord at the table.
- Massing at their old border to hold Florin's advance, now abandoned with no allies coming to their aid.
- The remaining enemy faction, whose repositioning troops are the only movement seen before hostilities resume.
- Florin's assigned enemy, whose air defenses inadvertently shoot down most of the Reaver missile salvo.
- Enemy faction headquartered at The King's Point, fighting Florin's 101st and defending a shielded mountain castle.
- The race Rosetta hates absolutely, whose laughter behind the Scolopendra glass defined her life.
- An off-world people whose newly crowned king dies with a shipful of children in an orbital killing disguised as crossfire.