“The prairies and jungles of north and northwestern Alcidea had remained uncharted land for centuries, partly because the region’s wildlife was particularly hostile to trespassers, and also because those lands already had an owner, even if the Empire would never recognise them as such.

Tribal groupings of greenskins, orcs and goblins of various sorts, dominated the regions, with the orcs in general favoring the open prairies and the goblins the dense jungles. One time the Emperor had asked then-Marshall Vosberg about the potential costs of securing those lands, and it had not taken the marshall long to answer.

That after he considered the knowledge we knew of those lands, and the assumed number of tribals living in them, it would not be worth the losses our armies would take to conquer them, to the point that profits might only start to come after three or more generations of conquest, if that.” - Vandrin Rousseau, Geologist and Royal Cartographer from the Clangeddin Empire, Circa 206 VA.

It was already the evening when Celia brought Andromarche over to where thousands of orcs, goblins, elves, and hybrids had gathered - not everyone who had participated in the battle had remained, as those whose clans lived afar had left only their delegations while the bulk of their warriors returned home already - in what amounted to a large circle, in the middle of which was where the cooking took place.

Over a thousand orcs - with some elves amongst them - were busy with butchering and cooking various animals in the center of the circle. Andromarche saw many slaughtered lambs and large, bull-like beasts, as well as some great lizards and predatory felines of the prairies. There were even some slaughtered horses she thought were likely from the ones captured during the battle half a month ago, since she had not seen wild horses in her stay so far.

Unlike how it was commonly done in the empire, where the animal’s offal and various organs were thrown out and left for the dogs and the poor to fight over, the locals here used them as well. Andromarche saw some of them diligently cleaning the various viscera before they were split up, with many of the recognizable organs going into massive pots of stew that had also been mixed with the blood of the animals in question.

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Some bits, like the intestines, had been kept apart, as they were then stuffed with a mixture of coarsely minced meat and fat, mixed in with nuts, fruits, and spices, and made into long, spiraling sausages instead. The lungs from the animals were also kept aside and were filled with what looked like milk more than anything, before they were boiled in large cauldrons of water.

The orcish clans lacked the typical cooking implements Andromarche was used to, with most of their cooking done over open fires, flat chunks of hot stones, or large cauldrons, but one thing that caught her eye was how the orcs had dug many pits in the cooking area and lined them with stones that had been heated in the fire, before they placed large parcels of food wrapped in leaves into the pits, covered it with more hot stones and soil to bury it, then poured some water over the area.

Aideen explained to her that the whole thing acted not unlike an oven, with the steam from the poured water helping to keep the foods moist as they baked in their own juices beneath the soil. The preparation lasted all the way until the sun had set, while some lighter foods like flatbreads - courtesy of their hosts from clan Greentusk - and preserved meats were served to occupy the guests, along with cups of alcoholic drinks.

Andromarche found the preserved meats quite odd, crumbly with an oily and slightly fruity taste, which Celia explained to her was mostly due to how the locals preserved their meats for the long duration. The meat itself had been dried and then crushed until it almost became a powder, before it was mixed with rendered fats and dried fruits and then pressed into cakes around the size of a bread loaf. Treated in such a way, the preserved meat could last as long as a year or two as long as it was stored at a dry place.

They also formed a large part of the diet of the local clans since they often went on the move, and hunts were no guaranteed thing. Even when the hunts were successful, the oldest portions of such preserved foods would be consumed as well to avoid them going bad, while part of the hunted animals would in turn be used to make fresh batches of more along the way.

Large feasts like what they witnessed at the moment were rare, and from what Aideen learned from the orcish chiefs she talked with, typically only done when multiple tribes met with one another. The current occasion was naturally done to celebrate the gathering of the tribes, as it doubled as part of the closing of the gathering, after which the clans would go back their own ways once more.

That said, it was not as if they had not learned from the human incursion. The orcs had worked out a system for the clans who lived nearer to the human territory to warn the others quickly, in the form of trained messenger birds, something the Greentusks had plenty of and was in regular use by clans that were close to them.

Each of the departing clans brought several such birds with them, with each of them part of a pair. One strangeness of the birds they used was that every egg laid by the bird always resulted in twins, and the twin birds had a sort of sense that allowed them to detect where the other was. As such, it allowed the birds to send messages not only to the Greentusks, but also the various other tribes, even if it was only usable once before someone had to deliver the birds to the various clans once more.