The village of Orrona is in many ways as unremarkable as villages can be, but even the most boring places have its quirks, horrors and other stories if you dig deep enough. In the case of Orrona it is literary true.
The story of what would become Orrona starts the same ways most places in this region, with the arrival of Flan explorers a bit over 4000 years ago. They came along the coast of Nyr Dyv and explored inland, and the estuary of the small Orron river most likely went unnoticed during the first phases of exploration. The mighty Veng to the west and the much smaller Sanstin River to the east both got a lot more interest and settlements sprung up along them.
The first one to settle at what would later become Orrona is long lost to history, but if someone inquisitive with enough divination skills would investigate this is the story they would find. A flan named Yerahu landed here around -3200 CY with a small group of family and followers. He was the younger brother of a regional lord and had just lost a power challenge and needed to settle somewhere else, far enough away and hard enough to find to give him time to start over and rebuild his life.
Yerahu settled on the little peninsula south of the modern village since it has a small hill with some small caves for extra protection. A small marina was built on the western side of peninsula hidden from view from the lake, and back then most of the area was covered in conifers making it hard to find Yerahu's settlement.
Over time it grew to become a village and it grew along side Selach that as situated at the mouth of the Sanstin, Yerahu pledge loyalty to the lord of Selach and life was beginning to perk up again for young Yerahu and his small band of followers. Yerahu's older brother found out that Lord Selach had a new henchman who must be his traitorous younger brother. He offered Lord Selach a truce and alliance if he delt with Yerahu, and sent him prof that he had done so. Lord Selach took him up on his offer and the first settlers of future Orrona met a quick but gruesome death. The head of Yerahu was sent away and lost to history, but his body and the others where unceremoniously dumped in the deepest cave on the peninsula.
The simple construction they made withered and almost disappeared. Left to this day are a couple of stone foundations, one two stores high that was a fortified tower that had a wooden floors and upper structure that are long gone. Two mooring stones along the shoreline on the western side can be found if you look among the dense reeds just under the water surface on the western side.
After the executions the peninsula got a bad reputation, was considered haunted and few people set foot on it except when it was time to execute someone, and rumors of hideous and particularly gruesome end for those who got executed over on the "Traitor's Cove" as the place became known in the region. After a century or so around a hundred people had been brought to their death and left to rot on the island. And its reputation grew and people kept away from it.
Then a new line of rulers took over Selach and the Traitor's Cove was no longer used and left to linger in silence. It did so for another few centuries before a infamous dragon took control of the lands. The Reign of Dragotha had come and she needed bones, lots of them. After she had killed or chased away everyone, she used her senses and ruthless determination to find and dig up every bone she could find. In -946 CY Dragotha found "Traitor's Cove" and after finding the bones laying around in the open she dug out the rest and took them with her. This might have been one of the few reasonably good deeds Dragotha has ever done. The hole she left is there to this day, and under 10 feet of soil soaked in dried blood are the bones (minus the skull) of Yerahu and his closest followers.
After Dragotha's demise a new order of things slowly came to be, the time of the Oeridians had come and in 52CY the first people from Selach, rebuilt and now named Delard after the new Oeridian lord who ruled there, came to explore. A road along the coast westward was in the plans and their mission was to find the best place to cross the river. They picked a spot on the bigger northern peninsula and that was the start of the Orrona that still, for the most part, stands.
Over the next century a village and a new economy slowly evolved around the bridge and river. At first the only inhabitants where the rivers guards and their dependents. Traffic was increasing and the peninsula offered both decent fishing and reasonably fertile lands, and Orrona grew into a kind of suburb to Delard a couple of miles away. It was too close for most travels to stop and seek shelter over night, at most a pint on the way was what possible to sell travelers. Delard had way more to offer, and was a safer place to stay over night. Auldet farther west became the next resting place where most travelers rested.
Its not noted down anywhere who made the first batch of peat smoked whitefish, but someone put a few of the small fish from the stream in the smoke from a peat fire and must have liked the result. It became a thing, and peat smoked whitefish became popular in the region being eaten as far away as Critwall, Axeport and towns miles inland. With demand came new innovations in production, from catching wild fish to farming them. A practice of farming insects took off, and the insects are used to feed the fish that are housed in closed off part of the Orron next to the village. Fish farming in now the major industry in Orrona, along with a bit of farming, and fishing in the river and along the Nyr Dyv shoreline.
When Halmadar the Cruel insurgency started Orrona was not directly affected. As Halmadars's influence increased the chaos drew nearer and in the late 420's his forces had taken control of Auldet a few miles to the west. The people of Orrona did what most sensible people did and fled east to nearby Delard. To flee would serve the people of Orrona multiple times later in history as well. Halmadar's men never took over Orrona, Delard was reasonably well defended and not a prime target. Instead Halmadar turned west and besieged Critwall, and the remaining thugs in Auldet was killed off in a battle that the people of Orrona talks about to this day.
The village's claim to fame is one of their sons became a squire in the new Knights of Holy Shielding at the battle against Halmadar the Cruel's men in Auldet where he performed admirably he became a full knight of the order, and rose through the ranks as Orrand in honor of his birth place. He became the lord of the keep that guards the merger of the Ritensa and Veng Rivers, and served their until his death in 480 CY. The keep was named after him, but is now called Oran's keep after a son of the knight assigned to the keep almost a century later. That son was named Oran after the keep and became a mage and took part in the wars against the Hierarchs and then Iuz. He took over the keep and renamed it Orand's keep.
Quiet village life continued until the Horned Society with support from Bandit Kingdom invaded in 579 CY. This time the word came with people fleeing from the north to Delard. Smoke could be seen from settlements to the north. The Knight where nowhere to bee seen this time, and the people of Orrona decided to take to the Nyr Dyv this time. Every available boat was packed up in a hurry and then hastily rowed and sailed out into the Nyr Dyv. So did most people of Delard as well, and a small armada of boats sailed south along the coast and ended up on Scragholm Island.
Orrona faired rather well during the invasion. There was no one there to take, and treasure was nowhere to be found, and there was bigger and richer places to capture. This meant that Orrona was large left alone the first year or so. The Hobgoblins who where the first of the new rulers of the area was not interested in fish farming and soon concentrated on Critwall. Later on in a group of junior Iuz clerics took over Auldet and Delard and started using slave labor to try and get the economy going again. They has a go at fishing, but didn't have boats or the knowledge to make any so it was a low yielding enterprise. The initial crew of Iuzian clerics met a hastily end in 583 CY when a force of the Shield Patrol landed on the coast near the village on a recon/raid mission. The three clerics where found, and either killed in combat, or if they surrended, unceremoniously executed. One of their henchmen was left alive and sent off to spread the news that the Knights will come for them all eventually.
This pattern repeated itself twice more before the Iuzians learned to stay away from the coast, and later the area around Orrona served as a forward base for the Shield Patrol. The village was left empty for several years until Uddard became the new Lord of Delard. Uddard served the newly appointed Baron of Axeport and was given the task of getting Delard functioning again. Being a hardened kid born in Molag who has served in many battles and now was ready to reap some reward from all the fighting, took to his new task with experience and strangely some patients as well. Uddard got a few people there to both guard the road west and be self sufficient, it was a repeat of the initial Aerdy settlement many centuries earlier.
Uddard's tough but reasonably fair regime paid off and a semblance of village life returned again in the early 590's. The Iuzian's wanted their share or threated to take over. Uddard let them try tipped off the Shield Patrol, or killed them off himself, it was a good sport and an excellent way to stay fit, and then blamed the Shield Patrol. Higher up clerics didn't dare to directly confront Uddard, he was capable and wise. One of the tricks he used was to use the riches taken from killed Iuzians to pay off those higher up. This kept him both feared and respected byt leaders further north, who raerly ventured down to check on things.
Uddard
This has been the situation is Orrona until very recently in the winter of 598 - 599 when a force of Shield Landers under Katarina herself liberated Auldet a few miles west. Uddard and Katarina have had a first talk about the future, but nothing has come out of it as far as the people of Orrona have heard it. They are keeping their heads down and tries to say out of politics, it is a dangerous gamble at best and often outright deadly.
Map Links:
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Shield%20Lands/Orrona%20presentation%20-1.jpg
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Shield%20Lands/Orrona%20map%201.jpg
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Shield%20Lands/Orrona%20Aerial.jpg
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Shield%20Lands/Orrona3D-%20east.jpg
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Shield%20Lands/Orrona3D-north.jpg
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Shield%20Lands/Orrona3D-south%20east.jpg
