Orr
From Guild Wars 2 Wiki
The human Kingdom of Orr was considered holy land by all, as its capital city, Arah, was inhabited by the gods until the Exodus. When the gods left Orr, its citizens and armies tried to stay out of the politics of Guilds, wishing only to safeguard Arah and perhaps eventually be rewarded by the gods. However, as the Guild Wars broke out, Orr had no choice but to mobilize its army in order to prevent armed Guild conflict in the holy streets of Arah. Soon after, Kryta and Ascalon did the same, and all-out war ensued.
While the human kingdoms were fighting one another, the Charr swept down from the north, leaving Ascalon in ruins, and its citizens clinging on by a thread (one that would be severed in the upcoming century), and splitting up to fight Orr and Kryta. Orr was ready to fight the Charr, and believed that they could protect their kingdom and the holy city. In less than 12 hours, the majority of the Orrian army had fallen, and the Charr had almost reached Arah. Terick, a servant of the dark god Abaddon, who had in fact orchestrated the Charr invasion, tricked King Reza's personal advisor, Vizier Khilbron into taking matters into his own hands. Khilbron read out a scroll from the darkest depths of Orr's vaults, repeating an incantation from a time before the Bloodstones, a time when all four schools of magic could all be wielded at once by one person.
Orr was destroyed. Any living creature in range of the blast was killed instantly. The black cloud that engulfed the kingdom concealed the true extent of the damage for weeks. When the smoke finally cleared, onlookers found that the entire peninsula had sunk, leaving only scattered small islands in its place. The only creatures left were the wandering dead...those who had been killed so fast that they did not even realize that they had died. This event came to be known as the Cataclysm. The armies of undead would later plague the lands of Kryta under the command of Vizier Khilbron, who had been transformed into an evil Undead Lich.
The Kingdom of Orr sat on the seabed for over a century, while on the surface, corsair expeditions plundered Orrian gold and artifacts. Then one day, without warning, Orr returned.
Beneath the waves of the Sea of Sorrows, underneath the fallen Kingdom of Orr, awoke an ancient and terrible dragon more powerful than anything Tyria has ever seen before. The deathless dragon, known in Dwarven legends as Zhaitan, raised Orr to the surface once again, creating massive waves that flooded Kryta, the Tarnished Coast, the Battle Isles and the Ring of Fire. The corsairs harbored in the islands were sunk, only to be brought back to the surface as a terrifying undead navy. The dragon's power transformed the fallen of Orr into an undead horde that has waged war on Tyria for a century in an attempt to gain complete control of the continent. Zhaitan now controls the Strait of Malchor with an iron claw, cutting off contact with Cantha entirely. Any vessels that attempt to sail to or from Tyria are sunk and then raised as a new addition to the undead fleets.
[edit] Notes
| The Guild Wars Wiki has an article on Orr. |
- Jeff Grubb has stated that "It is possible that the cryptic message [in The Path to Revelations] refers to the Dragons – “a land unwaking” could be the risen kingdom of Orr, and answers to the origin of the dragons do lie there."
| Regions | |
|---|---|
| Tyria | Ascalon • Blazeridge Mountains • Charr Homelands • Crystal Desert • Depths of Tyria • Kryta • Maguuma Jungle • Orr • Ring of Fire Island Chain • Shiverpeak Mountains • Sorrow's Furnace • Tarnished Coast |
| Elsewhere | Cantha • Elona • The Mists |
