Gruumsh

Gruumsh, known as Gruumsh One-Eye, is the brutal and unyielding god of war, conquest, and destruction, and is most widely revered as the creator and divine patron of the orc people. He is a being of unrelenting fury and strength, a relentless force who despises weakness, compromise, and the so-called "civilized" gods and races who scorn his children.

In most depictions, Gruumsh appears as a towering orcish war-god, clad in black iron and seething with rage. His most distinctive feature is his single, blazing eye—the other torn from his skull in myth, often said to have been taken in battle by Corellon, the elven god, during a primordial conflict. This wound is more than physical; it is symbolic of the eternal enmity Gruumsh bears toward the elves and many other races who, in his view, were granted lands and gifts that rightfully belonged to the orcs.

Gruumsh teaches that strength is the only law worth following, and that the weak exist to be conquered or destroyed. He exalts warfare, pillage, domination, and the triumph of the savage will over the soft comforts of peace. His divine code is one of survival through supremacy—never yield, never forget, never forgive.

He is often seen as the chief of the orcish pantheon, ruling over other warlike deities such as Bahgtru (the strong), Ilneval (the tactician), and Luthic (the cave-mother and healer). In this divine hierarchy, Gruumsh is not only the progenitor of the orc race, but also the embodiment of its ideals: rage, endurance, and the refusal to be cast aside or forgotten.

To his worshippers, Gruumsh is a god of liberation as well as vengeance—liberation from weakness, from the lies of peaceful gods, from the chains of fear. His clerics and warlords invoke his name to rally tribes, ignite holy wars, and justify acts of bloody conquest. His temples are often mobile—tents, war camps, and battlefield shrines stained with the blood of the fallen.

To those outside orcish culture, Gruumsh is a terror—a harbinger of slaughter, the god who watches from the shadows of civilization with a single, burning eye and a spear ready to strike. But to the orcs who march beneath his banner, he is not just a destroyer—he is the god who never bowed, the One-Eye who sees through lies, and the storm that will never be broken.