Tarbh

House Tarbh – The Blue-Skinned Bulls of the Mountains

Sigil: a black bull’s head on a split black-and-blue field
Faith: Tribalricha – they follow the six gods Vagdarr (Strength & Kinship), Hurthka (War & Courage), Muragaas (Fire & Craft), Yarmrus (Sea & Storm), Voormish (Spirits & Dreams), and Horamush (Rage & Slaughter).
Seat: The Blue Skull Camp, high in the mountain pass between Whitestone (Whitestone Kingdom) and Embermoor (Tudor Empire).
Origin: The Underdark beneath Piccer Kingdom.
Race: Blue-skinned Orcs, kin of the old Underdark tribes.

Origins in Shadow

Before the sunlight ever kissed their hides, the Tarbh were miners and beast-tamers of the Underdark. Their blue hue came from generations breathing the mineral vapours of azurite caverns, and their eyes glowed pale from torch-moss.
They served the Duergar of Piccer for centuries—slaves and soldiers alike—until the “Breaking of the Chains” in 592 PR, when Chieftain Drog Tarbh led a revolt through the molten tunnels of Garn Orrad. The slaves drowned their masters in their own forges, then took their skulls as trophies—painting them blue with azurite ash. Thus was born the Blue Skull Clan, and Drog became its first High Bull.

The Flight to the Surface

Hunted by both Piccer lords and Underdark monsters, the clan fled upward. For twenty years they fought through caverns of hook-horrors and stone wyrms, finally emerging beneath the port city of Thumbervel in Albion.
There they saw the sun for the first time—a thing so bright that it blinded half their number and sent the rest into religious frenzy. To them, the sun was Vagdarr’s Eye, proof that the gods of Tribalricha had led them out of the deep.

When the Thumbervel watch demanded their surrender, Drog Tarbh answered with stolen cannon fire. The Blue Skulls seized a merchant brig called The Stone Boar and, under storm and chase, sailed south across the Vandar Sea into Tudor waters.

The Pilgrimage of the Horns (612–617 PR)

Their voyage was guided by the shaman Voorgra Bone-Voice, who claimed to hear Yarmrus in the thunder. She steered them toward the grey mountains between Whitestone and Embermoor. There, amid lightning and cold rain, Drog Tarbh planted the first bull-banner.
He declared:

“Here the Horns shall face both empires and bow to neither.”

The clan built crude longhouses and palisades of slate and bone. Hunters brought meat from the high slopes, and smiths forged axes from blue-veined ore. The mountain folk called them demons; the Tudor merchants called them thieves. But the Blue Skulls called it home.

Culture and Customs

• War & Kinship: Every Tarbh warrior earns horn-rings of black iron. When a Bull dies, his skull is painted blue and placed upon the palisade to guard the camp.
• The Twin Fires: Each night two fires burn—one black with tar for Horamush’s rage, one golden for Vagdarr’s hearth. No meal is eaten until both fires are lit.
• The Horn-Trial: Younglings seeking adulthood must wrestle a mountain bull and carve a horn from it. Only when the horn is hollowed into a drinking cup may they claim their first weapon.
• Faith: Their shamans chant the Sixfold Litany—a prayer invoking each Tribalricha god before battle. Muragaas and Hurthka are thanked with forge-songs; Voormish and Yarmrus are placated with dream-smoke and sea-shells; Vagdarr receives blood; Horamush receives fury.

Modern Era – The Age of Blue Iron (620 PR–Present)

Under High Bull Gorvak Tarbh, Drog’s grandson, the clan numbers nearly six hundred souls. Their camp has grown into a fortress-village straddling the pass known as Boarspine Gate—the only safe road between Whitestone and Embermoor.

Gorvak trades with both sides while swearing loyalty to neither:

• From Albion, he buys grain, mead, and steel.
• From Tudor, he buys salt, alchemy, and poisons—through smugglers of House Rongeur and House Vipère.

Rumour says Lord Lucien Vipère himself employs Tarbh mercenaries to guard his northern caravans, while Merthin Rongeur leases them ships to raid the Norlan coast.

Yet Gorvak preaches that one day the Tribalricha gods will unite the scattered orc houses—Corchon from the Rusthorn Hills, Tarbh from the Mountains, and the southern Mireborn—to found a kingdom where blue and green skin stand as one herd.

Notable Leaders

• Drog Tarbh the Chain-Breaker (580–617 PR): Founder, rebel slave, first High Bull. His skull—painted deepest blue—still hangs above the chieftain’s hall.
• Voorgra Bone-Voice (589–628 PR): Blind shamaness who led the flight to the surface. Her prophecies of “the Sun-Bull born of Sea and Stone” are still recited before war.
• Gorvak Tarbh (598 PR – present): Current High Bull, war-lord, and keeper of the Boarspine Pass. Renowned for wearing a helm fashioned from a bull’s skull dyed half-black, half-blue.
• Sharn of the Broken Horns: Gorvak’s daughter and chief raider, famous for capturing Embermoor nobles alive to ransom them back in chains of silver.

Relations and Reputation

• Allies: House Vipère (Embermoor), House Rongeur (Leadenport), Corchon Tribe (Rusthorn Hills).
• Enemies: The Order of the Silverbrand and the Whitestone Knights, who deem the Tarbh heretics.
• Symbolic Colour: Azure and obsidian, representing sky and shadow—freedom and vengeance.

Legacy

Among Whitestone’s taverns they say, “If you hear a horn in the mountain mist, kneel—not for mercy, but so your neck breaks clean.”
The Tarbh answer such words with laughter and the clatter of tankards. For them, every insult is a prayer, every scar a scripture, and every skull—blue-painted or not—a promise that the Blue Skull Clan still watches from the heights between Whitestone and Embermoor.