I’ve had a faction idea bouncing around in my head for stoic desert orcs who hate magic. That’s more or less the core. I’ve mulled it a bunch and now I’m writing it down as an excuse to think about it more and maybe settle some core themes and elements for them. I’m referring them as the Samit (“silent” in Arabic) for now, but I lack much in the way of nailed down lore.

Let’s start with the minis that are inspiring them—that’s at least easy.

Per usual, One Page Rules holds my heart. I like how these feel monstrous and serious without necessarily being over-the-top. I imagine them with reddish brown skin and desert themed bases. Lots of warm colors, which will make them horrible to paint but beautiful to see.

I imagine this as an overall serious faction in its tone. I think my guiding principles can be summed up as:

1. Stoic orcs from the desert. In personality, they are calm and even. Their motivations are more to do with pragmatic concerns and less with the passions that once drove them.
2. They should have an emphasis on weight, with some form of hard hitting unit. A chariot or heavy cavalry feels appropriate here. I like the idea of a mass backed by momentum. I imagine a big rock hitting you the face.
3. They should nullify and resist magic, but not cast it.

That last point makes them really tricky, but let’s go through in order. Stoic orcs:

Again, I envision them as very pragmatic. These are practical armies with practical soldiers, trained to do more with less because the desert doesn’t give you much to begin with. Base units should be simple to understand and have some form of cooperative resistance to magic. Gather more of them and they are more resistant. I envision a special rule to that effect: if a nearby ally is attacked by magic, grant an extra dice of resistance to X limit. It encourages an army that sticks together to nullify enemy magic, but that also means they tend to ball up and control less of the map.

I’ve been mulling these guys for a while, but the idea of something hard hitting that swings in and leaves an impression has always been part of the equation. When OPR released this chariot, I was absolutely hyped. Here it is: the big impact. I love the idea of a force composed of many units of orc warriors that make way for two chariots to roll in and be the center of gravity that punches a hole through the enemy. The alternative here would be cavalry, which I also like. I don’t normally associate desert infantry with heavy cavalry—they’re usually where your light cavalry comes from. I like subverting the trope here.

Then we have the Veiled, which is where OPR somewhat fails me. I dislike the staff for their “Shaman” model and I’m not a fan of the getup, but with some 3D modeling I can probably work this into something usable. I’m of two minds: one is to have only a single strong Veiled guiding a force. It will be easy to kill, but very effective in stopping magic. Another is to have many weak Veiled, so your enemy can stomp them locally and have some magical play, making it less of a potential negative play experience. I lean toward the latter for gameplay reasons and I think it informs something interesting about their society. Why so many of these Veiled? Where do they come from? What does it take to be one? How important are they to society?

I’m nowhere near done here, I admit. It’s the right direction, but I still lack anything really distinct. They’re the anti-magic, heavy cavalry faction in my head right now and that’s… something. Writing out this post has really highlighted that for me.

I think it’s important that they’re simple, but effective. The brutish nature of an orc fits that well. It feels “Stoic” to me to take the cleanest route to victory. They execute the clear path with no extravagance.

I’ll keep working on it. This might be more about their interaction, like with their magic resistance. Their Veiled should probably also buff allies in some manner, such that unspinning the orc force is about picking away their Veiled and isolating their troops while avoiding the hammer that is their mounted troops. Actually, I like that. Write that down!

Oh, right.

Anyway, I think I’ve finally found the shape of these orcs. They are not just “anti-magic desert orcs with chariots,” though that is admittedly a pretty good starting point. They are a people defined by restraint, penitence, and momentum. They close ranks around their Veiled, endure what the enemy throws at them, and then answer with something heavy enough to break the line. That gives me both a gameplay identity and a lore identity, which is exactly what I was missing when I started writing this. Against Paul’s elves, who are drowning in memory and sorrow, the Samit become something like a mirror: a society so ashamed of its past that it refuses to touch it at all. Neither side is really free of what happened. One mourns it. The other allows that past to define its identity.

Still, there’s something here I really love. Now that we’ve moved beyond the core systems, exploring factions and what they reveal about the world—and the game itself—is probably the most exciting part of the process. The Samit feel like they add a new angle to Desiderium: not just another army, but another argument about how peoples in this world view and survive history itself.