The Orc Invasion

The Orcish Invasion

Introduction

The Orcish clans have invaded Britannia.

Major towns and the surrounding countryside can fall under Orc control. Occupation forces patrol the streets, commerce changes, travel becomes more dangerous, and the people living under occupation must decide where their loyalties lie.

Players can fight back.

The Orcish Invasion uses a territorial control system in which occupation forces can be progressively weakened and entire districts liberated. But unlike a conventional invasion event, liberation is not the end.

The Orcs can return.

Orc-aligned players can work to reclaim territory that has been liberated. A town may therefore pass from Orc occupation to human control and eventually back into Orc hands, beginning the struggle again.

There is no permanent victory condition.

Occupation → Liberation → Orc Recapture → Liberation → ...

The Orcish Invasion is a continuing part of Upheaval's world. Territorial control changes not only where Orcs can be found, but also commerce, vendor behavior, travel, access to supplies, courier activity, and the relative danger of different parts of Britannia.

The struggle for Britannia never truly ends.

Territory Control

The Orcish Invasion is fought through the Territory Control system.

Occupied regions are divided into a hierarchy of smaller territories. Players progressively weaken Orc control at the local level until larger portions of a town can ultimately be liberated.

The basic progression is:

Area → Zone → District

Areas represent the smallest objectives within the occupation.

Zones contain multiple areas.

Districts represent the larger territorial objective and contain the zones that must be reclaimed before the district itself can be liberated.

This allows players to make incremental progress against an occupation rather than requiring an entire town to be conquered at once.

Identifying Orc Clans

Occupation forces belong to individual Orc clans.

When you single-click an Orc, its clan name appears beneath its name:

<orc name> [Grak'thar]

The clan name is important.

Orcs belonging to the same clan cooperate in maintaining control of their territory. Attacking Orcs indiscriminately may accomplish very little if the players fighting the occupation spread their efforts across several clans.

Focus Your Efforts

Successful liberation requires concentrated pressure.

Each clan maintains its occupation through forces distributed throughout the territory. If players attack several clans simultaneously without doing enough damage to any one of them, the occupation can recover.

For this reason, players should identify a clan and concentrate their attacks against it.

As an Orc clan loses forces, players make progress toward breaking its control of the area.

If pressure is not maintained, the clan may begin rebuilding its strength.

Players may see messages such as:

[Grak'thar] is regaining strength.

This means that previous progress against that clan is being lost.

A coordinated group concentrating on one objective will therefore generally accomplish considerably more than players randomly killing occupation forces throughout the region.

Tracking Liberation Progress

As players fight occupation forces, progress messages indicate their contribution toward liberation.

Examples include:

• 1/10 kills needed for this area.
• 1/30 kills needed for this zone.

These messages reflect different levels of territorial progress.

Clearing the required occupation forces within an area advances control of the larger zone. As additional areas fall, the Orcs gradually lose their ability to maintain control of that zone.

When the requirements for a zone have been satisfied, the occupation forces there cease reinforcing and players are notified of their success.

Progress continues until the larger district can be liberated.

Liberating a District

Zones combine to form larger districts.

As players reclaim the component territories, the Orcish occupation progressively loses its hold over the district.

When the required territories have been reclaimed, the district is liberated.

Liberation represents a significant change in the state of the world.

Occupation forces withdraw, human commerce becomes easier, and vendors who were unwilling to serve human players may once again conduct business normally.

But liberation does not erase the individual loyalties of the people living there.

Some vendors may have secretly supported the human resistance throughout the occupation. Others may remain sympathetic to the Orcs even after the district has been reclaimed.

And most importantly:

Liberation is not permanent.

Orc-Aligned Players

The war can be fought from either side.

Players may align themselves with the Orcish forces and move among Orcs under circumstances that would be extremely dangerous for an ordinary human player.

For an Orc-aligned player, territorial control has the opposite meaning.

An Orc-occupied district may provide relatively safe movement and normal access to sympathetic commerce, while a district liberated by humans may become hostile territory.

Orc players therefore have a reason to care about the territorial state of Britannia beyond simply participating in PvP.

When humans liberate territory, Orc-aligned players can work toward taking it back.

Orc Recapture

Liberated districts can eventually be returned to Orc control.

The Gypsy Seers found throughout Britannia provide Orc-aligned players with a means of challenging human control.

Orc-aligned players may bring the heads of their enemies to a Gypsy Seer. The Seer will accept only legitimate offerings from non-Orc players, and the spirits are not easily deceived by attempts to manufacture suitable sacrifices.

Ten qualified heads are required.

The offerings alone, however, are not sufficient to summon the district's final defender.

The Town Guardian represents the human forces defending a liberated district. The Guardian can only be summoned once human progress within the district has reached sufficient strength.

If the required offerings have been collected before that point, the Seer retains them and waits. Once human control reaches the required level, she begins the ritual and summons the Town Guardian.

Defeating the Town Guardian returns the district to Orc control.

When the Guardian falls, all of Britannia is notified:

"The Town Guardian has fallen! The Orcs have reclaimed [district]."

Orc occupation is restored, occupation forces return, and the territorial struggle begins again.

A district that humans fought to liberate may therefore once again become Orc territory.

And it may subsequently be liberated again.

The Perpetual War

This cycle is fundamental to Upheaval.

The Orcish Invasion is not designed as a quest that the server eventually completes.

There is no point at which players permanently defeat the invasion and remove the system from the world.

Instead:

Orcs occupy territory.

Humans organize and liberate it.

Orcs organize and recapture it.

Humans can liberate it again.

The current map is therefore a snapshot of an ongoing conflict rather than a record of objectives that have been permanently completed.

A town that was safe yesterday may not remain safe tomorrow.

Occupation and Commerce

Territorial control affects more than combat.

The inhabitants of Britannia have persistent loyalties.

When a district is under Orc control:

• Orc-aligned players may trade normally with most vendors
• Human players may need to locate sympathetic vendors willing to trade secretly
• Some vendors may refuse service
• Vendors openly hostile to humans may attack

When humans liberate the district:

• Human players regain normal access to most commerce
• Orc sympathizers may continue secretly assisting Orc-aligned players
• Vendors hostile to Orcs may refuse service
• Some vendors may attack Orc-aligned players

A change in territorial control changes which side openly controls commerce.

It does not change who the individual vendors are.

For additional information, see Vendors Under Occupation.

Occupation and Vendor Networks

Some vendors belong to hidden networks of sympathizers, spies, and trusted contacts.

These relationships persist regardless of who currently controls the district.

Players who learn these networks may be able to locate merchants willing to trade with them even behind enemy lines.

There are no icons identifying these vendors. Players must discover their loyalties through conversation, observation, experimentation, and information shared by other players.

This means knowledge acquired during one occupation may remain valuable during the next.

Occupation and Courier Work

Territorial control also affects the courier system.

Trusted vendors may ask players to carry documents, orders, parcels, and other items to contacts elsewhere in Britannia.

The danger of that journey depends partly upon the state of the world.

A destination controlled by your side represents a very different undertaking from a journey deep into territory controlled by your enemies.

As districts are liberated and recaptured, courier routes and their relative dangers therefore change with them.

A route that was relatively safe yesterday may cross hostile territory today.

For additional information, see Courier System.

Why Territorial Control Matters

There is no universally desirable state of the map.

Human players may want a town liberated because doing so improves access to merchants and makes travel safer.

Orc-aligned players may want that same town returned to Orc control.

Even players nominally on the same side may occasionally have different interests. Dangerous routes and occupied territories can create opportunities that disappear when the countryside becomes safe.

Territorial control therefore creates competing military, commercial, and economic interests without requiring players to follow a predetermined storyline.

The important question is not:

Has this town been conquered?

It is:

Who controls it now?

Strategy

The basic principles of the territorial war are straightforward:

• Identify which Orc clan controls your objective.
• Concentrate attacks rather than spreading kills among unrelated clans.
• Watch territorial progress messages.
• Maintain pressure when a clan begins regaining strength.
• Work from smaller territorial objectives toward zones and districts.
• Pay attention to changes elsewhere in Britannia.
• Remember that a liberated district can be lost again.

For Orc-aligned players, the strategy is reversed: watch for liberated districts, locate the means to challenge human control, and coordinate an attempt to return the territory to Orc occupation.

Neither side should assume that yesterday's victory settled anything permanently.

A Changing Britannia

The purpose of the Orcish Invasion is not simply to add more monsters to Ultima Online.

It gives the world state.

Britain, Vesper, Minoc, Yew, and the other communities of Britannia are connected by merchants, travelers, information, supplies, political loyalties, and roads.

Occupation changes those relationships.

Liberation changes them again.

Recapture changes them again.

Players who understand the territory, know the people living within it, maintain useful contacts, and pay attention to changes in the world possess something potentially as valuable as equipment:

Knowledge of Britannia.