The Horned Lands are ruled from Molag. High Priestess Althea is the nominal ruler, although the effective ruler is the Lesser Boneheart priest Marynnek, who looks after the day-to-day details, since Althea is often in Dorakaa. However, a string of “estates” along the Ritensa are given over to noble fiends in the service of Pazrael, part of the pact Iuz made with this Abyssal Lord.

Iuz’s priests exercise careful and watchful control over the Horned Lands. They do so with their usual combination of terror and bullying. While this bullying and the fiends in alliance with the priests are useful to a point, they also have to maintain discipline among fractious tribes and races. These groups have deeper-rooted conflicts than the orcs of the Land of Iuz and have fewer opportunities for letting off steam. In the Land of Iuz, orcs can be given abundant battle in the Vesve Forest and the Furyondian Borderlands. In the Horned Lands, only the Fellreev Forest serves this purpose. The Shield Lands are vanquished and humanoids can no longer raid there, reducing the opportunities for exporting tensions abroad. In addition, the priests have to deal with the most powerful bandit leaders of the lands on almost equal terms, using political and persuasive skills. Up front use of bullying and threatening tactics, especially in the far-flung territories abutting the Bandit Lands, would simply turn the bandits against them.

Thus, while the priesthood has maintained good control in these lands, it is a tense control which drains their energies and calls for greater self-control and cunning than these chaotic evil priests are used to.

Horned Society