I spotted their makeshift shelters first, grimy animal skins stretched taut over wood and bone, with large rocks placed as ballast, the traditional shelters of the Ogre. Growing up in rural Cyrodiil we were taught from a very young age to recognise such structures and give them the widest possible berth. For like the wild bears they share their hunting grounds with, whilst they will shy from human contact, they are easily startled and are ferocious when they feel threatened. If left alone however they generally stay clear of human or mer settlements, unless it is to pinch the odd vulnerable livestock.

No matter how primitive they may seem to us, these humble shelters, along with their crude goblin-like tributes to Malacath, are to be found throughout the out-lands of Tamriel, proof perhaps that these brutish, uncivilised creatures have a shared culture, making them more then just animals. Usually they live in small communities, but perhaps it is that they are gathering together at the Serpent Hollow Cave, along with the bear matriarch and her sloth of bears, for mutual preservation against such large numbers of soldiers roaming this war ravaged land.

However, I remember the threat the Ironhands Ogres posed in Stormhaven when from the Wrothgar mountains they gathered in large number to raid Gavauden. That was perhaps the first time in generations humans had witnessed the threat of an aggression of Ogres with a common, and shared purpose. Indeed, if not for the aid of the Murtag Orc Clan and their General, the dream tormented Godrum, the whole of eastern Stormhaven may have come to resemble Aphren’s Hold.

I do wonder if once upon a time we may have been closer to ogres, perhaps in the Merethic age when out of common need we may have co-existed side by side, as they sometimes do now with the goblin tribes. As we grew more civilised however, they seemed to us to be more wild. Such a close relationship with the wild bears suggests that they are now closer to beasts then either men or mer, and perhaps it is inevitable even that one day they will be but beasts and disappear into the wilderness forever; their makeshift shelters becoming little more then Antiquarian oddities.

S.K