The Red Queen of the arena — part I
This is the story of Katu Gorria, the orc queen of the Imperial arenas
Katu came to the Holy Infernal Empire to escape marriage and pursue her dream of becoming a swordswoman. One of the most cliched stories you can hear from an orc. Even if how Katu Gorria got into the Empire may be unexceptional, her life surely is not, otherwise, she wouldn’t be one of the best-known fighters in the Empire.
Leaving home
The Orc kingdoms (Orkoen Erresumak) are traditionalists: following old customs and honoring ancestors is a pillar of their culture. In Orkoen society, the family you are born into decided everything: your role, your duties, your job, your spouse. Your caste (Jaioterria) is your place in the world and defines your honor and burdens.
The pressure to conform is enormous. Those who want to live their authentic life have to choose between secrecy, escape, or death.
Orcs’ bardic tradition is full of stories of people running away in the mountains, eventually been caught by a disgruntled betrothed or a heartbroken relative, meeting their death in a duel after secrets, emotions, and literal guts are spilled out. The romanticized stories of tragic double suicides set in Orkoen became a trend in VII century Infernal opera, so much so that they and their variants became stales tropes. It didn’t help that the orcs coming to the Empire told their struggles with the same overblown tones, eager to paint their flight as a heroic and necessary act.
Katu Gorria has a similar story, a girl coming to Empire to be open about her true love: swords.
Orc girls are barred from learning Hesiak, “the art of the sword”, considered an exclusively male activity. This doesn't mean women can’t fight but there are weapons they can wield and others they can’t, following ancestral rules and taboos: asking an orc why double axes and spears are “girly” while single-blade axes and halberds are “boyish” will result in an all-night-long rant filled with obscure historical anecdotes, passage form the scriptures and questionable anatomy.
The Hesizainak, the swordsmen devoted to the hesiak style, are one of the most fascinating martial artists in all the Axam continent.
Hesiak is a seamless union of fighting and spellcasting, in which footwork, stances, flourishes, and war cries work can create spatial magic: a swordsman can use his slashes and thrusts to fold, pierce and distort distances themselves. One of the most infamous moves is the heart piercer: after a complex whirling of his sword, the Hesizainak can strike an opponent from the inside out.
Katu was born in the Southern Kingdom, into the warrior caste and her family was devoted to teaching and preserving the “art of the sword” since the beginning of recorded history.
She was destined to essentially three life paths: pursue a military career in a female battalion; marry someone who is pursuing a military carrier and became gerra emaztea (basically a squire for her husband); swore chastity and become a nun.
From a very early age, it was clear that those were no real options for her. Katu loved swords and fencing, an obsession that started when she was just a baby. She ignored more feminine weapons like flails and mauls (her mother’s favorites) and pestered her father to join her brothers in the sword lessons. She exhausted her parents and eventually was instructed in Hesiak like her brothers, with the caveat she would dress as a boy in any situation where someone could see her training.
Katu’s mother was worried, her daughter will never find a husband or a place in life, she should be transferred to her side of the family and learn other weapons, or anything else at that point, just something “appropriate”. The father traded waters, curious to see where the talent of that little girl would lead her: “we think about that when the moment comes”.
She quickly matched her brothers in athletic prowess and technical precision. A small girl that could go toe to toe with burly young men was a bewildering sight. A sight that couldn’t be kept secret much longer. As Katu grew, the question of her future became pressing: maybe she could drop fencing… unthinkable! A life of disguise? Untenable. Maybe she will be accepted, or at least not tormented for it: the southern kingdom has become more elastic on the castes’ rules, it’s the reason for the civil war that split the kingdom… The mother pressured her to marry: if only there was a young man willing to close an eye on her daughter's extravagance! But there was no one on sight.
The only real alternative to the convent or marriage was to send Katu away, waiting for better times. Where? The Holy Infernal Empire: Mother has a relative, an uncle, a veteran of the civil war, that went there to marry his human lover against the family will (how original!). That’s the solution. Katu always suspected that her mother and her brothers just wanted to get rid of her: she was an embarrassment, a delusion, a problem. What could she do? Katu packed her bag, took her beloved cat with her, and sailed away.
Part 1 of 7
