Everwinter

"Winter follows hard on the heels of the Beastclaw Raiders. These savage ogors must stay ahead of this supernatural blizzard, for if they were to fall into its clutches, they would be frozen alive and condemned to an eternity of hunger – the most terrible fate imaginable for any of the Gulping God’s children."

The Everwinter in various Mawtribes
To the Boulderhead Mawtribe, this magical storm appears as a furious barrage of fist-sized hailstones; the ogors of the Winterbite march to war enveloped in a blanket of white fog; and the Thunderbellies charge into battle behind a booming gale that drives their foes inexorably backwards.

The Everwinter's curse
While their blubberous bodies and thick skin make them well equipped to deal with extreme cold, even Beastclaw ogors cannot withstand the mystical temperatures of the Everwinter. Any who find themselves in its icy embrace are frozen to the ground, rendered unable to move while their hunger remains unabated. Though this does not kill the ogor, it subjects them to a far worse fate – they must stand, immobile, while their hunger grows ever more agonising and insistent. There are places in the realms where entire Alfrostuns of Beastclaw Raiders stand in frozen formation, having been rooted to the spot for generations. Woe betide any who stray into such locations. Most of these foolish adventurers are frozen alongside the brutish creatures, but some suffer a more violent fate, as the tantalising presence of fresh meat can make the ogors strain hard enough to shatter their icy bindings. When such beings are freed, the results of their ravenous rampages are gruesome indeed.

The Everwinter's blessing
The Alfrostuns ride on the edge of the blizzard’s fury, always on the very cusp of disaster. Yet the paradox of this existence is that the Everwinter is also the source of their power. The shamanistic war- leaders known as Huskard Torrs can channel the ferocious power of the storm in order to batter their foes with deadly missiles or shroud them in freezing palls of fog. The coming of the Everwinter can be just as horrifically devastating to the Raiders’ victims. Those few who manage to survive the spears and blades of the ogors might give their praises to the gods for a brief moment as their attackers depart – only for relief to turn into horror as a freezing blizzard rushes down from the mountains to swallow them whole. Instead of the barren wastes left behind by the Gutbusters, Beastclaw Raiders leave frozen, featureless tundra haunted by the savage beasts of winter.

Gutbusters and the Everwinter
For their part, the Gutbuster tribes look upon the Everwinter as a curse that haunts those who have failed to properly appease Gorkamorka. Many Tyrants and Overtyrants openly scorn the Beastclaw Raiders for this great shame, and more than one brutal civil war has been initiated as a result of just such an unwise insult. Though the great blizzard does not chase after the Gutbusters directly, they are no more immune to its ravages than their wild kin. The warglutts that swear allegiance to the Boulderhead, Thunderbellies or Winterbite Mawtribes soon come to appreciate the Everwinter’s terrible ferocity.

After the Necroquake
In the wake of the Shyish necroquake, the pattern of the Everwinter has become ever more erratic. As the immense surge of deathly magic birthed in the aftermath of Nagash’s spell swept across the lands, it battered against the blizzard’s fierce storm front. This resulted in a series of intense supernatural tempests that devastated great portions of the realms. Swirling ice blended with clouds of ethereal matter, and wherever the black clouds gathered, hosts of ice-taloned gheists spawned. Worse still, many Alfrostuns found their hunting grounds stripped of prey and rendered barren and lifeless by the spectral tempests. Forced to divert, they ranged across new frontiers. The damage wrought upon the ogors’ migratory trails has brought the Gulping God’s children into conflict with new prey. [...]

[...] While several Alfrostuns and warglutts were entirely consumed by the raging deathstorms of the necroquake, frozen in the final throes of death, other Frostlords looked behind them to find the skies were bright and clear in all directions and the Everwinter’s grasp had loosened. However, the Huskards of these Alfrostuns have warned that this is merely a temporary reprieve – Gorkamorka’s hunger is eternal, and even death cannot quench it.

The Great Thawing.
As the death-gales of the Shyish necroquake battle against the icy storms of the Everwinter, the freezing embrace of the latter has been driven back in many regions, leading to a great thawing. As a result, many imprisoned Beastclaw Raiders have at long last been freed from their icy prisons. Driven entirely mad by their long existence without the taste of fresh meat and gore upon their lips, these ogors – and in some cases entire Alfrostuns – have embarked upon a desperate search for food.