Clan Drad aka The New Orsinium

So while playing through Oblivion I found something a tad odd about the quest for Malacath. In the quest you can release up to six ogres from being enslaved at which point, they return to Lord Drad's Estate and force their former masters into manual labor. Not only that but they recognize you as an ally enough to not attack you from then on. This behavior shocked me as I hadn't seen behavior like this in a non-playable race anywhere else in the game. It then occurred to me that the player had effectively given them a farm and a mine which would be the starter kit for a decent settlement.

This got me to thinking about the disparity of populations in the Elder Scrolls games and what it would take to actually have a settlement fully functional by these ogres. So first, we'd have to convert their in-game population into something more approximate to the lore by looking at the other cities in the setting. The only concrete population I was able to find was the city-state of Daggerfall which came in at 110,000 in the book "A History of Daggerfall". While I don't like to assume, on would think that the Imperial City would be much larger than this. In order to keep the guess work to a minimum however, for the math, I'll put the Imperial City's population equal to Daggerfall's capital.

So the in-game population of the Imperial City, according to http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Demographics is 313 including the unnamed guards. Using this number, we can get a rough estimate as to how much the numbers are shrunk down for the game by dividing 110,000 by 313. This gives us 351.437699681. For simplicty's sake, I'll round it down to 350. So to get the "Lore" population of this new clan of ogres, we'll simply multiply it by 350 leaving us with a number of 2100.

So now we have a settlement of 2100 ogres. But they're just savages, and likely are going to just go on a raid right? Well, it doesn't seem like it. Being enslaved seems to be the best thing that ever happened to the ogres as they had to work the mines and fields for the Drads, meaning they'd have a working knowledge of these practices and may be able to find practical uses for them. This is confirmed when they force their former masters to work the fields. The foundations of Agriculture.

And while the Drad Estate doesn't seem large enough to support 2100 ogres, we have to take into account that the size of many locations in Oblivion have been massively scaled down, that and there's only one other farm in the region which is actually smaller than Drad's Estate. That said we can assume that the actual size of the farm would be enough to pick up the slack and support Anvil and the surrounding area which means it would easily support the ogre population once they take it over and then some.

So here comes the next problem. How do the ogres survive in a province that hates them? How would they be allowed to grow or prosper? Well, before anyone can full-on attack them, they get a little help from the Oblivion Crisis, or as I like to call it, the "Oblivion Cradle". First, it's my educated guess that the Ogres wouldn't be as impacted by the Oblivion Crisis as everywhere else. While there is a gate that does appear nearby, we have to bare a few things in mind. First, the Oblivion gates do not appear at total random. While you can run into them out in the wild, sure they do seem to focus on threats such as cities and settlements. While Drad had agriculture and was supporting Anvil in terms of food, the estate would probably not be a direct threat to Daedric incursion and thus not a priority. Not only that but Malacath's shrine is to the north and Malacath himself has placed an extreme importance on these ogres.

While Daedric princes are known to war with each other, Mehrunes Dagon is currently attempting to secure Nirn so directly pissing off Malacath who is known for his fighting prowess and brutality wouldn't be smart to do right off the bat. Instead, the gate is likely there as a response the conjurers in Beldaburo, a nearby Ayleid ruin. If anyone would be a threat, it'd be neutral conjurers who could feasibly know how to disrupt gates or control daedra. It'd be best to snuff them out before they go to anyone else for an alliance or any secrets get out. Thus, there may be a squabble here and there but the ogres would be less hurt than generally every other settlement in the province, let alone the empire.

Okay, so the Crisis is over, surely they'd send a force to depose the budding civilization right? Well, considering that every city was under attack and also lent their forces to the fight in Bruma, no one would be in the position to do anything about a bunch of ogres for some time. There's no emperor and people are rebuilding, probably in no condition to fight. In just five years' time Red Mountain erupts and the empire starts to collapse. Black Marsh and Elsweyr secede, meaning Cyrodiil would have even less military resources in attempting to deal with the secessions and possible disaster relief to Morrowind. The Potentate gets assassinated at the ten year mark and the combined forces of Hammerfell and Daggerfall are expending resources taking down Orsinium again. For a solid decade, the world is a cluster fuck which largely leaves the Drad Estate forgotten and untouched.

After this point, the original 2100 ogres now have had ten years head start and all the resources they could possibly need. While one can only guess as to how quick ogres multiply, I'm willing to bet they reproduce as quickly as humans. While there is no concrete information on Ogre biology aside from maybe their teeth, there is a suggestion that they can interbreed with people. http://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:OB-item-Doran_Family_Tree.jpg

An unfinished quest and a small piece of parchment in a home within Chorrol seems to indicate that ogres can breed with other playable species as it appears one is the ancestor of Jirolin Doran, an Imperial. With compatible biology, we can assume that Ogres have similar gestation periods and lifespans to that of the other playable races and would grow to fit their environment accordingly.

From 4e 10 on, it's only a guess as to whether or not the ogres continue to exist as their own civilization. The Drad Ogres. I'm confident that they last for some time, maybe even attracting orcs and goblins, becoming a new Orsinium. It's not that far fetched considering ESO has Wrothgarian Ogres which helped found another Orsinium. Perhaps that is evidence that when given the resources, they could be intelligent enough to become more than the brutes they're often thought to be. Not only that but this new settlement is so close to the shrine of Malacath who I'm sure will continue to watch over them.

Welp. There's my weird lore theory. Feel free to blow it to smithereens or extrapolate on it! Thanks!