Elevator pitch: "The Lord of the Rings told from the point of view of the orcs." Which is how it started. It’s diverged a lot from that, but the basic theme remains: how could a dark lord could come to power, and why would his armies would choose to follow a powerful evil sorcerer? What’s in it for the "bad guys", and how do they seem themselves?

 The story is told from the point of view of a human, Lissa, who discovers a powerful magic artifact that may be the key to defeating the dark lord. But along the way Lissa also meets some of the goblins on the other side, and she discovers that good and evil are not always white and black.