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7[[quoteright:350:[[UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Mongols_9938.JPG]]]]
8
9->''"From the chaos comes form and order\
10From the many comes the one\
11Out of the east prowl upon the borders\
12Come to crush and overrun"''
13-->-- '''Music/MiracleOfSound''' on Caesar's Legion, "[[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas Mojave Song]]"
14
15They're strange. They're foreign. They come from the East. [[ZergRush And there's a lot of them]]. Maybe it's because they're AlwaysChaoticEvil, or maybe we're just next in a line of civilizations to be conquered, but they're out to get us.
16
17This trope arose a long time ago from bad experiences and sometimes just general xenophobia. While the more bigoted aspect of the trope is [[ValuesDissonance no longer fashionable]], it still survives thanks to FollowTheLeader and the need for an easy source of danger and [[WhatMeasureIsAMook disposable enemies.]] Internal life of the hordes isn't usually depicted much, if at all. They are foreign, they are evil, and [[LawOfConservationOfDetail that's all that matters.]]
18
19"The East" comes from the typical placement of the "others" in RealLife Western Europe. The usual candidates for the hordes include Muslims (take your pick from Turks, Arabs, or general "Moors"), Mongols, Huns, Hungarians, Scythians, Russians, or {{Fantasy Counterpart Culture}}s of them. Like several of these cultures, they're likely to have been BornInTheSaddle. They'll sometimes look stereotypically Asian or "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turanid_race Turanid]]" (an obsolete term to indicate Central Asian populations with mixed Caucasian/East Asian traits), but they aren't criminal masterminds like the YellowPeril - they're just a mass of {{Mooks}} born to be mooks.
20
21A culture can even be on both sides of the trope. Russians are a source of Hordes for Western Europe, but they themselves endured Mongol control for some centuries - it's a popular trope in Russian folk tales.
22
23The Hordes from the East will often act like TheHorde, [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant but they don't have to.]] Hordes from the East will always be presented as a feared foreign danger, but their behavior can vary. There's a chance that they don't pillage at all, or that they use clever strategies in battle instead of just brute force.[[note]]as real-life Mongols did[[/note]]
24
25Some cultures have their own tropes involving attacks from a particular direction. For example, an attack would have always come [[CivilWar from the North/West in China]], from the North-West in India, and from the North in Rome. Another variant is to have hordes from [[GrimUpNorth up north,]] Vikings or Norse barbarians.
26
27----
28!!Examples:
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30[[foldercontrol]]
31
32[[folder:Card games]]
33* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'': The Mardu Horde are a nomadic warlike horde made up of several different species/races of creatures. They inhabit the rocky wastes and steppes on the plane of Tarkir, which is influenced by central, east and southeast Asia.
34[[/folder]]
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36[[folder:Film]]
37* ''Film/TheMongols'' is about the Mongol invasion of UsefulNotes/{{Poland}} in 1240. UsefulNotes/GenghisKhan's son Ögedei, who succeeds him at the head of the hordes, is depicted as cruel and having a perpetual [[BloodKnight lust for war]].
38* ''Film/TheScorpionKing'': The starting premise.
39--> '''Narrator''': "Before the time of the pyramids, a fearsome horde came from the East and swept across the barren lands of the ancient world."
40* ''A Woman in Berlin'': Depicts hordes of dumb, rampaging [[UsefulNotes/RedsWithRockets Red Army soldiers]] raping the women of UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}} during the occupation there after the end of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. It is mentioned to be revenge for the [[UsefulNotes/NazisWithGnarlyWeapons Wehrmacht's]] own atrocities. Some of the Red Army soldiers are shown to be more civilized than others, though. One of them even protects the main character from his comrades.
41[[/folder]]
42
43[[folder:Literature]]
44* ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'': We've always been at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia. Either way, they're at war with the east, and the telescreens depict the enemy forces as an endless procession of "row after row of solid-looking men with expressionless Asiatic faces."
45* Played straight with the Angarak nations in ''Literature/TheBelgariad''. Subverted in the SequelSeries, ''The Malloreon'', which shows that once [[GodOfEvil Torak's]] influence is removed they're not that different from everyone else.
46* ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'': While actually geographically to the South of Narnia, Calormen is based somewhat on this trope. But Lewis makes a concerted effort, especially in ''A Horse and His Boy'' to subvert it by showing that many individual Calormenes are good people and will go to Aslan's Country. And even the very patriotic Narnian Bree can show an amount of respect and admiration for an aspect of the Calormene culture, like their love of Literature/ArabianNights style storytelling.
47* The [[HumansByAnyOtherName "Mabden" human barbarians]] in the ''Literature/{{Corum}}'' series are savage hordes from the East. The good, civilized Mabden live in a land that seems to have a closer resemblance to Europe, with lots of coastline, castles, and a cool-temperate climate. In the second trilogy, the hordes from the East are replaced by [[GrimUpNorth cold-dwelling]] {{Eldritch Abomination}}s.
48* ''Literature/ConradStargard''. Conrad Stargard prepares for, and wages, a defensive war against the Mongol invaders of Poland. It helps that he's an [[OneManIndustrialRevolution engineer from the future]], and knows the Mongols are coming.
49* Downplayed in ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' in regards to the Eastern Empire. Individual members can be good and honourable as much as bad and they have not fully attacked yet (mostly due to the [[ApocalypseHow Mage Storms]]). At the same time, they are home to a DecadentCourt and will eventually be the last major enemy for Valdemar to deal with.
50* ''Literature/MichaelStrogoff'': The Tartars, helped by Ivan Ogareff and Gypsies, project to invade Russian Siberia, as a first step in the invasion of the European Russia.
51* ''Literature/{{Nightrunner}}'' series: the invading Plenimar... of course from the east.
52* ''Literature/TheShadowOfTheVulture'': The Ottoman Empire would be portrayed as this, but the straightest example is the Crimean Tartars employed by the Sultan to hunt down and bring TheHero's head to him. This is TruthInTelevision since the Tatars were {{voluntary vassal}}s of the Ottomans.
53* ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': The Dothraki serve this function for Westeros and the Free Cities. They're an equestrian culture in the east based very loosely on the steppe cultures in Asia such as the Mongols (albeit only representing their worst aspects). While the Dothraki never travel across the ocean, there's a fear at one point that they might invade Westeros, though generally, Westeros is more concerned with the wildlings from the [[GrimUpNorth grim north]] who more resemble classic western barbarians. To the Free Cities, who border them immediately to the west, the threat from the Dothraki is always present, hence why they spare no expenses [[BegoneBribe servicing them whenever they visit]]. For example, Drogo has a manse in Pentos, where Daenerys meets him for the first time.
54** ''Literature/TheWorldOfIceAndFire'' gives another example of this in the Jogos Nhai, who live on the other side of the mountains west of the Dothraki Sea. While similar to the Dothraki in many ways (nomadic lifestyle, cavalry-focused combat, and a predisposition to pillage and slaughter other nations), they do vary in many key ways: Dothraki only cut their hair if they lose in battle while the Jogos Nhai are bald; the Dothraki travel in great warbands, the Jogos Nhai travel in small bands closely connected by blood; the Dothraki often fight one another while the Jogos Nhai never make war upon each other; finally the Dothraki venerate horses, while the Jogos Nhai ride [[ZebrasAreJustStripedHorses zorses]].
55* ''Literature/TheSwordOfSaintFerdinand'': The Arab conquerors were regarded by the Hispano-Romans as invaders from the South and East who spoke strange languages, wore strange clothes and practised a strange religion. Five centuries later, though, it is the Andalusian settlers who regard the Castilian army as a horde of infidel savages from the North overrunning their lands.
56* ''Franchise/TolkiensLegendarium'':
57** In ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', Morgoth's armies in the later years of the Wars of Beleriand include large numbers of Men from the lands east of Beleriand, who are generically called "Easterlings." Little is said about their cultures or methods of warfare, but there are a ''lot'' of them. One group of Easterlings is primarily responsible for the Elves' disastrous defeat in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, or "Battle of Unnumbered Tears" -- they allied wih the Elves but then went over to Morgoth during the battle, catching the Elven army between Orcs in front and Easterlings behind.
58** ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' is probably the TropeCodifier for this trope in the fantasy genre. Sauron's armies include two distinct types of Hordes:
59*** The Haradrim come from the realm of Harad, which is south and east of Sauron's land of Mordor. They resemble a fusion of Ottoman Turks and ancient Carthage: they are dark-skinned, have a lot of cavalry, wield short bows and {{SinisterScimitar}}s, and field a number of WarElephants.
60*** The Easterlings are a second type of barbarian Men who come from Rhûn, a vast sweep of lands east of the Anduin River that Tolkien never explored, so their organization is unknown. However, there were several tribes of Easterlings, such as the Balchoth and the Variags. One tribe that gets a lot of time in the history of Gondor is a nomadic people called the Wainriders, who waged war on Gondor for over a century starting perhaps twelve hundred years before the War of the Ring. They are horsemen and charioteers whose primitive dwellings are built onto carts - ''wains'' in archaic English. The Wainriders run rings around the infantry of Gondor before finally being defeated. Tolkien clearly seems to have based them on various Eurasian nomadic peoples; commonly, both their armies and the families following them had portable dwellings that could be loaded onto carts.
61** The Easterlings who fight for Sauron aren't treated as [[AlwaysChaoticEvil inherently evil]] the way the orcs are and it's pointed out they're merely [[WhatASenselessWasteOfHumanLife Sauron's pawns]], but as the story is told from the point of view of people fighting on the other side of a war, they're frequently treated as just a faceless swarm of foreign enemies. Interestingly, given that DirectLineToTheAuthor is in effect, they're technically proto-Indo-Europeans or at least their ancestors. There are also Hordes from the North (Angmar, though that's BackStory) and West (Dunlendings, at least in relation to Rohan).
62** ''Literature/TheFallOfNumenor'':
63*** At several points during the Second Age, Sauron headed Eastwards to trick people and fell creatures into joining him to invade Gil-Galad's Elven realm. It is said the Eastern Orcs were specially wild, unruly and hard to subjugate, since they had lived without a master for a long time (due to Morgoth being busy in Beleriand or banished into the Void).
64*** Inverted with the Númenoreans, though they see themselves as the pinnacle of human civilization, gradually come to be seen as a faceless horde of oppressors by other humans as their culture became more tyrannical - particularly after their king becomes Sauron's puppet. Men from the East were even used as fodder for human sacrifice at Sauron's bidding. The corrupted Númenóreans thus leave a legacy of resentment and hatred among other human cultures that [[MagnificentBastard Sauron exploits]] against the descendants of the uncorrupted Númenoreans. Played straight at the end of their civilization when the Númenoreans build a massive war fleet to conquer the utmost Western lands.
65* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'':
66** Deconstructed with the Aiel. As far as most of the Westland nations are concerned they're very much this trope, particularly in light of the fact that they fought a major war with them just a generation ago, but when they come into focus the Aiel are quickly established as a staunchly honorable people and allies of [[TheHero Rand]] (who is revealed to be of partial Aiel descent)- and as far as they're concerned, it's the ''Westlanders'' who are the incomprehensible barbarians.
67** More complicated examples occur as the series progresses. The Seanchan initially seem to be an alien horde (riding [[HorseOfADifferentColor alien animals]], to boot), but they come from the ''West'', and their culture is quickly revealed to be very complex and less concerned with rape-and-pillage than actual productive imperialism. The [[spoiler: Sharans]] invade in the last book, come from a land further East than the Aiel, and are definitely an alien horde for narrative purposes, but their means of invasion is giant portals, so they don't actually invade from the East.
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70[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
71* ''Series/GameOfThrones'': The Dothraki are an extremely numerous race of equestrian nomads (loosely based on the Mongols) who threaten the Free Cities of western Essos from time to time. Daenerys is initially married to the Dothraki chieftain Khal Drogo to win his support for her brother's bid to retake Westeros.
72* ''Series/TheLordOfTheRingsTheRingsOfPower'': Hordes from the North in the case of the Southlanders. At some point before the start of the show, hordes of Orcs descended from [[GrimUpNorth Forodwaith]] unbeknown to both Men and Elves, and secretly prepared for the invasion of the Southlands. They successfully took the Southlands and started its terraforming.
73* ''Series/MontyPythonsFlyingCircus'': Invoked (with humorous intentions) in the opening narration of episode "The Attila the Hun Show":
74-->''"In the 5th century, as the once mighty Roman Empire crumbled, the soft underbelly of Western Europe lay invitingly exposed to the barbarian hordes to the East: Alaric the Visigoth, Gaiseric the Vandal, and Theoderic the Ostrogoth in turn swept westward in a reign of terror. But none surpassed in power and cruelty the mighty -- Attila the Hun. ... Ladies and gentlemen, it's The Attila the Hun Show!"''
75** In {{Homage}}, Attila the Hun became a recurring character on the Python-influenced radio sketch show ''Radio/TheBurkissWay''.
76* ''{{Series/Vikings}}'': In season 6 of ''Vikings'', [[GloriousMotherRussia the Rus]] are portrayed this way, complete with completely ahistorical Mongol attire. Historically, the Mongol invasion of UsefulNotes/KievanRus happened centuries after the end of UsefulNotes/TheVikingAge, so their portrayal as pseudo-Mongols is highly inaccurate for the period of the show.
77[[/folder]]
78
79[[folder:Propaganda]]
80* [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Nazi propaganda]] used this trope extensively to try and raise morale in the later stages of the war, depicting Russians as a barbaric destructive invasion. [[GoneHorriblyWrong This resulted in panicked refugees impacting German army logistics]]. The obvious solution of opening the Western front (to get Americans instead of Russians) was not tried; the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge Battle Of The Bulge]] probably ensured a Soviet Berlin.
81* Particularly during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, British and American propaganda described Germans as "Huns", referencing a line from Kaiser Wilhelm II's speech to German troops before the Boxer Rebellion, where he prevailed upon them to act like 'Huns' in their treatment of the Chinese.
82* Also during World War II, American propaganda about the Japanese usually depicted them as a combination of this and YellowPeril.
83[[/folder]]
84
85[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
86* ''TabletopGame/{{Chronopia}}'' has the Blackbloods. The faction is composed of Orcs, Ogres, Goblins and Trolls, all wearing Mongolian armor and are a threat to the Firstborn humans and even to the demon-worshiping Devout with their vast horde of desert raiders.
87* ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' had the Tuigans, a FantasyCounterpartCulture to the Mongols (except they ultimately end up ''far'' less successful in actually conquering anything during their one Horde period). For the second half of their trilogy, they are this trope to the Faerûnians (for the ''first'' half, they were Hordes From The [[InvertedTrope West]] to Shou Lung and TabletopGame/KaraTur in general -- worth mentioning may be that Shou Lung is a FantasyCounterpartCulture to China).
88* The Skorne in ''[[TabletopGame/IronKingdoms HORDES]]'' have gnarly spiky designs. They are mixed between Asian and Persian designs and aesthetics and are a typical warlike race.
89* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'':
90** The Kurgans, a FantasyCounterpartCulture to Turkic steppe nomads rather than of the Mongols. They worship [[GodOfEvil the Chaos Gods]] and thus are AlwaysChaoticEvil. They actually resemble what ancient Turks would have looked like rather than Chinese people in furs, as they keep long hair and beards just as historical Turks did. Not yellow in the slightest either, they actually have brownish skin, like copper. They usually alternate between raiding and pillaging Kislev, the FantasyCounterpartCulture to Russia to their west, and the Cathayans, the FantasyCounterpartCulture to the Chinese to their east. They're also friends, raiding/trading partners and occasional adversaries with the Norscans, a FantasyCounterpartCulture to the Vikings, who dwell to their west, in some ways mirroring the relationship between Volga Bulgars and the Russ, or the relationship between the Khazar Khanate and Sviatoslav's raiders. Whenever an [[TheAntichrist Everchosen]] rises, he invades Kislev and the Empire (FantasyCounterpartCulture to Germany) with armies of beastmen, daemons, Norscans, and Kurgan, with the latter being stated as the most common of his soldiers. There are also the Hung, another Chaos-worshipping steppe people, who mirror the Huns and Xiongnu in style and dress and mostly war against Cathay and the Dark Elves, being seen in the Old World only very rarely.
91** The Hobgoblins live apart from the rest of Orc and Goblinkind, roaming the easter steppes south of Hung and Kurgan territory proper in great hordes of wolf-riding warriors dressed in pseudo-Mongolian furs, alternating between clashing with the Cathayans and sallying west to raid the Old World nations.
92** The Ogre Kingdoms are hordes of Mongolian-like savages, infamous for spreading across the Old World terrorizing the other races. They used to live in the steppes of Cathay but were driven out when a comet decimated their lands, forcing them out of the steppes, and Ogres soon resorted to cannibalism and barbarism to survive.
93* In ''TabletopGame/RaidersOfScythia'', you play as Scythians attacking Greece, Assyria and Persia.
94[[/folder]]
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96[[folder:Video Games]]
97* ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresII'' has both the Huns and the Mongols. They both have campaigns that focus on their conquests. The Hun campaign features Attila the Hun's reign of terror over Europe. The Mongol campaign has the rise of Genghis Khan and his conquest of Eurasia. Their specialities include having bonuses for their cavalry. Their unique units are also cavalry units. The Huns have the Tarkan which excels as an anti-building cavalry unit. Mongols have the Mangudai which is a horse archer that is good against siege units.
98* ''VideoGame/CrusaderKingsII'' has not one but three sets of Mongols (the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horde Golden Horde]], the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilkhanate Ilkhanate]] and the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timurids Timurids]]) who arrive in the late game and wreak havoc throughout the eastern half of the map.
99** The DLC pack ''The Old Gods'', which pushes the timeline back a good two hundred years, adds the Seljuks to the mix. (They're also present in the base game, but by that point in time, they had already settled into their empire and were no longer a proper "horde" as such.)
100** {{Inverted}} with the ''[[SillinessSwitch Sunset Invasion]]'' {{DLC}} where the Aztecs invade Europe from across the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, inverting it was one of the points of the DLC -- while usually, historicity was a greater concern than balance, going ahistorical for a while meant that (if the DLC is used, of course) western European lords no longer have the advantage over their eastern European counterparts that there isn't a rampaging horde a'coming for them.
101** ''The Horse Lords'' DLC adds a bunch of new mechanics specifically for Central Asian nomads like the Mongols.
102* The Qunari function like this to the human kingdoms in ''Franchise/DragonAge'', though they're actually from the West. Also, their military is far more disciplined and organized than the militaries belonging to Fereldon or Orlais. They're the FantasyCounterpartCulture to the Moors, albeit one with a religion that's closer to Confucianism than Islam.
103* Caesar's Legion from ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' is a post-apocalyptic North American variant. As the game takes place in Nevada, in this case, "The East" is Arizona.
104* ''Franchise/FireEmblem'':
105** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade'' and its prequel ''VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBlazingBlade'', despite being based in a MedievalEuropeanFantasy setting, actually avert this. The Sacaeans are based on the Mongolians, with their [[HorseArcher mounted archers]], Asian features, very pagan religion, and nomadic nature, but they are also a generally peaceful people who are perfectly happy minding their own business roaming across the plains of Sacae. Lyn, AKA Lyndis, one of the three who make up the protagonist PowerTrio of ''Blazing Blade'', is in fact from Sacae, and is very proud of her ethnicity. In fact, the militaristic [[TheEmpire empire]] of Bern actually invades ''them'' in ''Binding Blade''.
106** ''VideoGame/FireEmblemThreeHouses'' plays with this. Almyra is a vast realm to the east whose largely mounted armies are constantly trying to invade Fódlan. However, while the people of Fódlan regard them as barbarians, the Almyrans themselves seem to be at least as developed as their neighbors to the west, and a major subplot in the Golden Deer route is about the prospect of establishing peace and friendship with Almyra (in part because [[spoiler:said route's main Lord is half-Almyran himself]]).
107* ''VideoGame/GhostOfTsushima'' features the real Mongols and their invasion of Tsushima Island as a primer for their proper invasion of Japan, led by Genghis Khan's fictional grandson, Khotun Khan. Interestingly, this one is technically an inversion as the geography makes it so that they are hordes from the ''west''. Since the game's story is told in the style of old samurai movies, the Mongols are dehumanized to a degree where [[GasMaskMooks only a few of their faces are ever shown]] and their voices sound like inhuman, apelike grunting.
108* ''VideoGame/HeroesOfMightAndMagic V'' addon ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Tribes of the East]]'' introduces a faction, [[OurOrcsAreDifferent Great Horde]], that bears much resemblance to Huns/Mongols.
109** In VII they resemble desert nomads and raiders, fighting or fleeing from other factions who want to re-enslave them.
110* The Khergit Khanate from ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' are very Mongolian, with their love of horse archers and lamellar armour, and their position on the far eastern side of the map, and they are next to unstoppable on the field of battle ([[CripplingOverspecialization castle sieges are another matter entirely, however]]). Ironically, in the popular mod ''VideoGame/PhantasyCalradia'', they are hit with their own horde from the east in the form of the Orcs, who start with one city on the very edge of the map and ''a lot'' of ''huge'' armies and seek to expand westward into Calradia...
111* The Dragonkin in ''VideoGame/{{Runescape}}'' are an example of this. Movario describes them as evil bird spirits of the East. When they ravaged the plane of Kethsi, a manuscript found thousands of years later by the player says they appeared in the East ([[FridgeLogic which is odd since Kethsi is almost certainly a round planet]] in the same solar system as [[GodOfGood Arm]][[WingedHumanoid adyl's]] home planet). When they finally appear in-game, the player finds them ravaging a pirate island on the Eastern fringes of the world map.
112* Averted with the Khanate in ''VideoGame/SunlessSea''. London would perhaps ''prefer'' if you believe this of their rival, who are directly descended from the survivors of Karakorum, but like everything else in the game, the reality is a lot more complicated. Rumors of them being a horde of uncultured, violent barbarians is just Victorian-era racism, and in reality, they have electricity, firearms, and a fully functioning navy just like London. In fact, when visiting them, your biggest problem isn't that they are barbarians with no formal society, but the [[ObstructiveBureaucrat complete opposite]].
113* ''VideoGame/TotalWar'' series:
114** In the ''[[VideoGame/MedievalTotalWar Medieval]]'' [[VideoGame/MedievalIITotalWar games]] and an expansion for the first ''[[VideoGame/ShogunTotalWar Shogun]]'' game, the Mongols invade. They take the form of several huge stacks of elite units showing up in the Middle East/Russia/Kyushu. From there, they'll go on and attack whoever's nearby. An expansion pack for ''[[VideoGame/RomeTotalWar Rome]]'', appropriately titled "Barbarian Invasion", also adds a whole lot of factions like this. Chief among them are the Huns.
115** ''VideoGame/TotalWarAttila'' has the Huns, of course, and also the Great Migrators, Germanic and Sarmatian tribes displaced by the coming of the Huns and the cooling temperatures. There's even a mechanic for "horde" civilizations, where every army is also a city on the move.
116* In ''VideoGame/WarcraftOrcsAndHumans'', the Orcs are this from the perspective of the Kingdom of Azeroth[[note]]by ''World of Warcraft'' retconned to be named Stormwind[[/note]], as they first appear in the eastern regions of the kingdom and act like a horde in their advance west. Their coming from another ''world'' was only revealed later in the campaigns.
117[[/folder]]
118
119[[folder: Web Original]]
120* Creator/{{Mark Rosenfelder}}’s ConstructedWorld of [[https://www.zompist.com/virtuver.htm Almea]] has this from multiple directions:
121** Since the dominant culture, Verduria, is on the southern continent, the orientation is flipped, and in the backstory the nomadic steppe tribes that caused the transition from ancient to medieval times came from the west, with their languages even being called “the Western languages”. (Almea’s equivalent of the Indo-European language family is called “Eastern”, by contrast.)
122** However, Verduria lies about halfway between the ocean and the impassible desert, so enemy horses have come from the east several times as well. Notably, the two [[TheEmpire empires]] that [[TheUsualAdversaries caused so much trouble to all civilizations throughout history]], and which are explicitly compared to real-world fascism, originated east of Verduria and historically attacked from that direction.
123[[/folder]]
124
125[[folder:Western Animation]]
126* The second season of ''WesternAnimation/KingArthurAndTheKnightsOfJustice'' saw the inclusion of a secondary group of antagonists called the Purple Horde that fit this trope. Interestingly, while aligned with BigBad Morganna and fairly open about ransacking villages and conquering Camelot, they were portrayed as having their own code of honor unlike Lord Viper and his Warlords of Stone.
127* Parodied in the ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode [[Recap/SouthParkS6E11ChildAbductionIsNotFunny "Child Abduction is Not Funny."]] To keep their kids safe from child predators, the adults of South Park commission the owner of the City Wok restaurant to build a wall around the town, purely because he's Chinese. [[StopBeingStereotypical Despite his objections]], he proves [[IResembleThatRemark capable of single-handedly building a city wall incredibly quickly,]] but he soon attracts the attention of a tiny Mongol horde. [[RuleOfFunny In modern Colorado.]]
128-->'''Mr. Kim:''' [[AsianSpeekeeEngrish Goddamn Mongorians! Stop tearing down my shitty wall!]]
129* ''WesternAnimation/TaleSpin'': The pandas of Panda-la seem like peaceful and isolationist Chinese stereotypes until they decide to unleash their airships and heat-seeking rockets to conquer the world.
130[[/folder]]
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132[[folder:Real Life]]
133* Hordes from the east did, in fact, attack Europe and the Middle East (and India and [[CivilWar China]] but it is "hordes from the north" in ''their'' case) with startling regularity for most of human history. Being pastoralists, they could field a much larger percentage of their society for war (i.e. pretty much every military-aged male) than agrarian peoples, giving them disproportionate hitting power relative to their demographic weight. They include the proto-Indo-Europeans, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, Magyars, Pechenegs, Tartars, Kipchaks, [[UsefulNotes/TurksWithTroops Turks]], Mongols, Timurids, Uzbeks, and Russians. It wasn't until the rise of gunpowder armies that central Eurasian nomads ceased to be an existential threat to their "civilized" neighbors. Despite this they remained a major one well into the gunpowder age: Ottoman-backed Tatars and Cossacks sacked Russian and Polish cities with some regularity into the 18th century (though they had steadily lost battlefield relevance in the previous ones), and northern nomads raided China into the same era (the Manchus even taking over the entire country in the mid-17th century - granted they had Han Chinese rebels helping them).
134** One of the biggest victims of the Mongol invasions was the Khwarezmian Empire, which was ironic since its Turkic ruling class was considered a horde from the east a few centuries earlier.
135** Such "regularity" came with the fact that usually, nomads from Central Asia had nothing really to live on save for herding animals. Whenever their population exploded, the explosion was often manifested by a roving horde seeking to live in arable lands that could support such huge populations.
136** And while less spiritually true to this trope but literally fitting it, there are times when the "hordes" are numerous but from an otherwise "developed" culture using a superior population to expand against its weaker neighbors. The Majapahit Empire of Indonesia, the peoples of Central Asia ([[HoistByTheirOwnPetard who would normally be the source of this trope]]) in the way of the Song Chinese, and the Chinese of the UsefulNotes/SecondSinoJapaneseWar probably wouldn't have cared that the hordes attacking them were from complex and settled societies.
137* Subverted by the Yamnaya Culture, one of the first nomadic Proto-Indo-European cultures to move west into Europe. While they did eventually supplant the previous cultures of the region, the current prevailing theory is that this was actually a consensual arrangement; since the Yamnaya were a bronze-age culture with domesticated horses, neolithic cultures in Europe seem to have been eager to intermarry and mingle with them in order to reap the benefits. Of course, as with anything from prehistory, the evidence of this is quite limited, so take it with a grain of salt.
138* The earliest usage of this trope in recorded history belongs to the "Umman Manda," or "horde from the unknown," which was a catch-all term used by the Akkadian- and Old Persian-speaking nations of Ancient Mesopotamia (i.e. Akkad, Babylon, Assyria, Achaemenid Persia, etc) to describe the periodic invasions of nomadic Central Asian peoples from the east into the urbanized areas of Southwest Asia. The term was used for a number of different people groups, such as Gutians, Hurrians, Hyksos, and [[{{Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian}} Cimmerians]] before ultimately being used to describe the Scythian peoples, whose ability to [[BornInTheSaddle ride horses on horseback]] (previous Umman Manda invasions had relied on chariots) made them a major threat to the peoples they attacked. The term fell out of usage after the conquests of [[{{UsefulNotes/CyrusTheGreat}} Cyrus the Great]], whose Cyrus Cylinder states that he "made the land of Gutium and all the Umman Manda bow at his feet." That said, if one takes [[{{Literature/TheHistories}} Herodotus]] at his word, Cyrus ultimately met his end at the hands of the Scythian [[AmazonBrigade warrior-queen]] [[LadyOfWar Tomyris]], so rumors of the demise of the Umman Manda may have been greatly exaggerated for political expediency.
139* UsefulNotes/{{Japan}} actually fits this in regards to their neighbors in the 16th century. Japan at the time was much poorer and less urbanized than China, and had a less complex society, being divided into dozens of warring feudal clans. However, being perpetually at war meant they had an excess of soldiers, many of whom turned to raiding in peacetime. As a result [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wokou Japanese pirates]] constantly sallied west and south in their tens of thousands to raid other places, mostly China. But this was child's play compared to what happened in 1592, when Toyotomi Hideoyoshi decided he really wanted to be emperor of China and tried to invade it by going through Korea, uniting all the feudal warbands under his banner; over the next six years, the Koreans would see hundreds of thousands of men on thousands of ships and boats [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imjin_war strike from their east]] with virtually no warning, sacking any towns or cities they could get their hands on. The Chinese sent hundreds of thousands of their own men to combat this enemy. The Chinese-Korean coalition eventually defeated the Japanese, and a combination of renewed anti-piracy measures and Japan going into isolation ensured the wokou died out in the 1600s (''Chinese'' pirates on the other hand would last into the 19th century).
140* The UsefulNotes/NativeAmericans point of view on the European colonization of the Americas.
141* The Great Viking Army that invaded England in 865.
142** Previously thought to be the case with the Anglo-Saxon tribes towards the Romano-Britons, however, modern genetic studies have turned this into DatedHistory as England's genetics is predominantly Celtic, suggesting Anglo-Saxons only took over the ruling class and culturally assimilated the rest of the population, like the Romans.
143* [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades The Crusader armies]], from the Muslim point of view (despite having come from the West), though before that it was Muslims themselves to the Eastern Christians when it was part of the Eastern Roman Empire (this time from the south), and then there's the Romans themselves to the Israelites (this time from the north)...Eh, you get the point.
144* The Ottoman Empire was this on ''two'' directions:
145** It was a prime example of this trope to the countries of Central and Southeastern Europe - being Muslims, the Ottomans were always presented as the supreme threat to Christian civilization. It doesn't help that they also spoke a language very different from the local ones. They also had much larger armies than were ordinarily seen in the region (the Ottoman Sultanate having a far greater population than any of the Balkan states, under one ruler) and tended to tap the Crimean Tatars for auxiliaries, adding to the perception. The Ottomans were for a while still subject to the same threat by the Timurids, who claimed themselves as successors of the Mongols but were a Turkic state in practice (in fact, as was the case with Bulgaria, a recently conquered country in the West could get a brief chance to rise up when the Ottomans took a hit on their own Eastern flank), and later the Afsharids, whose army was mixed Turkic-Iranic.
146** It was also the biggest enemy of Safavid Iran, their eastern neighbor, so it's hordes from the ''west''. And for much of the same reasons, as well; while the Safavids were Muslims, they were (rather overzealously) converted to Shiism by their founder, whilst the Ottomans remained Sunni all the way. Some scholars have theorized that the way UsefulNotes/IsmailI spread Shiism in Iran (by the sword) might have been a reaction to the rise of the Ottomans, to give the Iranian population a way to differentiate themselves from the Turks.
147* UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler and the UsefulNotes/{{Nazi|Germany}} party considered the Poles, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Baltic people to be this as well as DirtyCommunists, and that the German Reich's mission should be to eradicate those cultures and colonize the eastern lands of Russia (which would cost them dearly eventually, since many of these people actually suffered under UsefulNotes/JosefStalin and would have [[LesCollaborateurs gladly joined them to fight against him]]). Nazi propaganda specifically referred to the invading Red Army as "Asiatic hordes". Ironically, the Nazis themselves were the supreme example of hordes from the ''west''.
148* Bulgars, Khazars, Magyars and Turks settled down after their initial invasions and thus happened to be on both ends of the trope throughout their history.
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