Yes, from the lore i collected it looks like the Halflings were indeed bad guys of the recent ages, i'm not yet at the end of the game but i wonder if the Sher'thul are going to beat them easily on the evil level.
Their hunt of godlings is rather suspicious to start with and their weaponry/technology that nearly destroyed the world seems to hint at very bad source of powers.
I liked the story of the major Orc hero (Garkul the Devourer) too (headbutted Atamathon
), but i would not really call him a good guy either, after all murdering whole cities of defenseless people does not really play well for good karma
For the females, there's a difference between assuring the future of their race and building gigantic new hordes in few days (as from the description of the female and the female unique in the end, they seem produce many baby orcs by minutes), so it lead into thinking that the notes are not telling exactly the truth (after all the orcs history notes were wrote by Garkul followers and admirers), as they were not building back their race, they were building several legions for further invasions.
That's what i like in this universe, like for the case of the temple of creation (the naga versus the sea dragon), you're left with yourself to judge the truth behind the notes and claims you read, meaning that Maj'Eyal history may not always be wrote in truth but in way that servers their writers views.
Anyways, it's rather amazing to see the superb effort to create such a coherent world in Tome4, you can see that it has been a great work to rebuild from the middle earth environment into something very different but with such a completely new vast amount of history.
Now in gameplay, that has been one of the most difficult dungeon for my character.
While the underground large level between theose are "piece of cake" easy, the guarded barracks with the large amount of very strong orcs in the main large room is very hard as my teleport tactic can't work, each guarded barracks being too small for the teleport to make an effect.
Additionally, i don't know why it's happening, but while the corridor looks nice for a defense (as individually none of the legion of defender is of any threat), after a few turns, i'm teleported all around the room, often landing in the middle of somewhere that put my character in jeopardy.
I save scummed a very lot to complete the 2 first ones (there are 4 of them) replaying those guarded barracks a lot until i figured out a tactic using the Rush followed by Death Dance , then retreating to stairs, healing, going back and hoping for the best.
As Frumple and Dr Feelgood seems to be enthousiastic with it, i will need to study seriously those movement runes, would most likely have saved my character in those without the need of save scumming in the 2 first floors of them as i would have been able to run to the stairs instead of being stuck in sometime nearly impossible situations, but losing a teleport or a healing ? argh. Decisions ! Decisions !
At least it allowed me to get a frankly great artifact massive armor (Plate Armor of the King) and get to level 48
Though i found some slimy stairs at the end of that Pride after killing Grushnak, wonder where it is leading.