As usual, I do some of my best thinking while I am falling asleep, and the night I came up with this was no exception. As I was drifting off, thinking about various things regarding the (then) upcoming printing of my game -- ORX -- my thoughts drifted off to Athas, and the two mixed.
Previously, I had been thinking about orcs as wandering near-savages interested mainly in trade-and-warfare, but that was just too...tame; kind of bland and uninteresting.
Basically, they weren't really all that peculiar or different, and I've always wanted my Green Age races to be both different than the race is usually depicted in D&D material and specifically different in tone and concept, while retaining some of that basic race-flavor they have.
I do not want just people in funny hats, and wandering merchants was just too much a funny hat.
Then I thought, "Why are they wandering merchants?" And the role of Loot -- from my game about orcs -- came into my head: how gathering Loot helps forestall an orc's death. Much of the following came from that mix, though it has taken until now to really cohere.
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The quick description: Orcs are wandering merchants of life and death, surrounded by spirits of the dead whom they have made pacts with, and who can cross the boundaries between the worlds of spirit and matter.
Orcs are said to have secret ways to travel the world, and pockets of mist are called orc-roads, because orcs often come riding out of them from seemingly nowhere. Orcs could cross into (and out of) the Gray at will along certain roadways and in certain other places, or under certain conditions.
Orcs live in nomadic, wandering bands who travel the roads and the wilderness of Athas, as well as the misty roads of the world beyond this one. They are bandits, raiders, and even merchants: buying, selling and trading with the towns and travelers who cross their paths, both living and dead.
They are greeted with suspicion and distrust, as orcs bear the stigma of being thieves and trouble-makers because orcs have gold-lust. Orcs believe physical wealth creates temporal power in the afterlife; the more wealth one manages to retain, the longer one is able to linger in the Gray after death and the more power one has there.
Orcs are thieves, assassins, artists, necromancers, wizards, diviners, funerary priests, spiritualists, grave diggers, bandits, architects, and merchants.
The quick history: At that time, the orcs were the keepers of the dead and knew all the secrets of the other world, or the world beyond this one. They could speak to spirits, put ghosts to rest, and curse their persecutors with hauntings.
Before the Cleansing Wars, the dead stayed quiet in their graves for the most part, and did not bother the living nor make themselves known, but as the wars drove the orcs towards extinction, the dead began to bother the living more and more often. Propaganda said this was the orcs' doing, using their unholy magics, and this hastened their genocide...
When the orcs were slain, when the last of their kind died, the curtain that had once hung between life-and-death was shredded. The dead were no longer quiet or content to remain in their graves or lie forever where they had fallen. It was no longer only the orcs who could travel between the two worlds, but the dead would rise up and haunt the living, as though they yet lived.
It seems the orcs had somehow held the the Gray apart from Athas, and with their deaths, with the complete destruction of the race, the realm of dissolution and spirit merged as one with Athas.
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Here's the thing: I want orcs to retain that "wizard-bred canon-fodder slave-race for evil armies" and "bandits, raiders, seen-as-savages" thing they traditionally have going on, but twisting it around in a couple places. One thought is that they weren't a very good slave race (no pun intended) and took their destiny into their own hands; another obvious one is that they're not just the product of blasphemous breeding programs, but are instead necromantic in origin in some way (without being undead); and another being that they aren't just simple bad-guy bandits but fill a variety of social niches.
I was thinking:
It is said that orcs came into the world still-born.
Orcs were bred to be a servant race, created for war, perhaps molded from the corpses of the dead by a memory of the Lifeshaping art. Even the orcs have forgotten their creator's name.
They perpetuate themselves not through breeding, but by performing strange and terrible rituals upon the corpses of animals and men. In this way, orc-bands come to be, and can grow large and terrible.
Orcs were the first of the new races to learn the rites of undeath.
Many of the oldest and most terrible of the undead today are orcs.
I also like your idea of linking Orcs to the Grey. "Orc roads," "Orc Paths" are an interesting idea. I can easily imagine someone saying "that's just and Orc road," meaning it is a path that leads to nowhere (unless you are capable of shiftin in and out of the Grey).
Continuing with this idea, perhaps Orcs could deal extensively with death in the Green Age. Perhaps Orc tribes would set up semi-permanent enclaves in various Green Age cities where they operate as undertakers, grave-diggers, and even executioners. Perhaps the fact that they deal exclusively with death in the Green Age is one reason why they are reviled by others... I could imagine a lot of interesting superstition and lore arising about Orcs if they served as a society's executioners and morticians...
The connection between the accumulation of wealth and power in the Grey doesn't seem very intuitive to me. You might want to expand on this ideal more.
Maybe another way to rearticulate the relationship between Orcs and materialism is to say that Orcs have tried to leverage their lowly status by accumulating not only material goods, but also favors (from both the dead and the living). Perhaps, for an Orc, an objects value lies not in how much money you can get from it, but how much you can use an object in order to manipulate another person.
Taking this idea one step further, Orcs could curry favor with the dead by caring for spirits in ways that the living tend to neglect. Or maybe Orcs could act as mediums as well, helping the living to communicate with their deceased loved ones. In this sense, I really like cnahumck's idea of a culture that places a heavy emphasis on ancestor worship and even ritual cannibalism of deceased family members.
With this template, we can have Orcs act as petty merchants, messengers (since "Orc roads" provide a rapid, albiet unreliable, means of transportation), executioners, grave-diggers, undertakers, etc. They would have an essential, yet demeaned status in society. This would in turn, justify their somewhat trecherous nature.
I don't want to pervert your original idea too much, but you had a lot of creative suggestions and it really got my imagination working. Please keep us informed of what you might like to do with Green Age Orcs, and I'll definitely try to give you some good feedback.
itf
Some great ideas Greyworm!
Thanks!
I like the idea of Orcs as nomads during the Green Age -perhaps the Elves of Athas evolved to fill in a sociological niche that was once filled by the Orcs.
Interesting idea. There are certainly similarities: the elves are nomadic and always on the move, they are seen as thieves and untrustworthy by the larger population, they often use defilers and destructive magic.
Continuing with this idea, perhaps Orcs could deal extensively with death in the Green Age. Perhaps Orc tribes would set up semi-permanent enclaves in various Green Age cities where they operate as undertakers, grave-diggers, and even executioners. Perhaps the fact that they deal exclusively with death in the Green Age is one reason why they are reviled by others... I could imagine a lot of interesting superstition and lore arising about Orcs if they served as a society's executioners and morticians...
Yep, in fact, that's exactly what I envisioned. Note the list of typical "orc jobs" or "roles" up above.
The connection between the accumulation of wealth and power in the Grey doesn't seem very intuitive to me. You might want to expand on this ideal more.
True. My main thought however is that it doesn't have to make a lot of sense: it is a belief (perhaps even true).
Consider: it is about as intuitive as believing that nailing a guy to a cross allows you to live forever, that carrying around a giant wooden ***** will bring you good crops and lots of money, that various weeds (or whatever) are holy and scare away evil spirits, that tearing someone's heart out will keep the sun from falling out of the sky, or similar examples of beliefs from various real world religious groups which can be seen as not particularly intuitive to the outsider.
(Tangentially, there is precedent for this particular belief: there are a number of ancient cultures who linked personal wealth to spiritual health and power. The wealth being an outer expression of the inner power contained by the individual.)
Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it!
(Tangentially, there is precedent for this particular belief: there are a number of ancient cultures who linked personal wealth to spiritual health and power. The wealth being an outer expression of the inner power contained by the individual.)
Pharaohs didn't fill their tombs with loot for nothing. Maybe find something on ancient egyptian religious beliefs to connect with the Orcs?
So what do the dead want? What do they have to offer? Do they have cites, or do they just wander aimlessly, lost in their own thoughts? Do they want to hurry and join the Gray, or avoid it as long as they can? I think it would be interesting for there to be orcish trading outposts in the Gray, but wouldn't they have to import all their materials? Are there spots in the Gray where spirit traffic is high enough to make setting up shop their worthwhile?
On the reproduction, I was also thinking like Terminus Vortexa with the WH40K style of spores, but tying it in by having the spores needing corpses to grow. That way, it covers that they use the dead to reproduce in an unconventional way, but aren't undead themselves. Basically re-using a body for a new life form. Some cultures may have opted for cremation to prevent the Orcs from using the bodies of their loved ones for nursries.
OOhhhh.....NICE!!
) were just made for war and damned hard to kill. I think greyorm really turned the idea of an orc on its ear and I'm digging what he has layed out. Now, if orcs had the ability to shift and travel through the Gray, could there still be some refugees there hiding?
It brought up a tattered memory I had about a caste of people in ancient china. They handled the dead as well. I can't recall for the life of me what they are called or where I read it. But they were shunned and even set below peasants on the social ladder. Might be something worth investigating.