Hunter's Rite

The Hunter's Rite is a ritual shared by the majority of orc clans in the Grand Tribal Confederacy. It takes place each month in the dark of the new moon, and serves to show the respect that hunters hold for their prey.

History

The ritual is as old as the orc clans themselves. Said to have been granted to them by She Who Hungers, it was designed to show reciprocal respect to the prey animals that the orcs hunted, in hopes of maintaining their positions as benevolent rulers at the top of the food chain.

Execution

The exact details of the ritual vary from clan to clan, though the rites undertaken by tribes tend to be more standardized, as much as anything in orc society can be considered standardized.
On the night of the new moon, a hunter will take a token from their greatest kill since the last time they did the ritual and bury it in the ground. They will then cut a small piece off of themselves, burn it, and add it to the token before burying it in the earth. The piece of themselves that is offered need not be large; a fingernail, a lock of hair, a sliver of tusk, a small piece of skin sliced from the heel of the palm; any of these would be suitable offerings. The only guideline is that the offering must inflict some kind of discomfort. The hair must be ripped out by hand, the fingernail must be pulled out all at once, the tusk sliver must be carved off with a jagged knife, or something along those lines. Conversely, an item of great importance can be buried in place of a physical offering.
Once the offering has been made, the practitioner will audibly thank their prey, and then sit in silence for a short period of meditation.

Components and tools

A token from a recent and respected kill is all that is required.

Participants

The hunter need be the only participant, but larger community, clan, and tribal rituals are also common, and involve many more hunters or teams of hunters with large prey.

Observance

This rite is observed whenever a hunter feels they need to re-affirm their relationship with their prey, though most hunters try to do it at least a handful of times per year. The ritual can only be done on the new moon.

Related Ethnicities

• Orc