Orc
The villanos orc is found nearly eveywhere on Summer's Tale, just in lesser or greater numbers. Their appearance and ferocity varies from place to place, but all orcs are murderous, nasty, and cruel to the extreme.
All other things aside, orcs have a leathery hide colored ruddy to brown-green, and thickly muscled arms and legs. Their foreheads are sloped and low, and beady black eyes gaze stupid from narrow sockets. Black scraggly hair and prominent tusks (usually blunted) round out their appearance. Their hands are large, with yellowed claws. They are ugly, to say the least, with a demeanor to match.
Orcs live in tribal societies, in which might makes right is the only real rule. The average orc will follow and fight for the chief that exhibits the most powerful and deadly presence.
A tribe is generally nomadic, staying in a place just long enough to completely deplete of usable resources. Tribes of good strength and number will stake out locations close to human or dwarven settlement, looking always for the option of raiding and destroying. In the case of elves, the orcs have so much hatred and spite that they will sometimes recklessly attack a settlement, with rage as their primary offensive. The hatred between Elves and Orcs goes back beyond reckoning; there is some strange attraction-repulsion between the two races. Elves represent everything the Orc is not: beauty, dignity, refinement, and nobility of spirit. Needless to say. an Orc will murder an Elf on sight, and vice versa.
Orcs have a crude society among them, ridiculing the weak and sycophantically propitiating the powerful. An entire lifetime (perhaps 70 years at best) can be spent playing this game, and very few survive it for long. Indeed, the life expectancy of an orce is little over 20 years.
Their lifestyle keeps them moving, but now and then a powerful chief or warlord will find a suitable place for a longer stay. Alternately, a tribe that has been bested will remove themselves, usually to the nearest rocky hills, to lick their wound, plot further evil, or gang up and murder their failed chief.
Orcs are more active in Spring and Summer months. In this part of the year, city militias, guards, and scouts ramp up their suveillance of nearby Orc tribes. Sometimes a group is sent out to destroy the Orcs first, before they become a bigger problem. Those settlements beset by the foul creatures are much more likely to avoid the conflict proactively. Orcs set up camps in places that offer a promise of hunting or raiding, moving on if threatened or if, or when they've destroyed enough to deplete the local resources.
Once a year, in lands far from civilized settle, Orcs of a certain region will call a korgg, or “Gathering," and come together to drink, fight, gamble, and terrorize each other, and any local creatures stupid or curious enough to stick around. The destruction and dead Orcish bodies left after the korgg offer a huge mess.
Orcs are dangerous for their numbers; especially in squads that include a leader. They are able to train as fighters in some groups, and these are the most deadly orcs, leading squads of the less-powerful. The rest are warriors, follwing blindly and hoping for any treasure or glory or status they might gain among the others. One or two orcs by themselves will be pitiful cowards unless of the fighting class, or facing very weak foes.
The origin of Orcs? There are speculations, but it seems the consensus is generally that Orcs are like Death. They've always been around, and always been fearsome, and always been antithetical go life.
Orcs have a crude religion, with a small pantheon of ruthless and destructive deities. The chief among them is Grummsh, the one-eyed god of murder and chaos. Orcs have been known to tear out an eye from a defeated foe and eat it raw, for all to see. This can be intimidating and disturbing to witness.
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