Half-Orcs

To say something, or someone, is ‘Orcish’ or ‘Half-Orc’ could describe an Orc crossed with Somon, Homon, Aeth, Deoth, Nathling or Avatar. It could describe a “true” Half-Orc, with one orcish parent, or someone with only a trace of orcish blood. It could be used to describe an orc-mammal hybrid, the product of a pig, horse, goat or buffalo, or a strange looking beast that seems to show a little bit too much malevolence or intelligence; “that horse has an Orcish look about it”. More commonly it is simply an insult for someone with an unusual look.

It is never a good thing to say, and in a handful of places it is legitimate to kill someone for inferring orcish descent. It is certainly enough to open a court case for libel (in the Grey Cities) or demand a duel (in the Realities).

The possibilities being manifold, we will consider first the most commonly referred to form of Half-Orc, an individual with one Orc and one Somon parent, before briefly looking at the range of other expressions.

HALF-SOMON, HALF-ORC

Put simply, being a Half-Orc is tough as hell. However, Half-Orcs themselves are also tough as hell. They grow up fast, reaching maturity around eight or nine and then show relatively little evidence of aging over the majority of their lifespan until to within about a decade of their natural death from old age, usually at around seventy to ninety years old. Then, over the course of about ten years, they age very rapidly indeed. A Half-Orc always knows when the end is coming.

PHYSICAL EXPRESSION

The level of visible orcishness can vary largely but for almost all Half-Orcs it is near-impossible that anyone sane or smart will not notice the mixed descent. Even if not seen as Orcish, the Half-Orc will only be able to ‘pass’ as an exceptionally ugly, mutilated, or mutated version of their race. Perhaps a burn victim or a sufferer of torture.

But it’s much more likely that the orcishness is ripe and vivid within them, and few Half-Orcs would ever bother to even try ‘passing’ anyway.

Half-Orcs tend to be strong. Not necessarily physically huge or built up, but with a deep resistant core strength and thick bones. Their skin tends to be rough, thicker than the Somon average, almost like skin that has been very slightly scarred, sometimes with flecks of keratin or the occasional light patterning of scales, like a mosaic of tiny fingernails.

They almost always have thick strong nails, bristling hair, (when they have hair at all), big chomping teeth in a strong jaw, and a slightly frightening smile. This is, in many cases, in addition to that the generally weird physical features that are commonly associated with the Orc Strain. No matter how attenuated it is in the blood, there is always the small chance of some wild mutation popping up as if from nowhere; tusks, bat ears, huge nose holes, a rasping tiny-toothed tongue, the list is near-endless.

Taken individually, any of these might be simply one unusual element in the overall makeup of a strange-looking member of their group, but they are never just present individually in the Half-Orc, they are always part of a pattern and the pattern is generally obvious.

Here is the creature. Here is the thing.

DREAMS

Half-Orc dreams are silent, or completely black. Some dream in touch only, or in smell. Some dream inexpressible things; hypnotic journeys in time to imagined places or states, as powerful and transporting as the dreams of a child.

A Half-Orc never fully absorbs the vivid intensity and powerful emotions of their dreams. In their sleep they cry out, weep, laugh hysterically, or just smile. Sometimes they sleep-fight, making sharing space a precarious entail. At other times they seem to spring awake and stride about before rapidly falling back to sleep.

Incredibly, they almost never get themselves killed doing these things, some bizarre survival instinct preserves them through their nocturnal escapades.

It’s even more rare that they remember any of it. Nine out of ten times whatever they experience in their sleep is a calm black hole by sunrise.

Some recall encounters with The Orc. A grey, pebbly homunculus sitting on its haunches, grinning with sharp teeth, there crouching in the dreamscape. It’s not a threatening presence, Half-orcs don’t tend to be neurotic about their Orcish side. But it is there, ready for whatever comes and unafraid of its own diminution.

BLACKWATER SOCIETIES VIEW OF HALF-ORCS

Blackwaters view of the Half-Orc, ranges all the way from a late-19th-Century condescending tolerance (but not equality), all the way to early-19th-Century total segregation and random terror.

(Yga has a nearly mid-20th century attitude to Otherness. But even in Yga you will rarely see a True Orc just walking around.)

There are large parts of the continent where a Half-Orc will not necessarily have the assumption of physical safety from the law or equal treatment under it and in most other places it is considered completely natural to treat them a step lower on the hierarchy than their immediate contemporaries. It would be considered radical to do otherwise.

They are seen as the carrier of a social, physical, and/or moral disease; the Orc Strain. The only real difference in attitude is whether they are considered guilty by default or treated as a victim of their own birth.

But the Half-Orcs barely care at all.

HALF-ORC PERSONALITIES

The Half-Orc personality varies even more than their already-variable physical representation. In some ways, each Half-Orc is like a species to itself.

Yet a few commonalities present themselves often enough to form a very broad type.

Orcs themselves are not fundamentally less intelligent than Somon, at least in terms of pure problem solving, so the I.Q. of the Half-Orc isn’t any lower, and may even be a little higher, than most Somon. They learn incredibly quickly, a quality common to very young Orcs and which seems to be retained by Half-Orcs throughout the whole of their lives.

A great deal of what most Humans care about seems utterly pointless to most Half-Orcs. This quote from Vosis Fails famous and much-condemned paper “Orc and Man: the illusion of Humanity” comes from an extensive interview with “Subject X”, an un-named Half-Orc;

Subject X – “I can read. Read the Histories of Uud. (Such as they are). But what do they matter? The past is unknown and I wasn’t there. The future is uncertain and I won’t be there either. All this crap people cake themselves in, the needs, the hierarchies, hopes dancing on the edge of some imagined future. They could just be happy now. It is a choice. Trauma. Bad memories. Shame. It’s done, so why worry? Here and now is here and now.”

Vosis Fail – “Don’t you feel you have been forced onto the bottom rung of Blackwater society? That Humanity has taken something from you?”

Subject X – “A thief steals old shoes I no longer wear. What do I care?”

Vosis Fail – “The unfairness of it doesn’t bother you? Not at all?”

Subject X – “What’s ‘fair’? Can you eat it?”

Vosis Fail - (laughs) “I think where you play the savage a little too much. You don’t find the loss of social position. . .”

Subject X – “Inconvenient.”

Vosis Fail – “Yes. Inconvenient.”

Subject X – “I’ve seen flamingos chattering in a salt lake. It’s. . .a pretty picture? Complex. I can see why someone might want to get involved. It’s not for me.”

Vosis Fail – “You claim a godlike indifference then.”

Subject X – “I care. About people. Family, lovers, friends.”

Vosis Fail – “Do they know that?”

Subject X - (laughs) “I’ve told them. I have been informed that I’m not exactly. . .demonstrative?”

Vosis Fail – “So your word alone is enough?”

Subject X – “Words. That doesn’t make sense to me. If I say I am going to do something, I do it. It is done. Why would I say otherwise?”

Vosis Fail – “And these are all people that you’ve been physically close to. . .”

Subject X – “One way or another, yes.”

Vosis Fail – “And that is loyalty to you.”

Subject X – “It’s the only thing there is to be loyal to.”

Vosis Fail – “Others do have more abstract loyalties. To nations, races, ideas, principals. . .”

Subject X – “I never felt anything looking at a flag.”

Vosis Fail – “And the violence. . .”

Subject X – “It’s there.”

Vosis Fail – “Many people would say, have told me in fact, before I came to talk to you, that Half-Orcs are an inherently violent race. That you are berserks. Destructive and sadistic.”

Subect X – “Can be. Can be.”

Vosis Fail – “You don’t find that insulting?”

Subject X – “Why? It’s true. True of them too If you push.”

Vosis Fail – “To me, you seem both civil and reasonable.”

Subject X - (laughs) “Ma would like that. But it’s a choice. Same choice you have. All the time, permeating everything. Just closer to the skin.”

Vosis Fail – “That sounds awfully like philosophy.”

Subject X – “We have no historians, but we do have philosophers.”

As well as a terrifying capacity for sustained violence, Half-Orcs often have a kind of cracked genius for in-the-moment adaptation and improvisation. They are also vibrantly and intensely present in any particular moment. This quality sometimes makes them artists, monks (their capacity to meditate is remarkable), or even Theists.

There is a weird almost fetishistic anti-charisma to Half-Orcs. As an intelligible version of Blackwaters ultimate outsider they have a peculiar kind of social gravity, which they genuinely don’t care about, which only increases the charisma.

How a Half-Orc feels about their indifference can vary a great deal. Some see it as their saving grace, the great gift of Orcish blood, others as an impediment, something to consciously overcome. Some are looking for somewhere to fit in, others for nothing more than a safe place to spend the night.

The fate of the Half-Orc can also be a kind of gravity. One it can be hard to escape.

• Low abstract empathy
• Personal loyalty
• Indifference to rules and social forms
• Dark anti-charisma
• Capacity for violence
• Respect for strength

It’s easy for a Half-Orc to end up as the leader of a criminal band, or, its state-approved equivalent; a city-serving shadow company, one of those nameless military formations that hover in the penumbra of disavowed power.

To do otherwise, to actively shape a different fate, takes significant effort, but of all the peoples of Blackwater, perhaps the ones least willing to be lead by Fate are the Half-Orcs.

LEVELS OF VISIBLE ORCISHNESS

Such is life for the visibly Half-Orcish. But their descendants, those with only a trace of the Orcish strain, or for their disturbing alternates, Orc-Animal hybrids, life shapes very different paths.

‘PASSING’ PART-ORCS

As the amount of visible Orcishness goes down, life can get more, not less, stressful and complex. Someone with just enough Orcishness to be spotted and outed, but just little enough that, given the right circumstances, they might be able to pass, lives in a deeply uncertain world.

Without most of the benefits of Orcish super-indifference and physical potency they are essentially just an average person with a few odd qualities, maybe slightly higher than average informational retention, stamina and impulsivity, and a potentially crippling family secret, along with the possibility for a random wild mutation to crop up in any future generation.

For those with less-visible Orcish blood, life can be a social and personal nightmare. The fact that they are ‘hidden’; can actually make their presence more disturbing to those who’s self-appointed purpose is maintaining the purity and stability of reality and humanity.

The fear of invisible Orcish blood, the Orc Strain lying hidden in human flesh, passed on from generation to generation, is a powerful one.

ANIMAL HYBRIDS

Orcishness can be combined with almost anything that can give birth. This includes many larger and more complex animals, and is part of the reason that, in the wake of an Orc invasion, surviving farm animals are almost always put down.

Should they live, the results of these unions are considered deeply and inherently monstrous by almost all of Humanity. If they find a way to survive it is only by fleeing to the Zomia, the Margins or the Waste, where they may re-combine with the greater Orc Strain, who at least will not regard them with any special prejudice.

Nevertheless, fundamentally, as with the Half-Somon, there is no necessary inherent reason why such creatures should be evil. Animals have empathy, most large mammals have more empathy for their kin group than an Orc, and while animals are impulsive it is due largely to a lack of capacity, rather than a pure disinterest in the future.

And the Orc Strain does mix strangely. An Orc-Animal hybrid need not be unemphatic, and need not be indifferent to its future, neither does it necessarily have to be sadistic, any more than a Half- Somon. They could, possibly, be considered as people.

It would be very unwise to state this kind of thing out-loud in Blackwater. Even Vosis Fail only inferred the possibility and he was excommunicated from ever-tolerant Yga.