The Lore of Orcs

Orcs are among the vilest of all creatures; evil beings
created for war. They delight in destruction, all their
essence is bent towards violence, mind and body. They
despise beauty and goodness, finding their presence
painful, and do all they can to bring what is right in the
world to ash. It is said that if they ever achieve this aim,
they will then fight among themselves in the ruins of the
realms of better races, unheeding and uncaring, hatred
driving them on to ultimate self-destruction.

Orcs are the foot soldiers of evil. At the height of the
War with Gods, Garkan the Black, the dark aspect of
the God of Smiths, bethought himself that he would
forge an army of man-beasts made for his armies.
For 900 days and nights he toiled in his forge pits
until, by the light of a blood-moon, he hauled forth
in chains the fi rst of Orc kind. Not forged of metal,
these warriors, for Garkan took the living bodies of
purer souls, and struck with his hammer upon them,
working and reshaping them with magical heat on
his forge of sorrow-cursed obsidian until they were
made anew; twisted into near-animals by pain and
self-loathing at what they had become.

Other gods, and later, other speaking creatures, took
these monsters and experimented on them, much to
Garkan’s annoyance, giving rise to the confusing array
of Orcoids that plague the world to this day.
Although the dark gods were cast down into the Abyss
at the climax of the War With Gods many millennia ago,
and Winter, the last of their kind, was finally driven
from the surface of the world 900 past, their servants
have prospered in the gods’ absence. After Winter’s
armies were defeated, many lands were left empty and
desolate, and more still were revealed by the melting
ice. Orcs breed quickly, and they have spread like a
disease to infest large tracts of this new earth. From
deep caverns to the heights of the mountains, Orcs
and their wicked kin dwell everywhere. Small bands
of them can be found in the most civilised of lands,
while in the wild north kingdoms of slaughter are
raised and cast down by Orcs in relentless succession.
Roving hordes of Orcs, Goblins, Hobgoblins, Half- Orcs
and worse, accompanied by all manner of monsters
and war engines, are a constant threat to the realms
of finer folk.

Orcs are large, muscular creatures, with hugely muscled
limbs and thick bones. Their hands are large and grasping,
their arms long, like an ape’s. They hunch habitually, but
when they stand tall they overtop most men, and their
body mass easily twice as great as a man’s. An Orc is
tireless. They are lazy creatures, but suitably motivated
by the promise of war or the slaver’s lash, they can run
without pause for day upon day, their shuffling run
eating up leagues eagerly.

Their minds are narrow and as ugly as their faces; their
greatest preoccupation being the invention of ever-
greater torments for the innocent and good. Humans
and Elves alike (the Dwarfs know better) mistake their
inability to concentrate and propensity to sudden,
mindless violence as stupidity, but Orcs are far from
stupid. From their father god Garkan the Black they
have inherited an affinity for making; and though their
creations are crude and ugly to others’ eyes, they are
strong. Orcs are capable of awesome feats of smithying
and engineering when inspired - the might of their war
machines and weapons is surpassed only by the twisted
ingenuity of their instruments of torture.

Orcs have long faces and fang-lined maws. Their tongues
are clumsy, ill-suited to speech, and their language is
harsh, full of rasping and barking. Above tiny, hooked
noses their red eyes glimmer in deep sockets like pits,
miniature copies of the Abyss itself.

Wherever there are Orcs, there are their kinsfolk, the
Goblins and Urkin. Lesser creatures than the Orcs,
what the Goblins lack in size they make up for in
viciousness. Many other sub-species of Orcoid curse
the world - Greater Goblins, Hobgoblins and the
Half- Orcs. There are many, many types of these
creatures, and the scholars of the speaking peoples
spend much time in categorising and describing them,
but in truth they are all the same, and interbreed
freely. All were forged by evil for evil intent, no matter
their size or strength.

As far as an Orc is concerned, might is right. He who
hits hardest laughs longest, and all of their leaders have
had to fight their way into their positions of power. A
good Orc chief might last a decade or more, before age,
infirmity or old wounds weaken him, and then he will be
bested in combat by another Orc and replaced, his body
devoured at his vanquisher’s victory feast. It is a brutal
way of life, but the Orcs do not bemoan it. For them it is
the way of things, and so only right. Other creatures that
follow more civilised ways they see as weak and feeble.
As a result, Orc heroes tend to be very large.

Big Orcs are stronger Orcs, and so big Orcs are more likely to be
king. Powerful Orcs are marked out from youth. This
can be dangerous, as some Orc chiefs prefer to cull the
bigger young, sparing themselves from the blade for a
few years longer, and Abyssal Dwarf slavers follow this
line of reasoning religiously, to prevent rebellion. Many
Orc kings, however, have little truck with this, holding
that to kill the biggest and best weakens the tribe, and a
king with a weak tribe is nothing. With weak followers, a
king’s achievements will be unremarkable, and his name
forgotten to song and legend. To be forgotten is the fate
of most chiefs; but to be remembered for all time is the
goal of them all.

It is commonly believed orcs and all their kin are pure evil.
However there is a persisting rumor of scholarly  Half-Orcs
and Bugbears, forming a conclave near the ruined libraries
of Primovantor's great fallen city Decius. But this is usually
told by those heavily imbibed by alcohol in pubs.