Races/Orcs

Orcs are a sapient species often maligned by others as wicked, cunning, stupid, paradoxically both cowardly and killing machines, and a host of other unsavory stereotypes. In truth, orcs tend to live a rougher lifestyle than, say, humans and elves, often because they were pushed into harder landscapes, such as caves, desert wastes, swamps and locations where seemingly everything animal, mineral and vegetable seems intent on killing anyone who looks askance at it, by humans, elves and dwarves.

Appearance
In the typical image of an orc, they stand about a head taller than a human (around 6’5”) and has a solid frame, rippling with muscle, and is usually snarling bestially. In truth, orcs’ primary differences from humans are their skin tones (typically shades of green, grey, or occasionally bluish or reddish tints of grey), their ears, typically pointed, and a pair of tusks protruding upwards from their lower lip.

They may be very solidly built, tall, and have slightly flatter faces, but in truth these are barely outside of the range of human appearances. With a large enough sample size, yes, orc height will be about 8” or so higher on average than human, and they will tend to have a higher muscle mass, but it’s barely a greater difference than the slight statistical difference in average male human muscle mass compared to average female human muscle mass.

Stereotypes of orcs as brutish, hulking monsters persist nonetheless.

Lifestyle
Orcs frequently live a life of raiding, pillaging, and theft. Their dwellings tend to be makeshift, or roughly made, and their arms and armor are often battered items taken from fallen enemies, or very roughly forged. Some groups of orcs even primarily use weapons and armor made of stone, wood, or animal products, with only the most important members of their group having even stolen metal goods. This is due to the fact that they are often a displaced people, pushed out of environs and territories with better resources, and they are frequently chronically displaced, not nomadic due to culture, or following a migratory game species, but because ever-growing human, elf or dwarf settlements keep pushing the orcish groups before them as towns and kingdoms expand ever outward, denying them even the chance to set down roots and build a technologically comparable settlement.

The rare orc, or group of orcs, who employs professionally forged weapons, armor or tools, and lives in a dwelling that doesn’t look ready to fall apart or be broken down at a moment’s notice is likely a slave, or a conquered people. Orcish slave gladiators are often popular attractions in the arenas of cultures who see themselves as “more enlightened” than the victim of human, elf and dwarf racism.

It is common for groups of orcs to live communally, hunting, eating, living, raising young, and sometimes sleeping together. For a lot of groups, this is because it is more practical in the environment they live in. A group of orcs can hunt large, often dangerous game animals that have more than enough meat to feed the whole group. Sharing a living space means fewer buildings to construct and more hands to devote to the buildings that are constructed. A small group of orcs can look after and care for the young that cannot yet do so for themselves, rather than roughly half the group having to look after their own child or children, and allows care providers to have days and times to themselves. Sleeping in a large pile of bodies in a single space means your group can better survive cold nights without so much need for blankets due to shared body heat—and it means that touch starvation in members is rare. Groups of orcs also seldom have the luxury to seek out the privacy that humans, elves and dwarves do in their cities and kingdoms, where these peoples will own private homes, shared only with close friends.

Communalist living, however, has its drawbacks, and these can feed into stereotypes of orcs as violent and hotheaded, when a non-orc sees a long simmering antipathy between two orcs explode into an argument or a brawl because constantly being near each other has driven both orcs a bridge too far. Communalist living, especially as orcs commonly practice it, with their animals sharing their spaces as much as their fellow orcs do, can also lead to the spread of disease, and can lead to mental illness, especially depression—which it is notable due to the fact that depression can present with episodes of intense anger. Which again, further feeds into the stereotypes of orcs.

Sex and Gender Among Orcs
Orcs are a sexually dimorphic species in much the same model as other mammalian, or quasi-mammalian, humanoid species. However, orcs do not have a tradition of gender roles, or even much tradition of distinction of gender. Orcs broadly have a single gender—orc. They present however they choose, whether due to practicality, utility, taste, or resources—laugh at the warchief in a summer dress at your own peril.

To be “orc gender” does have a meaning to orcs, one that has come to be defined through their history of displacement, and forced to live through violence. To be a orc gender is commonly defined as to be one who takes what they need, shuns charity (as charity from other species has often come with colonization or covert attacks), and is able to provide for themselves from the land. There is a single third-person pronoun in Orcish, ikhlovic (the first person pronoun is Vikh) which amounts to a singular they, but an individual orc’s use of pronouns in other languages will commonly depend on how they learned those languages. Some orcs will use gendered pronouns, including for themselves, when speaking a non-orcish language, because they were exposed to those pronouns while learning the language, often from someone who is from a culture that does distinguish genders. Some orcs will use non-gendered pronouns, especially for themselves, because they feel these are more accurate to how they identify, but some orcs take on the cultures of other species and take on a non-Orc gender identity, which may be in addition to or instead of their own culture’s orc gender. And some orcs will use the Orcish pronoun, either due to not understanding the pronouns of the language they are using, or because they completely understand those pronouns, and are making a conscious decision to not submit to the cultural ideas tied to the language they’re speaking.

Orcish
Orcish is a primarily phonetic language, with mobile and flexible stress of syllables. It has a complex system of case, but word order isn’t particular set, with inflection being much more important. Orcish has tense and mood as other languages, as well as aspect, indicating whether an action is completed or not (ie, where Common would say “is X” or use the past-tense of X, Orcish doesn’t use a word like “is” instead using different conjugations of the verb in question). Orcish also has a complex series of address, implying a lot simply by the speaker’s choice of second person pronoun. Orcish does not make use of articles (the or a/an), and so it’s not uncommon for native Orcish speakers to drop these words when speaking other languages (“I must find cleric” rather than “I must find a/the cleric”).

Orcish is an oral language with no script, traditionally. Some groups of orcs will have a written form of their language, either using the script of another culture that is geographically close to them, or a script that was created for orcish by would-be colonizers.

Orc Culture
Orcs are commonly seen as warlike, and aggressive. But they do have pastimes and traditions that are not directly related to combat or war.

Music
Orcs music makes heavy use of percussion and wind instrument, with stringed instruments being very rare. Percussion instruments can be made very durable, and wind instruments can be made to travel well, while stringed instruments are comparatively fragile.

Orc singing generally makes more use of vocalization, through overtone singing, vocable chanting, and scatting, than actual lyrics. Orcs also, however, have a tradition of poetry, usually spoken with musical accompaniment, but sometimes sung with a precise meter. Orcish poetry generally takes the form of odes, erotic verse, or insults. In fact, Orcs have a tradition of Vysmeivat, where two orcs will trade Zloystikh (malice verses), as a means of essentially verbally sparring to solve a dispute. These Vysmeivat matches are important, because it allows two orcs to solve their disputes in a way that does not hamper the group when they are next attacked, and usually ends with an amicable parting of the disputing parties, though it’s not particularly rare for Vysmeivat matches to end in resentment instead.

Kamentsel
Perhaps the most recognized Orcish sport is a full contact ball sport that uses heavy balls made of tightly layered leather, called Kamentsel in Orcish. There are two major forms- Dvakamentsel, and Vsekamentsel. The first is played by two sides of equal numbers of players, either one on one, or a pair of teams. The latter is a free-for-all, where more than two players are each playing for themselves against all others. Sometimes, more than two teams will play at once, which is either given a name that replaces the “Dva” with the appropriate number of teams, or is just referred to as Dvakamentsel, as while Dva is the Orcish word for “two,” Dvakamentsel carries the basic connotation of “team kamentsel.”

Kamentsel makes use of a single goal, in the center of the playing field, with each faction in play having their own ball made of tightly wrapped leather and dyed a different color. Each faction is simultaneously trying to get their own ball into the goal and prevent their opponent or opponents from scoring a goal with their own. There are few rules in Kamentsel beyond the object of scoring goals, staying in the play area, and not killing your opponent. A player who kills another player in Kamentsel automatically loses, and may be forced to make reparation to the immediate family of the deceased. Grievous injury of an opponent does not result in an automatic loss, but will result in loss of points or point penalties.

Wrestling
Orcs enjoy wrestling, both as participants and spectators, and wrestling is a recognized means of settling disputes in most orc groups. As in Kamentsel, killing an opponent is outright against the rules, and inflicting serious injury results in penalty. Beyond that, there are no barred holds.

Warg Sports
Orcs are very fond of wargs, and form very close bonds with them. This leads to a variety of warg sports--hunting with wargs, wrestling wargs (very often the orc’s own warg), even warg fights, where two orcs will pit their wargs against one another. However, unlike dog fights of other cultures, warg fights are tightly controlled and monitored to ensure neither warg does any real damage to the other. Fight wargs will be trained to not bite down fully, to submit to a bite, and will have their paws wrapped with leather. Again, orcs value their wargs, and wargs are working pets, while orcs enjoy warg fighting, it is not just cruel, but also impractical for them to endanger their pets for a sport.

Borbalukh
Borbaluk, literally “bow wrestling,” is an interesting sport where two archers stand opposite one another with targets beside them. The archers have special arrows that will not inflict serious injury if they hit their opponent, but will paint the target when they hit, as well as a variety of “trick” arrows. The object is to score higher than your opponent by hitting their target, which can be done through accuracy, and by preventing your opponent’s arrows from reaching your target, whether by attempting to block or knock away the arrow before it reaches your target, or by interring with the arrow in flight. Note, however, that hitting your opponent with an arrow they attempted to block or knock away is worth a single point.