Orcs & Greenskins

Most prominently known for their green or brown skins, tusks, battle-hardened bodies, and thick builds, orcs have come to be feared among many of the other races. Orcs themselves believe that only those of worth have value. What orcs value most is strength, of mind and/or body. In displays of strength, orcs often wear the skulls of the conquered and weapons of those they fell as these symbolize to the orcs your victories. Bared flesh shows courage; courage not to hide behind skins of metal but that you master pain and it serves you. Other notable trends among orc attire are that concerning their tusks. To an orc tusks are a symbol of maturity, aggression, and power and therefore it's not uncommon for tusks to be decorated with caps, piercings drilled into the marrow, painted lines and other adornments especially among females. Great events are often dipicted on their bodies via tattooing and ritualistic scarring.

To an orc strength means everything. If he wishes to lead he must be stronger than who does, if he/she wants a mate they must be strong enough to claim them. There is nothing in orc society that favors the weak and as such they mirror in ways the Spartans of ancient days. To live as an orc is to live a hard life, and a culture formed on such breeds only the strongest, a fact that orcs often put on display. Brawls, games of strength and prowess, even the act of mating among their kind are all constant displays of personal power. Likewise they seek to constantly push themselves to prove this and gives rise to the claims of orcs as warmongering and violent. In the end life to orcs is a great contest one must always struggle against.

Creation Story

Chaos by its nature is a destroyer, not that it ever intend to be of course, but what it built was only so lasting. Chaos was a being of ever changing whims and desires. It was a god of free will embodied and as such anything it created was ever mutable, ever shifting. It was a curse perhaps to see one’s own creation perverted by one’s own hand. The pure intent to sculpt form from clay to see some great work only to watch it melt into the puddle it was before. Still Chaos wished to have a people of its own and while its siblings built mighty races that seeded the world with life a growing spite boiled in the shifting gods heart that demanded the same.

The first of its children were beings of formless bodies that recalled horror in the sane of mind. They were terrible and yet hypnotic to behold with form that defied explanation and thoughts and wills that were unsettlingly alien even to the gods. Fearing these things might alter the balance in their unknowable machinations these first creations were locked away beneath earth and sea by the other gods whom were so repelled by these abominations. The other gods then admonished their sibling and set forth it should create no more of those things least the balance be thrown to peril. But Chaos was not so easily swayed and in anger and spite Chaos sought to make then a race from another if its own would not do a race it could call its own a race that would have to be accepted, by force if needed. Of all the gods only another shared as fervently Chaos’s need to create and that was Passion. But as Chaos’s spawn were locked away Passion created and influenced a splendid host of life that many were the marvel of the world over.

It was this adoration Chaos sought for its own work and stealing the form of a lover Chaos seduced Passion unknowingly and from their union they sired a woman of impeccable beauty; she was as radiant as the dawn with flawless bronzed flesh, and raven colored hair. She had lips wild fire and charm and grace in the same. But it was in her eyes the truth lie, for in her eyes were the very stars and a gaze that shifted in endless depth; it was these eyes that betrayed the ruse, these eyes that riled the others wrath. Discovered the gods grew angered, violent, they admonished once more their sibling and took from Chaos its perfect child and hurled it to the earth in hopes the fall might kill her. But the passion for life not so easily broken; the ability to change not so simply destroyed. Battered, broken, and nearly dead the woman survived now only by her unending anger at the gods. An anger that urged her for vengeance, urged her for vindication. She spent years harnessing her power wandering the earth in the guise of others and took unto her being of other races and from them sired seven children. These demigods were to be her first; Primal creatures of great might of their own to make war on the heavens.

When at last the time had come and the gods learned of these creatures it was almost too late. They set upon the gods in the night and near murdered a few before the rest took arms. It was a fierce, savage, and bloody conflict though all too brief. In the end the gods were too much for the godling and her children and in the aftermath the Dark Mother and her Firstborn were exiled into the far wastes of the world but not before the gods laid upon them a curse that made what was once beautiful and fair now bent and horrid with monstrous form. Forms that reflected the ugliness of what they had done, what they were so that all would know of their impudence. Only Chaos wept for its children, watching as broken and cast to the far lands these people, these Uruk “Broken” were left to survive as a primitive, brutal people might.

In time the firstborn had others and from them came a host of people. Orcs, Ogres, Goblins and more... they grew, they spread, Grew some more. All driven by this burning need to see all the gods loved put to flame and ruin for what they had done. Theirs became a thriving culture of warriors as diverse as the many races of the world. They created for themselves homes, kingdoms, and in time gods of their own... But these were not the gods of old... no these barbarians grew on the stories of their forefathers, the Primals, first of their kind who fought the gods, and in them all was born and nurtured this fire of hate against those who made this world. These god scorned beasts... These dark skinned reavers. People of unbridled passions and the iron wills to carve their own path.

Place in the World

Orcs hold that the strongest lead and the weaker follow. An ideal that is repeated time and again in orc culture. It is this fact alone that even allows them function as strength and power are what keeps the often chaotic and confrontational natures in line. Orcs are by nature a xenophobic sort in regards with most other races. This is an idea born out of the bestial mindset that "might makes right" and as such any other race is in direct competition to the orcs for survival. Still there are notable exceptions to this rule. This is most often seen in orc hordes gathering the likes of goblins, trolls, ogres, and other bestial savage races that outsiders would most often classify as, monstrous, orckind, goblinkind, or greenskins.