More stuff about orcs

You'd think orcs, for their reputation, are savage killers and monstrous beasts. Only half of that is true.

As anyone with half a brain knows, orcs are not a species -- not really. Orcishness is a religion, a way of life. An orc is only an orc if she follows the Orc Way -- if she kills. The killer part, then, is true; but monsters they are not. Furthermore, orcs aren't green, nor even exceptionally huge. Rather, orcs are pitch black and covered in thick, coarse hair. Their eyes are bright yellow and they have huge yellow fangs, although no tusks. They have wide mouths with thin, almost non-existent lips. They look like apes, but with more elongated, predatory faces.

Given their looks and their propensity for killing, one can forgive other peoples for thinking them mindless monsters. Yet orcs are intelligent, sensitive people. They care a great deal about others -- for this quality, combined with their strength, were they chosen to feed the Creator. Only one who loves the world and its creator more than his own soul could do what orcs do - kill to keep the world alive.

What is an orc?

We, orcs, serve the Creator. The Creator died - as far as God can die - by making the world. Reality is his corpse. And make no mistake, the Great Rot is coming. The Great Rot, when all is pain and disease and broken. What can stave off the Great Rot? Only life. This is why we kill. The life force of those we murder serves to feed the Creator, that his beautiful world and the vibrant life within it may exist longer. That the Great Rot may be delayed. To this we are called. To live in peace, to refrain from killing - this is the greatest selfishness, the most disgusting robbery. The un-killer is not orc. His orcishness leaves him. I have seen it happen. We, true orcs, take upon ourselves the hideous task of pruning the world - that it may flourish the more. The task of killing the innocent, the frightened, the defenseless. This crime we take upon ourselves. Never think that killing is good, child. Killing is not good. But it is necessary.

How do they live?

Orcs live in nomadic bands. They move every year or so. Hide tents they take with them for the journey, mud houses are left since new ones are easily built again. The orcish name for these villages, buqarz, derives from bur (fenced, warded) and qarzje (rest after battle). A "village", then, is not so much a place to live as it is a place to recuperate from violence outside the buqarz.

Orcish nomadic groups are part of tribes; these are mainly linguistic/ethnic sub-divisions, each of which is related to one part of the creator:

• The Ayyin trace their origin to the sun, God's eye.
• The Hezur trace their origin to the rocks, God's bones.
• The Darakh trace their origin to the seas, God's blood.
• The Sárka trace their origin to the soil, God's flesh.

Orcs know and identify with their tribe. They do not think in terms of blood relations. Clans are important to orcs, but are synonymous with group or village more than with family. If an Ayyin orc travels to and joins an Ayyin buqarz, she will without problem be accepted as part of the clan, although she has no family relations there. Orcs from other tribes will always be an other-triber, mainly due to language and culture barriers - a perfectly fine and a good walker of the Orc Way, accepted in the group, but forever a bit strange. An orc name mentions tribe before mentioning parent.

Orcs have no real social structure apart from the buqarz. Some orcs live as man and wife. Others live in polygamous or polyandrous configurations, or in polyamorous relationships. Others have no lasting relationships at all and are alone. Every adult orc has a personal domicile in the buqarz. The way these are configured mimics the social relationships. Friends or lovers place their tents facing each other or next to each other. Should there be conflict, the dwellings are moved away or built with their backsides to each other.

No leaders, no chiefs, no wars, no goals. Orcs just kill to keep the world going. Orcs are concerned with "keep going". They don't develop, invent, or have grand ambitions. Orcs don't move anywhere, they don't care about utopia's or salvation. They don't care about immortality or fame. They just live their lives the way they're supposed to, part of the bigger whole. They care about the kill, the atonement, eating, drinking, singing poetry, watching the stars.

Growing up an orc

Orcish children enjoy a sheltered childhood in the burqaz, yet they grow up fast. They have no names until they enter adulthood. Orcish play is mainly fighting and hide-and-seek. Orcs don't really have "parents"; often, one parent will be dead. Conversely, an orc child may have multiple fathers and mothers, given the prevalence of polyamory. Like everyone, they do not know about sperm and egg -- all of an orc's fathers and mothers are her true fathers and mothers.

Orcs usually have two teachers, often a parent - one teaches killing, the other tracking. During puberty, an orc will start to join on raids. Here, a kill marks the end of childhood. The orc, now, is in liminal space - neither child nor adult - and must sleep outside the burqaz. They will join again the next raid, until they "take their head" after managing a "good kill". A "good kill", in orcish parlance, is a quick kill: usually it involves head, neck, or heart trauma by way of spear, arrow, axe, in rare cases sword. The victim is then decapitated. The best kill is a sudden decapitation - almost impossible in battle, but the true act of killing that all orcs aspire to. This head-taking at the entrance into adulthood reminds orcs of this most pure and painless act of killing. Orcs keep their First Heads with them during all raids. For practical reasons, this often becomes just the jawbone.

Only after the head-taking is an orc an adult, and receives he a name from the Unblooded. This name is usually something degrading, like Guilty One, Cancer, Murderer, Poisoning, Killer, Monster, Leech. This is so that the new adult may never come to relish killing for its own sake. An orc is a wretch, taking upon himself the unspeakable crime of murdering frightened innocents, sacrificing his own soul and conscience to the world.

The Unblooded

Most large bands contain an Unblooded, sort of madmen-saints. The Unblooded are orcs who have never, and never will, kill. They are the only orcs who do not kill yet remain orcs. Orcs have a bizarre, contradictory relationship with their Unblooded. They hate, love, despise, pity, and envy them.

In orcish society, the good kill and the head-taking marks adulthood. Unblooded, never killing, are in a way children, yet wise and dangerous; outside of normal ways of being. Unpredictable and strange. Who knows what an Unblooded thinks? Why is he laughing like that? Pale and gross, with their ugly pale-blue eyes and white matted hair. Are they born or created? This is a secret known only to other Unblooded.

The Unblooded are not chiefs -- there is only one Chief, and he is dead. Orc life is mainly anarchist. No orc owes allegiance to any chief, warlord, or king. Only the Creator commands an orc. Btw, this means that if you're a minor human chiefdom or bird-men aviary or whatever, your organized attempts to fight off or even kill the local murder-band of orcs will most likely be successful. Orcs don't organize wars, because orcs don't organize.

Unblooded are seen as societal trash, since they do not feed the Creator, yet at the same time they are revered, envied, and seen with guilt and grief, since they are the only orcs not stained by hundreds of murders. Unblooded possess an innocence that orcs cannot afford to have. Unblooded usually wear rags or nothing at all and live on trash heaps and dung piles, their white hair filthy and matted.

The Unblooded is one of the rare orcs who actually might die of old age. Dying of old age is a disgustingly selfish action -- you have used up all your life yourself, giving nothing to the Creator, who so sorely needs it. Orcs look suspiciously on old people and spit on those who die of old age.

Unblooded are thus a reversal of everything orc. As such, they break social taboos continuously. They adress men as women and women as men; they masturbate in public; they smear themselves in shit; they may even be vegetarians or - ugh - keep pets and not kill them. And yet if an Unblooded suggests an opinion or a course of action, it is done.

That's because the Unblooded are wise beyond their mortality. Their insanity is just a way of seeing and acting that transcends the affairs of petty mortals. The Unblooded tastes the reality of the Dead Creator. It is the Unblooded who decides the next pastures; the Unblooded who decides the next raid; the Unblooded who decides the next sacrifice.

Everyone listens to them, everyone spits on them, everyone reveres them.

What do orcs eat?

Orcs are carnivores. Not biologically -- biologically they are omnivores. But an orc knows that consuming vegetables and fruits furthers the life of the plant rather than ends it. Life must end, lest it devolve into the squirming of the Great Rot. Thus, an orc eats meat. They hunt, they herd. Typical orcish cattle includes wildebeast, oxen, aurochs, mountain goats. Anything that's around, really, preferably with red blood.

Orcs are also cannibals. The failure to eat a fresh dead body is seen as offensive and disgusting - especially to the spirit of the deceased himself. The only exception are the Unblooded, who are thrown on the trash heap to rot.

How do they fight?

Orcs want you to die as quickly as possible and with as little pain as possible. During combat they might thank you, cry for you, or advise you to submit to a quick death. Orcs want to insta-kill - a decapitation, nigh-impossible as it is, is most admired. As such, orcs are not even aggressive fighters. They are content to wait. Think samurai -- frozen like a statue, waiting for that opening, that one perfect strike that brings death at once.

They are also archers - again trained to kill quickly, through the heart or throat.

How to interact with orcs.

Honestly, don't. If you want to talk with orcs, make sure to take their minds of the kill-mission. One way to do this is to take something with you and kill this yourself in front of them, as a token of your understanding and your value as a bringer of death. A rabbit might do. A cow is better. The larger, the more life, the more likely an orc will be to spare your own. If you bring more death alive, an orc will leave you alive. But you must convince them that you are a bringer of death.

Of course, most adventurers are bringers of death, and perhaps an orc will come to those conclusions himself -- to the dismay of your noble heroes. That's interesting right there. For a travelling adventurer, orcs may not even be in that much of a rush to kill you.

Orc Racial Traits

Despised - If you want to travel with or play as an orc, nigh everyone will try to murder you on sight.

First Head - Your First Head, covered in a linen rag. Where did you get it? Who does it belong to? The First Head is enchanted and can, in horrifying choking whispers, answer any question once a day with the great knowledge of the dead. However, there is a fifty-fifty chance that it will tell a lie in an attempt to kill you.

Kill for God - You must kill something once a day. Plant, bug, cow, person - anything. If you fail to uphold this, your First Head will not speak that day. If you persist in your disgusting pacifism, orcishness will leave you. Your teeth will shrink, your yellow eyes will fade and change colour, your hair will vanish and your pitch-black skin will be afflicted by discolouration and diseases. You are no longer orc. You look human, or goblin - but make no mistake. You are not goblin or human. You are nothing. You are worse than nothing.

The Goblin-peoples

Caraxan goblins are not the same as your run of the mill goblins. Of all intelligent species in Caraxe, goblins at the most numerous and varied. They come in all shapes, sizes, colours, and demeanours.

Maybe they evolved first. Maybe they originated in a magical accident. Whatever the reasons there's tons of them. They outnumber humans. But they aren't sadistic dumb-dumbs any more than humans are. Crucially, they're not orcs either. Orcs are as orcs do. They are tough and hard as steel cords; fanged, yellow-eyed, and covered in black bristles, agents of the Orc Way, guardians of the Creator. Orcness is more like religion than a species.

Goblins, by contrast, are just a species; often flabby with huge, bat-like ears, mostly hairless and harmless. (Although, facing a hammerhead goblin warrior, tribally tattood, half-naked, ripped with muscle and baring his incisors, you may as well be facing an orc). Their skin colours contain all those of mundane humans and more exotic ones as well.

Again, they are not Orcs. Goblins are people, not monsters. They live in multi-species cities, serve in armies and as clerks. Their faces are human-like, caricatured and stretched by their specific breed. They are intelligent. Adventurer-wise, goblins are likely to favour conventional weaponry over magic. They're pragmatic. Specific goblin traits depend on the sub-species or breed.

Breeds include:

Grey Goblins
Hammerhead Goblins
Night Goblins
Longhaired Goblins
Proboscis Goblins
Hive Goblins (these are often hostile)
Blind cave Goblins (often hostile)
And many many others...

Goblins are like dogs, or fruitflies. Their genes are slippery and mutate fast. Lock 20 city goblins in a dungeon for three generations and the kids will come out blind with huge ears, amazing senses of smell, a very odd sense of humour and a taste for rats. This is why there's so many breeds.

If you play as a goblin, you get to pick (or invent) a breed.

The race bonus of Goblins in general is:

Bitey: unlike other species, Goblins, with their sharp teeth and adaptable stomach can digest almost anything less hard than stone. A Goblin is likely to bite his way out of trouble - wood, earth, bone, even metal, given enough time, must fall before a Goblin's teeth. 

Strong Stomach: They don't require rations or water since they can digest most anything and are immune to poison damage through eating.

Breed Talent: Alternatively, a player may want to invent a Goblin breed with a specific racial bonus. Be it dark vision, limited flight, amazing hearing, burrowing skills, elastic bones, or anything the DM approves.

Orcs are driven by love

Orcs are driven by love.

Orcs love the entire world. That is why they kill.

Let me start over.

Wild orcs, tribal orcs. Yellow glowing eyes, dark scaly skin, ape-like fangs, black bristly hair everywhere. Stone-orcs, true orcs, whatever you wanna call them; the greenskins, the barbarians, killers - these are the true orcs who live as they have for thousands of years. The chosen people.

Being an orc lies not in your toughness, black bristles, or your tusks, these orcs will tell you (before they kill you). Being an orc lies in honouring the Creator. This faith needs no name, since all orcs follow it, and those who do not follow it are not really orcs. It is the Orc Way. Orcness is more religion than species.

The orcish faith is built on love. Love for the entire world and everything that's in it.

But, you tell me, orcs kill everything that's in the world?

They kill because orcs, more than anyone, understand that love, true love, is a terrifying force. True love is sacrifice.

The creative act of the honoured Creator was a sacrifice. He died doing it. The world is the Divine corpse. His blood became the spirits and the world of spirits and the few spirits that follow the Orc Way that the orcs call smallgods.

Orcs love life, and they love the world, which is the corpse of the beloved Creator, and they live in constant fear of what they call the Great Rot. The world is in freefall towards total putrification, the rotting away of everything good and beautiful. Orcs know this. Their wise women have seen it.

Only death can pay for life. Orcs know this too.

For life to continue existing, bloody sacrifices are necessary. The teeming of life must be kept in bounds lest it become the teeming of the Great Rot. And the orcs, strong as they are, are called to be these grim custodians. To keep at bay the Great Rot. They trim the world, that it may flourish.

This is is why adult orcs, male and female, kill something at least once a day, be it person, animal, plant. Why their bands leave mindless destruction in their wake. They kill so that life does not overstep its own bounds, implodes in on itself. Population control for all of creation. The life force of their victims feeds the Dead Creator. It prolongs the advent of the Great Rot. Orcs don't find pleasure in the killing. It is a thankless job. They know they are reviled and damned. It is part of the sacrifice.

Orcs prefer to kill by one decapatory blow. The goodness of a kill lies in fitting intent and ruthless efficiency; they see pain as useless, and a symptom of the Great Rot. When the Great Rot comes, there will be only pain.

If you find a slaughtered caravan and all bodies are headless, you have found the work of orcs. The heads are removed and placed in their shrines to the Creator, where they receive ritual mournings and apologies, and thanks for their sacrifice. Orcs cry for every life they end.

Of course, there *are* what the clans call Bent Orcs. These actually enjoy slaughter and murder and don't really care about the Great Rot. They are a minority, but despised by True Orcs.

Nothing is more horrible to an orc than the idea of a natural death. It is the ultimate selfishness, a murder of the world. This is why orcs (almost) never run from a fight. If their victims die, the life goes to the world. If they themselves die, their own life goes to the world. Either outcome is good for an orc.

Orcs must kill once a day or suffer nightmares and after a while become human or goblin.

Orcish Racial Traits

Kill For God: Kill once a day. Plant, bug, human. If you don't, you suffer nightmares and lose the blessing on your First Head. If you don't for a week, you become goblin or human.

The First Head: Every orc carries the head of their first kill with them wrapped in linen. It is revived by orcish magic and the blessing of the creator. This head knows everything, can only speak in whispers, and can answer a question once a day. However, there is a 50/50 chance that the head will lie and lure you to your death.

The Bloody Lands of Circassa

First off, this blog is mainly an attempt to get some dnd personal worldbuilding organized. I was inspired to do this after finding Goblin Punch, which is amazing. I have tons of half-baked ideas lying around and some friends who'd like to play dnd if only someone was willing to DM, so I guess this is my foray into actually producing some sort of homebrew settings. If anyone ever actually reads this and likes it, that is a win for me.

Let's away!

The Lands of Circassa

Basically, it's a volcanic swamp-plain that is really the bloodstain of an ancient murdered god.
In the northern parts of Caraxe lies a swamp that stretches away for miles and miles in the shadow of mount Berammon. The entire landscape is dominated by shades of red and black, with only bright green and blue mineral deposits around the boiling pools popping out.

In the bogs, pools bubble with steam that tastes like metal on the back of your tongue. The thin-treed forests are all shades of red, brown, and purple. In the barrens, the very rocks look like congealed blood.

According to the Circassans, that's because it is. The Red Lands were formed when the Ruling King named Diluvian was betrayed by his two companions, stabbed clean through with the Pammachon sword which burns like the heart of the earth. His gigantic body toppled from his palace on the mountain onto a fertile patch of land which his boiling blood stained. To this day, the place where Diluvian's massive corpse lay is seeped through with boiling blood -- seething with the heat of the Pammachon sword or with lust for revenge. People can't seem to agree on it.

The Red People

The Circassans -- or the Red People as some call them -- believe themselves to have been born out of the seething blood. They look like it, sure. They're hairless and slightly misshapen, their skins ranging from anywhere between blood-red, brown, and blotted purple. They enjoy spicy foods, a good fight, poetry with a distinctive depressive streak, and a hot bath in any of Circassa's hot springs (the water is slightly reddish).

Circassans revere -- and fear -- blood, or rather the power inherent in it. A person's blood is a person's soul. The religion of the Red Men centers on the ritual letting and imbibing of the blood of (usually willing) others for whatever reason (marriage, mourning, pledging fealty). The bloodspeakers of the tribes use blood magic as part of sacred, divinitory rites. Don't call it blood magic though, since other and unsanctioned uses of blood magic are seen as severe blasphemy, or as a violation of a person on par with rape. These all function within the wider worldview wherein Diluvian is honoured as the Great Ancestor, the Dead Father.

These are the old ways, the ways of the blood. The tribes (calling themselves freemen) still practice these ways in their semi-nomadic travels over the Circassan plains and bogs. However, many Circassans have abandoned the old ways and live like a settled, agrarian people, either in their city of Godsgrave, or in the many cities of the lands surrounding Circassa. Some have even lost their old religion, the way of the blood and the Dead Father. The tribes call these city people stonefolk, and it is not a compliment.

Flora

The Bloodlands are filled with all manner of choking weeds and gore-like algae filling the smoking pools.

Bloodplum is an ever popular fruit with the Circassans. It makes your eyes turn red if you eat too much of it.

Purplerice is the main agrarian crop for cities like Godsgrave. The tribes sometimes buy it, since it is useful, keeps for a long time, and it isn't hard to find a boiling pool somewhere if you can't get a fire going for cooking.

Birch grows in Circassa. Ordinary birch, though the leaves seem a little reddish. Same goes for many other "ordinary" plants and grasses.

Fauna

Everything in Circassa has adapted to the heat emanating from the bowels of the earth in places.

Hotfrogs are frogs that have an incredibly high body temperature due to their adaptation to the hotter pools in Circassa's wilderness. They are a delicacy and the Circassans hunt them with long frogspears to avoid the hot steam.

Soarers are a type of very light and thin snakes that can - if weather allows - float crazy distances on the hot air streams that arise from the red ground. Some types actually hunt birds.

Pearl Beetles are delicious (and huge) insects that are not native to Circassa, but some have escaped after being imported to Godsgrave as livestock or pack animals.

Monsters

Some bad critters are the spirits that arise from the boiling pools at certain positions of the moons. They might be fragments of Diluvian's ghost or manifestations of his betrayal. Nobody knows, but they can possess a man and makes his blood boil. When you look at them, your eyes start bleeding.

Lurkers are half-real, hateful creatures that lurk in ponds and pools to drag in any passing little girl and drown/boil her to death. An adventurer will also do. They might be born out of Diluvians blood same as the Circassans, but they are cruder, lumpier, and turn back into liquid once killed.