Is there any real basis for having orcs/orks/greenskins in a setting besides aping blizzard/gygax/tolkien?

I wanted some kind of mythic or folkloric justification for orcs, some kind of race that was definitely not just multicolored humans. The closest I can figure are dokkalfar/svartalfar or maybe some sort of fey.

Yeah but there's at least some justification for elves and dwarves. I guess orcs are just OC.

that said, it's not unusual to have Halflings and orcs removed and instead have a spread of racial modifiers for average sized races with Dwarves and Elves being basically otherwise normal humans in terms of modifiers, but in different size categories

>the setting I'm working on right now is very true to mythology

Mythology is such a wide and varied grab bag of random bullshit that any decisions you make as to whether or not to include one thing and not another are essentially arbitrary. So if you want orcs, put in orcs.

Pygmies are an actual thing though, as are island hobbits (no really, homo floresiensis).

Yeah but I think the issue OP has is that he's looking for some vaguely antagonistic different race to pit against humans.

Not... not really. The Tuatha de Dannan and Alfr bear very, very little resemblance to the Elves of Tolkien and later fantasy, and the svartalfr bear a similar amount of resemblance to dwarves.

Are there any pictures of big tittied girls like that, wearing a shirt that says "cock", but isn't of an orc?
that tooth (and the green skin) is off-putting as hell

Tolkien described orc skin as having the color and texture of burnt wood. So, a mottled black-gray, presumably. His orcs were also smaller and weaker than humans on average, used by their masters as cannon fodder. Even the Uruk Hai, though closer to human strength and stature, were a little shy of it.

DnD orcs were initially treated as semi-porcine (this shows up in a lot of older art) and their skin wasn't green, although there doesn't seem to have been a consistent colorization. Some of them may have been shown as green, but I don't believe it was the norm early on. As far as I know, the most widespread and early depiction of orcs as greenskins were from GW. If anybody has an earlier example, I'd be interested to see it.

As for mythology, orcs aren't a part of it. Their name derives from an Anglo-Saxon generic term for an ogre/demon/evil spirit, comparable to modern English's "monster." JRR Tolkien, a linguist and expert on Anglo-Saxon, chose to use the word for his fictional creation. Orcs belong almost entirely to literature, not myth or folklore.

I always have my orcs as the agricultural/ brewer race in my games. Kind of the miss treated work horse that's easy to point fingers at.

Svartalfar are technically dwarves when they're not drow.

Remember also that Tolkein's Orcs are Goblins, while Generic Fantasy™ Orcs are Uruk-Hai AKA Daywalkers like Blade.

"Orc" is basically cognate with "ogre", or Grendel, or what have you.

They could be blessed by a God of war, who is green because why not.

They aren't supposed to be tolkien elves, that's the point.

Funny you mention the Irish, I was thinking of having fomorians kinda fill the orc void.

But vaguely antagonistic different race has always been 'humans from farther away than I can reasonably walk in a day.' Just have the role of the Mongols be played by orcs.

Pygmies turned out to just be malnourished though, they actually grow as tall as normal people (their smallest women are about '5"11 for instance) when they have a reliable source of vitamin D in their diet.

There's a real lack of anything about the "dark elves". They literally have more names than actual characteristics.

I'm thinking that I need to clarify the difference between ogres, trolls, giants, jotnar, etc. I think maybe all of those are too conflated among themselves.

Ape Warhams.

Tolkien's elves are an interesting jumble. On the one hand, you've got the grandeur, ethereal nature and beautry, and otherworld home in the islands of the West from celtic traditions. And you've got grey/dark/high divisions and a contrast with dwarves that's very Norse, considering Snorri Sturluson's lines on the Alfr. You've got the nature associations that come with both of them. But Tolkien's elves, on the whole, are much more human. They're beings of flesh and blood who live in our world and eat and drink and shit and piss like we do (though more stylishly, one presumes) whereas the fey and alfr and the like were usually seen more as otherworldy spirit-beings. Compared the Tuatha de Dannan/Fey/Anglo-Saxon elves and the like, Tolkien's elves are also a lot nicer, on the whole. They lack the disturbing amorality and soullessness that medieval fey and elves were often depicted as having.

They're an original creation. Tolkien took what bits and pieces he liked from myth and folklore, ignored what he didn't like, and glued those bits together into his elves.

What's super confusing to me is that I've also read a load of Maori legends, and they ALSO have elves who also have "dark elf" cousins who live underground.

Whereever there are elves, there's fucking dark elves nearby confusing shit.

Use centaurs as you barbaric antagonist race instead.

Don't the elves not REALLY die in bits of the tolkein lore? Like they just wake up in the western isles or something weird like that if they die in middle earth?

Orcs aren't apes in warhams though!

Mushrooms>humiez>apes

Yeah I notice that too, whether it's dark/light elves or seelie/unseelie. Palette swap elves can fuck off.

Someone had mentioned using mongols earlier but what I had refrained from saying is that centaurs already have that niche for me, at least.

>Is there any real basis for having orcs/orks/greenskins in a setting besides aping blizzard/gygax/tolkien?
So that you can have a race of savages without going into /pol/ territory.

Tolkien's a little vague on the topic. He did once write up a series of laws and customs for elves, including their societal rules and laws about resurrection, IE when an elf dies in Middle-Earth, reincarnates in the West and returns home to Middle-Earth. However, these notes were very early and he never went back to them. The only possible example in the actual stories of an elf doing this is Glorfindel, but Tolkien never confirmed if Glorfindel in LotR is the same as the one in the Silmarillion, or just two elves sharing a popular name. If reincarnation did occur, it seems to have been rare, with most elf spirits dwelling in the Halls of Mandos until the end of the world.

Tolkien's elves, though they can theoretically live forever, are more spirit than flesh, and eventually the spirit will burn the flesh away. Not literally (except in the case of Feanor), but more of a gradual fading.

He also based their language of Finnish, amd the Kalevala was another important piece of inspiration for LotR. He was the master of the European mythology kitchen sink, in a way that feels organic and authentic without totally reproducing its predecessors.

STOP POSTIN' SMUTTY ORCS! STOP LIKING WHAT I DONT LIKE!

Seelie/Unseelie are much more than a palette swap in folklore. They're extremely different in appearance and behavior.

>Seelie/Unseelie
Second time I'm reminded about KoAR today. Is it a sign?

But why user? Why don't you like smutty, slutty orcs?

Yeah if you hadn't guessed I was definitely trying to avoid that. Like, you know what I would fucking love? A justification to have Super Mutants.

pic related

aww.

Trolls.

Just use trolls.

>Yeah but there's at least some justification for elves and dwarves.
The way I see it justification mostly depends on the lore of the setting. Sure you could slide in some original species steel donuts into your setting, but if there isn't at least a justifiable amount of lore to explain their existence then why would they be there to begin with? Same with Orcs, Elves, Dwarves, and anything else.

Yeah. This is why, though I hate it when people try to put their own "spin" on elves (IE taking Tolkien's elves and just making them Aztec or Maori or something like that) I have a lot of respect for someone who can do a good job of looking at tons of contradictory myths and legends, and piece together something that has the same feel but is largely an original creation out of it. When done well, those concepts seem to last.

Stoker did the same thing with vampires, for example.

Or ogres.

You could sort of make it like colloidal silver poisoning where their skin is being colored by something in their environment. Maybe it also agitates them as well, which is why they have a reputation as being crazed.

That being said, if you want orc dudes in your setting but want some sort of mythological basis, it might be easier to start with green dudes as a base and grab bag different bits from various mythologies to approximate what you want.

BIKOZ I LIKE SLUTTY-SMUTTY LOLI FAERIEZ, AND YA'Z POSTIN' COWZ

>this thread

I recognize that outfit.

Trolls are such a clusterfuck, I haven't even started looking at them yet.

My biggest issue is that ogres have to be big.

pic related

You posted it again! Good job!

Which super-mutants? Like, Fallout 2 Super-Mutants who are happy to hang out in regular towns living like normal folks, Fallout 1 Super-mutants who have a leader and a genocidal ethos, or fallout 4 super-mutants who make no sense and marauding cannibals?

You sound like you're talking yourself into being retarded.

Ogres don't have to be huge. 7-8 feet would be fine, comparable to GW or Warcraft orcs.

>Stoker did the same thing with vampires, for example.
Sheridan le Fanu, Polidori.

Okay, okay. Bare with me here. I have just three words to offer you.

Neanderthal Predation Theory.

because anytime you end up making a fantasy world you just end up with "totally not orcs", "totally not dragons", "totally not elves", ect.

I love em all

Are blizz orcs really that big compared to humans? Damn.

I thought the average GW ogre is described as being ten feet tall.

When were orcs created anyway? Did they all start with tolkien?

>7-8 ft

Not sure what you mean, because homo sapiens interbred with neanderthals.

That really seems to be the issue.

As many of other fantasy races, they were some norse spirits of evil, and Tolkien made them an actual race.

Shadowrun Trolls are kinda what you wanna look out for - shadowrun orcs are, ironically, more about fast breeding and aren't nearly as orky as trolls, but trolls have horns and stuff.

themandus.org/gallery/

NEANDERTHAL. PREDATION. THEORY.

Yes, yes, I know. But Stoker did a considerable amount of research of Eastern European traditions about vampires, and his Count is largely a result of him making a patchwork out of that, with some ideas of his own and the contemporary fascination with hypnotism thrown in. Dracula as an archetype has endured for almost 120 years since the book came out, and is the metric by which all modern vampire fiction is measured. Sure, Stoker was also inspired by the earlier buding of vampire literature, but I think his Count is a lot more fleshed out than most of the earlier examples in the genre.

>Orcs
>Norse spirits of evil
That sounds honestly really awesome. And here I thougth I knew my shit about norse mythology. Going to research that now.

>this thread
youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY

I was thinking of GW orks, who are bigger than humans, but not huge. They're closer to ogres than to Tolkien's orcs who were smaller and more goblinish.

Which is ironic, since the original Anglo-Saxon meaning of orc could refer to an ogreish or a goblinish creature.

There's nothing to research. Orcs (the original word is orcneas) is an Anglo-Saxon, not a Nordic word. As mentioned earlier, it didn't refer to a particular creature, but was a catchall term. Ultimately it's thought to derive from Latin Orcus, another name for Pluto, some variant of which entered Anglo-Saxon as a loan word.

Sure, I won't dispute that. It's just the "Stoker vampire" kind of predates him. Ruthven and Karnstein are definitely of the same type as Dracula.

Only in the sense that they're vampires posing as seductive noblemen, in contrast to folkloric vampires who are more likely to be peasants. Stoker's rules, powers, and general conception of vampires is apart from Ruthven or Karnstein, for the most part.

That´s about the same as what I found googling, thanks user.

Still this is giving me a whole lot of new ideas to use.

Pig orcs best orcs

Weird frog/cat hybrid orcs best orcs.

Arent orcs from somewhere near the alps originally? Some sort of demon.

kek, okay. If you're going to argue there aren't strong similarities between Mircalla and Dracula I think that's pure contrarianism, so enjoy it I guess. I'm not interested in some merry-go-round of bullshit.

That's pretty good too

I stand behind evil caveman orcs.

They're even easy to justify.

The thing about orcs is that in the absence of a diverse mythological or folkloric base to amalgamate from, history is used instead. If you strip away the monstrous appearances, orcs are just the "invading barbarian horde" archetype that has cropped up in the cultures of every civilization. Which stereotypically barbarian culture they're based on varies a fair amount. Sometimes you get a bit of Norse Viking, a bit of Celtic headhunter. Tolkien was definitely inspired by medieval accounts of the massed cannon fodder hordes of Saracens in things like the Song of Roland. In later years a lot of writes have gone to the Mongol/generic steppe nomad hole for orc characterization.

They're nothing uniquely supernatural or inhuman about them. They're just demonized human stereotypes, exaggerated to the point of monstrousness and then mashed together.

Oh, I'll argue nothing of the sort. There are strong similarities. Stoker was clearly inspired and influenced by that story. But I think, through his own research and creativity, he created something recognizably distinct in Dracula, and I would say it is his template that has better stood the test of time.

>Demonized human stereotypes.
That´s a part I hate about most depiction of orcs. They´re almost always chaotic evil everywhere.

I hate to say it, but it's what we've got. Personally, this is why I try to avoid using orcs in my settings, because without mythology to drawn on I'm basically just reskinning human cultures.

Don't forget the ones in New Vegas, who had their own town.

Those are just fallout 2.

The Fallout 4 super mutants are on the same warpath as the Fallout 1 super mutants. They're just leaderless as far as I know.

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I like using them as a counter-weight to civilization. There has to be a reason magic exists and it's not utopia. It's because orcs fuck everything up. Everytime. Forever.

I'm pretty sure that Tolkein, in one of his letters drew a direct comparison between his orcs and the Mongols, so that's not just later writers.

What if orcs were a sort of tulpa of human bigotry? That is, every culture assumes there's some horde of foreign savages coming to murder them all and steal their stuff, and that concentrated belief creates an avatar of all those beliefs? A marauding ghost-army of barely human brutes who appear only to destroy, rape, and pillage who vanish as soon as there's no more of that to do.

They're clearly pink, user.

there is zero reason not to call your orcs goblins, trolls, devils or ogers just because D&D insist on using the word differently

it's as stupid as insisting that store clerks need to have faith magic or else they aren't clerics

Tolkien referred to them as Mongoloid, IE having East Asian features such as slanted eyes or broad, flat faces. Tolkien was a tad racist, though I think it was largely an unconscious racism..

Right, but non-Tolkien elves just... literally aren't elves. They're a completely different thing.

make orcs the sea peoples

Elves pre-date Tolkien as a concept and older versions are pretty different from his. His version is popular, but it is not the end-all-be-all of what an elf is.

Well, the thing is, that's what Tolkien orcs were for. Tolkien wanted to tell a black and white story about good and evil. The bad guy is a literal demon. But he didn't just want a man versus big monsters story, he wanted a war story, with armies. So he invented the orcs as soulless, evil monster people. They let him tell stories about armies clashing without the enemy needing to be human. They're the quintessential mook, the robot army or faceless stormtrooper. They exist to be humanoid enemies it's okay to kill, guilt free. Like zombies.

Fomorians are basically just evil fae.