Orcs

A race that stems from millennia of eugenics and a culture engineered to produce servants for a dark god.

They're basically Elves. Good with bows, live in forests, one with nature and all that. They've even got pointy ears, fair skin, fancy hair.

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

After being rounded up by the elves and put on a prison aisle the orcs of my land became very close as a species and managed to unify. The took over the island and the boats and started being ORC PIRATES

They don't exist anymore. They were systematically exterminated over 500 years ago by sentient machines. Their only descendants are half-breeds that were outcast and are accepted to varying degrees into human society.

A coastal sea faring people that either stayed home by the coasts or struck out to explore, raid or, trade along the coasts of the world.

Burly, Sea green skin, ape like, and no tusks.

Currently the nations they call home are part of the elven (place holder name for empire or state.) using them as the basis for their navy.

About a thousand odd years ago, humans had come out of the wilderness and occupied and taken over the elven city states, and a century or two after that, race relations couldn't have been worse.

Then the Orc came out of nowhere, ravaged the cities, left destruction in its wake. Not Orcs, but Orc, The Orc, The Monster, The Terror, a tide or cloud of chaos over the settlements that left a stain. Today, the remnants of that time crop up every so often in random births. These anomalies are known as half-orcs. Human half-orcs are large, brutish and violent. They make amazing mercenaries, terrible soldiers. Elven half-orc are thin, creepy things, and cruel. They make amazing assassins and negotiators, sometimes both at the same time.

Half-orcs of both kinds can sometimes become the legend of their genetic ancestry in a terrifying display of mutant power and become, if only for a moment, The Orc.

I'm fascinated by the orcs in this game Burning Wheel where they are described as hateful and cowardly.

It's an angle of orcs that I feel is really underrepresented and doesn't get a lot of facetime in settings where it does exist.

>an orchestra battalion
I see, I see...

Delicious.

Somebody just read Blood Meridian.

How does the book describe them?

What are Uruk-Hai like in the books? I a bit fuzzy in it and only remember that they served Saruman and Sauron out of fear or something instead of being bred for war,

in a homebrew setting, I have a race of amazons. Their mother is the first daughter of the god of war and a giantess. her sister is the mother of all orcs and ogres after a demon lord raped her. Ogre mages are a result of an amazon and orc breeding.

Depends
We met a bunch of travelling orc bards, like a german band
It was great

I have these fairly typical nomad orc on northern plains and one separated tribe, that conquered human empire, sat on the throne, got fat, accepted human culture and now they're just green humans with big teeth.

Orcs in my setting are inspired by mixing Tolkien's inspiration for orcs as "broken elves" and the Orks of Wicked Fantasy (not always evil, revere pain & scars as signs of one's achievements/strength).

Long story short, in the early years of the war between the dwarfin and elfin empires that ultimately wrecked the world, the dwarves tried to get payback for the elves unleashing magical plagues on one of their biggest cities by conducting alchemical experiments on captured elfin soldiers. These stripped them of their magical powers and longevity, but gave them greater strength, endurance and fecundity, birthing the first orcs. Goblins are mutant throwbacks who don't breed true (that is, they're almost as likely to have orc offspring as orcs are to have goblin offspring) and are far punier, but have regained some magical traits (using Forest Gnome stats). Also, they're not hideous, looking more like feral, green-skinned elves with the iconic tusks & black claws.

Basically, just bigger, better orks. Their portrayal in Shadows of Mordor was more in-line with what the books described.

Sauce: lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Uruk-hai

Orcs as in the entire race or Orcs as in the ethnic group?

No, none of the "orcish" races do appreciate this generalization (I mean imagine if all white people were called 'Londoners', or worse: all humans were called 'Canadians').

But, basic gist is that Orcs (the ethnic group) are sort of Germanic tribals crossed with elements of the Amish in that they try to directly avoid using more modern tech (and especially not the rising magitech stuff) like firearms and various clockwork, they have taken though to any advances in medicine and sanitation though, but they're a rather spiritual people who feel a pure soul is forged from the fires of hardwork and toil. They also tend to avoid large-scale farming favoring to instead keep somewhat large gardens to supplement their hunter-gatherer food supplies.

They also don't believe in using any sort of beasts of burden.

Other orcish races find them weird because of this.

>orcs

don't exist in current setting time. they did at one point, before being put to the sword by the elves.

This.

I kind of stole the whole "Orcs are a subsecies of elves" from Elder Scrolls. I don't have a lot of the lore in stone yet, but I'm working on it.

High elves are basically constantly shitting on all other subspecies of Elves. They tolerate the Wood Elves and Sun Elves, they basically ignore the Moon Elves and the Sea Elves. But they go out of their way to fuck with the Dark Elves and Bastard Elves (Which is the translation of the High Elven word for Orc).

So the Orcs had to find a way to survive where the High Elves couldn't get them. High Elves, while magically gifted, are physically frail, so they can't survive as well as the Orcs can in the frigid subarctic steppes they call their home. The orcs have become masters of mounted combat, typically riding Dire Boars or Wargs. Due to their entire history being comprised of either being chased away by stronger nations, or being forced to pillage and conquer weaker nations, they have a very strong cultural focus on honing ones' body to be a perfect fighting machine. Orcish monks are some of the most powerful fighters in the world, not to mention the religious leaders of their culture.

Some Orcs, (typically from the more Northern, Central and Eastern regions of their territory) frown upon Orcs that lose themselves in the throes of barbaric rage, seeing the loss of full control of their bodies as a weakness. But Orcs in the Western and Southern provinces of their culture are much more tolerant of their fellow Orcs going savage (so long as they target their rage at their enemies)

Pretty weeaboo desu

>nature isn't all nice and happy like a lot of games show it off to be.
this, in my setting they druids gave life to the trees (treants) and souls who died in the froests are reanimted and their soul act as wraiths, they take dragon bones (whole skeleton) and resurect them to guard their wast forests

>I kind of stole the whole "Orcs are a subsecies of elves" from Elder Scrolls.
Do you mean "from the Lord of the Rings"?

Tribal and germanic warrior people who breed for strength and take great enjoyment in hunting giant monsters.
They are low in number for now because they are a small group who washed up like planar flotsam, but are starting to spread.
They would be spreading faster but they are currently at war with the Hobgoblins over who gets to keep the goblins as slaves. As for the goblins, they are smart enough to recognise that without someone ordering them around they inevitably end up murdering each other over petty shit.

They are somewhat unusual in that they are the only non-human race who can breed with humans (human is the collective term for humans, elves, dwarves, etc as they are all mutations of one-another), but nobody is entirely sure what allows them to do this.

LoTR doesn't know what it wants orcs to be

Does your setting really need that many god damned elf subtypes

Semi demonic plains Indian boar men. Aren't actively malicious, just very angry and wary of other people trying to control them. Oldest race, the Titans first crack at making people. Didn't turn out well.
Make great shamans due to being made prior to mortality really being a thing, and being seen as kind of kid (or in some cases older) brothers to many spirits

What makes all these elves different? Do tell!

Hey, If humans get so many variations, why not everyone else?

Humans only get one statblock, not infinite +2/-2 variations.

16 feet tall, immortal, autoevolutionary ability, stupid amounts of magic.

There's also like half a dozen remaining, and they spend most of their time sulking in the darker corners of the planet.

The Orcs in my setting were once a slave race used by the Dwarves for mining in dangerous areas (such as volcanoes). After being freed (for reasons not related to them) they wandered the world, encountering Elves for the first time. It did not go well for them, and it resulted with the Orcs being driven toward inhospitable areas, such as deserts and wastelands. Still, the Orcs endured, and became a primitive warrior race with varying castes dedicated to a specific way of combat. Their weapons, fighting style and general culture is similar to Native Americans, Maori Warriors and Aztec/Inca Societies, with items and tattoos/piercings that vary from region to region. They are savage and are borderline hostile towards outsiders.

Visually, I pick Drow and whatever passes for Dark Elves these days and add fangs and other assorted beastial features and tribal tattoos. Their clothes become more robust and rough-looking, but doesn't devolve into "whatever we stole and bolted together from scraps". I also like to throw in some central asian clothing into the mix, because furry collars and fur-trimmed sleeves are pimpin'.

Culturally I love them living in the steppes and foothills, with the occasional tribe settling in the deep woods or abandoned dwarven halls. When they live as nomads, they live in yurts with potted plants hanging from the sides, and when they're settled down they basically build hobbitholes but human sized and breed pigs.

They are a highly social people with strong tribal ties, which is the reason for their constant fights with other clans and their warlike reputation. They breed a large kind of dog that is often mistaken for wolves which they use as guarddogs and warhounds.

I agree. Fighting Uruk-Hai are amazing, although I wish we had gotten more character out of them.

Pic related, people to this day look weird at me when I profess my love.

The later two films were shit and he became fucking retarded by the end, but god damnit was he everything I wanted in the first film.

The books describe common orcs as long armed and bow-legged, with broad faces and slanted features. So, basically very ape-like.

The fighting Uruk-Hai are a special breed, basically half- or quarter-humans, who could resist daylight and who had much more stamina.

Funnily enough, the books describe them not only as stronger, but also more intelligent than regular orcs, while in the books they essentially became the brawns to the orcish brains.

Why the hell not?

Why did you post a pic of demons?

I hate those blocky heels. Would have been much hotter if they were just wearing sandals.

not!achaemenid persian empire
Though thier empire has long since collapsed.

There a several cultures of them that can differ quite a bit. But in general they are pig-orcs that were created by the new gods to be their soldiers in the war against the former rulers of this world. Pig orcs because they grow fast, eat everything and are fierece beasts. And because I like pig orcs for some reason.

Today they honor their past by fighting for the one true religion as stoic warrios, or for their holy city states. They are quite naive and easily mislead, but also loyal and passionate about their goals. Though the not!mongol orcs give everyone that mostly encounters orcs a bad impression on them. Those don't fight for their gods or for virtues, they are nothing but barbarians that want to eat and fight.

Oh and they have one specific kind of magic associated with them and that is control of weather.

>And because I like pig orcs for some reason.
It's because you're a degenerate

Why is that, user?

They eat NOTHING but Maggoty bread

/v/ plz go

"It's got protein in it."

Pigorcs or P'orks only make appearances as rapists in hentai manga these days. It's also potentially close to the furry fandom, being an anthropomorph animal, and that fandom is known for its very own special kind of degeneracy.

Western fantasy mainstream has wholeheartedly accepted orcs as misunderstood noble savages with monkey faces and tusks, or visually the same concept but inexplicably obsessed with combat and killing.

>Pigorcs or P'orks only make appearances as rapists in hentai manga these days
Too bad my setting isn't a hentai.
>these days
Sometimes I like to remind me of the olden times.
>It's also potentially close to the furry fandom
As far as I can tell they don't really like pigs. And guilt of association isn't an argument for me. Especially when pig orcs have been done by western settings before furries were a thing.

>Western fantasy mainstream has wholeheartedly accepted orcs as misunderstood noble savages with monkey faces and tusks
Which I find utterly boring.
>but inexplicably obsessed with combat and killing
Not so great in my opinion.

Well, your post could have been stupider.

I should have specified that I'm not and that I am not in support of his opinion, although I do dislike P'Orks, which has to do with personal bias and none of the reasons I mentioned.

This is why it was less dumber than I expected from someone using the word "degenerate".

homie, don't try to argue the point of assholes for them. They might think that their behavior is justified.

Chill out homie, the /v/ has retreated to its hole.

Nature isn't nice but it's not nice in a way that is opposite of that example.
In nature there is no such thing as morality, the strong devour the weak and existence is defined by struggle, the nature goddess revealing her enemies' "true face" is if anything too much moral posturing, she takes the role of a judge, something that doesn't exist in nature.

That's not the first time today that someone blames /v/ for something that has nothing to do with video games.

I don't even...what?

I have replaced them with beastmen. Evil, rapey beastmen.

Though sometimes I consider creating a semi-unique race and calling them something like orcs, maybe a bit more honorabu since my setting has some asian influences but I like to keep my playable races really low for some reason.

Enemies. Don't count as a playable race.

>savage ape-men that eat iron
>iron becomes part of their bones
>don't know how to make fire neither use tools
>only want iron and food
>deserted village has no people, no foodstuffs, no tools, but valuables remain untouched.
>every wound is covered by ossified scabs
>armored ones becomes alphas
>old ones are sometimes mistaken by rusty golems
>countless orcs migrate from their volcanic homeland every year
>no one knows how they spawn so many out from arid land
>some think they are the maggots of the dead gods' corpses, given shape and hate by their diet.
>no females, every corpse becomes a womb for a litter
>you destroyed the corpses, didn't you?

Sounds pretty fucking metal user.

No actual orcs, but I've got people whose god is dead and is rotting. This drives them homidically mad, let them use evil magic and makes them deformed. They destroyed an empire they were vassals to but before they could move on, they reached the point when they can't get organized anymore.

So now there is a vast land populated with homicidal madmen.

that's badass. i'll be stealing that. maybe.

I really like this idea of a people having a close connection to their god to the point where if the god is going through shit it fucks them up

This is major part of global religious conflict in my setting now. After seeing what might happen when you worship a real god, people started shunning pagans and flocking to the church that worship god that allegedly created all the lesser gods and was never heard from again. They promise that once they stomp all the worship of lesser gods and spirits, he'd return and take everyone back into heaven.

huh definitely a cool set up for a larger campaign

I haven't decided yet. They all live in the south in not!Rome in a pseudo-historical fantasy dark age setting. They've been mentioned as a massive threat the southern nobility are warring against, but none have appeared yet.

They might be Germanic conquerers not too different to the human not!Saxons that my players are running, or they might be something else entirely.

>he's never ran a game about highly industrialized but individually inept pig-orcs invading an idyllic fantasy kingdom

It's like you hate fun.

Bipedal predators. They may look like any sort of depiction of orcs/hoblins/stock evil brutish humanoids, because they are extremely prone to mutations due to being souped up on supernatural taint and the fact that mating of orcs with any other humanoid produces what is functionally orcs with some traits of the other parent's appearance. Above-mentioned taint makes them much physically stronger and more resilient than humans (although pained by the sun) but largely kills their empathy and gives them very short temper. Unless press-ganged by some sort of overlord who needs strong brutes, they exist as countless small gangs and tribes that constantly raid their neighbors, including other orcs - their sociopathy and tendency to resort to violence whenever they want something usually prevents orcs from forming more complicated societies. Orcs have almost no culture of their own and generally loathe hard work as suitable only for slaves.

>What are orcs like in your setting
they don't exist.
Frankly there are plenty of other terrible things out there for peasants to fear.

>What are orcs like in your setting

>not having merry orcs

In my setting's lore they are at a constant turf war with the Dwarves in the mountains, though that's on a separate continent. The party originally started there, until one of them was committing themselves to Orc genocide, burning down their villages and killing the women and children as well as the men.

What subtypes are these THICC, soft, warm and cuddly elves? They're my subtype

They are demons, such elves don't exist.

I love me some pig-orcs. I always fluff them as the degenerate result of mad wizardry and/or demonic creation. Their numbers are kept up by breeding sows, huge porcine female monstrosities that pump out litter after litter of fast growing fodder. The tainted blood of their unholy lineage insures that each orc, regardless of personality, is still twisted and hateful at the core. Makes for some great mooks that PC's can kill without worrying to much about the ethical complications of orc babies and the like.

I do also run more "normal" orcs who were the indigenous people that got slowly pushed out of their land by the other encroaching races. At first they lived in caves, but the Dwarfs came up from the Deep Realms and pushed them out into the great forests of the upper worlds. This was at least a livable situation, since the great trees provided some protection from the sun. Then the elves came from across the ocean, took one look at the orcs and scoured them from the forests in a racial holy war. The only place the orcs had left was the vast plains and fields. Agonizingly bright, but at least food was plentiful and the orcs could construct bone and hide shelters to hide from the sun in until night fell and they could go hunting. But the nascent kingdoms of humanity, who had managed to get their hot little hands on some horses and invented cavalry tactics in the meantime, slaughtered them and pushed the fleeing survivors past the mountains and into the deserts and wastelands beyond, which do to the unrelenting sunlight, heat, and scarcity, is basically orc Hell. But after centuries, the other races are in decline and the orcs have begun moving across the mountains en masse. Years of exile has made them meaner, stronger, tougher, and really, really fucking pissed.

Pig and normal Orc alliance when?

They are to humans what humans are to elves.
Yes, this means orcs have technology that other races don't, most notably firearms and steam engines (shootas and chuggas) in a medieval setting. This is balanced because they suck at magic.

Normal orcs, I guess.

Gelded slaves with no culture of their own. Males (thus eunuchs) may enjoy equal rights as propers citizen after paying off their slavery or set free, while females are kept closely guarded and are usually limited to house-slavery, or any other task that does not involve interacting with virile males from any race. And like eunuchs historically, such as Rome or China, they're really comfy with bureaucratic positions.

Why gelded, you may ask? Because a union between an orc and something else always and certainly produces an orc. Also tend to be aggressive and difficult to control otherwise.

I guess the females have started creating their own exclusive culture to differentiate themselves from their masters and the defanged males (who have zero incentive of helping them, because of the privileges that being gelded allows them). Said culture is not at all related to their lost old culture since no one ever remembers what it was like, but basically tries to be opposite of everything host culture, while selling it as authentic "old orcish".

orky.

They aren't. I don't see any point in a race whose sole purpose in life is to be insufferably belligerent.

The Tolkien concept of elves versus orcs is just another one-dimensional rehash of moral absolutes / good versus evil. The bad guys are bad for no other reason than it's their nature to be bad. Such compelling writing.

My orcs are a split-off species created by a host of Old Gods that were since killed off. They were essentially half-brothers to the humans, who are the offspring of yet another god and a mortal. However, when then human daddy-god fucked off, the orcs and humans split apart. The orcs and humans both inherited half of this vast divine empire. The humans have since lost the unity and splintered it into a dozen smaller states in varying stages of technological decay or advancement, with the most eastern part starting to get their 18th century Imperialism game on, and the most western parts essentially being mud-farmers.

The orcs, meanwhile, have become an isolationist nation over the last thousands and a few years, and built a big fuck-you wall along the border with the humans. They stay inside their mostly intact divine empire, living according to strict religious and martial values, developing their own strains of advanced technology, such as cannons and rapid-fire muskets running on some unobtanium magical element I conceived for them.

There are strong religious and territorial tensions between the orcs and the humans, who like to fight little wars. Mostly this translates to human supremacy at sea, while the orcs shoot down at anything that tries to walk up to their Great Wall of China, forcing even more isolation.

Now, the sneaky part that my party doesn't know is that the orcs actually swore to their daddy-god that they would maintain and arms themselves so that, one day, they could save humanity from the impending return of the big bad evil Old Gods. The condition, however, is that the emperor of the human empire has to call them into the war.

The issue is that the human empire has long since sunk because #Gavelkind succession, and none of the human scholars remember or know this.

On fire.

Not any kind of magic fire that doesn't burn them. They just keep getting set alight by all sorts of things.

He does, but he's a filthy fucking casual

I own multiple number 1s, 1-7 in individual issues and 1-5 trade. Stolke needs to hurry the fuck up. I buy every issue I come across, I love orc stain that much

>Tolkienian Orcs
>Subspecies of elves
>Pick two

Seems pretty clear to me.

This is just one explanation that kinda got canon because his son decided to take it into the Silmarillion. But Tolkien himself could never really make sense where orcs came from.

A legitimately classless Utopian society.

Most lived in small farming villages and and were communal with no leaders. Those that didn't like this became hunters and occasionally trade with the villages when not in the boonies. They literally had no wars, crime, or even concept of lieing.

Then the Not!Roman Elves came.

Humans corrupted and twisted by the Chaos God,with providing himself with a steady source of belief (the "food" of the gods in my setting,from which they obtain the power to enact divine intervention,miracles,etc.),but said god was so concerned with his the other,lesser gods conspired agaisnt him and took him down,taking him apart until there was left only a teeny tiny piece of his essence,which was subsequently encased in a rune engraved sarcophagus in Hell.
Physically humanoid,slightly taller than average human males,with greyish skin,generally bald (though females and some males can grow hair) and with no tusks,but with elongated canines. Both sexes look practically the same,the only way to make male apart from female is usually hair (orc women only have breasts during gestation). Half-orcs are a thing,but only with humans; all the other races can't mix with orcs due to their different origins.Anyway,half-orcs aren't common;they usually die young(they are weaker than true orcs) or,due to their higher mental abilities,become spellcasters.
They live in subterranean complexes in the rim of the world's North Pole,in caverns and ancient giant ruins buried millenia ago by an Ice Age (ice giants live in the surface above the orcish caverns). Orcs have a partially sedentarian "civilization",though during spring and summer they raid the southern lands for prisoners (for interrogation,ritual sacrifice and food) and other valuables like weapons or crafting materials.
Their society is tribal and based on "might makes right",but considering both male and female orcs can be equally strong,a significant number of tribes are run by matriarchal warchiefs.Religion is centered around the worship of nature spirits and lesser evil gods,though a small remmant of the Chaos God cult is still present in the deepest settlements,and demonic cults are a thing.

You do not understand Tolkein, or this is weak, contrarian bait to one of the great authors of the 20th century.

Why would you disrespect such a gentleman?

> the books describe them not only as stronger, but also more intelligent than regular orcs, while in the books they essentially became the brawns to the orcish brains.
What?

>less dumber
kys

>Why

Shock value, muh contrarianism

Please forgive me... but they're so fun to role play for a noob group who are looking to have as much fun as possible. The 40k orks as they are now (in the vidya mostly) just work for what I need.

Black Company?