What kind of lore do I use to break the back of the creepy "my mother was raped by an orc" half orc backstory? Im starting a new campaign and every single half orc character has been this and its just such a creepy pigeonhold for character origin. Should I make them like Uruk Hai and be created by evil wizards?
Help me Veeky Forums
>creepy
Well my half orc pcs mother was not raped by an orc. The easiest way is to swap the parent races. Make the mother the orc. Then you can have the barbarian warrior of a tribe that has relations with orc tribes who impressed an orcess as the father. No rape involved. Makes sense, to me at least.
Make it so half orcs can breed with either each other or humans to make more half orc children.
Do you have any backstory besides your race?
Father was raped by an orc. Problem solved.
I like that as well, but ive always liked using the orcs as a bit more demon worshipping, baby eating, blood sacrificing monsters than the more noble savage type deal that would allow for human intermarriage.
that is good advice though
Make Orcs the playable race instead of Half-Orcs.
Then you just have to make it so Orcs don't kill people on sight and aren't killed on sight.
>pigeonhold
Nice eggcorn.
You get a half-orc or an equivalent if a half-orc has a kid right? I remember one half-orc characters backstory I made was that his father was a smith and his mother was an adventurer, and after he was born his mother died on one of her adventures. Then he was raised to be a smith and decided to become an adventurer to support his aging father.
Maybe your mom was a tough-as-nails widow/spinster farmer in the backwoods and your dad was an exiled orc brave who earned a place to sleep by doing chores and hunting game for her. Winter nights were cold and, well, you came along. Heck, Greenwood reckons this is actually a pretty common origin for half-orcs in Faerun.
Your dad was human and the orc was your mom. Maybe he rescued her from the patriarchal oppression of standard orc culture. Maybe she left her tribe to prove herself as a warrior and found it appealing that he didn't dismiss her for her gender. Maybe your dad was a "horde-leading wizard" type who took your mom as a political marriage or concubine type.
Maybe, in your parents' neck of the woods, barbaric human tribes or no-nonsense frontier settlers and not-so-evil orc tribes regularly intermarry.
One of your parents is a human ex-adventurer who was reincarnated as an orc after a failed quest. S/He settled down with a human spouse, perhaps a fellow adventurer, and you came along.
Both your parents are half-orcs in a consensual relationship. Half-orcs just simply breed true, just like half-elves in most D&D settings.
This.
>evil human barbarian tribes frequently make long-term alliances with orc tribes
Does anything more really need to be said?
Fun fact: Volo's Guide talks about how orcs don't actually just go around raping everything. They only choose to mate with the strongest of a places they conquer, and half-orcs are fairly valued within their society instead of unwanted bastards.
Well the tribe of humans could be equally bad. I never said they had to be noble. You can get demon worshiping cultists to fuq the demon worshiping orcs if you wanted orcs to be all bad.
Played a half-orc witch in Pathfinder. Her mother was a powerful hedge witch who did the deed with an orc brave of a powerful nearby tribe in the hopes of breeding a child that had the power and ferocity of her orc ancestors as witch patron. I drew inspiration for the character from Dragon Age, actually: Flemmeth and her daughter, Morrigan
You don't know what the word "creepy" means, do you?
>Mother is a powerful sorceress
>Has a muscle fetish
>Routinely charms barbarians, warriors, smiths, etc that catch her eye for a crazy night in her tower
>She was a little too drunk during that orc invasion when she charmed your father and forgot the no-pregnancy spell until it was too late
>Grew up in the tower of a powerful, horny sorcerers that wanted you to grow up and be a big strong man.
I always figured that half orcs would be more accepted among orcs than humans desu
It makes sense. They look more like Orcs than humans, and they're smart and charismatic by comparison.
BUT DEYZ PUNY
DEYZ NOT PROPPA ORCZ
His mum had a thing for inter-racial.
I've created a setting for a podcast I'm currently recording (nothing released yet as I want to make an effort to post produce it) where there are basically tribes of orcs and men beyond a sprawling dwarven mountain range that often intermingle, marry and breed. It's all very Mongolian inspired.
Occasionally they unite under a Khan-like leader.
no user, you are the creeper
>half orks are now orks
>orks are now double orks
Short-lived fuck-you-mom-and-dad relationship resulted in a child. Still a bastard but the sullied reputation and rumors were unfounded. PC is raised as a part of a servile family rather than getting the formal name and the orcish parent is a well-to-do member of their culture in the next town over, but thought of terribly because the matriarch/patriarch of the human side of things besmirched their name within their local reach.
My half-orc was the result of a very drunk bard-esque nobleman and an orc woman, so he's BIG but has pretensions of royalty, even as he's splitting a man's skull.
That sounds like a pretty fun character. Reminds me a bit of the Gray Prince from Oblivion who had a noble human (vampire) father but a human mother
you you DOUBLE ORK
This is what I did. My players seemed to like it. When I use orcs the monster as encounters we just say they are from more tribal parts of orc society.
The father is a bard.
>creepy
Fuck off, SJW
...
My character's human father met his future orc bride when they were adolescents. She was a quiet and dreamy girl who he bullied and teased because he was immature, often provoking her into striking or throwing him. When she got into puberty he started drooling over how stacked she got and his bullying became more like sexual harassment. In spite of everything she actually liked their little "battles" and his ability to bring her out of her shell. They started dating in university and the rest is history.
>a couple wizards get hammered out of their minds one night
>as a joke/dare, they mind-control an orc into becoming a perfect 18-CHA gentleman
>mind-controlled orc convinces people in town not to kill him, gets dressed in the finest of formal clothing, attends banquets and festivals, etc.
>eventually woos a beautiful woman in town
>gets her pregnant
>one day, he's wandering around outside town and the mind control finally wears off
>he wanders away with no memory of his life as a gentleman
>assumed killed by monsters, remembered fondly by the woman and the town
>a few months later, a half-orc PC with no rape backstory is born
I just made one where a wealthy businessman/nobleman lusted after his orcish servant and got her knocked up and decided to raise him as his bastard. Once I get the numbers juuuust right, it'll be hilarious. He'll be moderate Int because of all the books he read, but low Wis because his Orcish brain can't figure out how to apply the knowledge to deduce things. And high Cha because of his understanding of high society. And he'll wield a rapier but only ever make Strength rolls with it.
Its true what they say, wizards have no morals...
Pic related btw, I kind of fiddled around in Hero Forge before drafting the story.
Both of their parents were half-orcs, therefor they are also half-orc
It was your mother who raped the orc. She still occasionally lets him out of the closet for a breath of fresh air.
Why not just have the pc cursed with orc blood then for defiling a temple of gruumesh or something if you want orcs to be inhuman monsters?
>human father
>human mother
What.
He's mistaken. The Gray Prince's father was a human vampire, his mother was an orc who was a minor servant on the Lord's estate, unaware of the Lord's unusual appetite.
I never really got why he went so emotional once he found out about his heritage. Being a Vampire was awesome in that game.
Cause his greatest source of pride was really a diseased serial killer?
>I'm leaving, mom.
>I had enough of you bringing strangers every day and making all that... "noise".
> So now I will adventure for my own land ! My own "apartment".
>ok my little green piggy pie, don't forget to kiss mother goodbye, and say Farwell to your new father Umir Ironshaft.
A buff Dwarf walks behind the sorceress and slaps her behind and then puts an arm around her.
>Aye, don't ya worry about yer mom wee lad. I'll take "goooooood" care of her !
The dwarf and the sorceress both giggle.
The Orc warrior was overwhelmed by emotions that range from anger, dread but most of all, disgust.
All he could do was try to leave as soon as possible to flee this waking nightmare and pray he will encounter a Mind Flayer on his travels that will erase his memory.
But that's not how genetics work....
Are you retarded?
Give them a tribal society with very strict rites for initiating outsiders, and a half-orc lineage prominent in many of the tribes that holds positions of power and importance and can trace their lineage back to one ancient human prophet adopted by the tribes. Make it a matter of great shame to mate with those outside the tribe. Now you have an orcish culture disinclined towards rape that occasionally adopts human members, who are almost certain to produce half-orc children as the orcs practically trip over themselves to provide mates in the hopes of producing a lineage rivaling that of the old prophet.
No, I'm not retarded. The idea of a viable population of half x is retarded, and you'd laugh at it if you had any idea how genetic recombination works in hybrids.
The father was a vampire who had an orc mistress. The kid is the results of this, but he doesn't know his dad was a vampire.
Well aren't you proud of your high school biology class?
>Applying real world science to fantasy un-ironically.
> No, I'm not retarded. The idea of a fireball is retarded, and you'd laugh at it if you had any idea how thermodynamics works in physics.
You do realize being a sarcastic cunt in no way disproves me and that you haven't once refuted my point right? I'm not even assuming the hybrid would't be viable and couln't reproduce, which is a likely outcome. I'm accepting that this is fantasy land and they can have a viable offspring, and you know what? Even if an orc and a human, or an elf and a human, could have a viable offspring that could itself reproduce you still couldn't have a viable population of Half x's.
That is another issue entirely and I just shove it in the back of my head and label it magic.
This is easy. Human women don't survive the experience, so half-orcs generally aren't born from them. Rather, most of them originate from when orcish women get their hands on war prisoners from the latest raid or skirmish. The human men don't survive the experience either, but they don't have to in order to make half-orcs.
There, no more "creepy" "my mother was raped by an orc" backstory!
And you being a conceated cunt doesnt make you right, but I'll show a little respect and assume you already know that.
You don't know how the race dynamics work in the d&d world. You're just assuming the races are like separate species who cant make 2nd generation viable offspring or something, and then angrily asserting that's the case under a thin layer of biology jargon.
It could feasibly work. Mexicans are basically half orcs. The Spanish raped the native barbarians, and the result was Mestizos. Now, when two mestizos have sex, the result is another little beaner. You can just think of half-orcs like that and there's no problem.
>There, no more "creepy" "my mother was raped by an orc" backstory!
No, just a "raped to death" backstory.
...
Interbreeding between different groups of humans is not the same as interbreeding between two different species, and I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you can understand that. We don't even have proper sub species, we are all almost exactly the same.
Unless you want to tell me that there is almost no genetic variance between the races, so little genetic variance that they are essentially all the same race in fact, then no mestizos do not prove that there can be a viable population of half x. They prove that humans can breed with other humans, which we already know.
Don't reply to me ever again.
Okay.
>Assume you can understand that
I promise you I have more experience in biology than you, so please just listen to what I have to say. And I'm going to sleep, so don't waste your time responding for me.
Yes, I'm telling you to think of orcs and humans as the same species. You keep asserting they're separate species and couldn't create a lineage, but obviously the very definition of a species is their ability to create a lineage. So what I'm saying is to assume they can have viable grandkids, and then you can use our taxonomy to call them the same species if you want. It's not that wild of an idea, the orcs are basically just fantasy representation of native tribes.
>Yes, I'm telling you to think of orcs and humans as the same species
hell most fantasy games refer to the various demihuman races as well... "races" and not "species" anyhow.
In our campaign most half-breeds are considered somewhat rare. I play a half-orc paladin with the group sorcerer being his twin. Our origin was that the orc was our mother while dad was this wandering elf warrior that the orcs held in great regard.
On top of that since most half-breeds are come out stillborn, our local shaman threw in this bullshit prophecy of our characters being some chosen children or whatnot.
what are some good names for an orc or half-orc PC?
So the champion of the Arena from Oblivion?
Bonus points if he gets suicidal and pretty much throws the match cause you told him something he was simply not meant to know. That he's a monster!
Man, I really liked Oblivions quests.
By Azura, by Azura, by Azura!
Well the last half orc I played was found in an orc tribe as a baby by a bunch of humans who were in the middle of putting his tribe to the sword. Some there took pity on him and he was raised by adoptive human parents.
Sure his biological mother probably was raped by an orc... But that really doesn't inform the character at all. The years of being both an outcast and knowing that you have a family that chose to love you and sees the good in you.... all that stuff informs the character.
Still, it was lame as balls that he then just killed himself rather than fight you.
I've always liked, Alexander Dumas for a half-orc. Just get French writers all up in their grill. Jules Verne, Molière, François Rabelais, Zola, Albert Camus, Diderot and if you don't like those, you can always go Honoré de Balzac.
Also, even if you can't come up with anything for a non-edgy backstory, you can just say they were found in a basket at the front door of an orphanage and you can fill it in later when you have a good idea or just never fill it in at all.
>Whole tribes of halforcs.
>Human/orc barbarian tribes with symbiotic relationships and interbreeding.
>Agrarian orcs coexisting peacefully with a human settlement. Similar to gray orcs.
>a group of right bastards who keep orc women as sex slaves.
>Just use hobgoblins. They're better anyways. They're like mythic China / romans / Andromeda nietzcheans.
And this isn't warhams. Go home, spore monkey.
It's d&d.
All humanoids (creature type) can interbreed and produce viable populations of half-breeds.
Fey, outsiders, and dragons can breed with anything.
That's how it works.
Death by snoo snoo
Well, if your setting has fully sentient orcs that aren't always chaotic evil, you could make it so that half-orc was actually born out of love between orc and some crazy human female who was/is wannabe-orc. That's more outlandish than basic "raped by orc" story, but atleast there's no rape.
The only thing creepier than having your mother be raped by an orc is having your mother willingly fuck an orc, which is basically a step up from beastiality.
Go with rape, because that way you don't have to say "Yes, my mother willingly fucked an orc, which sane people won't do."
This may be more campaign-based, but I had a character in a West Marches game that was a half-orc fighter hailing from the tundra. Naturally, when characters got around to talking about backstory and the life back home, my character got irritable, talked about the lack of honor his father had for doing such a deplorable act, and the like.
The reveal was that his mother was an orc and soon-to-be chieftain, and his father was some bard living the bard life; not an honorable way to lay an orc.
I don't know, man. Every time I think about a man fucking a female orc, I keep thinking of those nudes of Leslie Jones we saw a while ago. The woman's basically an ape.
Spray her green, you get an orc.
In my games the vast majority of orc-blooded humans are from savage and barbaric tribes where the line between humans and orcs is very blurry after dozens of generations of raiding, murdering and intermarrying eachother.
In those savage lands there's very few 'pure blood' orcs left.
Technically speaking in most D&D settings it would be proper to say that Orcs, Humans and Elves are all the same species, just different breeds.
Obligatory:
>What kind of lore do I use to break the back of the creepy "my mother was raped by an orc" half orc backstory?
What if both your parents were half-orcs?
Yet she still gets laid, otherwise we wouldn't have those nudes.
Not everyone fucks a model.
I don't follow. The point isn't whether she gets laid or not. For instance, some people do fuck cows or dogs. The point is that we really shouldn't have to see it happen.
>"horde-leading wizard" type who took your mom as a political marriage or concubine type.
I'm stealing the shit out of this.
>Sigh, the things I do for Evil...
>Technically speaking in most D&D settings it would be proper to say that Orcs, Humans and Elves are all the same species, just different breeds.
That's why they're called races and usually (not in all settings though) they have all evolved from same ancient race. Typically the first ones are the elves, although humans are pretty common choice in more subversive works.
You don't. It's just like a line or two of backstory. You're just coming off as a dipshit now. When you got invited to a friend's house when you were in school and his mm was an ugly pile of trash did you get upset at your friend? "Oh god now I have to imagine myself fucking that ugly thing." Like, what?
That's a bit of a non-sequitur, don't you think? Besides, I don't know any black people.
A magical accident fused an orc and human together into a single being, whose bloodline has bred true ever since.
Half-orcs are slowly overtaking both humans and orcs.
The dude she was fucking was clearly black, so it doesn't really justify half-orcs with orc mom. The product of the intercourse would be a full orc... I mean black.
It's players like you, who need to escape the grim nature of reality, that are the root cause of all this feel good, noble savage, inclusive bullshit. Trying to use rpg's like fucking night lights and security blankets for you to bury your head under.
Some people like seeing real world parallels in their rpg's to aid in the suspension of disbelief.
Some people are mature enough to accept a narrative that would otherwise make them uncomfortable or upset IRL because it provides depth and relatable context.
If you want to play in a bubble wrap setting don't expect anyone else to respect that choice.
That said, the only response that seems remotely reasonable here is the evil humans teaming up with orcs.
So many fucking mary sue backstory ideas here its sickening.
So no female heroes?
How do you think the Uruk Hai were made user?
Saruman bred them using men and orcs
Odds are he didn't just magically merge the two together
Odds are not every subject was ok with bumping uglies with something that ugly
Unless your orcs are just green humans with pointed ears, your dealing with some bipedal ape/pig creatures
I mean I guess furries would be into that ... ugh
Meant to tag OP too
I LIKE IT!
I like it!
Insinuating what?
Women can't handle talking about rape or having it in their seting without falling to pieces?
Child of two half-orcs, or a half-orc and a human.
Or your mother was an enchantress who dominated an Orc Chieftain and took him as her boy toy.
Or your father was a VERY brave human man who lived on the frontier and courted your Orcish mother.
There's options, motherfucker.
Or that no women are capable of acts of heroism IRL?
So many boarderline or flat out magical realm suggestions
It's like all spell-casters use magic for is to get laid whether anyone is willing or not.
Or just ignoring the likely cultural/social consequences of having sex with an orc never mind actually having a child with one
Xenophobia is pretty common among humans, usually fueled by fear of the "other" taking over, replacing the existing people. Wont be many humans left if they're all breeding with orcs or at least that would be the likely fear among the populace.