In Defence of A More Civilised Orc (Patreon)

In the campaign that I'm running, I have two half-orc PCs in my group (who are called The Artists of Arson after one too many fireballs hit the wrong person), one that was Han-Solo'd (Episode V, not VII) for two hundred years, and another that was raised in high society. Naturally, they're both very curious about returning to their roots, so when the human rogue managed to get cursed with blood-magic after reneging on a deal with the Xanathar's Guild involving a dragon, they all hopped on the "Make Us Some Scenarios Where We Can Flex Our Backstories" train. This was great, as I've long felt that the way orcs are portrayed in fantasy is relatively simplistic, and could be dealt with in a more convincing way. So, I started to rewrite Orcish culture. 

Firstly, one must ask; what is an orc? Of all of the stereotypes and sentiments about the common fantasy creature, the one that prevails over all others is their love of violence. They're a war-like species, and do little creation of their own; instead, they just rape, murder, and pillage whatever they like. Their god Gruumsh commands them to do three things:

• Gather and breed, and your numbers shall flourish.
• Rise up in hordes and seize that which is rightfully yours. 
• Raid. Kill. Conquer.

This is all fine and good; standard sort of faceless, mindless evil that heroes generically fight against. It becomes a little bit harder when you're dealing with half-orcs looking to attempt to reconnect with their culture- first of which being the question of "why wouldn't the orcs kill everyone on sight". And the stock-standard Orcish culture didn't seem to have an answer for that that satisfied me. I had an endpoint in mind (the player who plays the half-orc Sorcerer has wanted to find a reason to abandon Gruumsh for the Lady of Chaos, and take a level in Cleric). I just had to get there.

So, first thing is first: orcs do not idolise strength. Rather the opposite; they revile weakness. Not weakness of body, but weakness of will. It's almost impossible to play a game like Dungeons and Dragons without letting your personal politics leak through, and this is one of the cases where I felt it appropriate to apply a bit of egalitarianism to a fundamentally non-egalitarian world; orcs now hate weakness, indecisiveness, and mercy. Still the same ferocity, but with the added capability of including the weak-of-body-but-goddamn-she's-ruthless characters in the social hierarchy.

As a test of their character, the PCs had to play Stabscotch (the knife game where you stab in between your fingers). Five DC13 Dexterity rolls. On a fail, take d4 + Strength mod damage, and make a 10 + (whatever the damage was) Constitution (or Wisdom) saving throw to keep going. Doesn't matter if you hit your fingers, only matters if you stop. This was a nice balance between the different abilities, and since there was no penalty for starting over (except the damage), everyone got through eventually.

I decided to build off of this idea of "hesitation kills", and created the glodcull, a holy raid. To perform the glodcull, the tribe first has a day of fighting (because my PCs gotta have a colosseum fight sometime!). Then, they perform a purge, consuming all of the food that they have. And on the third day, they call forth a storm (from Gruumsh, or your orcish god of choice), under the cover of which they go out and raid, bringing back any and everything that they can, without killing anyone. And then on the fourth day, they repay the blood debt to Gruumsh, and ritually torture and sacrifice the prisoners, in as many gruesome different ways as you can think of.

This first and foremost served a purpose for the narrative (up until this point, the party will be settling in nicely, figuring that the orcs aren't so bad, they've just got a bad rep for nothing, etc), but I like the premise more as I think about it; the feast ensures that the orcs must commit to their glodcull, and that they have no hesitation about doing so. The stipulation that nobody dies raises their stakes, making it doubly important that they are confident in their abilities, and opens up a vulnerability (if the townsfolk know that noone could die, they could use that to their advantage). One of the orcs that I have acting as a servant/slave was a former soldier that disgraced himself by killing a knight during the glodcull; a coward that didn't believe totally in his superiority. Gruumsh does have the tempest domain, and it would make sense that there would be a blood sacrifice to repay the debt; the decision to place it after the raid is basically just flavour. 

The town of orcs that my players have come across is home not only to orcs, but a couple wanderers, misfits, and people that otherwise are not fit for normal society. They buck the trend of homophobia and misogyny by not considering femininity a weakness, but rather a different facet of the will of Gruumsh; if you're a hard bastard, who gives a crap what's between your legs or who you take to bed? This isn't a perfect way of fixing the 'noble savage' stereotype that plagues orcs, but I'm pleased with the results so far; the town is currently led by a female orc, who has heavily scarred hands, and invented a whole new way of torturing people. There's a level of respect given to the players, but they know their place, and are treading carefully, which is something new for my near-murder-hobo-status group. I'll update with the results the next game that we have.