the greed of the grizzly king (Patreon)

hi res: https://i.imgur.com/0aK2eo4.png

"what the four toed king claims as his remains as his--in this life and the next." -clan shurkar histories, vol 3.

grand puba orc chieftain putting the finishing touches on a few newly-minted uthashg'k, a kind of slave/shaman class in orc culture consisting solely of captured human prisoners of war. the participants go through a grueling arcane ritual/brainwashing process wherein the prisoner's original identity is erased, and they are made to "remember" their "true" identity as an ancestor or animal-spirit, dedicated to the  pleasure and continued high combat morale of the clan.

 according to orkish mysticism, the original soul of the uthashg'k is forced into a state of unwitting astral projection, via entheogenic substances, ancient magic, and a lot of brutal orkish lovemaking. once the freed from the body, the spirit thinks that it has escaped its terrible ordeal--overjoyed, it begins the long sprint towards home and away from the orkish encampment. by the time the spirit realizes what has happened (always too late), it becomes a hungry ghost, trapped and nameless and rapidly deteriorating in the Land Between Lands. the process can often take days, depending on how easily the vessel body accepts its new, servile spirit--particularly headstrong vessels can sometimes take entire weeks. in all of orkish written and oral tradition, there is only one individual known to have resisted the uthashg'k ritual completely; a human barbarian known as "Hela the Strong," from around 2120 MEC. Hela is mentioned only one other time, in passing, when orkish historian Kalgutha Redribbon visited the clan shurkar stronghold and described him as being "kept as a novelty for a while," as the "Vessel that Would Not Empty," until he was eventually "...fed, fussing and fighting, to a Great Clutching Wyrm from the eastern jungles--[this] served as fitting entertainment for the wedding of a chieftain's daughter to the son of a famed hunter. the wyrm took [seven] hours to finally swallow hime... (Redribbon 237)."

the chief completes the ritual by marking them with his sigil (a blue bear's paw with four toes), ensuring that they are bound to him until the end of days--and possibly a for few days after that. 

(thank you guys for the opportunity to make dorky shit like this <3)