Lands of the Orcs

[Gilladian]

My PCs (10th level group of fighter, rogue, druid, wizard) have just stumbled on a teleport gate that can take them to a place where orcs are the dominant species.

I envision this as a sort of badlands; rough hilly terrain, narrow valleys, scant plantlife mostly consisting of grasses, scraggly bushes, a few trees, minimal streams and few rivers, much like west Texas (think the Davis Mountains, even).

But aside from one nearby tribe of warlike barbarians and sorceresses, I've no ideas about what the orcs are like, how the PCs will be received, and what sort of adventure to plan for them. I have six or eight weeks to come up with something, so if anyone has some neat ideas, please share.

I'm also open to suggestions of Dungeon adventures or modules that would be easy to insert into such an environment.

 

[Blackrat]

I might still have my old notes somewhere from a campaign that was set in such place. At the very least those include tribe-names and some description of their internal relations. I'll rummage through my hard-drive and see if I can find them.

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

For some reason, Planet of the Apes popped into my head -- probably because you described orcs as a "dominant species" and because the terrain you described sounds a bit like what we saw in the original (Charlton Heston) film. It might be interesting to expand on this and have civilized orcs, living in proper towns, with an organized military, and feral, barbaric humans as slave labour.

Just a thought.


Richard

 

[Gilladian]

Blackrat - that would be great! Knowing what factions exist and what their goals are is half the battle in creating the "feel" of a place. Names and personalities are the other half.

Rich - I don't know if this area is large enough to support whole towns and cities - but a good idea nevertheless - make the orcs a bit unexpected - then again, my PCs haven't had a chance to run around in an area where most everyone is just a mean nasty monster out to kill them...

 

[the Jester]

Internecine orc warfare.

If you follow the standard orc description, females are chattel, so you could have a cage of she-orcs, perhaps even leading to an orcish women's liberation movement.

How about the exiled orcish paladin who watches over the desert? Maybe he's already found the point that the teleporter leads to, and he thinks it's his duty to guard it and test the nature of newcomers (slaying them if they are evil)?

Perhaps the pcs can hear the thunder of drums in the distance all the time, pointing them to an understanding of just how much of a dominant species these orcs are. "We can hear ten cities in the distance!" Drumming could certainly be heard miles away in the right terrain (open badlands?).

 

[Robbs]

I'm currently populating a campaign world and am facing similar issues. I've placed orc tribes in two areas, foothills that are similar to your description (although more northernly, so winter snows are more of an issue than summer heat) and a boggish area east of that. I'm basically looking at three issues to help me shape them; access to water, food sources, and outside pressures preventing them from relocating in a more hospitable area. For the group that exists in the foothills, they are situated between the Giantlands higher up, they exist in conflict with Ogres and such in their territory, and below them are an Amerind flavored barbarian people that are inherently magical. Thus their options are fairly limited. They can't relocate without impacting a group generally more powerful than them. They are in constant conflict with the other powers sharing their lands, which necessitates warbands. Any peaceful times leads to massive breeding (I have them as a fertile people that are quick to mature) which puts huge pressures upon the tribes, triggering internecine warfare. Periodically a uniter of tribes will appear, when this happens they swarm (reaching deep into the lowlands and driving the human tribes far south). So there are alternating cycles. In rich times they raid in numbers during the warm months. In poor times they raid in small groups during the winter. The bog group has different specfics but similar issues. Their territory is not rich enough to supply them, they cannot raise enough to assume more peaceful ways, and nobody wants their land bad enough to try and wipe them out. So they are a perpetual thorn. To alter that, you can have something valuable that they have limited ability to cash in on as an incentive to explorers and adventuring. In my campaign I am working in an angle sampling earlier races that battled for dominance and were devastated, leaving behind ancient ruins. I'm stealing from the Monte Cook-Dragons vs. Giants, with some Forgotten Realms, Cthulu and my own stuff mixed in. So while the orcs are smart enough to stay out of the cursed areas, PCs are notoriously dumb that way!

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Society & Organization:
Orcs are a quarrelsome and disagreeable race. They don't naturally want to form large groups or stable long-term kingdoms. The largest permanent group they can stand before fissioning off into subgroups is the clan.

Each clan consists of approximately a village worth of orcs, somewhere between 150 and 300 per clan. These clans prefer to remain isolated from other clans most of the time. Subsisting on limited crops and the game and wild plants collected by hunting parties. Female orcs are considered property of males. Much of the violence and discontent within a clan is over the distribution of females. The strongest and most prestigious orcs have small harems while many younger or less respected orc males lack any and must fight for the females of other orcs. This is how most social turnover in positions of power happen as young orcs kill failing elders to take their property and position in the community.

Interaction and trade between orc clans takes place as a form of ceremonial gift-giving using the trading of females as a pretense. Once a season during a traditionally mandated pause in the constant skirmishing of clans groups of prospective traders gather less valuable (but not insultingly so) females and their goods. The females carrying the goods while the male clan-members guard and guide them along the way. At each community the traders will gather in a cleared area below the walls of the clanhome and the females will sit upon a hide with the goods they carried spread out before them on the hide. Orcs from the clanhome will then come down to the trading ground with their own females carrying goods. The goods are a ceremonial prize-stake and haggling takes the form of bargaining over the equity of which females are to change hands though they're really haggling over the parcels carried by the females.

Several related clans will form a Great Clan. While they dwell separately any Great Clan worth the name will have a ceremonial center. These temple-cities are watched over only by wandering hermit mystics most of the year. Visited only by orcs in search of divine wisdom either via torturous spirit journey rituals involving self-scarification, blood rites, and pain transcendence. Or if a mystic present at the center accepts their offerings or believes their search has special value he will make a spirit journey himself on behalf of the orc. This has greater prestige and significance as their closeness with the gods of the orcs means they're more likely to get a favorable, or at least comprehensible, answer. During certain times of the year great processions will set forth from the clanhomes to the ceremonial centers. Full of shamans, seekers, warriors, and offerings (including living sacrifices) for the gods. When they get there the hermit mystics will have congregated to oversee and manage the great ceremonies to follow.

Perishable offerings, including sacrifices for the gods are left on the massive altar stones until the weather destroys them. Non-perishable offerings are paraded on litters into the city and up to the temple then at the conclusion of the ceremony are buried behind the temple in the sight of the gods. None would dare attempt to dig these up as ceremonial offerings are distinct and a curse is believed to fall on those who take what belongs to the gods.

Structures & Settlements
These clans occupy defensible positions near a water source in the badlands. Normally such clanholds are built of hardened bricks made from adobe and asphalt gathered from natural seeps and baked in ovens with the lightest seep oil. These clanholds are normally built into high ledges in the cliffs of river valleys carved across the landscape by moving water for defensibility. Where these are not available they are built on the highest overlooking point possible, atop bluffs and kopjes.
At the heart of every clanhome is a great wind-drum. Made from the hide of large beasts stretched over wooden barrels these enormous drums are beaten by a wind-driven mallets and play a large part in the territorial displays of orc society.

Ceremonial centers are always very ancient because they take so long to build. Constructed entirely from great cyclopean blocks of stone quarried from the cliffs at the edge of river valleys nearby and hauled to the holy site of the temple complex at great effort. Temple cities have no homes or storehouses or even walls because none live there save the ever-watchful eyes of the gods. Normally constructed around a circular courtyard arena for ceremonial combat with the temples of the various gods raised above on high stepped stone platforms around it. The temples are megalithic post and lintel constructions around the central altar. Only the hermit mystics are allowed on the temple itself. Chiefs stand on the first step below the temple with their clansmen behind on lower steps as ceremonies are performed. All structures in temple cities, and there generally aren't that many, are built without roofs. To invite the gaze of the gods and prove that those who seek their favor hide nothing from them in the attempt to gain it. At the center of each arena is a windmill made from a single massive treetrunk carried all the way from the green-lands driving the mallet of a huge gong made from the armor of slain warriors beaten into a single plate by brute muscle power and polished to a sheen by blowing grit in the wind. It's sound and flash are deemed pleasing to the gods and a testament of orc bravery in combat which the gods favor above all else.

Territory & Warfare
The resources of the land are few and widely distributed. Each one is vital to the continuance of a clan. But orcs are innately disagreeable and violent sorts. As such they defend their territories with rabid ferocity and constantly seek to expand upon the holdings of their clan. Orcs drum much as wolves howl, in a form of territorial display. The constantly sounding drum of a clanhome gives warning to every listener for miles that the land they walk is claimed already and they should leave immediately unless traveling one of the traditional paths during truce season.

Non-orcs are seen as game more than anything else unless blatantly powerful enough to command respect from the orcs who respect only raw force. Even if traveling a path during truce season non-orcs will probably be set upon if they aren't both visibly strong and capable of invoking rites of safe passage or trade.

The limited nature of orc agriculture and animal husbandry means much of their meat is from wild game. As such any clan always has at least one hunting party ranging out from the clanhold. Usually consisting of 6-12 warriors they are as much warband as hunting party. And take care to patrol the borders and most convenient routes toward the clanhold well, ambushing any outsiders they find who cannot invoke safe passage during the appropriate traditional season. Any game they catch will be immediately dressed out and preserved to keep it from spoiling. The spoils of each kill are marked by the one who took the game and when they return to the village the meat is distributed by the orcs who caught it individually. This is the source of most intra-clan trading as various goods change hands in exchange for meat from one or another hunter. Similarly power-plays often revolve around providing or denying access to meat to various members of a clan.

Orc warfare is comprised mainly of lightening raids. The goal being not to destroy another clan but to kill their warriors for status or push the boundaries of territory out and gain access to more resources. Females are the target of much raiding, and parties of young orc warriors will attempt to sneak deep inside the territory of another clan in order to capture their females as they work around the fields and clanhomes.

 

[Gilladian]

HeavenShallBurn, I'm adopting your writeup wholesale. Would you mind if I post it on my wiki (properly credited to you)? It's exactly what I had in mind but couldn't manage to pull together myself.

Now I just need to pick a clan or two for the PCs to interact with. I like the idea of the outcast paladin-type - perhaps he keeps an eye on one of the holy cities of the orcs - and perhaps the reason is that the city conceals something that the orcs have long since forgotten is there. And this paladin is happy to keep it that way.

When the PCs come along and perhaps upset a balance that exists between the clans, the paladin must decide whether to interfere and rescue them, or let trouble come to them as it may. If they do manage to stumble across his secret, he could become a foe of considerable power, or an ally, again depending on decisions the party makes.

This is going to make a great adventure!

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

HeavenShallBurn, I'm adopting your writeup wholesale. Would you mind if I post it on my wiki (properly credited to you)? It's exactly what I had in mind but couldn't manage to pull together myself.

Sure, that's why I posted it. You should probably run it through a quick spell-check too since I wrote it in a hurry and probably mis-spelled a few things here or there.

Basically when I do racial write-ups I look at the landform they occupy and what canon material exists them mash together appropriate pieces of historical cultures.

Here I used Arizona up to the Four Corners area as an environment since I'd been there. Then for the orc culture I started with the Cliff Dwellers, mixed with bedouin tribes. Trading I based on how many Bronze age cultures traded as a form of reciprocal gift-giving, often tied to horses. Given the precedent for status of female orcs I let them take the place of horses. The temple-cities came from a combination of Mayan ceremonial complexes and Akhenaten's roof-less temple city. The steppe nomads of ancient Asia used to leave both offerings and bodies to be stripped by the elements. The Aztecs and Mayans both tossed material offerings into sinkholes behind temples. Where they could have been easily retreived but were not because the goods were distinctive. And many ancient peoples believed offerings stolen from the gods or spirits were cursed. Ancient warfare was mostly raiding rather than war in the sense of the modern term.

 

[RichGreen]

HeavenShallBurn, I'm adopting your writeup wholesale.

I think I might do that too. I need some orcs for my Parsantium campaign. Great post!


Richard