"...What did we just walk in on?"

[chronoplasm]

OK, so I had an idea for a dungeon crawl where the party, exploring the orcish city of Juggernaut, come in in the middle of an orcish initiation ceremony.

Before a young orc can join a warband, that orc must endure a series of physical and mental trials.
For example, some initiates are made to run around without trousers while the other orcs attempt to spank them with pots and pans.
I'm thinking this might make for an interesting combat encounter should the players decide to intervene.

The orcs will be distracted by their games of course, so the party will be able to sneak by unnoticed if they should choose to do so. If the players decide to intervene, they may be able to steal the sacred ceremonial items from the orcs.

Do you guys have any suggestions for these initiation rites?

 

[fba827]

The one that comes to mind first is the typical guantlet idea.
Lots of orcs with clubs line up in two lines. The initiate has to walk/run between the two lines, enduring a beating from the orcs as he does so.

Maybe he has to "hold" in pull up position for a certain amount of time (and maybe something else is going on, like it's raining)

He has to do push ups while the chief sits on his back.

He must climb a steep mountain/cliff, retrive something from the top, and return.

He must arm wrestle (or wrestle) all the chief's sons.

He must make a fresh kill (deer or what not) and drink it's raw blood then smear it on his face like war paint.

walk on hot coals, or on a thorny briar

dig a pit nearby with his bare hands that will serve as his grave for the day he falls in battle

....

that's all i can think of off the top of my head. But i don't know how interesting many of them would be "to watch" from a PC perspective.

it may be best to try and figure out somethingthat could be misinterpreted by a bystander, otherwise the PCs will just say "oh, they're doing some rite of passage, that's all" - it should be something to at least make them hesitate for 10 seconds about whether it's a good or bad thing before deciding its a rite of passage.

 

[Charger28Alpha]

For the "Final Exam" the young Orc warriors have to face an armed captive while they are unarmed. In a circular pit or raised arena a captive is led in and given a simple weapon (Club, dagger, or such), then the wanna-be Orc warrior has to fight and kill the captive in order to be a full fledged warrior.

Along the same lines captives are released and then each young warrior has to chase down and kill one of the captives. The catch is that there are fewer captives than warriors. This would work best on the edge of the city. PCs seeing this could try and save some of the captives, or realize that most of the Orcs are at the ceremony and treasures of the city may be unguarded.

 

[chronoplasm]

Great suggestions guys!
Somehow I feel though that pigs and monkeys should be involved in here somewhere...

For the final exam... the young unarmed orc must battle an armed human... in the pig pen. The mud is a hazard that slows them both down and can cause them to slip, and the pigs will randomly attack either fighter or both.

Monkeys?

 

[Charger28Alpha]

The test to become an "elite" Orc warrior starts when lesser Orcs throw a dozen or so apples into a small copse of trees where monkeys live. Once the monkeys have grabbed the apples, those Orcs wanting to be considered elite, go into the copse, climb the trees and attempt to take an apple from one of the monkeys, and bring it back to the Chief.

 

[Bercilac]

Rites of Passage

Hi,

Did a bit of anthropology during my undergrad. Arthur Van Gennep wrote a book called "The Rites of Passage" that's a fascinating and pretty easy read if you're interested. To summarise the process he claims every rite of passage goes through:

1. The initiate is symbolically seperated out from the rest of the group, to emphasise their "unfinished" state. This may include special dress, face-paint, rituals vows of celibacy, silence, et cetera. The orcs would see these guys as initiates, but the PCs might mistake them for elites.

2. There is a "rite of transition", symbolising the passage from one state to another. Tatooing, circumcision, walking through a symbolic or actual doorway, dubbing (as in knighthood), et cetera.

3. There is a rite of re-integration, in which initiates symbolically re-join the community, but now as fully fledged (or married, graduated, whatever) members of society.

There may be other, smaller component rituals during this structure, but this is the bare minimum. Remember, the symbolism should evoke a journey, a death and rebirth, or some other unversalistic concept of change. Often there will be other members of the community acting as guides for this process (probably a cleric or druid). The other members of the community may also be in symbolic dress (perhaps some element of which is awarded to the initiates when they finish).

If anyone has knowledge of religion (know this about your characters, don't ask them or they'll cotton on) they should get a roll, though obviously a high DC as orcish rites of passage probably qualify as obscure knowledge in, for instance, elven clerical training.