I've been reading this thread with some interest but I have to chime in as the OP has...forgotten a lot of details about the setting he's calling racist.
Glen, I've "forgotten" a lot of details? If you're familiar with
my writings about Mystara from over the past 22 years, "forgetting details" is not something people have often accused me of.
Not once has he mentioned the Ethengar or Atruaghin, the Mystaran equivalents of the Mongolians and Native Americans,
In fact, in the original "
research post", I do mention the Atruaghin Clans and Ethengarians several times. Whenever GAZ10 mentions the Atruaghin or Ethengarians in relation to the "Red Orcs" and "Yellow Orcs", I include an explanatory note saying that, in Mystara, the Atruaghin and Ethengarians are the primary human analogs of Indigenous American and Mongolian culture.
The Glen said:
and [not once has he mentioned the] fact that orcs in Mystara assimilate the cultures of the people they fight against the most. [...] By removing the context behind the races you remove what made those orcs unique to the setting. The Red orcs dress and act that way because they fought for centuries against the Horse Clan before they were separated by an act of divine magic. But the Red orcs still copy the culture of the people that fought them to a standstill. The yellow orcs still fight the Ethengar, and believe by using their tactics and copying their customs they will gain a measure of their opponent's power. The black orcs dress in vaguely Thyatian gear, march in formation, and try to fight like the Legions that they witnessed crush all before them years ago. Orcs copy cultures in Mystara.
Hi Glen, could you provide sources for your various assertions?
I do see some explanations along those lines in GAZ10, which I'll try to document here. Yet it sounds to me like you've taken those examples of humanoids copying an adjacent culture, and then have run with it as a "fanon" interpretation and expanded it. And you're now presenting it as Official Mystaran lore, and justification for whatever ugliness is in the book.
It's not right to say: "Oh, it's all a joke! The humanoids were comedic parodies of human cultural analogs within the world of Mystara. The orcs just copied and parodied cultures. That's just what they do. It's funny!"
That's party true, but that doesn't justify the use of racial slurs, such as "red orcs" and "Asian" "yellow orcs."
I'd ask you to provide concrete evidence for your interpretation of GAZ10. But, I'll try to help. These are the things I've found in GAZ10 which are relevant to your assertion that "Orcs copy cultures." Yet some of the findings are
opposite to what you assert. I may've missed something - so please point me to the texts I've missed.
"1722 BC: Great Horde ravages Norwold and learns Norse culture." [Yes, the humanoids are copying Norse culture. Yet they already have a Mongolian/Turkic motif, since in the real world, the "Great Horde" was a Kipchak Turkic state. The very word "horde" is from the Kipchak Turkic word
orda, equivalent to Classical Mongolian
ord: ]
See:
Great Horde - Wikipedia
en.wiktionary.org
en.wikipedia.org
"1720 BC: Akkila-Khan conquers the southern steppes." [Note: As seen in the name "Akkila-Khan", adapted from real world "Attila the Hun" and the Mongolian title "khan", the humanoids were already Hunnic+Mongolian analogs
before they met Ethengar, Mystara's human Mongolian analog.]
"1711 BC: Great Horde reaches pre-khanate Ethengar." [Note: the humanoids already had a "khan" before the humans of Ethengar, which was in a "pre-khanate" stage. So this instance seems to be the opposite of your assertion that "orcs copy cultures." This text implies that the humans copied the humanoids.]
"1688 BC: Akkila-Khan retires from the world, becomes an Immortal, and takes the name of Yagrai. Unaware of the truth, Ethengarians rejoice. Rise of the first Khan [of Ethengar]." [Again, this implies that the humans copied the humanoids' pre-existing Mongolian-Turkic culture.]
"1305 BC: Wogar tribe moves south, along a major river, following the Great Shaman's floating gri-gri." [There is no indication that the humanoids copied an in-world Vodun / West African culture. The "gri-gri" exists an an unexplained
a priori "given."]
"1263 BC: [...] Tribe continues along the coast to Atruaghin. Learns the use of feathers, war paints, light cavalry tactics, and scalping." [Glen, you're right that this is an example of humanoids copying human culture, from an in-world perspective. But this simply does not excuse the terms 'red orcs' and 'red hides', which are very close to the racial slurs 'red men' and 'redskins.' The reference to 'scalping' is also insensitive. Not so fun.]
"1254 BC: Wogar Tribe splits into three nations. One settles south of Atruaghin." [This would be related to the humanoids' copying of the Atruaghin culture.]
"1299 BC: Vestland trolls miss a turn and pop up in Broken Lands." [The trolls would already have Norse culture, like the humans of Vestland. So yes, this would be an early example of "copying."]
"The old Atruaghin faith of the Orclanders has been supplanted by other races' religions after being invaded several times after the fall of Sitting Drool." PG, p.11 [This is an example of the humanoids copying the Atruaghin faith, and then that faith being supplanted by worship of humanoid Immortals, such as Wogar.]
Citizens of Kol are said to
"love mimicking the Empire of Thyatis, although they do not really understand the difference between a republic
and an imperial autocracy
." [That is another example of humanoids copying a human culture, in this case Roman/Byzantine and Italian.]
The "Naming Your Character" chapter does provide more evidence of "copying." Some humanoids tribes have names which come from:
-"Atruaghin Origins" (Red Orcs) [=vaguely indigenous American, including parodies of Lakota and Apsáalooke (Crow) names.]
-"Ethengarian Origins" (Yellow Orkia and Hobgobland) [="vaguely Mongol" but actually Mongolian, Tibetan, Chinese, and Bhutanese]
-"Ylari Origins" (South Gnollistan) [=Arabic, along with the Ottoman Turkish title "pasha"]
-"Northern Reaches Origins" (Trollhatten) [=Norse]
-"Sind Origins" (Ogremoor) [="reminiscent of India"]
I can find no evidence in GAZ10 for your specific assertion that:
"The Red orcs dress and act that way because they fought for centuries against the Horse Clan[.]"
or that:
"the Red orcs still copy the culture of the people that fought them to a standstill."
Could you provide a source for the "centuries" of fighting "against the Horse Clan", and that the Atruaghins fought the "red orcs" "to a standstill"?
I can also find no evidence in GAZ10 for your assertion that:
"The yellow orcs [...] believe by using [Ethengarian] tactics and copying their customs they will gain a measure of their opponent's power."
This looks to me like fanon storytelling. Which would be fine in other contexts, but in this thread is seriously focused on objectivity.
In regard to your statement:
"The black orcs dress in vaguely Thyatian gear, march in formation, and try to fight like the Legions that they witnessed crush all before them years ago."
I found no evidence for the term "black orcs." Did you invent the term? Much less the assertion that these "black orcs" "
try to fight like the [Thyatian] Legions that they witnessed crush all before them years ago."
Again, this appears to be fanon storytelling. Storytelling which is wielded to justify racial slurs in a Wizards product.
And I read through the entire Orcus Rex chapter again, and I cannot find any reference to your assertion that:
"there's another clan of orcs in the Broken Lands that emulate the Roman legion"
Unless I missed a reference, the Roman/Latin elements of Orcus Rex (such as the name "Orcus Rex" and the term "Legion") appear to be
a priori "givens", with no in-world explanation. The only vaguely related references I can find are these:
"975 AC: [...] The Legion [of Thar] is created. Thyatis frowns at the military threat."
This entry does show that Thyatis's Latin culture existed before the Legion of Orcus Rex, and that Thyatis was concerned with the military threat. Yet there's no indication that King Thar copied Thyatis.
And there's a label on the humanoids' map of the Known World which shows "R.I.P." in Thyatis. Which implies that the humanoids suffered loses there.
But you seem to be spinning a fanon tale out of very slim references.
Or, when you said "emulate" did you mean to speak "out-of-game", like: "There are orcs who are analogs of Rome."
Well, yes, there are Roman/Latin motifs in Orcus Rex, and also in Kol. But then you (confusedly?) mix in in-world statements:
"The black orcs dress in vaguely Thyatian gear, march in formation, and try to fight like the Legions that they witnessed crush all before them years ago."
Which I've found no evidence for.
Nevertheless, you're right that, from an in-world perspective, the humanoids of the Broken Lands have copied:
-Atruaghin (Indigenous American) culture: the Red Orcs
-Northlands (Norse) culture: Trollhatten
-Ylari (Arabic and Ottoman Turkish) names: South Gnollistan
-Sindi (Asian Indian) names: Ogremoor
-Thyatian (Roman/Byzantine culture and the Italian title "doge"): Kol
However, the evidence that Rexian Orcs copied the Thyatian culture, from an in-world perspective, is slim.
And in the case of the Mongolian-based Yellow Orcs and Hobgolanders, the opposite of your assertion appears to be true: the human Ethengarian culture initially
copied Mongolian motifs from the humanoids. And then the humanoids later copied names of Ethengarian origin.
Certain motifs (Turkic-Mongolian and Vodun) appear to be present in the Great Horde before they even encountered the human cultures of the Known World. The Hobgolanders (who have Mongolian-like culture) are said to be despised by King Thar because
"they are direct descendants of Akkila-Khan." (PG, p.9), which implies there's a continuous Mongolian-based culture descended from Akkila-Khan to the Hobgolanders.
I apologize if I've missed some important references. Let me know.
apparently copying the Romans is fine.
As I've said earlier in this thread: if the sections on Orcus Rex or Kol included real-world Roman ethnic slurs, that would not be fine.
I'm going to ignore most of your statements about the Mystara Piazza, since the ENWorld moderator asked me/us to mostly steer clear of talk about other forums.
People have dumped near doctoral theses on that page explaining the problem and their suggestion on the solution and gotten equality long diatribes in response. It's often funny, and quite entertaining.
I don't think racial slurs are that funny and entertaining.
But they take the whole of the setting into consideration, without cherry-picking.
If there were other racial slurs in a D&D product, such as the "n-word", would it be "cherry-picking" if someone spoke up about that?
See the
Wikipedia "list of ethnic slurs", which includes "redskins" and "yellow", for Asians.
Why must we always couch things in such nice, cushiony verbiage, like: "
Hey, overall the D&D Multiverse is great. I especially love the Known World of Mystara. Yet I feel that the racial slurs, such as the n-word, are problematic and bothersome."
Only to receive:
"What! Don't be political! Get out of our forum! Tell it to your legislator! We don't want to hear it!"