I have no orcs in my setting.
The role of orcs in my setting is held by 'goblinkind'. Goblinkind is one of the six races of mortal free peoples. Their chief Maglubiyet the Flame-Eyed God is the eldest deity, and is in a sense the senior deity of all creation. Certainly he thinks himself the rightful king for the universe.
After the gods-war, which was started by a quarrel between the god Uman and his son Usurl, and basically erupted into a cosmic family feud, the surviving deities met to discuss a truce and what was to be done with the now wrecked universe. One of the things that was purposed as a solution is that the gods would abandon Sartha, the World, and that in their place the gods make for themselves a servant, after the fashion and stature of the lesser fey but mortal, who they would be responsible for repairing Sartha in the absence of the gods. None of the gods trusted the other gods to allow their existing servants free access to Sartha, and so this new servant would be given the right or power to freely choose which of the instructions of the gods it would obey. The problem was that the gods could not agree on a design for this new creature, and so ultimately they ended up adopting six different designs - one each roughly corresponding to the six families of gods. These six designs are goblins, elves, humans, dwarves, orine, and idreth, and along with fey are collectively referred to as the 'free peoples'.
Sometime after this plan was adopted, goblins withdrew from the world. When they returned, they were 'changed' from the original design, and were creatures of horn and hide and fang. Goblinkind remains to this day a species which is the product of selective breeding and perhaps magical manipulation. They are divided into physical/social castes in a way that the other species are not. They've pretty much openly dropped any pretense of existing to carry out a purpose of repairing the world, and have the purpose of conquering it.
a) The new 'changed' goblins are carnivores, and they greedily will devour the other free peoples.
b) The new 'changed' goblins are less free, in that they only worship Maglubiyet's clan or else are generally impious. They basically show no interest in deities that don't show fealty to the Flame Eyed God.
c) The new 'changed' goblins are repulsive, even to themselves. They don't show a lot of concern for aesthetics, but to the extent that they do, they don't like the way they look.
There are philosophical quarrels among scholars as to whether the new goblins are really 'free people' at all, and are instead frequently viewed as 'lesser servitors' in as much as they seem to be loyal to only one deity. I have my own view of this as the story creator and game master, but I prefer to let the players come to their own conclusions and animate their own characters without word from on high as to what right and wrong are.
Goblins are earth toned, and their skin can take basically any shade that rocks can - from limestone white, to feldspar yellows and pinks, slate blacks, to sandstone red. Jade like green skin is rare, but considered attractive, by other goblins at least, in as much as they find each other attractive at all.
On a meta level, in no fashion are any of the races or ethnic groups of my world intended to be allegories for any real world ethnic group. While I can't avoid there being cultural influences in the architecture, dress, and other cultural trappings of a race, I do not intend these associations to be allegorical. For example, the prominent human Har ethnic group are not meant to be perceived as inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent nor as Hanseatic Europeans, despite drawing influences from medieval India and the Hanseatic League of Europe, and their North African appearance is meant as no more than a representation of their diverse ethnic roots located at the center of many cultural influences and not as commentary on any Mediterranean people. If some commenter tried to connect goblins or Har or Idreth to any real world people group, I'd consider it a failure of either their imagination or my own - either for them not being able to understand that I had more to talk about that real world racial conflicts or for me not conveying how distinctive and I intend all this to be. I resist any attempt to insert your experience of reading my work and use it to supplant my intentions. One of us is failing to communicate in that situation.
While I do think racism is a worthy topic of exploration in a fantasy setting, I consider racism in the abstract a much more interesting topic than any individual real world ethnic conflict. If I wanted to talk about European colonialism I would do so directly in world where Europe and European colonialism actually existed, and not talk about it via analogy by creating a fantasy world. What I wish to talk about is the infinite number of ways humans justify their hatred and inhumanity toward each other, but that's only one thing that I wish to talk about.
As for the 'uglies' like goblins, they exist for numerous reasons. First, as a nod to traditional fantasy tropes as conventional bad guys and to let me reach into all that prior creation and mythic archetypes when I want to. Secondly, to subvert traditional fantasy tropes, which I can only do if they appear to be one-dimensional 'orcs'. Goblins as I present them let me explore an alien concept, of a not quite free people conditioned to expect tyranny. As I explained by giving the backstory, many of the objections to the concept of 'orcs' depend on the assumption that orcs have a parallel backstory to humans, but by making that not quite true I can explore concepts that I couldn't if everything was just different sorts of people with bumps on their forehead.
Contrast also something like gnolls and minotaurs, which in my setting are 'lesser servitors' and are races without free will - they can't choose to overcome their instincts. They are essentially mortal demons, in the service of monstrous beings.
Finally, all of this is hugely subjective and I'm annoyed by how much subjective assessments seem to override the author's obvious intent, much less that some groups think their subjective impressions are objective fact. I'll risk an example, despite the controversy it will likely cause. I recently watched 'Black Panther' with my daughter. She is not 'woke'. She's not trained to see color. For the first half of her life she was raised in a predominantly black neighborhood. She goes to a church that is probably 1/3rd African American. One of her best friends is black. She's not by inclination someone who is sensitive to racial issues, by design. About 3/4s of the way into the movie 'Black Panther' she made a devastating one sentence observation about the movie that absolutely stunned me:
"These people can imagine black people with advanced technology and education, but they can't imagine black people who don't act like animals."
That's a direct quote. She made it, not offended, but laughing at what she perceived as the silly irrational behavior of the characters - this was just after T'Challa is confronted by Killmonger. You see, what's devastating about that quote is how it penetrates the veneer of the movie to get to its underlying assumptions. Technically sophisticated sure, but still having politics that are locked in a notion of leadership and that basically exactly matches a bull animal fighting over a harem. Tribes that see themselves as animal analogies, and who behave accordingly. It's devastating because when T'Challa is first confronted by Killmonger in the throne room, it's actually the climax of the story. The conflict the movie sets up is primarily an intellectual one, and so we expect that conflict to be primarily resolved in an intellectual space - that is in a debate between the protagonist and the antagonist where the vision of the two is actually examined and held up to appropriate criticism. T'Challa's main duty here is to explain why Killmonger is wrong, and there are a ton of things he possibly can say using only the information he has at hand. But T'Challa does not engage Killmonger in the intellectual battleground that is present, and instead retreats to a physical battleground where might makes right. From then on, we have only falling action and a long wrap up where we show T'Challa after some set backs defeats Killmonger in a battle of might.
Imagine how different the story would be if it wasn't just one about animals fighting, and where the topic was given the intellectual seriousness it deserves. Of course, this is itself a subjective impression. Fill free to be appalled that I didn't "get it".
Does that mean 'Black Panther' is racist or demeaning to dark skinned people? No, of course not. Quite obviously the intention of the writer is quite the opposite of that, and quite obviously most people recognize that and respond positively to it. On the net, even I agree it's more positive than negative. And despite the flaws lots of things to admire about the script and the production, including truly strong female characters that aren't tokens plugged into those roles and some initially strong writing setting up the conflict (to say nothing of T'Challa even if it isn't with much explanation taking what I perceive as the correct course in the end). What it means simply is that it perhaps doesn't serve the purpose it was created for as well as it could, or as well as the ideas involved deserve. Bad writing doesn't make a movie racist, and in general the writer's intent should always be viewed charitably.
