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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 5981280" data-attributes="member: 87792">I think I can do better than [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION];   It is commonly said that an orc was born with an axe in his hand and a desire to fight. This is a slight exaggeration. But what is certainly true is that orcs are shaped by their biology and upbringing and most of them do see the world as a challenge to be conquered.  And every adult orc is a survivor against brutal odds. Orcs, almost uniquely for civilised species, are egg laying mammals with an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory" target="_blank">r-type reproductive strategy</a> - and an average orc female lays about one egg every week, almost effortlessly and painlessly, and no male is needed to fertilise these eggs. The mother at that point stops worrying about her egg (if she were to worry about them all she'd go crazy), and about a week later from the egg hatches a 6" long orcling, already able to walk, speak orcish, seek food, and fend for itself. Which it has to because no one else is going to do it for them. Life for a newly hatched orcling is hard and, indeed, less than one orc in a hundred reaches adulthood at the age of six or so [some form of metamorphosis?]. These orcs have almost invariably learned that the world will kill them if they don't kill the world first, to team up to bring down prey much bigger than themselves, and very little in the way of order or discipline. And most of them use the same tactics to bring down towns that they learned first on small dogs and later on bigger game. Fortunately orc bands more than two dozen strong tend to fall apart and take each other out, and orcs regard orclings as even more of a pest than other races do. This r-type strategy, of course, makes orcs an almost perfect race for any would-be evil overlord looking to create a horde. Orcs spawn fast and if you only lose two thirds of the orcs through fairly brutal training you still have a horde of highly trained (although unimaginative) shock troops. 52% of orcs are male, probably because Gruumsh is, but there is no theoretical need for male orcs and indeed there have been orcish societies that decreed all male orcs to be killed.  If an orc is raised in an environment where there isn't a 99% chance of death before they reach adulthood, orcs learn well and can make good artists or even wizards.  This is amply demonstrated by the civilised orc societies that made good neighbours.  In every case such a society has somehow restricted their birth or hatching rates, then parenting the few orclings allowed to live.</blockquote>

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