+ Writing Prompt: Evil Orcs

[delericho]

I don't use all-evil orcs (or, actually, alignment at all). But I'll take a crack at it...

Human societies have long grappled with how to deal with those who commit crimes. In the borderlands, most societies have hit upon exile as their punishment of choice. Of course, a fair number of those exiled have committed only minor crimes, are victims of circumstance, or are otherwise far from evil. There are some, however, driven out for murder or other heinous crimes.

Meanwhile, there are dark places in the world where the influence of Gruumsh bleeds through and can cause mutation in those sufficiently open to his influence - specifically that final group of human exiles. When those exiles find themselves in the Gruumsh-touched caves, they find themselves mutated - first to become half-orcs, then fully orcish. Those who are particularly evil can become mutated further, losing an eye and becoming the true Chosen of Gruumsh.

Children of orcs are human, and remain so as long as they are innocent (or if removed from the Gruumsh-touched caves early enough). Unfortunately, the cycle of abuse tends to repeat, and so those children almost invariably eventually fall or are slain. Some few, of course, do escape.

Philosophers and moralists note that orcs are not evil because they are orcish; rather, they are orcish because they are evil. They further note that, in theory at least, an orc who renounced evil could purge themselves of the influence of Gruumsh. But this could only be done within the Gruumsh-touched realm, where they would be surrounded on all sides by a community hostile to their intent.

Those soldiers defending the borderlands note that any philosopher wishing to test this is welcome to join them on the wall.

 

[Theory of Games]

Proud Atlantis, Jewel of the Primordial World. Too proud. So proud that the gods took it as insult.

And smashed Atlantis the Great down, drowning her into the sea.

The surviving Atlanteans were cursed into semi-humanoid forms, half swine and half of what they had been. Stripped of their fabulous technologies and spectacular magicks, these people - now called Ork - were left naked with only their rage to clothe themselves.

But rage was enough.

Rage became armor and weapons and the will to take back the world. One hex at a time.

 

[MGibster]

I'm currently running a Greyhawk campaign, and while I don't have always evil orcs, I do have evil orcs. The bad orcs believe it is the nature of the strong to subjugate the weak, so, ipso facto, if they're not out there conquering others it means they're weak and they'll be conquered themselves. For these orcs, every war is a defensive war.

 

[npick03]

I’m very much not an evil Orc person, but I do think there is something to the (for lack of a better term) Tolkeineqsue Orc Archetype. So here goes my attempt:

Born from slaughter, the Orc is not a creature of flesh and spirit, but of blood-soaked memory and ceaseless violence. It manifests where steel and bone have clashed in such terrible numbers that the land itself can no longer forget. Ancient battlefields, sites of massacres, and killing fields where history drowned in blood—these are the birthplaces of the Orc.

Standing like some grotesque mockery of a warrior, an Orc's skin is the color of the dead—ashen grey and cold—while its eyes burn with the red hunger of battle yet unfinished. They appear clad in the remnants of warriors long past, but upon closer examination, what seems like rusted plate and rotting mail is instead chitinous armor, splitting from their very flesh as if war itself had birthed them fully armed.

Their weapons are horrors in their own right, crude but nightmarishly effective. An Orc does not craft or scavenge arms—it grows them. Blades of brittle rust, jagged bones, and sinew-forged clubs are wrenched from within their own bodies, emerging in a spray of viscous black blood. When one is shattered or lost, they merely reach within themselves again, birthing another from the endless stockpile of ruin within.

Orcs never fight alone. When one rises, more follow. Whether bound by some grim purpose or simply drawn to one another like carrion birds, they amass into legions of slaughter. Their tactics are not mindless—each one carries the echoes of countless battles, reenacting formations and strategies lost to time. They march in the disciplined ranks of forgotten empires, encircle their foes in ancient cavalry flanking maneuvers, and even lay sieges using methods unseen for centuries.

Borderland villages and isolated keeps are their favored prey, places too weak to resist their relentless assaults. There is no parley, no negotiation. They speak only in the language of war: the battle cries of dead soldiers, the last gasps of the fallen, and the screams of those whose names have been lost to history.

Orcs do not live, nor do they die in the conventional sense. When one is struck down, its body collapses into a slurry of blood and corroded iron—but that does not mean it is gone. Some claim that when enough blood is spilled upon the same cursed ground, the fallen Elemental will rise once more, a new form growing from the carnage like a weed from poisoned soil. Others whisper that they are bound to the memories of war itself, and so long as battle rages in the world, they can never truly be destroyed.

In some forsaken places, war never ends. The land itself pulses with old wounds, and the Orcs there never stop marching. They do not need food, nor rest, nor reason. Only conflict. Only carnage. Only war.

These Orcs would probably not be playable.

 

[Professor Murder]

If you want evil Orcs, you can just do what I did for a campaign.
Make them Vikings.