Orcs are a foul humanoid known for their savagery. Orc males stand at between six and a half and seven feet tall, while females are typically about six inches shorter. Both genders have large and powerful muscles, though the males are considerably stronger. Orcs have a deep green colored green that is tougher and more leather than human skin. They have large eyes, thick brows, broad flat noses, and small round ears. Their teeth are proportionally large compared to humans and their mouths are larger as well. Their jaws and teeth are quite strong and are capable of biting through wood, flesh and bone. Their cuspids are also pronounced, especially in males. Orc eyes are always black as is their hair on their hair. Orcs very seldom cut their hair though they smear dirt and feces into their hair, which mats it down into a stiff and foul smelling mess.
Even if they were clean, orcs would have a distinctly unpleasant odor about them, though orcs seldom bath themselves unless by necessity (such as having to swim) and in fact often smear their bodies with their own feces. One reason they do this is that they identify each other in part by smell, and can thus smell fellow tribe members from a distance. They also do this to show dominance within the group as the orc's smell dominates the area around him. Dominant orcs often smear their own feces upon their slaves or submissive servants.
Orcs eat all sorts of food, anything they can catch in fact, including bugs, animals, fruits, vegetables, wood, grass, feces of other animals, or even each other. They eat anything from prey that is still alive and squirming to food that is rotten and squirming with maggots. Perhaps because their diet is so diverse, orcs have an incredible resistance to disease and well as poisons. They can be exposed to illnesses, rot, food poisoning, or other disgusting things that would kill most other living things. There are a few powerful poisons that can affect them, but most are poisoned created through alchemy, nothing naturally occurring can phase them. Orcs never get infected wounds and heal from most injuries quite quickly. The bodily fluids of orcs are riddled with diseases and anyone exposed to their bodily fluids could be in danger of getting some unpleasant illness, though the orcs themselves are unaffected.
Orcs are immensely strong, fast, and tough. Their running speed is phenomenal as is their endurance, they can run down all sorts of prey animals and kill it with their hands and teeth if need be. Orcs are powerful swimming and climbers as well as naturally vicious fighters. Orcs have tough skin and strong bones which make them somewhat resistant to many injuries. Orcs live primarily in very hot and humid locations, they do not like the cold and have trouble finding water in arid lands. They feel quite comfortable in hot weather though, and their thick green skin protects them from the bites and stings of insects that are common in hot wet lands.
The sense of hearing of orcs is weaker than that of humans. Because of this, along with their savage personalities, they are very loud creatures. Even in calm conversations with each other in the primitive orc language is like shouting to a human's ears, and their screams of fear or anger can be deafening. When engaged in a fight they often scream, snarl, and grunt to frighten or distract their foes. Orcs engaged in warfare create an unbearable cacophony of dreadful noises.
Orcs' large eyes give them the ability to see well at night as long as their is some source of dim light and orcs are active during both day and night. Their sense of smell is quite well developed as well, they can sense game from quite a distance away and can even tell basic emotional or physiological states of their fellow orcs by changes in that orc's scent. This sense of smell is particularly amazing considering the fact that orcs themselves exude such a foul odor.
Orc are known for their fecundity as well as their brutality. Orc females often stay in a state of nearly constant pregnancy. The gestation period for a pregnant orc female is only 3 months and within a week after giving birth the female can get pregnant again. A new born orc is quite different from a human infant. It is a bit smaller than a human child, perhaps weighing an average of four to five pounds, but has considerably greater physical ability. Orc infants are born with the ability to crawl, see, and eat on their own. Orc mothers, despite having permanently enlarged (though small by human standard) breasts and nipples, do not nurse their young nor do they particularly take care of them. Within the first week or two of life, an orc female will sometimes leave scraps of extra food for her new born and may sometimes protect it from the predation of other orcs - but after that time period it must fend for itself.
The baby orc can crawl quite quickly, can climb, and seek out food with smell or sight, and can otherwise support itself. At this point in an orc's life, its mental ability is more like that of an animal than a humanoid creature, relying on instinct and cunning rather than learned knowledge or practice. The young orcs stay on the periphery of their tribe eating scraps left by adult orcs. The scent exuded by baby orcs can be recognized by other orcs in the tribe and makes adult orcs less inclined to kill or eat the babies, though they will do so if other sources of food aren't easily available. By the time an orc reaches the age of one year, it can walk and run and interact with other orcs on a very basic level. By the age of five it begins to enter the orc community and learns its place in the tribe. By the age of ten, the orc is fully mature and is a full member of the tribe. The years between five and ten are dangerous for young orcs, as more fully grown adults may see them as a threat and may kill and eat them. The males are in particular danger as they are seen as threats by the adult males. During these years, young orcs will usually show total submission to dominant adults as to do otherwise would be exceedingly dangerous.
For the next twenty years, orcs slowly grow in size and strength, though by their thirtieth year they begin to show signs of age and their physical prowess diminishes. When adult orcs start to show signs of age and cannot defend themselves as well, they are usually killed and eaten by younger and more vigorous adults. Few orcs live past the age of forty. Females are more likely to live longer as they tend not to be as competitive with each other, though even they will be slain by their fellow tribe mates when they become too weak or if the signs of age make them less desirable to dominant males. At birth, males outnumber females by more than double, but by adulthood they are considerably closer in number and by the age of twenty females considerably outnumber males.
Orc society is based almost entirely upon dominance and submission which is determined by violence. Orc tribes vary tremendously in size from ten individuals to several hundred. Because orcs can reproduce so quickly or die off so quickly from conflict, the size of a single tribe can fluctuate tremendously over a relatively small period of time. Tribes are lead by a group of dominant males, sometimes this can be a single strong male for a small tribe or as many as twenty males in tribes which number in the hundreds. These males are often more closely related to each other than others in the tribe and gang up on and kill other males or groups of males which do not show submission. In an orc tribe, submission is shown sexually, with the dominant male having intercourse with the female or submissive male.
When a male refuses to show dominance to the leaders of the tribe, there will be a fight. Orcs know no sense of honor or fair play, they fight as ferociously as they can and use superior numbers to their advantage in such battles for dominance. Frequently, the victorious males bite off the genitals of the losers before raping them, permanently turning the defeated males into mutilated eunuchs and rendering them forever submissive. Just as often the defeated males are killed by the victors or other members of the tribe in a frenzy of bloodlust. Females also fight to show dominance, but usually only against each other and young or castrated males. Females usually only kill other females when they see that one of their sisters is becoming to old and weak - at which point they fall on her to devour her.
When orcs fight for dominance, frequently even uninvolved orcs will join in the battle. Orcs become excited at the site of violence and their instincts direct them to take the side of the victor. When two orcs or groups of orcs fight, others look on screaming and grunting with excitement until one side seems to start gaining the upper hand. At that point, the previously uninvolved orcs fall open those who appear to be losing and attack them ferociously in an orgy of bloodshed and sadism. It is only because of the natural toughness of orcs that losers survive to be castrated.
Battles for dominance within an orc tribe usually only occur if the rival males believe that they can defeat the dominant ones. Orcs understand superior strength and superior numbers and will seldom attack if they know they will be defeated. Often if some event happens which leaves a dominant male or number of males dead or in a weakened position, then another group of males which had previously been biding their time and showing submission will rise up and attack the dominant group. There is little loyalty or trust within an orc tribe, a weakened or defeated orc will be killed by even his closest former allies once his weakness has become evident. Sometimes even dominant orcs kill each other or fight over dominance if one shows too much weakness or vulnerability.
Orcs virtually all love to see pain inflicted on others and to inflict pain when they are able. Should a defeated foe be still alive or an animal caught and wounded, the orc to take great delights in what ever pain it can inflict upon the unfortunate target before it can die. Orcs seeing others in pain will typically burst into fits of hysterical laughter, sounding like a cross between a screaming ape and a braying mule. Other orcs will join in the fun, prancing about laughing and pointing or trying to get at the victim themselves if they are not submissive to the orc already inflicting the pain. Orcs are also highly lascivious by nature and when not hunting, waring, or fighting for dominance they are copulating. Females are not as profligate as males, but still always submit to the dominant males because it would be dangerous to do otherwise.
In conflict, orcs have neither bravery nor cowardice. They see the world in terms of dominance and submission and operate on a pack mentality. When orcs sense submission in a foe, rival, or even a tribe mate, they will act upon that feeling and exert their dominance as aggressively as possible. Should another creature show bravery or confidence to the orc, it will be wary of attacking and will likely only do so if it has superior numbers or the element of surprise. When a number of orcs act boldly and with confidence, it inspires such confidence in their fellow orcs and the entire group can work itself up into a frenzy where they are virtually fearless. Along the same lines, fear or uncertainty is contagious among the orcs and a single act of cowardice can soon send the entire tribe fleeing even if there is no evident threat. Other emotional states can pass quickly among orcs as well. When excited, orcs will grunt and snort and thrash about, and when one orc is so excited many others will follow suit even without knowing what the cause of excitement is.
Castrated males become considerably more passive and docile than their intact brethren. They are also more clear thinking and less likely to be swayed by the pack mentality. They are some of the few orcs that have the patience to craft any sort of useful items such as stone knives or spears. Castrated are usually slaves to the males who defeated them in combat and are frequently used to do work for the dominant males, craft items for them, or please them sexually. Castrated males are the lowest adults within the tribe, and suffer abuse even from females of the tribe and must often eat the very worst food that others have discarded.
Outside of a few stone age items which are crafted by tribal castrati, orcs have no real technology. Orcs wear no clothing and construct no shelter, though they sometimes take refuge under fallen trees, within caves, or in dwelling built by other races. They have no knowledge or understanding of writing, no ability to refine ore, most tribes don't even know how to make or maintain fire. The orc language itself is exceedingly primitive, having only words for very simply and primal concepts. Orcs have quite a low intelligence by human standards, perhaps as low as fifty or sixty on average if their IQ could be tested, with the castrated males being higher with IQ's about ten points higher than before their mutilation.
If orcs find themselves at war with other races, they will steal weapons if they are able, though most tools are complicated for orcs to use. If some non-orc settlement is raided by orcs, the orcs will usually kill and devour all living creatures they encounter, delaying death only long enough to rape the victims or torture them. In some cases though, the orcs will make slaves from the few living prisoners they take from an attack. These slaves are subjected to terrible cruelty and abuse, and few live very long, though sometimes such prisoners can be forced into creating items of value for orcs, such as advanced weapons, or doing labor which orcs lack the intellect or patience to complete themselves. Though have have little intellect, creativity, or cohesiveness, orcs can reproduce so rapidly that they can successfully conquer areas by extended wars of attrition where they periodically raid other races' settlements and then replacing their number more quickly than their foes can. Because of this, it is not completely unknown for ruined cities to be filled with orcs who killed off the original inhabitants years ago and still dwell in the dilapidated buildings and use old rusted or damaged weapons taken from their defeated foes.
Though dominant males, or groups of them, usually lead the small tribes of orcs that are a plague to civilized and even to savage creatures, it takes a special kind of orc to form a an orcish horde. One such kind of orc is a hag - a hag is a female who survives long enough to essentially go through the orc equivalent of menopause - something that happens at around the age of fifty. Of the minority who hit menopause, very few survive more than a few years afterwards. At that age, a female orc's body starts to shrivel and become considerably slower, weaker, and more fragile. More bones grow smaller and less dense, her breasts shrink to nothing, causing her to shrink, her skin turns a sickly yellowish shade, her hair falls out in clumps, and she smells of weakness and old age. Elderly orc females become nothing more than skin and bones and are easy prey even for juvenile orcs. The reason why it is they who become leaders of large groups of orcs is that at this advanced age, some orc females can begin to tap into innate magical power which was unavailable to them in their youth.
Though an orc's body withers when she reaches that age, her mind becomes stronger. Like orc males who are castrated, she is freed from the inner rage and instincts which drive orcs to mindless violence. Her ability to think and reason increases dramatically as does her willpower, making the hag the mental equivalent of many humans. As her physical abilities decline and her intellect decreases, most orc hags begin to realize that staying with the tribe will result in their eventual death and then leave to seek out a life on their own. This transition is difficult for many orc hags to make, particularly before they begin to manifest any real magical abilities, especially as their bodies lose their vigor. Sometimes it takes years after the change before powers start to develop, sometimes it happens immediately before the female orc even begins to decline physically. The sooner her powers develop, and the more powerful they are, the more likely she is to survive.
For the most part, the magical powers of the orc hags develop naturally and then are enhanced through practice. Some of the first abilities they develop are subtle, such as prophetic dreams or the ability to supernaturally sense danger. These subtle powers are usually the first to develop. As time progresses, the orc hag gets more overt power, though the individual abilities vary from hag to hag. Some have the ability to become invisible or blend in to their surroundings, others can summon and control a yellowish acidic mist that they can use to strip the flesh from their foes, some can even control the minds of their fellow orcs. There are some hags who can bring a semblance of life back to a dead creature, making it a lifeless automaton under the command of the hag. Virtually all hags develop some sort of divination ability, other powers are more variable. Over the years as hags use these abilities, they grow in power and scope. Hags can live for several decades after becoming hags, sometimes longer if they use their magic to prolong their life or increase their health. Hag magical rituals are, like orcs themselves, primitive and bloody.
Many of the more powerful abilities of hags must be developed over time or learned from other hags - often times the divination abilities of one hag will lead them to seek out others from which to learn from or to ally with. At some point, a hag will become powerful enough in using its magic, or make enough allies among their fellow hags, that they can return to orc "society" not as weakened outcasts but as masters. When a powerful orc hag returns to her tribe, her fellow orcs will see and smell her age and weakness and will immediately seek to kill and devour her, though by this point a display of her magic should be enough to cowl the other orcs into submission. Once a hag, of group of them, gains control of a tribe of orcs, then the tribe becomes vastly more dangerous as it has a reasonably intelligent and capable leader.
Hags have progressed beyond the point where they crave sex or mindless violence. They do not, however, ever grow past the orc lust for power and dominance. When a hag's mind develops, she begins to see dominance on a scale that few others orcs can conceive of - she begins to imagine ruling many tribes, of creating nations, of having numerous slaves bow down and show her obedience. This is why she can so often be dangerous, because she has the intellect and drive to attempt to make these things happen - sometimes orc hags even succeed. It is when multiple tribes of orcs are united under s single ruler that you get what civilized people call an orcish horde.
Orcs under the rule of a hag operate a bit differently than typical orc tribes. The dominant males submit themselves to her and become her enforcers while the eunuchs of the tribe become her personal assistants and servants. As the hag recognizes the superior mental abilities of orc eunuchs, she can utilize them in ways that they seldom experience in a normal orc tribe. This can sometimes consist of learning to make more advanced weapons or dwelling. Hags can also see the potential of having other hags in her service and will protect aging females who show the potential to become hags themselves. The ruling hag must be careful in doing this, as hags always have ambition and loyalty is a sentiment unknown to orcs - it is not unknown for orc hordes that are ruled by multiple hags to collapse as the hags fight amongst themselves. Hags are also sometimes known to ally with other races, sometimes even selling the services of orc warriors as mercenaries in exchange for advanced weapons, secrets of crafting certain goods, or even jewels or baubles which some hags find desirable. On occasion, some solitary hags will even sell their services to non-orc groups if she sees that it might benefit her.
Male orcs also undergo a transformation when they reach the twilight of their lives. Even fewer male orcs than females reach an advanced age because of the fierce competition between males and the violent lifestyle they live. As soon as a dominant orc male starts to show sign signs of weakening with age, or when it loses its friends who helped to keep the less dominant males in line, then it becomes prey to younger males who seek dominance themselves. Sometimes though an orc male of advanced age can escape from the tribe and survive on its own, much like a hag might. Older males have an even more difficult time than females do, because they have the smell of an enemy male and will be sought out by bands of dominant male orcs. So an older orc male must be crafty to make it on its own for a prolonged period. By the time of a male orc's fiftieth year, it begins to undergo a strange transformation that is totally unlike what the hag experiences.
The elderly orc male develops a ravenous appetite and begins to eat prodigiously, feeding new growth in its body. The orc's bones grow larger and thicker, becoming significantly stronger than it ever was before. Its skin darkens and becomes thicker and tougher, like rawhide or boiled leather. Its brain grows as well and it becomes more cunning and intelligent, though they remain just as violent, sadistic, and libidinous. All of the orc's hair falls out and its eyes seem to sink into its head, becoming darker and more fearsome looking as the sclera turns a shade of dark brown.The creature the orc becomes is commonly known as an ogre. A fully developed ogre, one between the ages of sixty and seventy, can be over ten feet tall and is likely to weigh between a thousand and two thousand pounds though they can get much larger. Ogres will live for several decades after making this transformation, continuing to grow larger each year until its heart gives out from the stress of supplying blood to such a massive and powerful body.
Most ogres continue to live on their own, becomes solitary apex predators of the jungles that orcs inhabit. A solitary male ogre will kill almost any creature that it happens upon, especially other which it will frequently rape to death before devouring. Though a minority of ogres return to their former tribes (or another tribe) for much the same reason that hags do - in order to rule over them. When an ogre returns to a tribe, it will usually slay most or all of the males in the tribe - often takings its time and torturing them for its own amusement before eating them alive. In some cases it may be possible for an orc tribe to fight off or even kill an ogre, though usually an ogre is smart enough to select only smaller tribes for attack, picks off dominant males one at a time, or waits until the tribe has some other conflict. Male orcs who are particularly submissive or helpful to the ogre may be spared, but they will also be castrated so as not to become a threat or competitor for mates. The ogre then claims every female in the tribe for itself, ruling with an iron fist and usually kills or castrates any male orc which is born. Ogres naturally dislike each other, but are also shrewd enough to not attack fellow ogres on sight and may sometimes even ally with them in certain situations, though they will usually strike out against the other ogre when a good opportunity presents itself or when the other ogre's utility has outlived itself.
Ogres and hags have no love for one another either, as they both see each other as rivals in leading other orcs. Often a hag's magic is not powerful enough to counter the physical strength and resilience of the ogre combined with its intelligence - in which case the hag will typically end up as a meal for the ogre. In some cases though, a hag with the ability to control the minds of orcs will be able to force an ogre to her will - in which case she will have an extremely powerful and fearsome bodyguard. Some particularly knowledgeable hags have even been known to help protect elderly male orcs from their pack mates so that they might develop into ogres - though doing this would be madness if the hag had no way to control those ogres. Having ogre servants can sometimes be dangerous for hags though, as it is allying with other hags, as ogres are strong willed and cunning, they do not like being another creature's slave and on a few occasions an ogre has cast off a hag's mind control and devoured her. In some cases, hags can control ogres not by magic but through guile, by letting the ogre rule openly while the hag manipulates it into acting in accordance to her will. Only a minority of orcs have the potential to become either a hag or an ogre and only a minority of those ever get the chance, making each creature rare meetings between them rarer still.
Orcs live in the lands far to the south and west, where there is frequent rainfall and constant heat. It is in the thick jungles, rain forests, and nearby tropical savannah that orcs most often make their home. Orcs have a natural affinity for the heat and wetness of this climate, their thick green skins protecting them from insects and providing them with camouflage in the lush flora of the southwest. Orcs wear no clothing and make no shelters, though they do sometimes dig out small pits that they fill with mud and feces which can provide them with a more comfortable sleeping place or congregate under a tree's canopy for protect in a rain storm. Since temperatures of the jungles never become that low, the orcs can survive without shelter to clothing, though in seasons when it becomes uncharacteristically cold, orcs do nestle together for warmth. Hags, being more intelligent than other orcs and also more physically frail usually find, build, or have built for them some kind of shelter - though by the standards of other races this structure is usually quite primitive. Most orcs tribes do not use or know how to start fires, they don't need them to stay warm, cook food, or to aid in building civilization. If a tribe does have fire, it was usually introduced by a hag or ogre and either maintained by them or by eunuch orcs.
Orcs have very little in the way of culture. Orcs have no art aside from smearing themselves and their hair with feces. They have no true music to speak of, though sometimes they will begin screaming, snarling, beating rocks or sticks together or otherwise making load noises as a group and they get some measure of pleasure in the shared experience of making this noise. Orcs do have a language, though it has far fewer words and a smaller range of concepts than the languages of most other races. Orcs have great difficulty learning the language of other races and usually hags are the only orcs to do so unless they have been captured and forced to learn the alien language at a young age. Orcs do have one major past time that would be seen as a culture to other races and this is storytelling. Orcs like to tell each other stories about great events, essentially legends of the past, though these stories usually involve self aggrandizement on the part of the orcs. Orcs have no compunction about lying and do both to make themselves seem better than they are and to make their stories more interesting, and being of low intelligence their lies are generally poorly thought out or outlandish in nature, though many orcs cannot discern this. Female orcs particularly like to spin tall tales of incredible events they have seen or personal accomplishments, while male orcs generally try to least least base their stories on some event they have witnessed to heard tell of. Submissive orcs generally remain silent as their masters speak or when they do tell stories, they tell of the fighting or sexual prowess of the dominant orcs in order to ingratiate themselves to them.
Orcs have no religious or moral beliefs to speak of. Orcs are terrified of death, but never discuss or really even contemplate what happens before or after death or why life exists or if there is any meaning to it. For orcs, the only meaning in life is found in sex, eating, exerting dominance over others, and avoiding death or injury. There does seem to be certain spiritual ideas among the hags - usually involving a belief in the cyclic nature of existence and the reincarnation of souls. Some of the more spiritually inclined hags say that their ability to look into the future is actually their ability to remember the events of a past cycle in a another life. When hags congregate, they sometimes discuss these ideas with each other. Normal orcs generally fail to comprehend such ideas as there being an afterlife or indeed a past or future at all and the ignore or quickly forget any such ideas that they are exposed to.
