Orcs

“While their heads might seem to be in the clouds, it is a grave error to mistake that for an inability to tear off yours and toss it to join theirs.” - Reverend Prospera Thetick, cleric of Kullas Aureus

Locations
Orcs prefer to stay close to their ancestral homes on Bracken Moors and the wilderness areas immediately surrounding them. There are also a great number of them in nearby human cities (as servants, soldiers or slaves).

Typical Physical Attributes
Your typical Orc is taller than a Human, strong-limbed and barrel-chested, with greenish grey being the most common skin tone. Orcs are most often seen wearing their hooded purple tunics, which they adorn with various amulets made of bone and wood.

Orcs generally reach maturity at 10-13 years of age, and their average lifespan is shorter than that of humans, around 50 or so years. Anyone or anything over 70 years old would be considered ancient by Orcish standards.

Prevailing values
Orcs live and travel in tribes, or family units of up to 30 members. All tribes honor and respect those individuals known as Way-wise (though this is a crude translation into Tradish which fails to encapsulate the whole of the word’s meaning). The luckiest of tribes are those that have they own Way-wise, who serve as keepers of lore and protectors of Orc bodies as their spirits undertake a journey to the Dreamlands.

Most Orcs still uphold the mystic wisdom of their forebears, and all are said to be able to visit faraway places in their dreams, talk to the spirits of the dead and banish evil spells back at their caster.

Customs
The Rite of Homecoming: once an Orc child reaches the age of maturity, it is traditional that the whole family leave the place and the tribe that they have theretofore called home and set forth to travel together for a year, with the parents all the while passing on their skills and knowledge of the world. After a year has passed, the family turns back homewards, leaving their adolescent child to fend on their own. The child waits for a few weeks before setting on the path towards home alone. Upon reaching their place of origin, the child is thenceforth considered an adult and an equal.

Aesthetics
Tribe-like people with a dash of occult mysticism.

History
Perhaps you couldn’t tell by looking at them today, but you have been told the Orcs were once a peaceful, deeply spiritual people, who spent their days in quiet contemplation and paid little heed to the outside world. All this first changed when the chieftain Kruggh, known to the Orcs as the Great Betrayer, led a group of young, trusting Orcs over the Perianth mountain range and disappeared, never to be seen again. Whispered rumors around the campfires claim that the souls of those Orcs intermingled with Weirdlings in Spawn Gorge and became the Kauno, the night terrors that haunt the lands to the east.

However, the most devastating blow was dealt when the Enkindler invaders from Quillfork arrived, quickly crushing the Orc resistance with their army of battle mages and scattering their tribes wide across the heathland they once called their home. Now little more than refugees in their own land, the Orcs hold a bitter grudge against Enkindlers and are slowly gathering their forces for a counter-strike, although some have been forced to enlist as foot soldiers or servants in Human settlements to support themselves.

Relations
Aureates: Individual Aureates have shown great kindness to Orcish tribes in the past, an act which will not be forgotten. The Commonwealth has issued a statement condemning the invasion, but has as of yet not taken any measures to force the issue. Enkindlers: Generally despised by Orcs because of the long history of hostilities between the two peoples, which culminated in the final invasion of Bracken Moors some 40 years ago. Windborne: Saltbloods: Orcs: Dwarves: Sylvan Elves: Sea Elves: Gieldans: Gieldans are a new people untainted by war, whose philosophy of non-violence and child-like innocence fascinates those Orcs lucky enough to meet one. Halcyans: