Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse
Lord Dagult Neverember once told me, during a drunken tirade, that orcs are fearful of their gods, and, if one plays one’s cards right, they can be controlled through that fear and made to dance to any tune.
— Volo
To feel the thunder of orcish war drums outside the gate and to hear a chorus of voices growling, “Gruumsh!” is the nightmare of every civilized place in the world. For no matter how thick its walls, skilled its archers, or brave its knights, few settlements have ever withstood a full-scale onslaught of orcs.
Every soldier who lives through a fight with orcs tells of confronting a hulking foe that can cleave through a warrior with a single blow, part of a force that can cut down enemies as though they were trembling stalks of wheat before the scythe. Only a skilled and determined hero can hope to survive single combat with an orc.
Savage and fearless, orc tribes are ever in search of elves, dwarves, and humans to destroy. Motivated by their hatred of the civilized races of the world and their need to satisfy the demands of their deities, the orcs know that if they fight well and bring glory to their tribe, Gruumsh will call them home to the plane of Acheron. It is there in the afterlife where the chosen ones will join Gruumsh and his armies in their endless extraplanar battle for supremacy.
Orcs believe their gods to be invincible. They see the principles that define them and their deities at work every day in the world around them — nature rewards the strong and mercilessly eliminates the weak and the infirm. Orcs don’t revere their gods as much as they fear them; every tribe has superstitions about how to avert their wrath or bring their favor. This deep-seated uncertainty and fear comes forth in the form of savagery and relentlessness, as orcs ravage and kill to appease the gods in order to avoid their terrible retribution.
At the pinnacle of the orc pantheon is Gruumsh One-Eye, who created the orcs and continues to direct their destiny. He is aided and abetted by the other warrior deities, Bahgtru and Ilneval, who bring strength and cunning to the battlefield. The followers of all three gods are a tribe’s raiders and ravagers—often the only part of an orc tribe that its victims ever see.
Deep within the den of a tribe, far away from the war-hearth where warriors gather and celebrate, dwell the followers of Yurtrus, the god of disease and death, and Shargaas, the god of darkness and the unknown. Orcs too weak for battle (because of bodily weakness, malformation, injury, or age) often join these cults instead of facing daily humiliation, exile, or death.
Serving as the bridge between the two parts of the tribe are the priestesses of Luthic, the orc goddess who represents both life and the grave. It is her worshipers that raise young orcs to be warriors, and then, at the end of their lives, take them to Yurtrus and Shargaas to be carried into death and the great unknown.
Orcs survive through savagery and force of numbers. Theirs is a life that has no place for weakness, and every warrior must be strong enough to take what is needed by force. Orcs aren’t interested in treaties, trade negotiations or diplomacy. They care only for satisfying their insatiable desire for battle, to smash their foes and appease their gods.
In order to replenish the casualties of their endless warring, orcs breed prodigiously (and they aren’t choosy about what they breed with, which is why such creatures as half-orcs and ogrillons are found in the world). Females that are about to give birth are relieved of their other roles and taken to the lair’s whelping pens, where they are tended to by Luthic’s followers.
Orcs don’t take mates, and no pair-bonding occurs in a tribe other than at the moment when coupling takes place. At other times, males and females are more or less indifferent toward one another. All orcs consider mating to be a mundane necessity of life, and no special significance beyond that is imparted to it.
At 4 years old an orc is considered a juvenile, and by age 12 it is a fully functioning adult. Most orcs don’t live past the age of 25 due to battle or illness, but an orc can live to about 40, remaining healthy almost up until the end. Luthic’s divine blessing can further extend an orc’s life, though Gruumsh is never happy when she uses this power and tends to frown upon the one so “blessed.”
Young orcs must mature quickly in order to survive their perilous upbringing. Their early years are fraught with tests of strength, fierce competition and nothing in the way of maternal or paternal love. From the time a child can wield a stick or a crude knife, it asserts itself and defends itself while learning to fight, to survive in the wild, and to fear the gods.
The children that can’t endure the rigors of a life of combat are culled from the main body of the tribe, taken into the depths of the lair, and left for the followers of Yurtrus or Shargaas to accept or reject. A fully grown orc warrior is well prepared for a lifetime of combat.
When a tribe is on the move, orc warriors are commanded to scour the surrounding landscape for any opportunity to spill blood and bring glory to their gods. Often, bands of warriors work on a rotation, with one group heading out on a raid just as another group returns, laden with severed heads, sacks of loot, and armfuls of food. Warriors also serve as scouts, bringing back detailed reports about the surrounding area so that the chief can plan where to send raiders next.
The territory that orc war parties cover can extend for many miles around the lair, and any encampment or settlement of elves, dwarves, or humans in that area is at risk. If orcs come upon a target that is too large to assault directly, they will lurk along supply routes, taking out their frustration on caravans and travelers. Left unchecked, a tribe can subsist on this sort of prey and booty for quite some time.
Most of the orcs that stay behind when the warriors go on their raids are weaker than their tribe mates or otherwise not suited for a life of battle. Worshipers of Luthic fall into this category, as do some of those that revere Yurtrus or Shargaas. But even these orcs are trained in combat, and all of them are expected to act like warriors if the lair is attacked or threatened. Their numbers are augmented by any orogs in the tribe, which are primarily responsible for making sure that the lair is protected from intruders.
Orcs appreciate physical prowess and formidable combat ability in any form. As such, they might accept other creatures into their ranks from time to time. Orcs have been known to associate with wereboars and ettins, both creatures that can markedly improve a tribe’s murderous efficiency. For a promise of sufficient food and loot, a troll might accompany a tribe temporarily.
A group of orcs can be dominated by evil creatures of immense power, and they accept this subservient role either because they are forced to or because it offers them a measure of security while they engage in their savagery. Green dragons, for instance, sometimes use orcs as sentinels or shock troops. Orcs are sometimes attracted to the service of frost giants or fire giants, who then “reward” their loyalty by turning them into slaves.
If a tribe is defeated and driven from its lair, the survivors might come under the sway of a strong but dimwitted creature, such as a hill giant or an ogre. It is also not unheard of for an exceptionally strong and charismatic evil human to lead stray orcs that no longer have a tribe to call their own.
Orcs live in constant fear of their gods, and their behavior is rooted in that mentality. They believe that they can see the influence of the gods everywhere in the world around them, and the priests of a tribe are entrusted with the responsibility of identifying these signs and omens — both good and bad — and deciding how the tribe should react to them.
As a race, orcs have no noteworthy universal social traits, but some commonality does exist in the crude written communication that all orcs employ and in the way that they use pigments to decorate and distinguish themselves and their lairs.
Orcs believe that any seemingly unimportant discovery or event — a bear’s claw marks on a tree, a flock of crows, or a sudden gust of wind — might be a communication from the gods. If the tribe has encountered a similar omen before, the priests understand how to interpret it, but if a sign from the gods has no clear explanation, the priests might have to meditate for hours or days to get a vision of its meaning. Every group of orcs has particular superstitions and recognizes certain omens. These tenets vary from tribe to tribe, and are often based in events that the tribe has experienced.
Orcs have a written language adapted from that of the dwarves, but they aren’t a literate culture and rarely keep records or write down their thoughts. When orcs need to communicate in writing, they use crude symbols to convey basic information, such as “food stored here,” “danger close,” or “go this way.” A orc raiding party might leave such a sign in its wake, as an aid to other warriors that travel through the same area later on. Mountain guides, druids, and rangers might be familiar with many of these symbols, enabling them to keep their charges from inadvertently stumbling into a tribe’s territory.
Three colors have special meaning to all orcs, and they adorn their bodies, possessions, and lairs with pigments that produce those hues. Red ochre is used to represent blood, grayish-white ash to represent death, and charcoal to represent darkness.
The unwritten laws that govern the status of individual orcs within a tribe are manifested to a degree in how each orc uses these colors on itself and its personal items. For instance, the chief of one tribe might be the only one that has the right to stain its tusks with red ochre, while the warriors of another tribe rub streaks of ash into their garments to signify their safe return from a raid.