Orc

File:Placeholder**Orcs** are a humanoid race known throughout Vedar. Orcs tend to be a passionate, bold, short-tempered people known for their strength, their martial ingenuity, and their violent past. Though many of the other races of Vedar tend to look down on the orcs and they are often shunned in both human and dwarven societies, orcs have proven themselves to be tenacious survivors, firm allies and cunning tradesmen.

Orcs' proclivity for 'living in the moment' has given them a reputation as being poor planners and long term thinkers, though they are passionate about what they believe in. They often wear their hearts on their sleeves, not understanding why you would seek to hide emotions. They tend to be enthusiastic about life, and brood about failure for only a short time before moving on.

## History

### Age of Awakening

During the reign of the Elders, much of central Vedar was inhabited by small villages of humans or orcs. The Elders viewed orcs as savage, unthinking brutes and enslaved or slaughtered them without mercy. While enslaved humans were often used as house servants, farmers and even low-level clerks, orcs were almost exclusively used in the gladiatorial arenas, either for sport or to settle inter-Pride feuds. If they were lucky, they may have been used in particularly menial aspects of farming such as digging ditches and canals. Rarely, they were used in mining, though dwarves and gnomes were more commonly used for this work.

Orcs were also used as front line soldiers or cannon fodder in times of war, either between Prides or in hunting other races to enslave them. In human and dwarven settlements across southern Vedar, orcs were only known as brutal slavers - Many did not even know that the raiding orcs were being driven by the elders.

### Age of Heroes

After the collapse of the Elders, Vedar became occupied by the humans and orcs. Due to the Elders' more intensive persecution of the orcs, humans tended to vastly outnumber them and orcish villages could be many miles from others. In many regions, especially in the north where many of the refugees from the Fall of the Elders settled, trade between orc and human settlements was common, and many settlements were comprised of both races. However, over time, relations soured. Many human clerics, learning from their former elder masters, declared the natural superiority of humans over the 'unclean' orcs. Likewise, many orc leaders decreed that the humans were little better than the Elders. Indeed, many human nations of the time practiced slavery, or a form of it (Though there is also evidence of orcs keeping indentured servants). To this day, 'half-elf' is a common epithet used by orcs to refer to humans, especially those of the Aurelian Empire.

Brother Dalrim, a Dwarf monk of the Order of Ostmallen, recorded in xxxx:

> "*Though all the races fought for their freedom from the depredations of the Elders, the humans and orcs are key to the future of this land. After the Fall, the Dwarves tended to retreat north, to their brothers in the mountains, or to the fastnesses of their holds and keeps. The gnomes likewise disappeared, hiding away in their isolated settlements. Many of the orcs and humans, however, had no kin to return to, no land to call their own but what the Elders had claimed dominion over. The land is now full of the descendants of these people, from the people of Aurelia in the west, to those villages that were allowed to remain all those long years so long as they provided tribute in the form of their people and resources to their Elder overlords.*
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> *Those towns that once saw not race but only other survivors have grown cold. Relations soured by human crusades or orcish marauders. Human clerics and orc tribal leaders and shamans waging their wars of words, riling up the common people. The orcs find themselves being pushed further south or east by the greater numbers of humans. In the south, however, exist only older human settlements, ones whose people have never even seen the likes of orcs, and trust them not. Even in the free cities of the Order of Ostmalle, there is no love lost. The Dwarves know the orcs only from the slaving raids they would carry out as hunting dogs of the Elders. Orcs are barred from most of the towns of Ostmalle. So it is heard that they go east, braving the High Pass. A foolhardy endeavour even in the summers, especially to those with no knowledge of the mountains.*
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> *Word comes to us also of a land in the southeast, where orcs can be free. Rumours of this place have spread like wildfire through the orc people. However, the way to this promised land is blocked by the mountains and the rapid waters of the Arauros. The only crossing is the Elven refuge of Coroa, which is most certainly blocked to the orcs, those beasts without a home.''*"
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Even in Brother Dalrim's words above, it is possible to discern the prejudice against the orcs of the time. The Order of Ostmalle prided itself on its neutral record-keeping, but the text is littered with reference to orcish 'marauders', 'tribal leaders' and 'shamans', calling them 'beasts', compared to the human 'crusades' and 'clerics'.

It is not known where word of the aforementioned 'promised land' originated. Some state that it was started by human settlers in an attempt to convince orcs to leave their coveted lands. It is however known that many orcs did attempt the crossing south. Surviving records from the Elven library in Coroa mention a gathering of orcs north of the city that the High King "dealt with, nobly, courageously and justly". This gathering corresponds to a column of refugees, mostly orc women and children, that Ostmalle dwarves recorded as passing through some weeks before. Many orc stories, passed down through word of mouth, tell of travels across the great bay, or across the rapid river. Coroan records also reference orc bodies washing up in the city, particularly in the winter. The edges of the river would often freeze, making the journey across slightly shorter, though no less perilous, and the lack of food would make the refugees more desperate.

Not all orcs fled central Vedar. Orcish settlements, most no longer containing a mix of races or even interacting with human towns, still existed during the expansion of the Aurelian Empire. Many of these orcs had become little more than bandits, lack of trade or protection in unity forcing them to other methods to survive. This, in turn, reinforced human perceptions of the orcs, which made them even more hostile, pushing even more orcs into viewing humans as their enemies.

### Age of Empires

When Tullus Iulius pushed south with the Legions, many of these orc settlements were destroyed. Unlike the dwarves, there was no place for the orcs in the land of Aurelia. The vast majority of the people of Vedar viewed orcs as barely a step above goblins, who were vermin to civilized folk. Interestingly, however, Tullus himself seemed to have more respect for his classic enemy. His Codex on War with the Orc was the first of his Codices and in it he states that:

> "*The Orc is not to be underestimated. He is brutish, an uncivilized savage, true. But he possesses a low cunning that must be appreciated. Many a capable commander has fought orcs with a disdain usually reserved for hunting rats or other vermin, only to be surprised when he finds himself outmaneuvered, flanked and his men ripped apart by his enemy. The Orc does not play at the war games many of these human lords are used to. To many of them, it is a war for survival. They do not take noble prisoners, ready to ransom them back to their families. They have no need for our silly antics of parlay, of chivalry and of courteous combat. For this, many nobles call them barbaric, and simple. And they are. But this must never, ever be mistaken for stupidity. They are our adversaries, and they have an understanding of war, and of survival, that many can only dream of. And if only for that, they are deserving of our respect.*"
> ― Tullus Iulius Praeceptus' *Codex on War with the Orc*
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## Orc Nations

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