An Empire of Orcs?

As most of you know, The World of Fletnern first began development back in the 80s.  At that time, there were very few games on the market and only one major game - and only two versions of that game.  We’re not going to restart the argument about alignments, but at that time orcs were considered to be Lawful Evil.  The way that was explained by the writers seemed to be that they came together in tribes and villages, and therefore they must be lawful and not chaotic.

OK, that made sense - after a while.  Orcish hordes, right?  But if they did come together, then there must be some manner of “law” - I always thought it was more like a code, or even something more instinctual, like the pecking order that arises among certain herds of animals.  (Yes, I’m thinking pigs here.)  You know, where everyone knows who is more important than they are, and they might fight every once in a while to protect or change that pecking order.

So the question came down to were the orcs a collection of tribes doing their own things?  Or were they actually a country, or better yet, an empire?

Too often, it always falls to money for us.  One of the main considerations was trade.  Orcs are often raiders.  They raid enemies or rivals and take what they want.  Clearly few orcish tribes are so self-sufficient that they can grow crops, raise animals, craft weapons, etc.  So either raiding was the main way that some of them survived and others didn’t, or they were forced to trade with each other.

Well, if might makes right, then this would be right within the tribes and between the tribes.  Therefore the top tribe would impose its will on the lesser tribes.  The current top tribe in Fletnern is the Crooked Sword Tribe, but they’ve only been on top for a couple of decades.

Here’s where we get into the world building more than the game mastering:  It doesn’t make sense that violent raiders would be able to survive in a mountainous region.  They wouldn’t be able to gather or grow enough crops or livestock to survive.  Plus, if they continually raided the neighbors, those neighbors would pull away until there were no neighbors for them to raid, and they would be forced to turn on each other.

And right there is where they were under the previous top tribe, the Vile Ones.  Then the Crooked Swords took over and started to force the more violent raiders to start only going after certain targets.  They took the pressure off the farmer orcs.  They gave land to the rancher orcs.  Then they did something crazy.

Immediately to the east of the orcs’ Gold Mountains, is a stretch of coast line that produces ample crops.  But this land was controlled by humans.  But the humans were between the orcs and the ocean.  They really didn’t have a lot of space to spread out.  They were growing crops, sure, but they had to import a lot of things; things like lumber, building stone, clay and ceramics.

The Crooked Sword tribe reached out to these human villages and offered to bring them into the Wembic Empire.  They would make sure no orcs raided their villages.  They would trade timber, coal and iron for the humans’ crops.

Most of the villagers agreed out of sheer fear, but several of these immediately went back on the agreements they made with the orcs.  Yeah, that worked until the next spring.  As soon as the snows cleared from the mountain passes, the orcs came rushing down.  But! and this part sank in to the various human villages!  The orcish raiders knew exactly which villages kept their word and which didn’t.  They took everything from those who went back on their word and left the faithful villages completely alone.  In fact, they often visited the faithful villages and paid for their lodgings there.

Imagine, orc raiders destroyed your neighboring village, and assumedly some of your kin folks, but then come to your village with niceties and paying for the goods they wish to purchase.  Even more - asking what else it is you need from the empire.

Yes, the point is, this is a different type of orc and a different type of empire.  If nothing else, it will keep your players guessing!

This post was written as part of the recently released The Wembic Nation of the Gold Mountains aka All About Orcs, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one details everything having to do with orcs, but with a mind to making them interesting and far less predictable then they have been in far too many campaign worlds.

We hope we’re getting you interested?  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 64 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.