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Description

So I couldn’t resist to play around with the Pacific Northwest ecology, and some more of the Beautiful Creatures setting. The forest is completely 3D created and rendered in DAZ Studio.

Orcs, at least in my concept, don’t have names. They use nicknames, but those can change, depending on mood, role and just fashion.

Master and Bitch

Master (more contemporary folks might also call him ‘Sarge’ or something like that) is old for a male orc. Not in the human sense, they’re elves after all, he just managed not to get himself killed.

You note that I made him much more like a distorted elf than some kind of brutish pig-snout dimwit. That was on purpose...

Bitch might just have been another chubby street urchin with a foreseeable choice of careers. Her abrasive temper and her lack of respect for property got her into increasingly severe trouble. When the streets of her hometown became too hot for her to walk barefoot, she ran off to join with some highwaymen or other, that she heard tales off.

She found more than she expected, but she stuck with her resolve. Her knowledge of human security and how to circumvent it, and some talent on raids and heists on top made her kind of, well, uhm…

Usually, archaeologists use some religious term when they have no clue about what is going on, so we call her ‘war priestess’? All right? Yes, I guess we can go with that.

So in between them, they plan the raids and expeditions the tribe makes into human territory. With (my) orcs, a female doesn’t fight except as a last resolve, being judged too valuable for this kind of abuse. So Bitch is more strategically occupied, while Master and the boys do the footwork. Whatever she may look like from the outside, Bitch has long gone native. If you get on her wrong side, she is ‘just as bad as an orc’.

Excuse to the old man.

Now, if I come across a bit mean in regards of old Professor Tolkien and his treatment of races and genders, it’s not targeted at him or his work, but rather an incentive to improve world building. Him, he was interested in shifts of fricatives, Nordic prose and the changes brought upon mankind by industrialization and the Great War, among many things. C’mon, I dare you to do better in his place, but the wall of text on this topic has been raised high enough already without me placing some more bricks on top.

A blind spot?

So let’s get back to our favourite other species, the Elves. Or more specifically, their much maligned Orc cousins. In creating them from Avari by capture and torture, he made a bold move, which would raise all kind of questions for the future.

Unfortunately (this is my personal opinion, mind you), with his moral roots firmly resting in Christianity, he made a few moves too far on the world building chessboard, probably off on the nordic heathen tangent. Oh my.

His creation myth simply doesn’t justify the existence of a basically evil race of nonentities that the heroes could slaughter with impunity. Says I.

The Avari, the dark elves never had their fall from grace. At which point? Because they wouldn’t trust either of the dubious demi-gods which told them contradicting tales in all kind of weird shapes to go or not go and leave their homelands under the stars? Yes, Elves had their moment, the disobedience towards the Valar and the kinslaying at Aqualonde. But the Avari were not involved, it was the Feanorians.

They (all Elves at that) may have been flawed from the beginning – just like the original sin of mankind – but considering that Tolkien did leave out all the more important items – they don’t have an afterlife. Elves technically reincarnate. So no purgatory and no judgement. And there is no saviour in the lore. So Tolkien screwed them on all three sides, so to speak. And he knew it.

Afaik he wasn’t really happy and tried to weasel out of it, but the genie was already out of the bottle. Now, to be to perfectly clear – the Orcs work pretty good in their intended role in the book, which covers only a limited period of time and points of view. But overall, questions remain.

And those questions give them so much potential. Maybe more so than your generic Elves.

The Oliphaunt in the room.

There is of course another huge elephant in the room. Tolkien left out both Orc women and any explanation for their ability to multiply quickly. Tolkien mused that there should be Orc women, but women were a difficult topic for guys being born firmly in the Victorian Age, it seems.

But while they are at least supposed to be there in the case of humans, hobbits and elves (and leaving out dwarves as not to increase weirdness), with orcs there are exactly zilch ever described, mentioned or poetically hinted at.

But more on that later!

And the answer is:

Yes. You wanted to ask it all the time, didn’t you?

Description

So I couldn’t resist to play around with the Pacific Northwest ecology, and some more of the Beautiful Creatures setting. The forest is completely 3D created and rendered in DAZ Studio.

Orcs, at least in my concept, don’t have names. They use nicknames, but those can change, depending on mood, role and just fashion.

Master and Bitch

Master (more contemporary folks might also call him ‘Sarge’ or something like that) is old for a male orc. Not in the human sense, they’re elves after all, he just managed not to get himself killed.

You note that I made him much more like a distorted elf than some kind of brutish pig-snout dimwit. That was on purpose...

Bitch might just have been another chubby street urchin with a foreseeable choice of careers. Her abrasive temper and her lack of respect for property got her into increasingly severe trouble. When the streets of her hometown became too hot for her to walk barefoot, she ran off to join with some highwaymen or other, that she heard tales off.

She found more than she expected, but she stuck with her resolve. Her knowledge of human security and how to circumvent it, and some talent on raids and heists on top made her kind of, well, uhm…

Usually, archaeologists use some religious term when they have no clue about what is going on, so we call her ‘war priestess’? All right? Yes, I guess we can go with that.

So in between them, they plan the raids and expeditions the tribe makes into human territory. With (my) orcs, a female doesn’t fight except as a last resolve, being judged too valuable for this kind of abuse. So Bitch is more strategically occupied, while Master and the boys do the footwork. Whatever she may look like from the outside, Bitch has long gone native. If you get on her wrong side, she is ‘just as bad as an orc’.

Excuse to the old man.

Now, if I come across a bit mean in regards of old Professor Tolkien and his treatment of races and genders, it’s not targeted at him or his work, but rather an incentive to improve world building. Him, he was interested in shifts of fricatives, Nordic prose and the changes brought upon mankind by industrialization and the Great War, among many things. C’mon, I dare you to do better in his place, but the wall of text on this topic has been raised high enough already without me placing some more bricks on top.

A blind spot?

So let’s get back to our favourite other species, the Elves. Or more specifically, their much maligned Orc cousins. In creating them from Avari by capture and torture, he made a bold move, which would raise all kind of questions for the future.

Unfortunately (this is my personal opinion, mind you), with his moral roots firmly resting in Christianity, he made a few moves too far on the world building chessboard, probably off on the nordic heathen tangent. Oh my.

His creation myth simply doesn’t justify the existence of a basically evil race of nonentities that the heroes could slaughter with impunity. Says I.

The Avari, the dark elves never had their fall from grace. At which point? Because they wouldn’t trust either of the dubious demi-gods which told them contradicting tales in all kind of weird shapes to go or not go and leave their homelands under the stars? Yes, Elves had their moment, the disobedience towards the Valar and the kinslaying at Aqualonde. But the Avari were not involved, it was the Feanorians.

They (all Elves at that) may have been flawed from the beginning – just like the original sin of mankind – but considering that Tolkien did leave out all the more important items – they don’t have an afterlife. Elves technically reincarnate. So no purgatory and no judgement. And there is no saviour in the lore. So Tolkien screwed them on all three sides, so to speak. And he knew it.

Afaik he wasn’t really happy and tried to weasel out of it, but the genie was already out of the bottle. Now, to be to perfectly clear – the Orcs work pretty good in their intended role in the book, which covers only a limited period of time and points of view. But overall, questions remain.

And those questions give them so much potential. Maybe more so than your generic Elves.

The Oliphaunt in the room.

There is of course another huge elephant in the room. Tolkien left out both Orc women and any explanation for their ability to multiply quickly. Tolkien mused that there should be Orc women, but women were a difficult topic for guys being born firmly in the Victorian Age, it seems.

But while they are at least supposed to be there in the case of humans, hobbits and elves (and leaving out dwarves as not to increase weirdness), with orcs there are exactly zilch ever described, mentioned or poetically hinted at.

But more on that later!

And the answer is:

Yes. You wanted to ask it all the time, didn’t you?