#askorc

My trolls and ogres already had tusks, so I wanted my orcs to stand out from them a little more by making them look "smoother" and more refined. Looming Gaia orcs were not really war-like, they were actually quite peaceful and reclusive, so they didn't need the crazy teeth, claws, and horns that some other commoners have.

Ogres and trolls have more naturally violent behaviors compared to orcs. These behaviors are not always malicious though, often it's just "pecking order" stuff. They play-fight a lot to solve problems, this just comes naturally to them, but it does not come naturally to most orcs. Orcs don't need big scary tusks because they settle disputes by speaking instead of biting, and those teeth would just get in the way of speech.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost

In-world answer: Some believe that there are still some extinct peoples that haven't been discovered yet. Orcs, for example, were only acknowledged by the World Athenaeum recently because they spent most of their existence hiding underground, and their civilizations were only discovered because an earthquake happened to expose them. So, we don't really know for sure if there are more! They could be hiding somewhere too, just like the orcs.

Real-world answer:

Here's the very first concept I did for sirenes, from all the way back in 2011. Back then they were called "merfolk" and they were very different, both in design and function.

There was also this elf-like race of centaurs. Not much info about them because the idea was scrapped early on.

There was a species called Felidfolk, which were basically cat-people. They didn't exactly disappear, they just got repurposed into faunae.

That's all I can find at the moment!

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Questions/Comments?

Long-term, I think they would all just end up petering out again. These species went extinct for a reason; because they couldn't adapt to the changing world around them. So I imagine they would be poorly-adapted to Gaia as it is today.

Short-term, Etios Nation would make an effort to protect the gnolls and hogmen, probably by devoting a sanctuary to them on their land.

The World Athenaeum would try to develop a vaccine for the strain of rabies that wiped out the gnolls and jab as many of them as possible as quickly as possible.

I could see Mogdir Kingdom, Seelie Court, and the Unseelie Court setting up special refuges for sprights.

Evangeline Kingdom and Zareen Empire would make an effort to house orcs, maybe by building special protected districts for them until their populations were deemed stable.

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Questions/Comments?

It's a legit question! Unfortunately Athenaeum researchers have no hard answers, but they do have some theories.

It's believed that because overgrown ears are a trait exclusive to males of this species, female orcs may view it as: bigger ears = more masculine. Humans might make fun of you for having big ol' Dumbo ears that stick out from the sides of your head, but orcs see that and think "wow, what a Chad".

As for the big bellies...who the hell even knows. Researchers are a bit stumped on this one because among most other species, a round, swollen belly usually indicates pregnancy or a parasite infection. And those things aren't exactly sexy unless you're into some freaky shit...

It's possible that because the orcs lived in a closed-off, resource-scarce environment, a round belly was seen as a sign of fatness and therefore wealth. It's pretty obvious that male orcs played more of a "provider" role in their societies while females played a supportive role. Males were expected to provide for females, and females were expected to provide for children. A fat belly is a sign that a male orc is good at keeping himself fed, which means he's probably smart, strong, and a hard worker too, because you'd have to be in order to thrive in their underground environment.

According to ancient proto-Matuzan documents (By the way, how stereotypically Matuzan to record something like this...) male orcs would bump their bellies against someone to express attraction. Likewise, females would bump their hips/butt against their crushes. So they really did seem to value these body parts in particular, and the bumping was probably a way to be like "hey, check this shit out. I got it goin' on. Pretty hot, right??"

But of course, this love-language was lost on most other species who were just like "...why does this orc lady keep slamming her booty into me?? I'm just trying to have a good time at the club wtf"

(Needless to say, this did not help their charisma issues...)

The point is, orcs had a very, uh, unique standard of beauty that historians are still trying to wrap their heads around. We may never fully understand it.

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Questions/Comments?

Yep, they're the only commoners that completely lack hair. It's not clear exactly why, although their native homeland was very arid, so that may have something to do with it.

Some researchers theorize that their smooth skin helped them blend in with their rocky surroundings better. Their complexion wasn't broken up by patches of different-colored hair, which made them almost impossible to see against the environment. They were said to be great ambush-hunters for this reason.

Other researchers seem to think their lack of hair helped prevent fleas and disease, since orcs had dense populations that lived in very close quarters.

Realistically, it's probably due to a combination of these different factors. Gaia crafted all of creations to be most well-suited to the area she placed them. Not every creature is perfect, since some traits have to be sacrificed for other traits, but there must have been something about the orcs' hairlessness that served them well during their heyday.

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Questions/Comments?

Well, they're commoners, so they can lie.

There are so many possibilities, I don't think anyone could say for sure. Personally, I believe that if the orcs started out in the Blue Valley rather than the Midland Savannah, their chances of survival would have been way better.

Their main problem was that nobody really had their back. Their lack of charisma meant that making alliances with other tribes was damn near impossible for them. By contrast, humans and fauns may not have been very strong, but they were charming as hell, so they excelled at diplomacy.

Trolls, ogres, gorgons, minotaurs, and cecaelia all have charisma problems similar to the orcs. But unlike the orcs, these other species were strong enough to hold their ground, so it didn't matter what others thought of them.

Conditions in the Midland Savannah have always been rough, resources have always been scarce, and so the local tribes have always been war-like. Conversely, conditions in the Blue Valley were much easier, resources more plentiful, so the tribes were more chill. There were less reasons to fight over shit.

I feel like if the orcs started in the Blue Valley, they would have been able to last until Evangeline Kingdom rose to power, and then the kingdom would have absorbed them and had their back from that point forward. They could have lived under the protection of the kingdom as they fostered a decent population for themselves, then maybe they would've stood a chance.

Just my theory.

(This is sort of how the roshava got by, despite only having one starting tribe like the orcs. They were absorbed into Matuzu Kingdom early on.)

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Questions/Comments?

Etios welcomes all gaians, no exceptions, so they would welcome hogmen and gnolls into their borders with full citizen rights.

However, I don't think these species would last long there. Hogmen have behavioral issues similar to satyrs (except worse) and they struggled to integrate into non-hogmen societies. This eventually led to their downfall as they pissed off everyone around them and had no allies to back them up.

Etiosi dealt with satyrs by kind of shoving them into sovereign spaces (preserves), and they may try this with hogmen too. But hogmen, like humans, are aggressive expansionists. Their cities would quickly grow beyond the borders of their preserves and they would demand more land, food, water, etc. leading to a civil war. Etios would likely end up genociding them all over again.

The gnolls were susceptible to more zoonotic diseases than other species, similar to fauns. But unlike fauns, they lacked the technology/arcane knowledge to overcome it. Etios is a strictly neolithic-age civilization, so gnolls would not have access to the medical technology they'd need to survive long. One good plague would wipe them all out again.

As for orcs, they would be treated like any other commoner in Etios Nation. They would not be allowed to own land or marry, so upward mobility would be impossible for them.

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Questions/Comments?

Lore Masterpost