Fun with Orcs: Gender and Companionship
I unabashedly love orcs. They're kinda the best part of virtually any fantasy (and sci-fi, 40k!) story when they're actually given the time of day to be taken seriously and not just a stand-in for bland and vague minionry. When our D&D group first got together, it didn't take much time for me to slip into playing a half-orc, with my only initial annoyance being that there isn't a canonical option for playing a regular orc-orc.
The write-up below was some background information I put together for my character with regards to the way the orcs find companions and organize their communities. While most D&D societies get into fairly majoritarian territory when it comes to gender and sexuality, I thought it'd be more interesting to create a non-binary gender structure that enforces itself less upon arbitrary lines of social (and physical) violence and more upon some collective diktat of tradition regarding social utility. The orcs, in my mind, aren't slipping into mercantilism or early capitalism, like human societies usually are. The community still comes first. Change is natural, useful, and strongly protected.
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Tukkarh the Firehaired’s
Drunken Wife,
and Other Stories
from the
Orcish South
Faithfully written from the lands beyond our borders and returned to you, the esteemed reader, at the pleasure of the City College’s Board of Stationers by Acalir Acaleth the Younger, son of Acalir Acaleth the Elder.
Among the Clan Rhak-ha, marked with their clan sigil of a white diamond with the traditional southern orcish plaid, the ways of gender and marriage are quite different from our own. Couples—an inappropriate metaphor, to be explained—in Clan Rhak-ha do not hold to the concepts of one partner in matrimony with another for the whole of their lives. This is common among the southern orcs. While most orcs do join together for their lives, it is not a principle vowed or spoken aloud at the bonding ceremony. Instead, orcs vow to bond together as companions for three summers, at which time they will renew their vow, expand it to include another companion, or break it. It is rare, but not unheard of, for an orc to opt to break their vow during a bonding ceremony. Some tell that the rarity of this is perhaps due to its deadliness—orcs unprepared for a breaking of the bond have been known to lapse into a savage rage and a bloody melee often ensues.
Orcs bond with each other not as husbands or wives do, but as companions. Accordingly, they are not bound to only a single other companion. If they wish to expand their companionship, they can do so at the time of their next bonding ceremony. Due to the nomadic lifestyle and short lifespan of the average orc, this expanded family structure helps to provide for the widowed members of a bound companionship, as survivors support and care for each other. It is, among orcs, a most horrible thing to live truly alone.
In this sense, I have used words such as husband and wife, which are not applicable to the orcs. They simply do not have words for such things in their language—if one is married, that person is a companion. Similarly, there is no “man” or “woman” to the southern orcs. The concept of gender exists not as it does for humans, elves, dwarves, or halflings—often intriguing those on the outskirts of those more cosmopolitan races.
Orc gender, if we can call it that, appears to delineate social role more than anything else. I will write this word—gender—but one must recognize that it is a flimsy, paltry metaphor from our society applied upon the orcs of the south. I similarly use words like “he” and “she” when speaking of orcs, even those these twinned limitations hem in the variety of linguistic expressions orcs use to speak about themselves. We have become accustomed to this practice among the half-orcs who roam our city’s streets in large part because of the difficulty on that half-orc’s behalf on clearly explaining and enforcing their own alien customs against the overwhelming pressure of our city’s own cultural history.
I will use these terms, but, in truth, orcs of the south have three common genders, with orcs often transitioning between them in times of need or through personal development and discovery. The three genders include warriors, shamans, and—with poor translation into our common tongue—community-folk.
Warriors tend to show aggression, speak loudly in public, attend to activities like hunting and guarding the clan’s encampments, smithy weapons and armor, and other such duties associated with showing off strength and resolve. Community-folk are more softly spoken in small groups, but are known to take charge when addressing the clan as a public body. If one can think of the warriors as the muscle and the shamans as the spirit, community-folk are the brains behind the clans. In times of war, they develop strategies and maintain supplies. In times of peace, they teach the children, hold public councils with the clan’s chieftain, and tend to the common material needs of the community. Shamans provide religious guidance to the orc clans, as well as serving as historians and magicians. Shamans do not exclude themselves from the normal day-to-day life of an orc encampment—the idea of anyone not attending to the public space is anathema to the orcish way of life—like monks or priests in our city. Instead, it is common to see a group of warriors, community-folk, and shamans drinking together under the same drinking hall roof.
Orcs born into certain families may be more likely to belong to this or that gender—a great warrior’s child is more likely to belong to the warrior gender because that child will know the ways of the warrior and be raised in what is more than likely a warrior’s household. This likelihood is high in times of heightened stability and fertility for the orc clans, as there are enough orcs alive to fulfill each of the important social roles, and crossing over those lines of roles is more optional for the community as a whole rather than necessary.
The sense of what a community needs comes from the communal raising of orcish children. Orcish children live with their parents for night-time protection and lodging, but otherwise spend their days learning the ways of orcish community life. Unlike apprenticeships and advanced grammar schooling among humans, children return to their parents each night when the sun goes down. This averages out the labor of parenting across the entire encampment, allowing warrior and shaman parents to pursue their training and studies freely. While community-folk play a primary role in child-rearing because of this cultural atmosphere, warriors and shamans still teach their children their ways when the children return at night.
It is a common thing for an orc child to adopt the gender of the parents due to the grouping of orcish companions. It is not unheard of to see a companionship to the contrary, but most groupings consist of orcs of the same gender. Warriors often make mates of other warriors; shamans do the same with other shamans.
Orcs do not declare themselves—or are declared—for one gender or another for their life, as is common among most other races. Instead, orcs can drift between or through states of various genders. Talla Bloodsmirk, my guide through the Jonthar Grasslands, was a shaman for much of her life, but became a community-folk shortly after her companion died fighting northern slavers. Other orcs do not settle on a single gender, but inhabit social spaces in between—a warrior with a keen sense of magic and history might move into this liminal space between the two genders. We often speak and think according to poles of social roles—that the warriors are all the same, with their various tendencies, etc., etc. The truth, revealed by these southern orcs, is that there are not strong sticking points. Instead, there is a permanent drift which moves not in a triangle or a line between two poles, but through a whole field of influences and deep valencies.
I would be remiss if I were to convince the reader that this is the case for all of the orcish clans—even all of those in the southlands. It is not, to put the thing simply and clearly. As orcs do not congregate in large, contiguous stretches of countries, city-states, and empires, their societies do not neatly adopt uniformity. Among my travels, I met a half-orc named Urshank Kulgruu—adopting a double name in accordance with other orcish traditions not held in the south, where a second name may be taken as a descriptor, not a true name—who settled in the south. He had traveled throughout much of our known lands and to some places beyond, searching out the orcs in those places and learning of their various customs and traditions. I was told in no uncertain terms that the southern clans—these clans we call southern—are as unique as the eastern clans, the northern clans, the wild despots in the far, barren ends of this world, etc.
I have lived among, for some short time, three southern clans: Clan Rhak-ha, Clan Ullshuk, and Clan Dulmik. The variations between these three clans much resembles the variations between our human states. There is much sameness, but there is also much difference. One hopes, when I tell the tales in this edition, that you, wise reader, will notice these differences between clans and, in accordance with our traditions of tenacious curiosity and fine learning, apply your own theories to the ready volumes of research into these fascinating peoples at the edges of our grand city’s reach.
An Introduction to Orcish Companionship in Their Own Society
Among the Clan Rhak-ha, marked with their clan sigil of a white diamond with the traditional southern orcish plaid, the ways of gender and marriage are quite different from our own. Couples—an inappropriate metaphor, to be explained—in Clan Rhak-ha do not hold to the concepts of one partner in matrimony with another for the whole of their lives. This is common among the southern orcs. While most orcs do join together for their lives, it is not a principle vowed or spoken aloud at the bonding ceremony. Instead, orcs vow to bond together as companions for three summers, at which time they will renew their vow, expand it to include another companion, or break it. It is rare, but not unheard of, for an orc to opt to break their vow during a bonding ceremony. Some tell that the rarity of this is perhaps due to its deadliness—orcs unprepared for a breaking of the bond have been known to lapse into a savage rage and a bloody melee often ensues.
Orcs bond with each other not as husbands or wives do, but as companions. Accordingly, they are not bound to only a single other companion. If they wish to expand their companionship, they can do so at the time of their next bonding ceremony. Due to the nomadic lifestyle and short lifespan of the average orc, this expanded family structure helps to provide for the widowed members of a bound companionship, as survivors support and care for each other. It is, among orcs, a most horrible thing to live truly alone.
In this sense, I have used words such as husband and wife, which are not applicable to the orcs. They simply do not have words for such things in their language—if one is married, that person is a companion. Similarly, there is no “man” or “woman” to the southern orcs. The concept of gender exists not as it does for humans, elves, dwarves, or halflings—often intriguing those on the outskirts of those more cosmopolitan races.
Orc gender, if we can call it that, appears to delineate social role more than anything else. I will write this word—gender—but one must recognize that it is a flimsy, paltry metaphor from our society applied upon the orcs of the south. I similarly use words like “he” and “she” when speaking of orcs, even those these twinned limitations hem in the variety of linguistic expressions orcs use to speak about themselves. We have become accustomed to this practice among the half-orcs who roam our city’s streets in large part because of the difficulty on that half-orc’s behalf on clearly explaining and enforcing their own alien customs against the overwhelming pressure of our city’s own cultural history.
I will use these terms, but, in truth, orcs of the south have three common genders, with orcs often transitioning between them in times of need or through personal development and discovery. The three genders include warriors, shamans, and—with poor translation into our common tongue—community-folk.
Warriors tend to show aggression, speak loudly in public, attend to activities like hunting and guarding the clan’s encampments, smithy weapons and armor, and other such duties associated with showing off strength and resolve. Community-folk are more softly spoken in small groups, but are known to take charge when addressing the clan as a public body. If one can think of the warriors as the muscle and the shamans as the spirit, community-folk are the brains behind the clans. In times of war, they develop strategies and maintain supplies. In times of peace, they teach the children, hold public councils with the clan’s chieftain, and tend to the common material needs of the community. Shamans provide religious guidance to the orc clans, as well as serving as historians and magicians. Shamans do not exclude themselves from the normal day-to-day life of an orc encampment—the idea of anyone not attending to the public space is anathema to the orcish way of life—like monks or priests in our city. Instead, it is common to see a group of warriors, community-folk, and shamans drinking together under the same drinking hall roof.
Orcs born into certain families may be more likely to belong to this or that gender—a great warrior’s child is more likely to belong to the warrior gender because that child will know the ways of the warrior and be raised in what is more than likely a warrior’s household. This likelihood is high in times of heightened stability and fertility for the orc clans, as there are enough orcs alive to fulfill each of the important social roles, and crossing over those lines of roles is more optional for the community as a whole rather than necessary.
The sense of what a community needs comes from the communal raising of orcish children. Orcish children live with their parents for night-time protection and lodging, but otherwise spend their days learning the ways of orcish community life. Unlike apprenticeships and advanced grammar schooling among humans, children return to their parents each night when the sun goes down. This averages out the labor of parenting across the entire encampment, allowing warrior and shaman parents to pursue their training and studies freely. While community-folk play a primary role in child-rearing because of this cultural atmosphere, warriors and shamans still teach their children their ways when the children return at night.
It is a common thing for an orc child to adopt the gender of the parents due to the grouping of orcish companions. It is not unheard of to see a companionship to the contrary, but most groupings consist of orcs of the same gender. Warriors often make mates of other warriors; shamans do the same with other shamans.
Orcs do not declare themselves—or are declared—for one gender or another for their life, as is common among most other races. Instead, orcs can drift between or through states of various genders. Talla Bloodsmirk, my guide through the Jonthar Grasslands, was a shaman for much of her life, but became a community-folk shortly after her companion died fighting northern slavers. Other orcs do not settle on a single gender, but inhabit social spaces in between—a warrior with a keen sense of magic and history might move into this liminal space between the two genders. We often speak and think according to poles of social roles—that the warriors are all the same, with their various tendencies, etc., etc. The truth, revealed by these southern orcs, is that there are not strong sticking points. Instead, there is a permanent drift which moves not in a triangle or a line between two poles, but through a whole field of influences and deep valencies.
I would be remiss if I were to convince the reader that this is the case for all of the orcish clans—even all of those in the southlands. It is not, to put the thing simply and clearly. As orcs do not congregate in large, contiguous stretches of countries, city-states, and empires, their societies do not neatly adopt uniformity. Among my travels, I met a half-orc named Urshank Kulgruu—adopting a double name in accordance with other orcish traditions not held in the south, where a second name may be taken as a descriptor, not a true name—who settled in the south. He had traveled throughout much of our known lands and to some places beyond, searching out the orcs in those places and learning of their various customs and traditions. I was told in no uncertain terms that the southern clans—these clans we call southern—are as unique as the eastern clans, the northern clans, the wild despots in the far, barren ends of this world, etc.
I have lived among, for some short time, three southern clans: Clan Rhak-ha, Clan Ullshuk, and Clan Dulmik. The variations between these three clans much resembles the variations between our human states. There is much sameness, but there is also much difference. One hopes, when I tell the tales in this edition, that you, wise reader, will notice these differences between clans and, in accordance with our traditions of tenacious curiosity and fine learning, apply your own theories to the ready volumes of research into these fascinating peoples at the edges of our grand city’s reach.
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