Alathra:Orcs

Not to be confused with Raid Orcs.

Orc
Major race
Example appearance
Characteristics
Average lifespan (max)	60 years (120)
Height range	1.47 - 2.40 m (4′10′′ - 7′10′′)
Strengths	Naturally strong and resilient; instinct-driven tactical thinkers; skilled in metallurgy, earthcraft, and sound-powered machinery.
Weaknesses	Culturally rigid; slow to adapt socially or politically; poor abstract thinkers; limited magical affinity.
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Orcs are a broad-shouldered, physically resilient race known for their deep cultural bonds, elemental traditions, and instinctual intelligence. Historically semi-nomadic, orcish communities often follow ancestral paths across valleys, tundras, or high plains. These routes are tied to seasonal rhythms, earthbound rituals, and the resonant “songs” of the land. In some regions, settled orcish cities have emerged, incorporating modular building practices and stone-clay materials that mirror the moveable structures of their past.

Orcish culture centers around a reverence for earth and soil, in their combined symbolic and spiritual meaning. Known also in many cultures as the Children of Earth, orcs hold a spiritual belief that their people were formed directly from the soil and ash of Alathra’s earliest days. The earth is considered both ancestor and memory, holding the wisdom of all who have returned to it.

Orcish temples are traditionally built beneath the surface or into hillsides, shaped into large harmonic chambers or drum halls. These spaces are used for both worship and communication, sound being the primary bridge between orc and stone. Resonant tones, rhythmic percussion, and ground-hum are used in rituals, implemented into technology, and even have their part in diplomacy.

This relationship with resonance has also guided their development of sound-driven machines. Orcish engineering utilizes vibration, pressure harmonics, and voice-activated mechanisms to power tools, machinery, and defensive constructs. These creations emphasize durability, weight, and a raw, rhythmic energy that blends seamlessly into their landscapes.

With skin tones ranging from soil-brown to dusky red or olive green, they are born with pale boar-like stripes running down their spines, which fade upon maturity.

Strengths and weaknesses

Orcs possess exceptional physical strength and endurance, shaped by generations of labor and travel. Their societies are built around shared experience and direct action, with values emphasizing loyalty, resilience, and tradition. Skilled in metallurgy, earthworking, and siege construction, orcs also maintain strong oral traditions that aims to preserve history, law, and myth into memory through song and rhythm.

Their intelligence emerges through lived reality rather than abstraction. Intuition guides their understanding of the world. When faced with immediate threats or challenges, orcs excel at rapid, collective decision-making. Plans are formed quickly, enacted through trust and lived experience rather than formalized chains of command. This makes orcish groups agile, highly responsive, and effective in chaotic environments where adaptability and quick wit are key. While highly capable in practical systems, orcs have limited use for theoretical constructs such as formalized economics, philosophical theory, or symbolic governance. Their legal systems, for example, are often verbal, tied to witnesses, elders, and lineage rather than codified text.

This grounded worldview can lead to structural challenges. Political coordination with other races is often strained by differences in language structure, documentation practices, or speed of decision-making. Innovation that disrupts natural rhythm or balance is typically viewed with suspicion, especially when it conflicts with long-held traditions. This makes it difficult for orcs to engage in long-term development projects or to integrate new ideas unless they are physically demonstrated and proven through direct experience.

Orcs possess little natural affinity for magic, and what few traditions they maintain around it are deeply practical, rooted in physical experience and their relationship with the land. Orcish communities do not teach magic formally, and few orcs develop the capacity to wield complex or unstable forces.