Sword & Sorcery: "An earthier sort of fantasy" discussion

Orc-readers unite! You have some competition from the GOBLIN crew....but you have a head-start since many of you began discussing Orcs already (Link to previous ORC thread).

With members of this group writing about ORCS, there should be plenty to talk about. Any short story, work-in-progress, classic, shared-universe, etc. will do. (Warhammer, Forgotten Realms, Tolkien). Are you an orciphile? orc-phobic? Well there is plenty monster-erotica that is fair game too...

Anyway, pick a side: ORCS or GOBLINS!

Scott Oden had a nice comment in the ORC thread that listed a bunch of ORC books:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

In addition to that list, group members (Scott, Charles, Ashe, Trey and other) also have books/shorts on line. I am sure I missed some, so I invite all to chime in on their own works and spur discussions.
Harvest of War
Of Prisms and Shadows
Amarante: A Tale of Old Tharduin
Ashe's Grimluk

My story is just the first chapter as an excerpt at the moment. Book is going to be out this summer!

I'll get together my thoughts on Scott and Charles's stories and some thoughts on other things I've read and post them up in the next few days.

To most members of civilized society (and to a goodly number of adventurers along its edges) an Orc is an Orc is an Orc. They are all nasty, brutal creatures who bear no love for the civilization upon which they prey. The sole distinction is whether or not Orcs are the slayers or the slain. But, to an elite cadre of scholars, the study of Orcish affairs and taxonomy is a worthy addition to the corpus of Human knowledge.

Like Man, the Orc comes in a variety of shapes and sizes -- from the monstrous Greenskins of Azeroth to the spindly-legged Goblins of the Misty Mountains. But regardless of their relative size or locale, it is an unassailable fact that all Orcs belong to the genos Orco and can trace their evolution back to a common ancestral species, Orco archaeos. This species was first discovered and described by scholar and author JRR Tolkien. He postulated that Orco archaeos was a slave-race, beholden to higher powers for their will and focus; indeed, through his work on the translation and dissemination of the Red Book of Westmarch, Tolkien discovered copious anecdotal evidence to support his thesis.

But in the intervening years since Tolkien's discovery, other scholars and adventurers have added to the state of Orcish affairs by finding evidence of the existence of a myriad sub-species of O. archeaos. In 1976, renowned artists the Hildebrant brothers unveiled the first of many such sub-species, Orco archeaos varanidae (known in scholarly circles as Hildebrandts' Orcs). Based on sketches on indeterminate origin, the paintings showed creatures that were obviously O. archaeos in shape, but with heads that resembled a nightmarish marriage between a pig and a monitor lizard. Questions were raised, and much doubt was cast as to the validity of the Hildebrandts' discovery until the following year, when insurance salesman-turned-amateur taxonomist, EG Gygax, revealed that he, too, had come across a deviant branch of O. archeaos.

Dubbed Orco sus gygaxia, the Pig-faced Orc, Gygax's discovery spread like wildfire. It caused quite a stir in the salons and parlors of the world -- but that very same world benefited from Gygax's popularity; his influence, and that of Tolkien, spawned a whole generation of scholars. Interest in Orcish affairs soared, and soon new discoveries were being made.

In the early 1980s, in England, a discovery was made that set the scholarly world on its ear. In the cellars of a workshop in central London, workers unearthed a near complete skeleton of an entirely new species of Orc -- larger and hardier than O. archaeos and without any of the porcine features evidenced in O. sus gygaxia. After months of reconstruction and postulation, an unnamed member of the workshop declared the specimen to be Orco necans, the "killer Orc", of the variety known as chlorodermus, or "greenskin". Perhaps Greenskins were invaders from a distant land or world, who interbred with the local strain of O. archaeos; perhaps they were a parallel evolutionary species. Whatever their origins, the spread of O. necans chlorodermus was well-documented via findings brought to light in the latter part of the 20th century.

One of the defining features of O. necans over O. archaeos was not the propensity for hulking builds or green skin, but rather a shift in the mindset of researchers. Tolkien's treatise on O. archeaos emphasized their slave nature: they were servants to powers greater than themselves, footsoldiers as well as fodder; O. necans, however, often acted under their own agency. They were conquerors, tribal or clannish raiders prone to violence and only marginally intelligent -- though some scholars have proposed that strains of Orco necans who fit the classic definition of le bon sauvage must surely have existed (see C. Golden's work on the history of Azeroth). Between the two polarities, the slavish Orco archaeos and the headstrong Orco necans, dozens of authors and historians have staked their claim, from M. Howell's radical thesis that O. necans was a defeated and exploited race similar to the American natives of the 19th century, to S. Nicholls' translated journals of a freedom-loving band of O. archaeos. But, dim-witted or stoic, slave or free, the Orcish character remains intact and visible through their many permutations.

Over the next few years, we're poised to witness a new renaissance in Orcish affairs, with C. Pramas's unified treatise on the history of Orcish warfare seeing the light of day, along with S. Lauderdale's voluminous bibliography of all things Orcish nearing completion. And a forthcoming volume by A. Armstrong posits the existence of a new branch of O. necans chlorodermus. Add to that my own research into a heretofore unknown species of O. archaeos: Orco archaeos nordica, the Norse Orc, which is well-attested to in the fragmentary Lesser Gylfaggining . . .

In all, it's an exciting time to be a scholar of Orcish affairs!

(Originally posted on my blog in 2011, updated for this venue)

Scott wrote: "To most members of civilized society (and to a goodly number of adventurers along its edges) an Orc is an Orc is an Orc. They are all nasty, brutal creatures who bear no love for the civilization ..."

Wow, that's a definitive orc comment! Looks like you have two blogs, with the wordpress being more current. Here are Scott Oden's blog URLs:


https://scottoden.wordpress.com/skald...
http://scottoden.blogspot.com/

I'm in the process of recovering posts from the blogspot address before phasing it out. The wordpress blog will be their new home.

In the context of that lovely post, you could probably argue that my Orcs are a combination species of slave and killer. Though their temperament has come along way since their ancestors and on top of that, they've evolved culturally. No longer just nasty brutes enslaved by a dark lord, they've learned the value of compassion and kindness. But in battle, you still might have your arms ripped off. And not a better demon-hunter can be found.

Actually, this is now making me wonder if I should include a brief prologue on the history of my Orcs. Something I could use a standard primer for each book. Gonna have to think on that hard.

Also, in respect to other works than our local scholars, I decided to see if a random Orc book I found on Amazon was worth buying. The book is Orc: It's Not Easy Being Green, and after reading the sample, I've concluded that it is not worth reading and seems to almost entirely be made up of strange takes on "madcap" humor and laughing at bodily fluids. I fully admit that I can laugh at poop jokes with the glee of a toddler but between the sample for that and a sample from another of the author's books, it just comes off as boring and forced. Like the X Movie series (Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Scary Movie).

Now, saying all that, I could be completely wrong about the book but I'm really gonna doubt it. The cover's kind of shit and it's subtitled as "a comedy novella." And the protagonist's name is "Toenibbler." It seems like a really bad D&D parody.

How would this august assembly categorize kobolds in this discussion? Orc, Goblin, or "Get out of here, vermin"?

Ren of Atikala

I think if you look up the definition it is a goblin or hobgoblin

Goblins. On the grounds that they, like goblins, spring from folklore and not fiction. Also, very like them in their house-dwelling habits, like brownies. Indeed, since kobolds also were mine-spirits, they were closer to the modern concept of goblins than goblins were.

I would have to agree with that assessment.

Though, Orcs are just hard to compare to, am I right?

So, goblins have a long history in mythology while Orcs date back to the fiction of Tolkien? Is this what I'm hearing?

Well, there was a sea monster called an orc -- but basically, yes, the orc we know and love is the handiwork of Tolkien. Certainly he stuck the name on them.

Gygax & co did a lot for orcs as well. Warhammer too. My personal favorite is the direction the Elder Scrolls games took them. Well, and the direction i'm going.

Scott Oden's direction is exciting too as he's going historical fic with them.

I hope very soon to make my research public, but over the last few years I've uncovered some exciting facts about Orcs. Tolkien did, indeed, assign the name "orc" -- though its etymology goes back perhaps to the Latin "Orcus" and thence to the Greek "Phorkys" (who, with Ceto, was the father of quite a few ancient Greek monsters). Tolkien's familiarity with Old Norse brought him into contact with some exceedingly rare documents that were found originally in 1643 by the Bishop of Skalholt in Iceland, as part of the Codex Regius. One particular document seemed to be an aborted version of Sturluson's Gylfaginning, but was later identified (by J. Rathmore at Exeter) as an entirely new cycle that charted the creation myth of a very Orc-like race called the kaunar.

I discovered a few more such documents, all fairly scattered, and a few descriptions of artifacts such as runestones and a preliminary dig report of a site in the Atlas Mtns of Morocco that lend weight to the idea that an orc-like creature or race was once well-attested (no great conspiracy in it flying "under the radar" either: WWI and WWII disrupted much of the research, and it was never published due to illness and death of the various persons working on it).

So, yes . . . Tolkien gave the name "orc" to the race, but he seems to have been working with older myths that have since fallen by the way side.

And there Scott is, droppin some knowledge!

Boom! :)

Suck on that, goblins.

Tolkien did a fair bit to the goblins, too. Compare the goblins of The Hobbit to that of The Goblin and the Grocer.

He's also responsible for hobgoblins being worse than goblins, when in the folklore "hob" meant "house" and so hobgoblins were the nicer sort of goblins. (Could no doubt still be dangerous if the house was not kept clean.) Though he had some help from the Puritans, likely enough, who would list hobgoblins prominently when discussing the bogeys that were obviously diabolical.

If anyone doing the Orc read (or the Goblin read for that matter) reads The Goblin Corps, I'm interested to hear your thoughts. I read it last summer. Kind of had a love/hate thing going on.

Things have been awful quiet lately. Folks still reading?

Nothing Orcish, at least not yet. And after I finish my current book, I think I feel a Dying Earth reread coming on, so I may not make it by month's end ...

Gave The Weight of Blood a read, but was very unimpressed. Ratings trend higher than mine, and the Kindle version is free.

Yeah I grabbed the kindle version for that reason. What are your more in-depth, non-spoiler thoughts?

It never held together: there were too many cases where characters had to ignore the obvious or unreasonably delay action in order for events to progress as they did. I kept asking myself "why haven't these idiots been caught yet?"

That will definitely just ruin a story, yeah. Might still read it but it's gone way down the list now.