Orc

Orcs, also called Half-Orcs, are a kind of Starspawn‌ in Stildane‌ - a semi-common Players Handbook‌ Starspawn‌.
Orcs are scattered all throughout the world, but are most densely grouped together in Northern Stildane along the frontiers. Orcish communities are extremely common throughout the isolated lands of Uzeven, on the opposite side of the Chaos Wastes from "True" Stildane.
Orcs are a kind of mutated Human, often with boarlike features, accelerated hair growth, and larger frames. Different orcish groups look and act radically different; some have tusks, some are just very tall and bulky green people, and some have boar-like heads and dense fur. While many orc groups tend to live at the edge of the chaos wastes and therefore have a hardy frontier culture of normalized violence and hardship, this is hardly a universal trait.
Orcs are sometimes called "Half Orcs" not necessarily by heritage, but because of naming overlap. The term "orc" originally began as a label for animated wasteland spirits, often built with echoes of those who died in the deep wasteland but given a more imposing and monstrous shape. These original "orcs" were primarily a danger for communities near or in the wasteland, though they could take on a helpful and even whimsical disposition depending on the specific context. The people known as orcs were once considered to be "beastmen" akin to those wasteland spirits but "tame" (though the similarities really are skin-deep; orcish people are not orcish spirits and never were).
Orcs tend to have the same diet as humans - omnivorous. Their primary different from humanity is their heightened size, teeth, and enhanced adrenaline-triggered physique - dulling their pain and allowing their bodies to exert themselves when they otherwise shouldn't (not too different from what humans do irregularly). These are minor physical differences in the context of Stildane.

Civilization and Culture

History

Thousands of years ago, people used the word "orc" to describe frontier "beastmen", who came in many shapes and with many biologies. As described above, this was in reference to the bulky nature spirits who often took imposing shapes themed on local fauna or natural landscapes. The term was entirely a subjective slang term, not consistently referring to any community.
This began to change some centuries ago, when the first Empire of Kizen - the "Kivish Horde" of ancient times, who wielded Ederstone weapons - swept Northern Stildane in a wave of apocalyptic violence. The ancient Kivish Prophet-Emperor, Verkohn the Truthful, enslaved countless starspawn as his army conquered countless communities. Verkohn saw himself as the rightful ruler of all chaos magic and sought to bend the spirits of the land to his will. When he was unable to reliably bind the orcish spirits to his will, he settled for enslaving those "beastmen" who were supposedly descended from those spirits. He curated a group of bulky Starspawn with porcine features to act as his bodyguards and personal attendants, giving them special treatment and status in exchange for their absolute loyalty. These starspawn set the model for later emperors, generals, and warlords of the Kivish Horde and Empire; it became fashionable and then traditional for the elites to be attended to be "orcs". These Starspawn intermarried and had children, settling into a comfortable warrior-servant caste. Occasionally, other Starspawn who fit the orcish description were absorbed into the caste. The social isolation of these orcs pushed them together, forging close family bonds. They embraced the title of "orc" with pride and built new identities as orcs in this terrible new world.
In the late Kivish empire's caste system, orcs were at the top of the starspawn hierarchy and tended towards military roles. This system planted small orcish garrisons around the fringes of the empire - and these garrisons were cut loose when the empire collapsed a thousand years ago. Multiple Kivish empires have succeeded that brutal and ancient one, and these empires have continued to push orcs towards the frontiers - a role that conservative Kivish religious officials respect as a "traditional" one for orcs. Other orcs, who moved into towns and farmland and found themselves being displaced back towards the frontier during the Scourings, took what they could and fled far away. Many of these ended up in the far South, or in distant lands. Many others migrated to Uzeven, where they might retain some ties to their old communities without risking further violence from the Kivish. It has been several centuries since the last Scouring, though, so orcs have started to drift back into the Stildanian settled heartlands
Some orcs are still stereotyped as frontier warriors or violent rowdies, and some communities can be militaristic. But there are so many orcs - so many kinds of orcs at that - that no singular characterization makes any sense.

Genetic Ancestor(s)

• Human
• Starspawn

Geographic Distribution

• Stildane