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Wednesday, January 19, 2022

"Reinventing Fantasy Races" by Luke Maciak

 Some years ago I stumbled upon a blog series titled "Reinventing Fantasy Races" by Luke Maciak that I found a useful source of inspiration for my own writings. Since his website is suffering database issues as of the last two years or so, I was forced to use Wayback Machine to read his articles. The archive may be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210205155615/http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/tag/reinventing-fantasy-races/

There may be some missing images, outdated comments, or other errors. Thankfully the archive has multiple copies from different times so it should be easy to find everything with a little cross-checking. Other websites aren't so lucky... 

Friday, January 7, 2022

Non-rapey orcs?

So something that bugs certain people about half-orcs is the overuse of rape as their backstory and the subsequent characterization of orcs (and/or goblins) as all being violent misogynistic rapists. So I have a suggestion for making orcs less rapey without sacrificing their horror potential. What follows is a mix of influences, including Warhammer 40,000, Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, 13th Age, Alien, and Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda

Orcs are goblinoids (as per older editions of D&D) and the various goblinoid monsters are all instars or castes of a single species. They reproduce asexually by means of spawning pits and underground fungus wombs. They may reproduce in a quasi-sexual fashion by parasitic means too. One option is throwing victims into the spawning pits, where they are dissolved alive. Another is to lay eggs in a host with their teeth. The resulting offspring will inherit traits from the host, and this is how we get half-orcs. Goblinoids otherwise have no concept of gender or sexuality: humans and other demikind are seen as slaves and food, nothing more. Which is still plenty horrifying.

This raises a number of questions: What does it mean for goblinoids to be parasites, especially if half-orcs can become adventurers? What does this reinforce about the themes of the setting? Do the goblinoids inherit species traits or those of specific individuals?  Do they hunt down specific targets for the purpose of eugenics? How strict are civilizations about security, given that a bite can impregnate a person with larvae? Etc...

In a future post I'll discuss a treatment of orcs as demons that possess corpses.