Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

[Curufea]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

"And, like wow! You will totally markdown the Ring for me! Instead of that grody freak, you'll set up the Prom Queen. And I won't be square, but awesome and cool as the Mall and the Nightclub! Bitchin as the Beach and the Surf and the Sun! More, like, totally wicked than the Principle on Crack! Stronger than the foundations of Tammy Faye Baker. All shall like see my bodaciousness and be totally green. For sure."

 

"I aced the test," Galadriel said. "I will have a major downer, become a couch potato, and remain Galadriel."

[ghost-angel]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Californian isnt so much a matter of ACCENT as it is INTONATION and SLANG. I mean' date=' like TOTALLY dude; suprised you didnt KNOW that.[/quote']

 

Like, word, YO.

 

living in SoCal for a mere 2 years is how I lost my pretty heavy New England accent. Now that only comes out when I'm tired, drunk, or around other East coasters for more than 2 minutes.

[tkdguy]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Getting back on topic, it would be interesting to have orcs paint themselves like the Picts did. It could be done for camouflage, or maybe it has a religious significance for them (eg. green is their war god's color). Perhaps they also undergo ritual scarring to show off their status as warriors.

 

How about this: Orcs aren't actually green; they only dye themselves with that color before battle. And since most people only encounter them in battle (orcs are generally xenophobic by nature), most non-orcs don't know their natural skin tones match those of humans. An orc not wearing war paint may be unrecognizable to other races as a full-blooded orc, although people may think of him as a half-orc, depending on how distinctive orcs' features are in your campaign.

[Curufea]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Only Games Workshop Orcs are green - I believe D&D ones are grey?

[tkdguy]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Looking at the Monster Manuals I have:

 

In 3rd Edition, they have gray skin. In 2nd Edition, they had gray-green skin. I sold my 1st Edition stuff because I needed cash at the time, so I can't reference that one.

[Curufea]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

I'm not sure of the Tolkein ones - I think they may be black. There was also a subspecies in WFB (Warhammer Fantasy Battle - Games Workshop) known as Black Orcs which were their equivalent of Uruk Hai.

 

I'm not sure what colour they are in Harn - they're known as Gargun in that system.

[Vestnik]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Why not orcs as Aztecs? The whole "empire based on human sacrifice" bit. Cool gods in that pantheon too that could be modified.

[Markdoc]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Why not orcs as Aztecs? The whole "empire based on human sacrifice" bit. Cool gods in that pantheon too that could be modified.

 

Especially the names - I don't think an orc could say "ITZPZPALOTL" or "MICTLANTECIHUATL"

 

Actually, I don't think most players could either

 

cheers, Mark

[Vestnik]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

I like the idea of Aztec orcs. They would be more urbanized (at least one big city), tropical orcs driven to constant war in order to acquire new victims to sacrifice to their gods. Might have to fiddle with the technological level. Did the Aztecs have metalworking? My hazy memories are saying "no."

 

Can't get much bloodier than the Aztecs.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Did the Aztecs have metalworking?

 

Not to the extent that they were able to make metal weapons or armor. They were able to work softer metals, like gold and copper, which pleased Cortez to no end....

[Vestnik]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Not to the extent that they were able to make metal weapons or armor. They were able to work softer metals' date=' like gold and copper, which pleased Cortez to no end....[/quote']

 

D'oh! Obviously. For some stupid reason I wasn't thinking of gold as a metal.

Copper can be used to make arrowheads, can't it?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Yes, and they may have made some, but they weren't really much into ranged combat. The Aztecs were much more into close-in fighting.

[Curufea]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Was it lack of available ore, or had they just not worked out how to refine it?

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Was it lack of available ore' date=' or had they just not worked out how to refine it?[/quote']

 

I couldn't say for sure...but it's not going to stop me from pontificating.

 

It could have been. I don't know what the ore deposits are like in the desert areas of Mexico, but the rainforests are definitely not good places to dig very deep.

 

On the other hand, none of the other cultures in North America were able to work the harder metals, even if ore deposits were handy.

 

On yet another hand (where'd that come from? ) the Aztecs were more advanced than other native cultures in many ways, and they may have had enough experience with soft metals to have moved on if harder metals were present.

[Robyn]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Getting back on topic' date=' it would be interesting to have orcs paint themselves like the Picts did. It could be done for camouflage, or maybe it has a religious significance for them (eg. green is their war god's color). Perhaps they also undergo ritual scarring to show off their status as warriors.[/quote']

 

Or how about this: ritual scarring with some religious significance. Kaja, as a young lad, castrated himself to demonstrate his dedication to the faith (nice folks, those Druids - or, in Orcish terms, those Shamans).

 

How about this: Orcs aren't actually green; they only dye themselves with that color before battle.

 

And they don't actually have genitalia (noone has genitalia like that ), they just get their Shaman to cast "Bigby's Thrusting Tentacles" on them before entering battle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What?

[Markdoc]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

I couldn't say for sure...but it's not going to stop me from pontificating.

 

It could have been. I don't know what the ore deposits are like in the desert areas of Mexico, but the rainforests are definitely not good places to dig very deep.

 

On the other hand, none of the other cultures in North America were able to work the harder metals, even if ore deposits were handy.

 

On yet another hand (where'd that come from? ) the Aztecs were more advanced than other native cultures in many ways, and they may have had enough experience with soft metals to have moved on if harder metals were present.

 

Nope - the truth is the exact opposite. Mexico has plenty of ore - iron and steel production are two their largest industries (bigger than petroleum, IIRC). In Durango it's right at the surface - there are multiple large opencast mines there. Rich surface iron deposits in Coahuila , too. It's technology failure. Likewise for the Incas - plenty of iron ore (and good quality too) within their empire.

 

The aztecs (and especially the incas) were actually pretty successful metal workers, but they stuck with gold, silver and bronze alloys. We don't why - they just did. Same with the wheel. We know both incas and aztecs knew of it (they made wheeled toys) but even in areas where it would have been very useful, they didn't use it.

 

cheers, Mark

[Lucius]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Nope - the truth is the exact opposite. Mexico has plenty of ore - iron and steel production are two their largest industries (bigger than petroleum, IIRC). In Durango it's right at the surface - there are multiple large opencast mines there. Rich surface iron deposits in Coahuila , too. It's technology failure. Likewise for the Incas - plenty of iron ore (and good quality too) within their empire.

 

The aztecs (and especially the incas) were actually pretty successful metal workers, but they stuck with gold, silver and bronze alloys. We don't why - they just did. Same with the wheel. We know both incas and aztecs knew of it (they made wheeled toys) but even in areas where it would have been very useful, they didn't use it.

 

cheers, Mark

 

Yes, there's a lot they didn't get around to. But give them a break. Remember, Humanity evolved in Africa, spread quickly to Eurasia, but arrived in the Americas relatively recently. American civilizations are correspondingly younger. As I recall, the Inca emperor who fell to the Spanish was just the great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the first Inca - and they'd only had ONE dynasty.

 

I've read where an anthropologist observed that the amazing thing is how advanced American civilizations were given their late start compared to the "Old World."

 

In another few centuries, someone was bound to have looked at one of those toys and said "You know, everyone says that wouldn't be practical to make one big enough to do real work. But I don't think anyone's tried it. Maybe if I make a big set of wheels....."

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Introducing a palindromedary to a llama

[Markdoc]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Yes, there's a lot they didn't get around to. But give them a break. Remember, Humanity evolved in Africa, spread quickly to Eurasia, but arrived in the Americas relatively recently. American civilizations are correspondingly younger. As I recall, the Inca emperor who fell to the Spanish was just the great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the first Inca - and they'd only had ONE dynasty.

 

SNIP

 

I've read where an anthropologist observed that the amazing thing is how advanced American civilizations were given their late start compared to the "Old World."

 

P'raps. But the Eurasians who arrived in the Americas were no less advanced than the Eurasians who stayed behind. The Inca dynasty was not too old (neither was the Aztec civilisation, for that matter), but neither of them was the first in that area. The Olmecs were building stone houses and plazas in 1500 BC, not hugely different from those the spanish encountered nearly 3000 years later. Teotihucuan - the city the Aztecs made their capital - was founded around 600 BC - or about the same time as the founding of Rome.

 

There's a certain amount of political correctness (or at the other pole, racism) that creeps into discussions of technology and culture. The assumption is that all cultures advance technologically, and that the american cultures just "hadn't gotten around to it" yet. This is one of the major flaws in Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel" - he asks a question about the development of an important social function and then rules out from the beginning that a society's structure is important.

 

But as far as we can tell, there have been humans in the "new world" for 12-18,000 years - far longer than the time from the world's first cities to the first moon landing. It is fair to say that the Americas were never as heavily populated as Eurasia and Africa, and technological advancement does seem to be tied to having a critical mass of people. But still, there must be more to it than that, since they *did* develop large cities and sophisticated technology in some areas.

 

Not all cultures necessarily make the same decisions and develop the same technologies. Not all of them develop at all. Africans were raising sophisticated stone buildings long before the birth of christ and long before Europe could boast anything fancier than a tumulus. But in Ethiopia (to take one example) when the Europeans turned up 1500 years later, they found people who regarded the ruins of those buildings with awe as the work of angels: they had lost the ability to create anything of that scale.

 

I think history tells us that technology is not a linear advance.

 

cheers, Mark

[Kristopher]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Yes, there's a lot they didn't get around to. But give them a break. Remember, Humanity evolved in Africa, spread quickly to Eurasia, but arrived in the Americas relatively recently. American civilizations are correspondingly younger. As I recall, the Inca emperor who fell to the Spanish was just the great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the first Inca - and they'd only had ONE dynasty.

 

I've read where an anthropologist observed that the amazing thing is how advanced American civilizations were given their late start compared to the "Old World."

 

In another few centuries, someone was bound to have looked at one of those toys and said "You know, everyone says that wouldn't be practical to make one big enough to do real work. But I don't think anyone's tried it. Maybe if I make a big set of wheels....."

 

What late start? There were people in the Americans no later than 10000 BC, and probably much earlier. Neither the Incas nor the Aztecs were the first civilizations in their respective geographical areas. There are signs of an urban civilization in along the Supe river in Peru dating to 3000 BC.

 

My hunch is that the lack of development along certain lines had to do with those civilizations often being very traditional, very hierarchical, and very bound to ceremony and custom.

[Enforcer84]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

I never cared for the porcine look for the AD&D orcs. I prefer the Rankin-Bass drawings for them. Of course, I saw the "Return of the King" cartoon before I started playing D&D.

 

I was working on a low fantasy campaign where I was going to loosely base Orcs on Mongols, making them nomads who often raided neighboring settlements.

I used them as marauding insurance salesmen.

 

 

Ikeed!

I like the celtic orc though.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Orcs as Druidic/Celtic analogs?

 

Continuing the derail:

 

1491 had an interesting theory about technological stagnation in the Americas. Whereas there were several cultural centers in Ancient Eurasia (Mesopotamia, India, China...later Greece, Rome, Carthage) the Americas had only Mesoamerica and the Andes. And whereas Eurasia/Africa kept spreading ideas and technology among the various cultural centers, Mesoamerica and the Andes were pretty isolated from each other by swamps, jungles, and mountains. Some of the Andean ideas spread out into South America, and many of the Mesoamerican ideas spread all through North America, but there just wasn't the same level of cross-fertilization at work as in the "Old World".