Compromise and Conceit

We carry in our hearts the true country
And that cannot be stolen
We follow in the steps of our ancestry
And that cannot be broken

We Orcs do not have “names”, because every one of us is a verse in the ongoing Saga of our Clan. Were you to simplify the verses of my story so far into a phrase suitable for your frail, Embodied[1] language, then you may call me Skulltide, Blade of Memory.

I grew up among the Clan known as the Wardens of Memory, in the Valley of the Pylons. You have surely heard of it? The wide, silent valley where no bird sings and strange towers of obsidian rise at inscrutable angles from thick, wild forests. Those towers, formed of alien magic of impossible age, draw to them the lost and wandering essence of the restless dead from great distance. They drift down the valley’s central river, The Lacrima, visible in the quiet darkness as werelights and eerie will-o-wisps, fickle and deadly to those who have not learned the Songs of my Clan. Each of those balls of baleful essence-memory eventually drifts away from the river into the enclosing forest, to be drawn to one of the Pylons, where its essence and memories are drawn into the arcane stone. We, the Wardens of Memory, tend to the valley and bear witness to the torments and longings of the lost essence. All of us serve some purpose in the Clan’s function – but the Clan is dying, being slowly consumed by the Pylons it serves. Many of us simply disappear, wandering into the Forest of Memory and succumbing to the eerie spiritual call of the Pylons. Their souls leave their bodies, which they abandon to the scavengers among the trees, and are drawn into the Pylons themselves, lost to us and to time.

There is much debate in our clan as to why this is. Some say our Clan was bound here as punishment for an ancient sin, to be slowly consumed in service to the Pylons. Many speculate as to our ancient sin – did our ancestors build the Pylons? Did they harvest essence from the Embodied for some evil goal, that now we must all pay for until our Clan disappears? Were we trapped in the Valley by a curse? Did the Pylons curse us? Some argue the Pylons need souls as fuel, that they were built long ago by some evil empire to store the memories of all its people, and from the outset were designed to sustain their sinister magic through the harvesting of the souls of the True People[4]. Because the Saga of our clan is so old and so long, and the language of our people has changed so much in the aeons that the saga was written, we cannot easily interpret those early stanzas – indeed, few of us even know them – and so we cannot know the truth of our circumstances, except that which we know in this the present moment of our Saga: that our task consumes us, and within a few generations our Clan will disappear, our Saga be lost to time, if we cannot learn the truth of this affliction.

I, being one of the Subtle, was selected from an early age to study the divine, and to fulfill a role among the lost essences. But as our Clan’s numbers dwindled and our situation became more desperate, a faction among us decided that it was time to seek outside for knowledge. I was trained as a Warden of Memory, drawing my divine power from the knowledge and essence of the Pylons, but one day I was sent away from the Valley. Our people learned of the existence of a great and learned Necromancer on an island far from our land, and discovered that refugees from one of your pitiful internecine conflicts were fleeing there. I was sent down the Lacrima on a raft, to join one of those ships and travel to the Island, there to find my way to the Necromancer to learn more about the secrets of the Pylons. If the Necromancer has no knowledge well, we Subtle live long and vigorous lives – I will simply continue traveling until I learn the truth of the Pylons, and save my Clan.

I will cut the ties of Memory that bind us to the Pylons, that we may forever live in the Valley and fulfill the role our Clan is destined for. And until I do, you may call me Skulltide, Blade of Memory.

fn1: Orcs do not believe that non-Orcs have souls. Rather, they see non-Orc humanoids as a heightened form of animal, which over its lifetime imprints its memories and impressions onto the essence that flows through it. When some of those non-Orcs die, their essence lingers as a ghost[2], though most of this essence flows back into the mortal realm and returns to the power spots from whence these heightened form of animals drew it with the power of their will. Thus, non-Orcs are referred to as “Embodied” in the (higher) language of Orcs.

fn2: Have you ever seen an Orcish ghost or revenant? No, because souls require exceptional circumstances to be tricked into remaining in the mortal realm after their death. Such depravity is primarily the consequence of the unknowing, spiritually uninformed characteristics of essence

fn3: Orcs have three genders, though to the outsider they may appear to only resemble the two genders that characterise the limited spiritual and physical condition of the Embodied. Those we call the Primal are the largest among our kind, lean-bodied and muscular, giants compared to most of the Embodied. They are most likely to physically resemble those you call “men”, and so when we (lower ourselves to) speak with your kind, we refer to them as such. Those we call the Inchoate are usually the smallest of our kind, slightly shorter-lived and more likely in their passionate nature to take on the form you Embodied call “women”, and so we assign them that gender in our dealings with you Embodied. The remainder, those we call the Subtle, are between these two kinds in size and strength, equally likely to take either physical appearance as they grow – and sometimes both – and do not easily fit into your restrictive and arbitrary categories. Of course usually, given the lack of subtlety in the minds of the Embodied, you will confuse our form with one of your two genders, and who are we to correct you? But strictly speaking, I am a third.

fn4: The Orcs are the True People.

Image credit: Kikicianjur on DeviantArt: