Orks - 1 - History

Orks have been around for a while and have been rendered in many different ways.  As the start of the project, I want to go back and publicly research the history of Orks from a literal and artistic perspective.  Let's challenge what we know about these fantasy creatures.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc) (the supreme source of all knowledge...and yes, since this is a fantasy creature, I can surely use it as a reputable source to quote) defines orks as:  "various races of tough and warlike humanoid creatures in various fantasy settings."  That's pretty generic.  They credit Tolkein with the first modern usage of the word "Orc".  There are a bunch of older references to Orc in the article and you can peruse those on your own time.  Pulling out interesting things:

- Origins of the word are "demon", "hell" (orcus), "corpse" (orcné), and "giant", "ogre", "hell-devil" 

- Description from 1632 fairytales of "orco":  "large, speaking, mannish beast (hairy and tusked) that lived away in a dark forest or garden, and that might be evil (capturing/eating humans), indifferent or even benevolent"

- 1656: "Orke, begotten by an Incubus"

- "Tyrolean ork which may be either a house gnome or a mountain spirit that acts as protector of wildlife"

- "In Tolkien's writings, Orcs are of human shape, of varying size but always smaller than Men, ugly, filthy, with a taste for human flesh. They are fanged, bow-legged and long-armed, and some have dark skin as if burned. In a private letter, Tolkien describes them as "squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes ... degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types".^[11] They are portrayed as miserable, crafty and vicious beings."

So, there's some interesting stuff right there.  I'm especially honing in on the last description quoted about them being derivative of Mongols.

So, things I want to consider in future posts:

- Orks in D&D, both from description and from Art

- Orks in Warhammer and how they differ

- Realistic versus fantastical views on orcs

- Comparing orcs to animals and other groups

- Orc costume, armor, etc

- Orc habitats