Quote:
Originally Posted by martinl
Sorry, I will be less obscure:
I am trying to say that some individual or groups of humans will be tempted to ally with or exploit the orcs to deal with their human enemies. Humans often let their personal interests overrule their organization's interests.
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Well, sure.
The Zhentarim employ orcish soldiers and mercenaries, the Red Wizards of Thay have not only created a magically modified subrace of them as elite soldiers, but are also responsible for bringing millions of them to the world in a great magical ceremony known as the Orcgate Affair (they needed cheap troops) and so on.
Most such relationships, however, are decidedly less beneficial to the orcs than they could be. Orcs are used as shock troops and arrow fodder and their losses are usually even heavier than they would be if they were living their own traditional lifestyles.
On one hand, orcs
do have a real tendecy towards violent behaviour, so it's not like it's unjustified to hate and fear most of them, on the other, it's easy to see the grievance orcs have against the 'civilised' races.
Quote:
Originally Posted by martinl
I'll also say that monolithic murderous speciesism, while traditional in fantasy RPGs, creeps me out just a little.
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In the real world, when different races have competed for the same resources, we often enough see murderous racism that is damn near monolithic. And that's in cases where the differences are mostly cosmetic.
Most humans are quick to hate what's different and when you only meet individuals of that species when they are raiding your cattle and/or hunting you for meat, it's not difficult to understand that impulse.
Is is creepy? Sure. A brutal war for supremacy of a world is not meant to be pretty.
But even for a wise leader who has nothing against orcs, it may well be that the best course for humans is to wipe them out or at least keep down their numbers so that they'll never manage to challenge human realms militarily.