High Tech Mysticism & High Caliber Adventure - Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey - Elves & Fairy

We've been talking about Timothy  Brannan & Jason Vey's  Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. Along with the Age of Conan 'hack' for using OD&D in the Hyborian Age of Robert E. Howard. And now this comes full circle again. 

Elves & Fairy have bothered me in original Dungeons & Dragons going all of the way back to my gaming roots. And here's why, if we look deeply into definiation of Elves from both Wiki & the Encyclopedia Britticana 
"An elf (plural: elves) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore.In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves seem generally to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. However, the details of these beliefs have varied considerably over time ..." And if we dive into orginal Dungeons & Dragons & the rule book we get the following;"Elves can begin as either Fighting-Men or Magic-Users and freely switch class whenever they choose, from adventure to adventure, but not during the course of a single game. Thus, they gain the benefits of both classes and may use both weaponry and spells. They may use magic armor and still act as Magic-Users. However, they may not progress beyond 4th level Fighting-Man (Hero) nor 8th level Magic-User (Warlock). Elves are more able to note secret and hidden doors, able to locate secret passages on a roll of 1-4. At the referee's option, Elves may be allowed the chance to sense any secret door they pass, a 1 or a 2 indicating that they become aware that something is there. Elves have the ability of moving silently and are nearly invisible in their gray-green cloaks. Elves armed with magical weapons will add one pip to dice rolled to determine damage, i.e. when a hit is scored the possible number of damage points will be 2-7 per die." 
And no this isn't the first time we've covered Elves on this blog. Back in 2018 I did whole retrospective on them & yes I still subscribe to those beliefs there. 

The Elves back story within Tolkein is explored very nicely in this video here  But how can you have both a mythological view point & the Tolkien view within a campaign?! Easy there are different kinds of Elves created by different gods via many different time & space continuums. Elves and Fairies are distinctly different & in some cases very much far more then rivals. 
 

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"
Puck, Act III, scene ii.
William Shakespeare 

The Fey or Fairy cause headaches because of the fact that their origins are obscured in the mists of legend or mythology. Or are they?! There are multiple origins for these beings but let's go with the demoted angels,  pagan gods, & demons theory from legend & use the wiki entry explaination here;"A Christian tenet held that fairies were a class of "demoted" angels.^[15] One story described a group of angels revolting, and God ordering the gates of heaven shut; those still in heaven remained angels, those in hell became demons, and those caught in between became fairies.^[16] Others wrote that some angels, not being godly enough, yet not evil enough for hell, were thrown out of heaven.^[17] This concept may explain the tradition of paying a "teind" or tithe to hell; as fallen angels, although not quite devils, they could be viewed as subjects of Satan" 

King James, in his dissertation Daemonologie, stated the term "faries" referred to illusory spirits (demonic entities) that prophesied to, consorted with, and transported the individuals they served; in medieval times, a witch or sorcerer who had a pact with a familiar spirit might receive these services.^[19]

In England's Theosophist circles of the 19th century, a belief in the "angelic" nature of fairies was reported.^[20] Entities referred to as Devas were said to guide many processes of nature, such as evolution of organisms, growth of plants, etc., many of which resided inside the Sun (Solar Angels). The more Earthbound Devas included nature spirits, elementals, and fairies,^[21] which were described as appearing in the form of colored flames, roughly the size of a human.^[22]

Arthur Conan Doyle, in his 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies; The Theosophic View of Fairies, reported that eminent theosophist E. L. Gardner had likened fairies to butterflies, whose function was to provide an essential link between the energy of the sun and the plants of Earth, describing them as having no clean-cut shape ... small, hazy, and somewhat luminous clouds of colour with a brighter sparkish nucleus. "That growth of a plant which we regard as the customary and inevitable result of associating the three factors of sun, seed, and soil would never take place if the fairy builders were absent."  

Now there is a third race that we see in Lamentations of the Flame Princess's 'The Pale Lady' by Zzarchov Kowolski. A type of horrid  rabbit pagan goddess that we see has many of the characteristics of a demoted or fallen god that has become a type of fairy horror.

 The Pale Lady might also may an excellent modern horror adventure unto itself. And crosses into the realm of demoted pagan gods & once again the wiki fairy entry;"At one time it was thought that fairies were originally worshiped as deities, such as nymphs and tree spirits,^[24] and with the burgeoning predominance of the Christian Church, reverence for these deities carried on, but in a dwindling state of perceived power. Many deprecated deities of older folklore and myth were repurposed as fairies in Victorian fiction (See the works of W. B. Yeats for examples)." 
Recently the revamp of Cthulhu Dark Ages has the Old Ones which seem to bridge gap between the classic mythological concepts & the Fey according to the CDA book;"Most myths of mankind mention the existence of a race of intermediary beings between men and gods. Despite the many names given to this race, most descriptions draw a disturbingly consistent image of what the Necronomicon calls, “the Old Ones.” Don’t confuse them with the Great Old Ones. As the Necronomicon writes, “Great Cthulhu is Their cousin, yet can he spy Them only dimly.” The old ones are spirit-like entities serving Yog-Sothoth. They are naturally invisible but often manifest as a halo of light that makes them shine like stars. In fact these beings can appear in all sorts of ominous ghostly shapes, from beautiful maidens to dreadful things with golden wings and bronze talons. Some accounts also allude to the unwholesome smell that accompanies them. Old ones have the gift of being able to move very quickly, and even, some say, to be everywhere at once. The old ones are innumerable, they know neither good nor evil, and they walked the earth long before mankind. Now they wander forever, “not in the spheres we know, but between them”—the ultimate abyss filled by Yog-Sothoth" 

And this really seems to be in line with the ideas put forth in Clark Aston Smith's Zothique setting. And in the deep end of the  Qliphotic lore of the CAS Zothique literature.

This again is something that we find deep within the back end of Mystara via X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay. 

In terms of a modern Earth prime it means that X2 may have points that connect to the waking world or the underworld of the Dreamlands. And those mists that surround X2 may be more dangerous then then even the PC's have a clue about. The world of dreams isn't bound by normal space time but something far more dangerous. This isn't to say that they can be used to cross on purpose from one point to another in history but these may cross worlds or points in history where things can be far more unstable. This means that the magicks that the Ambervilles may connect into far more insidious issues then even their aware of. And it also puts both the player's PC's and others at risk. Perhaps even the modern Earth as we know it. 

High Tech Mysticism & High Caliber Adventure - Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars By Jason Vey - The Flipside of Law

 

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.
"Eldorado", st. 1 (1849). Edgar Allan Poe 

Apparently Timothy  Brannan the co writer on Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars wasn't getting credit on this blog's entries as co author of the game system?! That's my oversight & now that we've remedied that let's get back to the action.  Something started to occur to in the back of my mind about Original Dungeons & Dragons booklet 'The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures Volume Three of Three booklets' the following really weighted heavy on my mind; "Lost Parties: There is a chance of being lost, the chance depending on the type of terrain the party begins its turn upon. A lost party must move in the direction indicated by the die roll (1-6, as shown in the OUTDOOR SURVIVAL rules and on that board) and may make only one direction change from that direction. When exploring the referee should indicate which direction the party is lost in." 

What happens if this isn't the players adventurers?! Think about it. Dungeons as presented in original Dungeons & Dragons are set up to be machines of evil. Places of absolute riches, murder, dread, etc. So what happens to the other parties of NPC's who go down there?! This got me talking with DM Ricky & DM Steve about this & there was even more input.  The idea that the dungeon could as adventure location become the nexus gate  of a crisis. And the central point for both Law & Chaos as entry point into a plane prime. But this can't happen in a modern Earth right?! Not only did happen but it happened with two champions of balance in the official Moorcockian canon?! The anthology 'Tales of the Eternal Champion's 'Evening Odds'  story follows Gary Gygax's Gord The Rogue & his adventure to close a portal in Miami Florida by the archfiend Baphomet.  Baphomet is actually serving the flip side of the powers of Law in the Nine Hells. 
Don't forget the powers of Law don't necessarily mean 'good' it simply means 'Law' as in pay attention to the alignment of a monster.
                                                                  

Let's flip this back to the underworld for a moment. Those lost deep in the bowels of a dungeon may be willing to do anything to escape because not even death means a release from the grasp of those powers of the underworld. The underworld means both literal & figurative. Where do you think all of those skeletons & wandering monsters come from?! And were does the power come from to animate these undead?! Well what if the powers of Chaos in the form of the Balrogs which are at the top of the heap of original Dungeons & Dragons helping wizards in dungeons. There's a fan theory that there are literally thousands if not more Balrogs in Tolkein & you can find about that here. 

Now if this is the case could there be a reason why millions of years in the future that there's a mace wielding lord of evil in Clark Aston Smith's Zothique?! This isn't my theory but a friend of mine's on MeWe. The idea that Sauron could in point of fact not only survived the events that Tolkein depicted. But morphed into the Lord of Turpitudes is frightening. Sauron survives Middle Earth to found a cult dedicated to his evil within Mu?! THASAIDON has many of Sauron's traits but this isn't the only detail that runs in this direction. 

King of Rats version of Thasaidon on Deviant Art here. 

And what does this have to do with the underworld or dungeons?! Everything & more wraps itself around this idea. Earlier in this blog entry Baphomet was mentioned & that wasn't an accident. According to the Zothique D20 fan pdf; "THASAIDON Lawful Evil

Dark archfiend, “prince of all turpitudes.” Worshiped from the central deserts (Tasuun) to the southern islands (Sotar). Thasaidon is generous with his power, because he knows that power corrupts. Thasaidon is known and feared throughout Zothique, even where he is not worshiped. The vampires and lamiae pay him homage, and wizened liches drawn upon his power for continued earthly presence beyond the grave. Typical clerics will be power-hungry bureaucrats. The game master may elect to have some high-level arcane spells available only by the grace of Thasaidon."
The fact that the semi demonic & undead races draw power from him reminds me of Sauron's necromancer guise from Tolkein. But where does this leave him in Zothique?! Absolutely no where. Why?! Because by the time we read about him in The Dark Eidolon, CAS 1935 his armies have laid siege to the world, his time is almost over, & the dark promise is done. But what happens if this world millions of years in the future is accessible to the modern age?!  Its through the underworld of the dreamlands & Sauron survived through the underworld of mankind's dreams. He navigated history using the minds of mankind himself to skim along the currents of history, time, & space until it erm he arrived on Mu & later on Zothique. 

"The beginning of Clark Ashton Smith’s short story, The Dark Eidolon:

On Zothique, the last continent on Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood. New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had fallen closer. And out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man: the gods forgotten since Hyperborea, since Mu and Poseidonis, bearing other names but the same attributes. And the elder demons had also returned, battening on the fumes of evil sacrifice, and fostering again the primordial sorceries.

Many were the necromancers and magicians of Zothique, and the infamy and marvel of their doings were legended everywhere in the latter days. But among them all there was none greater than Namirrha, who imposed his black yoke on the cities of Xylac, and later, in a proud delirium, deemed himself the veritable peer of Thasaidon, lord of Evil."

This one statement brings Zothique into focus but its appearance within Pagan Publishing's Realms of Shadows By Blair Reynolds means that its accessible to 1920's game campaign. Which is pretty perfect for Timothy  Brannan & Jason Vey's  Nightshift Veterans of the Supernatural Wars.  Because it ties into the back end of Mystara via X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay. 

And this leads back into Hyperborea & much more coming up along with even more Lamentations so stay tuned! 

Half A Can of Whoop Ass - Another Ecology of the Half Orc For Old School Campaigns

Ever since I was a kid I've had to deal with the ins & outs of the ;real world; vs  'table top world of original Dungeons & Dragons. Everything from the Satanic panic to the full on nose sticking fun of folks delving into the 'true' meaning of Dungeons & Dragons. The game I love in all of its editions & incarnations has endured despite the attempts to the contrary. Which brings me once again the orc race wiki entry. This time I dive back even earlier into the mythology;

"The Latin: Orcus is glossed as "Orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol"^[a] ("Goblin, spectre, or hell-devil") in the 10th century Old English Cleopatra Glossary, about which Thomas Wright wrote, "Orcus was the name for Pluto, the god of the infernal regions, hence we can easily understand the explanation of hel-deofol. Orc, in Anglo-Saxon, like thyrs, means a spectre, or goblin."^[3][4][b] The Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal defines ork in the closely related Old Dutch language as a verslindend monster ("devouring monster"),^[5] and points at a possible origin in the Old Dutch nork "petulant, crabbed, evil person".^[6]

The term is used just once in Beowulf as the plural compound orcneas, one of the tribes alongside the elves and ettins (giants) condemned by God:

þanon untydras ealle onwocon eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas swylce gigantas þa wið gode wunnon lange þrage he him ðæs lean forgeald —Beowulf, Fitt I, vv. 111–14[7]

Thence all evil broods were born, ogres and elves and evil spirits —the giants also, who long time fought with God, for which he gave them their reward —John R. Clark Hall, tr. (1901)"

"Orcneas is translated "evil spirits" above, but its meaning is uncertain. Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc < L. orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses", which the translation "evil spirits" failed to do justice.^[9][c] It is generally supposed to contain an element -né, cognate to Gothic naus and Old Norse nár, both meaning 'corpse'.^[10] The usual Old English word for corpse is líc, but -né appears in nebbed 'corpse bed',^[11] and in dryhtné 'dead body of a warrior', where dryht is a military unit. If *orcné is to be glossed as orcus 'corpse', the meaning may be "corpse from Orcus (i.e. the underworld)", or "devil-corpse", understood as some sort of walking dead creature"



"A monster called Orcus is mentioned in Edmund Spenser's 1590 Faerie Queene.^[12] The Oxford English Dictionary records an Early Modern period orke, meaning "ogre", in Samuel Holland's 1656 fairy tale Don Zara, a pastiche of Spanish romances such as Don Quixote.^[d][13] It is presumed that 'orke'/'ogre' came into English via continental fairy-tales, especially from the 17th-century French writer Charles Perrault, who borrowed most of his stories and developed his "ogre" from the 16th-century Italian writers Giovanni Francesco Straparola (credited with introducing the literary form of the fairy tale) and Giambattista Basile, who wrote in the Naples dialect, stating that he was passing on oral folktales from his region. In the tales, Basile used huorco, huerco or uerco, the Neapolitan form of Italian orco, "giant" or "monster", to describe a large, hairy, tusked, mannish beast who could speak, lived in a dark forest or garden and might capture and eat humans"

Humanity as we know it has nothing to do with the mockery of the orc race as a whole & far more to do with the demon lord Orcus. That's right I'm connecting orcs with the demon lord who loans out his mace to ever Tom, Dick & high level evil cleric. The demon lord spreads his evil across dimensions & planes planting seeds of evil where it will made from the evil essences of the long evil dead. Warped, traded, & moved from one prime material plane to the other half orcs emerge from the pits & caverns of long forgotten evil lairs of orcs. Not so much the products of 'forced matings' but the spawning of half formed mockeries of mankind.



These essences are sewn throughout the multiverse to spread the corruption & the 'marketing' of the demon lord. And these are used by demon, devil, & evil cleric alike. There is a basis for this within the writings of Tolkien & his critics;"

The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey writes that the orcs in The Lord of the Rings were almost certainly created just to equip Middle-earth with "a continual supply of enemies over whom one need feel no compunction",^[24] or in Tolkien's words from The Monsters and the Critics "the infantry of the old war" ready to be slaughtered.^[24] Shippey states that all the same, orcs share the human concept of good and evil, with a familiar sense of morality, though he notes that, like many people, orcs are quite unable to apply their morals to themselves. In his view, Tolkien, as a Roman Catholic, took it as a given that "evil cannot make, only mock", so orcs could not have an equal and opposite morality to that of men or elves."
But what of the troubling origin of the half orc? Troubling to today's gamers possibly but are they really?! Pig Faced half orcs have been with original Dungeons & Dragons killing characters from the shadows since the early days of 'The Dragon' magazine. All of the way back in 'The Dragon' magazine issue number 62 'The half orc outlook' By Roger E. Moore. Yes that Roger E. Moore whom readers of this blog will recognize as one of the other author's & designers who doesn't get half of the credit he deserves by D&D gamers. 

HT3a – Pig-faced Orc I By Otherworldly miniatures an old favorite of mine to use for half orc assassins. 

 In 'The Dragon' magazine issue number 62 'The half orc outlook' By Roger E. Moore he takes on the culture & dynamics of orcish society;

"Half-orcs, as everyone knows, are what you get when you cross orcs and humans. They are not uncommon in the world of the AD&D™ game, and they do not enjoy good reputations among most populations. One well-known authority describes most half-orcs as “rude, crude, crass, and generally obnoxious.” Why do half-orcs seem to turn out this way? What makes them tick? To better understand half-orcs, one needs to understand the non-human aspect of their nature. Orcs are probably the most common sort of humanoid creatures. They vary widely in physical appearance, but generally seem to retain a vaguely human look, tinged with a hint of something . . . else. In nearly all orcish societies, the social philosophy is the same. Orcs are the ultimate social Darwinists; only the strong and the clever survive, and the strongest and cleverest orcs are the ones who manage to reach the upper social levels of their cultures: Orcs have no respect for those weaker than themselves, and are quick to step-and-fetch for those stronger than they. They distrust all overtures of friendship and love, seeing these as a cover for other, baser intentions; if they discover feelings of friendship to be quite genuine, they immediately attempt to manipulate events to take the best advantage of them and gain the upper hand. Orcs are like this because of the influence of their deities (discussed in the companion article to this one) and because of their own past. Sages have uncovered much evidence showing that orcs developed in regions generally hostile to life; survival was difficult, and only if a group worked closely together could it hope to collect enough food to get even a part of its numbers through the year. While the group would have to work together to collect food, distributing it was another matter. The strongest orcs got the most food, and the weakest ones got none at all. (They were probably going to die anyway, right?). "

These monsters are not stand ins for some real world racial type but the product of their own demonic evil gods that howl for the blood & entrails of humanity around them. The article goes on to bring the half orc world view into a lens of their own culture & society. Its not a pretty one at that ; "The very toughest orcs managed to receive more than just the bare minimum of nourishment, enough to make life more comfortable for them and give them a certain degree of personal security. This also gave them the chance to explore more intellectual occupations than food-gathering, like figuring out how to get more food and living space. The easiest opportunity to be realized was to take food and/or living space away from other folks, and these other folks were usually other orcs. Intertribal competition became fierce, and over the centuries many of these conflicts have “evolved” into what seem to be eternal states of war between various tribes. Orcs are nocturnal by nature. They prefer to catch prey when it is asleep and less able to escape. Orcs have done this for so long they’ve developed infravision, the ability to see living objects in darkness by their body heat. The development of infravision was assisted by the orcish habit of living in caves for protection. Orcs tend to live in wilderness areas where the sky is heavily overcast and direct sunlight is non-existent or rare at best. In magical universes such regions are frequently found, their twilight perpetually maintained by the forces of magic cast by mortal or godling. In these places orcs will be much more active than is customary in the daytime, even to the point of conducting raids and hunting, but it is at night when orcs really become dangerous."
Humanity as a whole doesn't really do well in the areas that orcs & even to a certain extent half orcs thrive. But for me 'The half orc outlook' By Roger E. Moore humanizes the half orc a bit too much but that's a personal preference.  If you are a conasuir of anything orc then seek out 'The Dragon' issue #62 with the orc gods & 'The half orc outlook' By Roger E. Moore. These really are classic articles & still very useful at the table top level.


Larry Elmore artwork with an awesome cover for classic Dragon magazine.

For me its back to the original mythology & Tolkien where the half orc is indeed an inhuman product of some ancient & other evil. I do not at all see these Porky Pig faced bastards as anything other then evil horrors spawned by ancient & demonic gods. They do not & will not represent anything or anyone other then what they are monstrous spawn waiting for PC's to slaughter them. Half orcs give nor  ask for any quarter & neither should your PC's!



Pig-faced orcs assault the outer walls (Doug Chaffee, 2nd ed AD&D Player’s Handbook, TSR, 1989)

William Hope Hodgson's Thomas Carnacki, the ghost detective tangles with an incredibly dangerous psychic entity that may be responsible for the swine things seen in The House on the Borderland in 'the Hog'. But could these psychic entity god things be far more responsible for the gods of the orcs? Are these things the spawn of such otherworldly entities merely repeating the same cycle of alien ecological devastation that we see in places like Greyhawk over and over again? All of the tropes that we find in Dungeons & Dragons are there again & again otherworldly forces, hybrid anomalies deep underground, ruins, dangerous sanity blasting monsters, & even the dungeon as place of misfortune.


The half orc doesn't represent any Earthly racial type at all but humanity's worst aspects mixed with the 'alien other'. That other is always lurking close within a party of adventurers who dally with such creatures who may or may not be aware of the murderous intent from within. Instead I think that half orc 'represents' the dungeon master waiting for the right time to murder the party members!

Otherworldly Miniatures Pig Faced Orcs. 

Blood for Bacon - Another Ecology of the Orc For Old School Campaigns

Much of what follows in my wake is taken from the Wiki entry on orcs
Ever since I was growing up going up in the Seventies I've been hearing about how 'orcs are racist' & how its wrong to paint them as merely evil's cogs & parts that act as a mechanism for slaughter of PC's & the forces that commit genocide on campaign settings. To which I say, "bull shite". Orcs have been with the grand game since its beginning in original Dungeons & Dragons. I know that these have been there because I've had countless PC's slaughtered by the Porky Pig faced bastards. But the origins of these pig faced horrors goes back into the dark recesses of mythology besides Tolkien;"Tolkien began the modern use of the English term "orc" to denote a race of evil, humanoid creatures. His earliest Elvish dictionaries include the entry Ork (orq-) "monster", "ogre", "demon", together with orqindi and "ogresse". He sometimes used the plural form orqui in his early texts.^[f] He stated that the Elvish words for orc were derived from a root ruku, "fear, horror"; in Quenya, orco, plural orkor; in Sindarin orch, plurals yrch and Orchoth (as a class).^{[T 2][T 1]} They had similar names in other Middle-earth languages: uruk in Black Speech (restricted to the larger soldier-orcs);^{[T 1]} in the language of the Drúedain gorgûn, "ork-folk"; in Khuzdul rukhs, plural rakhâs; and in the language of Rohan and in the Common Speech, orka.^{[T 2]}

Tolkien stated in a letter to the novelist Naomi Mitchison that his Orcs had been influenced by George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin.^{[T 1]} He explained that his "orc" was "derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability",^{[T 3]} and

I originally took the word from Old English orc (Beowulf 112 orc-neas and the gloss orc: þyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')).^[g] This is supposed not to be connected with modern English orc, ork, a name applied to various sea-beasts of the dolphin order".^{[T 4]}

Tolkien also observed a connection with the Latin word orcus, noting that "the word used in translation of Q[uenya] urko, S[indarin] orch is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc, 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connextion (sic) between them."
That's right going all of the way back into the beginning of Tolkien's work. But for me orcs have always been the 'other'. The other in this instance isn't a particular race,person, or thing but something utterly alien. Orcs to me are the inversion of mankind & a mockery of everything that it means to be human. This all comes down for me in Gary Gygax's B2 Keep on the Borderlands. 

Orcs are the evil monsters that along with a slew of other evil humanoid monsters in the Caves of Chaos are intent on slaughtering every human they can get a hold of. Its almost as though the orcs were created & bred for murder whole cloth. And that's exactly what they are. Don't believe me?! Again from the wiki on orcs; 


"The scholars of English literature William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood note that a widespread element of late 19th century Western culture was fear of moral decline and degeneration; this led to eugenics.^[17] In The Two Towers, the Ent Treebeard says:^{[T 16]}

It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman's Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of Orcs and Men? That would be a black evil!^{[T 16]}

The film-maker Andrew Stewart, writing in CounterPunch, cites this speech as an instance of "mid-twentieth century scientific racism .. which alarmingly spells out the notion of 'race mixing' as a great sin".^[18] Stewart notes, too, that the geography of Middle-earth deliberately pits the good West against the evil East;^[18] John Magoun, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, concurs, supposing that Middle-earth has a "moral geography".^[16] Any moral bias towards a north-western geography, however, was directly addressed by Tolkien himself in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, who had recently interviewed him in 1967:

Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I do have, for instance, a particular fondness for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil [ie. Morgoth].^{[T 17]}

In a private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as:^{[T 18]}

squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.

 A variety of critics and commentators have noted that orcs are somewhat like caricatures of non-Europeans. The journalist David Ibata writes that the orcs in Peter Jackson's Tolkien films look much like "the worst depictions of the Japanese drawn by American and British illustrators during World War II."^[19] The literary critic Jenny Turner, writing in the London Review of Books, endorses Andrew O'Hehir's comment on Salon.com that orcs are "by design and intention a northern European's paranoid caricature of the races he has dimly heard about".^[20][21] O'Hehir describes orcs as "a subhuman race bred by Morgoth and/or Sauron (although not created by them) that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death. They are dark-skinned and slant-eyed, and although they possess reason, speech, social organization and, as Shippey mentions, a sort of moral sensibility, they are inherently evil."^[21] He notes Tolkien's own description of them (quoted above), saying it could scarcely be more revealing of his attitude to the "Other", but excuses him saying that "it is also the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices. At the level of conscious intention, he was not a racist or an anti-Semite" and mentions his letters to this effect.^[21] In a letter to his son, Christopher who was serving in the RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict:

Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels.^{[T 19]}

The scholar of English literature Robert Tally describes the orcs as a demonized enemy, despite (he writes) Tolkien's own objections to demonization of the enemy in the two World Wars.^[22] The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar however argues against the "recurring accusations" of racism, stating that "a polycultured, polylingual world is absolutely central" to Middle-earth, and that readers and filmgoers will easily see that.^[2] The historian and Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell likewise disagreed with any notions of racism inherent or latent in Tolkien's works, and wondered "if there were a way of writing epic fantasy about a battle against an evil spirit and his monstrous servants without its being subject to speculation of racist intent""

The origins of the 'Orc' for me are much deeper stretch back further then Tolkein & his works of high fantasy. No for me the orcs go all the way back to William Hope Hodgeson's 'House on the Borderlands'.
"The House on the Borderland (1908) is a supernatural horror novel by British fantasist William Hope Hodgson. The novel is a hallucinatory account of a recluse's stay at a remote house, and his experiences of supernatural creatures and otherworldly dimensions."

The swine things that ravage, plague, & harrow the recluse are the perfect demonic Lovecraftian or is it Hodgesonian monsters that would be progenitors for the orc race. These are not a race that can be reasoned with or sat down to have tea with. These are murderous things intent on corrupting, destroying, & ravaging everything around them. Nightmare given flesh!



In 2000, DC Comics’ mature reader imprint Vertigo published a 96-page color graphic-novel adaptation The House on the Borderland, with story by Simon Revelstroke and art by Richard Corben.

The Vertigo imprint version of The House on the Borderland by Simon Revelstroke and art by Richard Corben takes some very heady liberties with the original source material. There's a very good review of The House on the Borderland & the Vertigo version of The House on the Borderland by Simon Revelstroke and art by Richard Corben on the Old Wine in New Wine Skins blog here. 
The truth is that we get a very alien & utterly demonic horror that seems at times to be a reflection of the evil or perversion of man. This is the other that William Hope Hodgeson brings to bare on his protagonist in the House on the Borderland. Wayne Douglas Barlow does an incredible job in his Barlowe's Guide to Fantasy portraying the Swine Things. Its implied in The House on the Borderland & The Hog both by William Hope Hodgeson that the Swine Things are appendages for some greater cosmic being or god.

For my campaigns the swine things are the 'other' & their rutting, invading, etc. are the source for the orc infestation across the multiverse. Want an OSR set of stats for the Swine Things the Throne of Salt blog has those here.  How are the orcs getting across planes?! Wizards, dark clerics, necromancers,etc. use the essence of the Swine Things & then begin spawning orcs in gene pools & the like. These things are programmed for destruction straight outta the artificial womb. They don't care about the niceties of mankind only its destruction!
“I’ve heard it. A sort of swinish clamouring melody that grunts and roars and shrieks in chunks of grunting sounds, all tied together with squealings and shot through with pig howls. I’ve sometimes thought there was a definite beat in it; for every now and again there comes a gargantuan GRUNT, breaking through the million pig-voiced roaring—a stupendous GRUNT that comes in with a beat. Can you understand me?”William Hope Hodgson’s “The Hog,” first published in Weird Tales in 1947 but certainly written much earlier since the author died in 1918.

Orcs are not simply evil but the essence of it. Their life is anti nature & they are hell bent on your PC's destruction. Make no bones about it. There's no racism about it only bloodshed, murder, & mayhem of any adventuring party that enters their domain. And if you think that this has nothing to do with Tolkien may I refer back to the orc wiki entry & what follows;"The Tolkien critic Tom Shippey writes that the orcs in The Lord of the Rings were almost certainly created just to equip Middle-earth with "a continual supply of enemies over whom one need feel no compunction",^[24] or in Tolkien's words from The Monsters and the Critics "the infantry of the old war" ready to be slaughtered.^[24] Shippey states that all the same, orcs share the human concept of good and evil, with a familiar sense of morality, though he notes that, like many people, orcs are quite unable to apply their morals to themselves. In his view, Tolkien, as a Roman Catholic, took it as a given that "evil cannot make, only mock", so orcs could not have an equal and opposite morality to that of men or elves.^[25] Shippey notes that in The Two Towers, the orc Gorbag disapproves of the "regular elvish trick" of seeming to abandon a comrade, as he wrongly supposes Sam has done with Frodo. Shippey describes the implied view of evil as Boethian, that evil is the absence of good; he notes however that Tolkien did not agree with that point of view, believing that evil had to be actively combatted, with war if necessary, the Manichean position"

There's good reason to slaughter those Pork Pig faced bastards in your Dungeons & Dragons games. Don't let orcs gain an inch in your campaigns or you may be dealing with a far greater & deadlier evil then your party of adventurers expects!


Otherworld Miniatures Orc Warband