I had the oddest dream the other night. I am blaming all the allergy drugs. And the Absinthe I had on Sunday.
So the the other night I dreamed about this giant orc with a blue face. Not sure if it was painted blue or was blue. It was wielding a giant axe, but one that looked like it was more chopping word than necks. He was screaming and running at "me". He was also wearing a kilt.
Now a lot of this can be explained away. I have been reading a lot of Tolkien of late and his orcs are more, for a lack of better word, demonic than the typical D&D Orc or even the typical "new" Orc as first given to us by John Wick. I have talked about orcs before and how they fit into my world and the various sub-races.
I was also at the Bristol Ren Faire that day, so that explains the axes and even the kilt.
The idea of a blue orc is a cool one, so I looked for them online. I see there are blue orcs in Heroscape and they have sabre-toothed tigers. That is a cool idea. The axe makes me think northern climes and the kilt, well Scottish. I have a "White Orc", but I was thinking that these Orcs would be south of the artic areas, but still northern and cold. Think Canada.
Given my world's population they could even be another offshoot of the Green Orcs, like the White. Culturewise they are not much different than the Green. Maybe more savage and certainly more tribal. Wars with the Green and White keep their numbers in check. To continue the metaphor, if Blue Orcs live in Canada then the Green live in the US and the White only the most northern places. Greenland, Iceland, Siberia and Alaska.
Blue Orcs do not differ significantly from the other strains/sub-races of Orc in terms of stats. Though if anything I would give them a bit better survival skills in colder climates. Though this also reminds me of the Cailleach Bheur, the hag of Winter. Maybe Blue Orcs worship the Cailleach as some sort of Goddess figure. Pagan Orcs...the idea has some possibility and different than the other orcs. Perhaps they believe that their Goddess carved them from ice and stone and then breathed on them to bring them to life.
The more I think about it the more I like it. I'll have to use these guys soon.
Plus it gives me a chance to come up some Blue Orc witches.
Hah, blue orcs! When I was a kid, I saw Bakshi's Lord of the Rings at the theater and also The Yellow Submarine on television and found it hard to remember the difference between orcs and Blue Meanies; indeed the first orc mini I painted couple of years later, I painted blue. Bakshi's orcs were too dark to be a discernable color, and I guess the hordes of Blue Meanies reminded me of the hordes of orcs...
ReplyDelete