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Lore: M'Gok Tukar
Posted: 27 Jun 2007 08:04 AM |
(Un)Common Knowledge
The most widely-used reference and guide to the race is Madolin Shorona's Treatise on Half-Orc Society. The result of five years living among the half-orcs at M'Gok Tukar, this work inspired dozens of students to attempt similar studies following Shorona's ground-breaking method of extended co-habitation and observation. None of these students have survived beyond the initial period of their research, and Shorona's accomplishments among the half-orcs have never been duplicated for any other humanoid race.
Most who have knowledge of M'Gok Tukar - or at least M'Gok Tukar as it was before their enslavement to the Duergar - agree that Shorona overstated the role of violence in the organization and day-to-day life of that community. While competition was intense within this and other tribes, overt violence, conflict and warfare were and are tightly regulated among the half-orcs and thankfully rare.
Nonetheless this work is thorough and what follows is merely a supplement. Common knowledge of M'Gok Tukar and the half-orcs ends here, however. The rest of this lore should help in fleshing out half-orc characters or creating non-orcs who have some ties to this or another tribe.
The story of M'Gok Tukar's origins - which is also the story of the half-orc hero Tukar - is included in the Vives Player's Handbook. This story would be well-known to any half-orc hailing from M'Gok Tukar, and obscure among the other races.
The Tribes
The half-orcs at M'Gok Tukar comprise a single tribe, separated as the scholar Shorona wrote into several distinct clans, which are each comprised by a number of family groups or bands. All half-orcs from M'Gok Tukar are therefore tribesmen and in this sense are kin to one another. A tribe is a series of clans that have been politically unified, and M'Gok Tukar has always been unified under the leadership of a single powerful chief, who receives advice from a council of big-men. The big-men of M'Gok Tukar are leaders of their respective clans, and while the chief is sovereign half-orcs identify most strongly with their individual clan and look to the big-men among their clan for leadership.
The clans of M'Gok Tukar have any number of big-men, and this rank designates either prowess in battle, wealth and political influence, or as is usually the case, both. There are at least ten or twelve to each clan. One attains this rank by agreement among the big-men of their own clan, and the occasion is always marked by the newly designated big-man throwing a feast and giving gifts to the other family groups within the clan.
As such, the pool of big-men underneath the chief of M'Gok Tukar is enormous. For important decisions as many as a hundred half-orcs gather to discuss and politic, though more often just a fraction of this number gather for council. The stronger clans can field more big-men at council, though the criteria for earning this rank is consistent across the clans. It is typical that the big-men of the chief's clan are most numerous when the council gathers, and just two or three powerful and wealthy clans usually dominate discussion.
Each of the other humanoid races that is politically consolidated and holds a piece of territory is considered a tribe. Examples include the Hardknott Kobolds, the Mountain Orcs who have a confederacy with their Goblin and Troll neighbors, the Snow Orcs, the Orcs of Mount Gru'gashk, the Ogre chiefdom of the Gladden Mines, the Bull-men who inhabit Lynaeum's labrynth, the Hill Giant tribe and the Mountian Giants unified under the rule of King Karkus. Each of these has its own political formations and its traditions. Together these are The Tribes, living in comparative savagery on the fringes of Vives' civilized lands.
The Tribes have varied relations with one another. Few engage in outright warfare, though there are certainly some conflicts simmering. For many short generations, for instance, M'Gok Tukar has hunted and slain the Trolls of Gladden Hills. More typical are negotiated alliances, confederacies, and truces. The social competition that goes on within tribes like M'Gok Tukar also goes on between Tribes, with exchanges of wives and gifts that signify promises to support one another in time of war. These alliances can be made against other Tribes, or against the powerful war machines of nations like Midor or Ferein.
Smaller amalgamations of humanoids exist, such as the loose grouping of ogres that stalk the northern scree slopes of the Divider Chain, of the hungry impoverished Gnolls that waylay travelers at the Dragon Tears Pass. Such less cohesive groups are not tribes but bands, and they have no real political relation to the tribes and no protection by truce or treaty except in rare instances.
Half-orcs and other races
Half-orcs frequently refer to themselves as Orclun. Orclun is a term that covers all the orcish tribes, including mixed bloods. Context indicates gender, age and rank in spoken orcish.
"Men" is the term used at M'Gok Tukar to indicate the human race, and for clarity in the common tongue one is allowed to speak of "Orclun men," "Orclun women," "Orclun children" and so forth, but there are no men of M'Gok Tukar, so to speak. M'Gok Tukar has had more contact with humanity than with any of the other races, and it may be fair to say that they know humans better than they know elves, dwarves or halflings, for instance. Conversely the humans and dwarves of Icy Vale, and those people living under Midoran rule have had the most exposure to half-orcs and hold the strongest opinions about them. All manner or derogatory names have been applied to the half-orcs, all across Vives. In Midor they are simply known as beasts. Those willing to acknowledge the human blood in their veins will call them half-breeds. To many, they are simply orcs, and this unintentionally follows the designation that M'Gok Tukar applies to its own people.
Half-orcs typically misunderstand and stereotype other races.
All humans are assumed to be wealthy and to Orclun eyes this is manifest in the grandeur of human cities, the extravagance of human dress, the fickle appetites and peculiar foods that humans cook and eat, and the fact that most humans do not appear to work (this last assumption is based in observation - a fraction of humanity toils very hard to feed the vast majority, who seem to produce nothing of value).
Men and women who engage in agriculture or tend livestock are fools to "give away" the food that they grow, and to live in squalor compared with the rich men who live in comfort in the cities. Farmers and peasants are called pathetic and miserable and are despised almost as much as the Midoran knight. While there is no agriculture among the half-orcs, some of the wilder Orclun are all too happy raid farmsteads and take food and animals, by stealth or by force. Raids are staged at harvest time, with sporadic poaching from fields and herds throughout the year. Other tribes, of course, will take away the farmers and their families as food.
Most Orclun have never been to Ferein and many have never seen the elves, and elves almost never visit M'Gok Tukar. While Ferein is equal to the grandest human city, the Orclun do not feel the same jealousy that they do towards humanity, as though Ferein were simply elven habitat. Again, the few Orclun who have seen Ferein observe correctly that the elves inhabit that territory so harmoniously that Ferein is not imaginable without the elves, and the elves are not imaginable living any place but Ferein. They are viewed as shy frail forest creatures akin to small deer or birds. They are acknowledgedly far more plentiful than the half-orcs at M'Gok Tukar (this is attributable to cultural and ecological factors, as the elves occupy a far more productive territory for hunting and gathering and Orclun subsistence is meager in comparison). Elves are presumed to live forever and to Orclun eyes they are unaging.
Great tension has developed between M'Gok Tukar and Ferein in recent months. The current chief of M'Gok Tukar was exposed as having ordered the killing of elves who guard Ferein's southern border in the Latonei Forest. The daughter of a high-ranking shaman, who was promised to marry King Karkus of the Mountain Giants and thus establish an alliance between these two tribes, was caught and executed in Ferein. The chief disowned the other Orclun who was involved and emnity now simmers between M'Gok Tukar and Ferein.
M'Gok Tukar has little exposure to the other races of Vives. Some kinship is felt regarding the dwarves, though most half-orcs are ignorant of where dwarves come from or what they are all about. Not so however regarding the dark dwarves, Duergar or "Durzagon" who for a time enslaved the Orclun at M'Gok Tukar. Of this specific breed of dwarf, M'Gok Tukar has precise knowledge regarding the habits, fighting styles and tactics, and even rudiments of the Durzagon language. Some Durzagon words have become Orclun slang, gradually entering into common usage wherever this tongue is spoken.
To the Orclun halflings and gnomes are amusing. Half-orcs frequently delight in visiting Brandibuck Vale, though such visits are extremely rare. If only a few half-orcs have seen Ferein, fewer still have seen the halfling village. It is a novelty, and visiting orclun handle hin-sized furniture and other objects as though they were toys. The hin themselves are sometimes viewed this way as well.
Language
The orcish language is ridiculously easy to learn, with a very small basic vocabulary that lacks many concepts included in language systems of humans, elves, and other races. Far more is communicated non-verbally, through displays of posture, facial expression, proximity, and sounds. An educated human may have a working vocabulary of 20,000 words, using only 2,000 in day-to-day life, and these numbers are adjusted sharply downwards for speakers of orcish, perhaps by a factor of ten. This creates a linguistic bottleneck for orcish-speakers when communicating in the common tongue. The unusual variety in orclun jaw-sets, dentition, etc., also gives some orclun a distinctive accent or causes them to drool or slobber during speech (except when speaking orcish, which accommodates these anatomical traits). As a rule orclun will sound dim-witted or childish speaking common and then switching to orcish will suddenly convey the fullness of their intelligence, such as it is.
Orcish comprises a sort of trade language among the many humanoids who speak it, collectively referred to as The Tribes. Most ogres and hill giants, as well as mountain giants, kobolds, goblinoids, and gnolls can speak it with fluency, and many other monstrous humanoids can use it to communicate tactics and parlay. In fact, the orcish tongue is spoken so widely that it may be more accurate to call it something else.
Lastly, orcish is not a written language. Its sounds however can be approximated with the alphabet of common writing, and some orclun who live among men do learn to read and write with the common alphabet. The vast majority have no use for paper, acknowledging only that it is good for starting fires, and ignore all signs, books and bulletins. Consider that the storied Muga Bugbreath, the half-orc sorceress who was a disciple of Naruth and shared Brimscale's blood, would eat spell scrolls and then belch forth their magics upon her hapless victims.
Beliefs and Spirituality
Shorona's account of the Cult of Gruin and ancestor worship at M'Gok Tukar is accurate. Ancestor worship extends far beyond prayers to Tukar. Each family reveres its deceased ancestors and believes itself surrounded and protected by their spirits. Ancestor spirits are not different from the spirits that inhabit people's bodies, or for that matter from the spirits that fill the natural world. In this tradition the spirits of the ancestors continue to inhabit the world, going into rocks, sky, streams and rivers, and growing things like trees and animals, existing there as a part of nature. Unlike Gruin's cult, this tradition emphasizes cycle and rebirth. In a future state the spirits that inhabit a boulder or a lake might exist apart from anything material, or might quicken the body of a newborn. It might be easiest to understand this as a diluted worship of Elbereth, that does not name her as such.
It should also be noted that the Cult of Gruin grows in power and before the Durzagon conquest came to dominate the public spiritual and ritual life at M'Gok Tukar. Reverence for ancestor spirits, which translates as reverence for the world that is inhabited by the spirits of the ancestors, is now observed privately if not secretly. The chiefly line of Borogask derived much political capital from supporting the Gruin Cult, and ancestor worship became more and more a political liability. The clan descending from Tukar however is the most prominent hold-out regarding ancestor worship, for obvious reasons, and the Tukar clan is revered even though it falls below the clan of Borogask in political influence. The conquest of M'Gok Tukar by the Durzagon solidified Gruin's worship and also prayer and supplication to Tukar who some looked to for salvation.
Tribal Life
The half-orcs at M'Gok Tukar are polygamous, wives and children being equated with prosperity. High-ranking males have more wives; Chief Borogask at one point had acquired twenty, and his offspring were similarly numerous. The population of M'Gok Tukar is just around 3000 individuals, including between 100-150 big-men each having from two to twelve wives. There are around 200 married adult males who are not able to compete among the big-men and have but one or two wives, and twice that number of unmarried males. There are also around twenty-five shaman who carry out Gruin's cultic worship, most of whom are male. To this number are added over a thousand female orclun who are wives to the big-men or lower-ranking males, and another 200 who are not married. There are also a thousand children and infants at M'Gok Tukar at any given time, males and females being prized equally and occurring in roughly equal numbers. Surprisingly, the conquest of M'Gok Tukar by the Durzagon was swift and relatively peaceable, and left most of the Orclun alive.
The fact that there are nearly two healthy adult females to each adult male at M'Gok Tukar was explained by Shorona as symptomatic of the warrior culture among the half-orcs. What the scholar failed to recognize - in part because he stayed for only five years - was the constant leakage of young orclun men from M'Gok Tukar, the preponderance of which do eventually return. This pattern results from the ranking system and the internal politics of M'Gok Tukar. Half of M'Gok Tukar's unmarried males leave the community in search of wealth and reputation rather than competing for rank and wives absent these advantages. Many leave planning to return and establish themselves as big-men, and this gives purpose to many half-orc adventurers. A proportion of them however are poorly suited to or uninterested in playing politics, lacking the wits or personality to become big-men, do not wish to marry, or simply do not fit into Orclun society. Therefore rather than being killed in battle, half of M'Gok Tukar's unmarried males are simply afield, roaming the country and never returning to the place of their birth for very long. This allowed approximately five hundred adult male Orclun from M'Gok Tukar to escape enslavement to the Durzagon.
By the same token, many Orclun women leave M'Gok Tukar even though females of the tribe are highly privileged. What is true of Orclun males is also true of females. Some are a poor fit at M'Gok Tukar and prefer a life on the road. Given the near complete liberty of Orclun women at M'Gok Tukar, there is no compulsion for these ever to return, and if they do they need not yield to tradition, marry and have children.
Marriages are defined rather loosely at M'Gok Tukar and proceed according to the will of Orclun women. Eligible women are courted by males, and if they chose to take a husband they simply go to live with the family of that male with no real ceremony to mark the occasion, beyond a welcome from the male's existing wives and family. If they grow dissatisfied they are free to leave and return to the family of their birth, taking some or all of their young with them, and no explanation is necessary. Ending a marriage is so easily accomplished and so common that it is not marked as divorce. An Orclun man has simply lost his wife. He may say that "his wife left him", or "went back to live with her family". He may not altogether recognize that she has left him, and still count her among his wives and her children among his offspring. As there is seldom any discussion, a husband who has been left simply finds his wife and her children missing. He may go to her family and ask for her to come back to him, but no explanation is owed and the woman is usually shielded from the man by her family.
Orclun families are porous in this way. An individual male does not grow a hareem of many wives as some outsiders might perceive, he has a variable number of wives depending upon his relationship with each and his own fortunes. He may have two wives one month, three the next, and then only one wife a year later. He may claim five wives while in actuality he only has three. In the end his word means little. He has as many wives as there are Orclun women who agree that they are his wives. This number, and therefore the Orclun male's ranking, is no secret to anyone within the clan though he may try to manipulate appearances to retain greater prestige and status.
Marriages are permitted between any two Orclun who do not have the same mother. They occur within and between bands, and within and between clans. Wives are also exchanged with other Tribes, though this only takes place within the highest-ranking clans at M'Gok Tukar. Orclun young belong to their mother's family until they are mature. When mature they will be considered members of the family of their mother's current husband. Orclun young mature very quickly; they are nearly full-grown by ten years of age, and are considered adults once they reach twelve or fifteen years. Young mature and are initiated as adults in cohorts within each clan.
There is a narrow range of options for either sex among the half-orcs. Most Orclun women will marry, many more than once moving from husband to husband, and women are status conscious just as men are, looking to the rank of their clan and their husband as sources of pride and status. Women, and to a lesser degree the children who labor under them, are responsible for all basic production at M'Gok Tukar. They procure and prepare ninety percent of the food, they raise children, fabricate clothing and other necessities, and they craft many of the prestige goods that are used in competitive feasting and gift-giving. Adult males are largely absent from family life. In the day-to-day Orclun families consist of women enjoying one another's company in pursuance of these productive activities.
An Orclun male cannot become a big-man or compete for rank within the clan and tribe without the economic support of his wives and family. Far more important than combat among the half-orcs at M'Gok Tukar is competitive feasting and gift-giving. Big-men have sufficient wealth and support to throw a feast that continues over an extended period, feeding his clan throughout that time and marking the occasion with gifts for the other big-men within his clan, and sometimes also big-men from other high-ranking clans. Big-men compete by giving greater and greater gifts, and are ranked according to the degree to which these gifts can be met with equal or greater gifts. If a big-man makes a gift of ten bear-hide shields to another big-man at a feast, and later a gift of only five shields of lesser quality are able to be returned, the ranking of those two is clearly established. Indebtedness is the outcome. Because gifts are transferable and re-gifting is permitted, big-men will "call in" gifts that are owed by their lessers in preparation for important feasts.
Ultimately a big-man's time is absorbed in these two activities: politicking at council with each other and with the chief, and accumulating wealth in the form of gifts to be given to other big-men at feast. There is a scale of gifts, from the most-prized commodities to those items barely worthy of giving, and an Orclun expresses his or her grasp of tribal politics in recognizing the difference. The scale of gifts is approximately this:
1. Prisoners, under the proper circumstances.
2. Valuable magical items or exceptional objects of traditional Orclun crafts.
3. Plunder representing victory over another tribe or race.
4. Exotic goods and materials that are not typically available at M'Gok Tukar.
5. High-quality foods and especially rare and desirable provisions.
6. Staple foods in large quantities; carcasses of large animals such as mastadon.
Example A: Bard Brendan the Bongo Boy visits M'Gok Tukar intending to extract and smelt a quantity of copper from the abandoned mines. He realizes that he is not simply entitled to help himself, so he has brought gifts that he will offer in exchange. He lays out a sumptuous spread of... animal meat and black bear skins. This is an extremely poor gift even for an outsider. Brendan is considered a pauper and ignored until he leaves M'Gok Tukar. On his next visit, he brings rings that he has made from bronze and amethyst, which most Orclun have never seen before, as well as a tower shield made from iron. He gifts away a number of these, which go into circulation among the big men and are highly valued. He is welcomed heartily and may take as much copper and tin as his ox can carry.
Example B: Perga Guk'U has never married, but she contributes to the success of her clan by heaping her own wealth upon the wealth of her family and supporting the big-men at feast. In her travels she has acquired much gold, but gold has little value as a gift. On one particularly important occasion she blows her entire savings to acquire a shield from the Artio clan in the north that is so powerful she herself cannot even wield it. The shield is given at feast to the big-man of another clan, elevating Perga's clan to the same rank because of this unique item's value.
Example C: Dana is the adopted daughter of one of M'Gok Tukar's shaman. Though shaman do not compete among the big-men, Dana is such an impressive warrior and powerful sorceress that she makes all of M'Gok Tukar proud. She may even be more powerful than Chief Borogask. Borogask holds a great feast at the time of the Blood Moon, and promises to King Karkus of the mountain giants in the north that Dana will be given to be his wife. Unlike normal marriage among the Orclun, Dana will be a virtual prisoner to the giant king. However Dana is not like other Orclun. As wife and prisoner she will guarantee an alliance between M'Gok Tukar and the gargantua of Karkus' realm.
NOTE: Conquest by the Durzagon has meant the interruption of this mode of exchange at M'Gok Tukar. Since this conquest was an economic one, this non-productive activity was outlawed and Orclun labor - including that of both males and females - was reoriented towards producing food to sustain the Durzagon war machine. Feasts, the setting in which Orclun gift-exchange took place, are forbidden at M'Gok Tukar. The council of big-men meets in secret if at all, and their wealth has largely been confiscated. The clan structure remains intact, but Orclun life has been disrupted in fundamental ways at M'Gok Tukar.
Other Recent Events
The Blood Moon Feast.
Ferein attacked by orclun daughters.
M'Gok Tukar shaman's daughter executed in Ferein. |
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"I'm talking about dying."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever."
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