Pity the Blue Orc
If you’ve only ever seen an orc who’s green, you must have nice stuff. Perhaps you live in a big castle or swing a fancy sword or even merely have the rippling muscles or towering intellect the orcs always wished for themselves. It is true that when orcs are sufficiently motivated to leave their holes in the ground and set off, en masse, to the places where humans live, it is often as not so they can take whatever it is they want so badly.
But pity the blue orc. Every world they’ve ever lived on or in has been set against orcs from the start. Dastardly villains see them as cannon fodder for their schemes and supposed heroes see them as monsters to be killed with impunity and relish. There are few who see orcs as people. It is natural enough to feel demoralized when an orc considers their place in the world. These orcs are not green, they’re blue. They mope, they move slowly, they are prone to monologues. There is a reason you’ve probably never seen a blue orc. Just as the green orc is the most likely to leave their hole, the blue orc is the likeliest to find the deepest, darkest hole they can, lie down there and wait to die.
If there is an orc to be sought out, it is the pink orc. These are a silly people, easily tickled and lovers of riddles. When orcs hold their festivals, you’ll find not but pink orcs, mirth and merriment. A pink orc does not seek to kill you, but it may seek to trick you. Not in a nasty way, merely for the fun of it. Everything is amusing to the pink orc. They are delighted to meet you but just as delighted to see you leave.
The most dangerous orc is not green but red. The red orc does not want to kill you to take your castle or your sword. They want to kill you because they hate you, hate your castle, hate your sword. Their rage cannot be contained to one target. They see the same injustice that the blue orc mourns, but it doesn’t make them sad, it makes them mad. You have heard tales, surely, of a keep fending off an invading horde of green orcs. But you haven’t heard of a fortress defending itself from red orcs. You’ve only seen cinders that were once thriving outposts. Red orcs have been here.
An orc’s color is not innate, of course. Humans may change hue, barely perceptively in comparison, when they are embarrassed or when they stay too long outdoors, but orcs change colors with their feelings. When people first learn this, their instinct is to mock them, compare them to flumphs (but is that an insult? Flumphs are “one of the best monsters in the [Fiend] Folio by far”!), but the flumph is far more individualistic. Orcs are a banded people, not solitary creatures. When they change colors, they often do so together. When one orc begins to feel blue, others follow.
If you come across a green orc, or heaven forbid a band of red orcs, you can choose to attack their bodies but you would be wiser to attack their spirits. If you can break their morale, you will see that most rare orc: the yellow orc. The yellow orc is cowardly, terrified. They run for the hills, back to their holes. Kill the orc most green with envy, and the others will surely turn yellow and then turn tail and run.
Orcs are, of course, not merely monsters. You are an orc, aren’t you? If so, the following rules apply:
When the world is unfair because others have what you don’t, your skin is green, and you have +2 (or the equivalent) to your Constitution score.
When the world is unfair because others prejudge you, your skin is blue, and you have +2 to your Wisdom score.
When the world is unfair but it’s all a joke, your skin is pink, and you have +2 to your Charisma score.
When the world is unfair and you must destroy it, your skin is red, and you have +2 to your Strength score.
When the world is unfair and you must run from it, your skin is yellow, and you have +2 to your Dexterity score.
Blogger’s Note: Like many, I have become passively aware of the Deathbringer RPG’s kickstarter and certain hullabaloo around its marketing. One thing I have learned is that apparently the color of orcs is yet another front in the USian culture war. See, for reference, Magnolia Keep’s review of Deathbringer’s marketing, which touches briefly on the blue vs green orcs. I did not know that blue orcs were woke, but apparently, they are. Some people just love their slime to be pink, but I prefer my slime prismatic. I’ve always liked the various emotion-color idioms (e.g., green with envy, feeling blue, tickled pink, seeing red, and yellow-bellied) so I decided to deploy them to make a different type of orc if you don’t want to commit a social faux pas by having your orcs be green or blue or whatever color is apparently bad for orcs to be.
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