Would you date an Orc?

The place for chatting and discussing subjects unrelated to Wesnoth.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

User avatar
Midnight_Carnival
Posts: 836
Joined: September 6th, 2008, 11:08 am
Location: On the beach at sunset, gathering coral

Would you date an Orc?

Post by Midnight_Carnival »

;) I'm just being silly, bit I've noticed how much attention is given to female Elves in fantasy games and wondering about other races.
In most fantasy games and litereature there are Half-Orcs, meaning it is possible for Orcs to breed with Humans.
Yet as we have seen in the other thread, Orcs and Humans have different values. I personally don't think an Orc would find a Human attractive at all because I think Orcs are attracted to eachother by the way they smell (Orc pheremones are probably quite distinct and may not smell that similar to human pheremones) meaning it is probably the small weak "loser" Orcs who end up breeding with Humans(?)
Of course I'm aslo going on the assumption that most races would feel that they were somehow superior to others. Since we are not ruling out the possiblity of Orcs eating other races (fairly common) it would make sense to me that Orcs would see themselves as apex predators among humanoids and thus would not want to breed with "food".

So if there is this geeky Orc who can't get a date... :geek:

I mean Elves breeding with Humans I can understand because although Elves are notorious snobs, they are (as much as they'd hate to admit it) very similar to Humans.
But Orcs?
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
User avatar
Telchin
Posts: 355
Joined: December 20th, 2010, 10:01 am
Location: Czech Republic

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Telchin »

I'm just being silly, bit I've noticed how much attention is given to female Elves in fantasy games and wondering about other races.
That's probably because Tolkien did it. (Thrice - Beren&Luthien, Tuor&Idril, Aragorn&Arwen) In Luthien's case her parents were aninterspecies couple too - a male elf and a female Maia (i.e. angel analogue). Note how the female is always the more magical/superior species and often have to abandon her family to live with her husband. I've read a theory that it was because of Tolkien's marriage. (They even have names Beren and Luthien on their graves.). While his wife was obviously of the same species, she was a Protestant, but had to convert to marry JRRT, because he was a (very conservative) Catholic, so there was probably some feeling of abandoning her kith and kin.
In most fantasy games and litereature there are Half-Orcs, meaning it is possible for Orcs to breed with Humans.
I can't speak for all those games, but don't some of them suggest that Half-Orcs are often products of rape? Orcs are usually warlike and savege and it real life it wasn't uncommon for soldiers of the victorious side to violate women of the losers. Of course, this can of worms should probably be left unopened in Wesnoth (which, IIRC, aims for PG rating). Actually, I'm not sure if interspecies breeding is allowed in Wesnoth's canon. (Interspecies romance appears in NR and [acronym=Delfador's Memoirs]DM[/acronym], but AFAIK both times without any children mentioned.)
Of course I'm aslo going on the assumption that most races would feel that they were somehow superior to others.
In real-life cultures that practiced slavery (e.g. ancient Rome, pre-Civil War USA), it wasn't unherad of for the masters to have (illegitimate) children with their slaves. It was frowned upon and probably not always consensusal on the slave's part, but it happened. So "people who are inferior scum" and "people to have sex with" aren't mutually exlusive groups. :oops:
I mean Elves breeding with Humans I can understand because although Elves are notorious snobs, they are (as much as they'd hate to admit it) very similar to Humans.
But Orcs?
Elvish women are only similiar to humans until they reach their maximum level and grow insectoid wings. :D That said elves, dwarves and orcs are similiar to humans in both shape (unlike drakes, sarians, etc.) and intelligence (unlike trolls and ogres) and are capable of living together on friendly terms (as seen in the Northern alliance in NR and THoT). How likely are humans to breed with non-human sapient species is hard to tell (as there are currently none in real life), but there is evidence that Homo sapiens interbred with both Neanderthals and Denisovans. (Both were technically humans, but more different from today humans than current human "races" from each other.)

EDIT: Yay, my 300th post on these forums. :D And it's another thread about orcs where I brought up real-life war crimes. :oops:
User avatar
Lord-Knightmare
Discord Moderator
Posts: 2340
Joined: May 24th, 2010, 5:26 pm
Location: Somewhere in the depths of Irdya, gathering my army to eventually destroy the known world.
Contact:

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Firstly, what the ****? :lol: :lol: Secondly, yes. I speculate that interracial breeding is possible in Wesnoth (only in UMCs). For instance, in revansurik's A Song of Fire, a dwarf Dvalin and an elf Alenya conceive a child together: the first dwelf or elf-dwarf or dwarf-elf. Another prominent one is that between Efraim and Lethalia (the protagonists from Legend of the Invincibles). Perhaps the most famous couple in the unofficial timeline is Elynia and Argan. Argan was not even an Irdyan. :P
In Swamplings, there is a vague reference that orcs breed with goblins (wait, the whole forum knows about this already).
Given all these examples, orc-human, goblin-(dwarf human), goblin-elf and even, orc-elf (I am disgusted at having thought about such a thing! :augh: ) can be assumed to be possible.
Creator of "War of Legends"
Creator of the Isle of Mists survival scenario.
Maintainer of Forward They Cried
User:Knyghtmare | My Medium
User avatar
Dugi
Posts: 4961
Joined: July 22nd, 2010, 10:29 am
Location: Carpathian Mountains
Contact:

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Dugi »

Have you seen an orcish woman somewhere in the game? I was asking about this some time ago, got no answers. Orcs can be 100% male, reproducing by budding or as hermaphrodites. Or maybe they reproduce by mining orcish eggs. Another possibility is that they always hide their women somewhere, in that case, it's not even necessary that their women are ugly (though there is one reason why, read on). Or their women are indistinguishable from men to other races (after all, all animals' females just have only larger nipples, no other species have breasts like human women have), just weaker orcs who work as Assassins or Archers (through Archers advancing to Crossbowmen makes this theory a bit suspicious).

Half orcs IMO might come out of rape, but that's not exactly dating. They could be seen as the Dothraki from A Song of Ice and Fire. Pheromones don't have a huge effect generally, so their ineffectiveness might not be such a great problem.
I am a man, so it's hard to tell if a man as manly as an orc would be attractive to women. For men, manly women generally don't tend to be attractive. The person dating an orc might be more likely to be a woman.
Telchin wrote:How likely are humans to breed with non-human sapient species is hard to tell (as there are currently none in real life), but there is evidence that Homo sapiens interbred with both Neanderthals and Denisovans.
This might be quite close to the point, Neanderthals were bulkier and stronger than nowadays' humans. Nowadays' white race inherited their cold resistance and lighter skin colour together with manly badly compatible genes that worsen health, a total of 3% of DNA (thus if I talk to a black man, I am like a half-orc to him :D). Evidence also shows that crossbreeds between anatomically modern humans and neanderthals were fertile because they were on the edge of genetic incompatibility, so they had to interbreed a lot to make those 3%.
Lord Knightmare wrote:there is a vague reference that orcs breed with goblins
I think that the description of orcs tells that goblins are just badly grown orcs or something like that.
User avatar
Telchin
Posts: 355
Joined: December 20th, 2010, 10:01 am
Location: Czech Republic

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Telchin »

Have you seen an orcish woman somewhere in the game?
This can be said about most sapient species in mainline Wesnoth. IIRC only species whose women appear in mainline are humans, elves, merfolk, nagas and undead. Conversely, Drake females are said to be non-sapient. But that is probably a discussion for an another topic.
I think that the description of orcs tells that goblins are just badly grown orcs or something like that.
Yes, the idea seems to be that instead of giving birth to a single child (like humans do) orcs are born in litters. Said children then compete between themselves, because orcish society (i.e. nomadic hunters and gatherers) can't provide food for all of them. Only the 1-2 strongest of the brood get enough food to grow into "fully grown" orcs (i.e. grunts and leaders). Some other grow into "lesser" orcs (i.e. archers and assasins) and the rest have their growth stunted and become goblins. This brings question whether goblins can reproduce and, if they can, whether they can beget orcs or only other goblins.
Back on the original topic, goblins are probably much less likely to have interspecies relationships than their bigger brothers. They are os similiar ugliness and culture as orcs, but in a child-sized package. (And if their 1/3 chance for "dim" trait is anything to go by, they probably don't have charmimg personalities either.) They better hope that Wesnoth invents on-line dating services soon. :D
User avatar
Midnight_Carnival
Posts: 836
Joined: September 6th, 2008, 11:08 am
Location: On the beach at sunset, gathering coral

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Midnight_Carnival »

Perhaps Orcs are like Laughing Hyeanas, the only way you could tell the male and female apart is by disecting one or by having a superhuman sense of smell.

Firstly:
As for the Orc raping Humans or Humans raping Orc details... I think it is best that we don't discuss this here, although feel free to PM me all your sordid Orc fantasies :augh:
As for the slavery option: Yes, that is true of humans keeping other humans as slaves - humans keeping dogs, cats, cows, horses, etc... Well, yes, there are incidents which take place there but they are (hopefully!) rather rare and the product of someone with something seriously wrong with them.
In the case of humans having iligitimate children (through consentual relations or not) with slaves, I'm sure the human finding the human slave physically attractive has something to do with it - since we have not yet established whether or not the Orcs would find Humans attractive or Humans would find Orcs attractive I think it best to determine that before we decide on the gory details.

Secondly: We have not discussed how difficult it would be for a Half-Orc to grow up.
I'm going to mention that I'm not discussing the rather controvertial topic of terminating pregnancy here, but you should bear in mind that in our world, methods of doing so have existed for thousands of years, religious and other ideological considerations come into play in our world but if you consider that a Half-Orc would not be regarded as Human at any stage of it's development...
I'd like to start with the birth of a Half-Orc baby: it would be helpless and dependent on others to survive.
It could start its life among Humans, in a mixed marriage or among Orcs.
I strongly suspect that Orcs, being quite savage, would be ruthless with their children, only the toughest, meanest and sneakiest would survive childhood. Since Humans have not evolved in that way, I think Human genes would only make the little Half-Orc less suited to surviving the challanges at an early stage of its development, to say nothing of Orcs (big and small) persecuting the child for being "diluted Human filth" or some such.
Among Humans there is nomrally a sense of caring for children in the community rather than "weeding out" the weaker ones - nonetheless, I imagine that a Half-Orc child would also be persecuted and that many, especially those who have lost loved ones to Orcs or personally been hurt by them, would feel quite justified in killing it, moreover it is unlikely the child would enjoy the same legal protection Human children would. (this should go further to answer the ugly Orc rape issue we are not discussing)
The only way I see Half-Orc child having any real chance of surviving to adulthood is if the child were born in either a community where Human - Orc relationships were not considered abnormal or in a mixed family. It is probable that both would take place in a fairly isolated context. I don't know if it would be a loving interspecies couple but let's put on rose-tinted glasses here and assume that for the purposes of raising Half-Orcs it would be best if it were.

Which brings us back to the primary issue being discussed here, can there be attraction and love between Humans and Orcs or put another way, would you date an Orc?
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
User avatar
Dugi
Posts: 4961
Joined: July 22nd, 2010, 10:29 am
Location: Carpathian Mountains
Contact:

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Dugi »

Because of the public scorn you've mentioned, a normal interracial love in a normal society is impossible. As you've eliminated the possibility of rape, I conclude that the only chance of an orc-human offspring growing up is in some remote place where a very small number of humans and orcs get marooned together. It might force them to cooperation, causing them to forget prejudices and the small size of the community might cause them to become less picky and accept what is available... Or maybe an opposite, Wesnoth's Princess marrying the Grandson of the Black Eye to make peace :D
User avatar
johndh
Posts: 591
Joined: June 6th, 2010, 4:03 am
Location: Music City

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by johndh »

Telchin wrote:it wasn't uncommon for soldiers of the victorious side to violate women of the losers.
*isn't :(
Dugi wrote: For men, manly women generally don't tend to be attractive.
That's something that is very dependant on culture. Just look at James Bond over the decades, with Sean Connery in the 1960s to Daniel Craig in the 2010s, or compare Clint Eastwood to Leo Dicaprio, or the resurgence of beards among young American men in the past few years. Our (Western) concept of masculinity and attractiveness has evolved a lot over the past few decades.
Spoiler'd for sexiness(?):
Midnight_Carnival wrote:Perhaps Orcs are like Laughing Hyeanas, the only way you could tell the male and female apart is by disecting one or by having a superhuman sense of smell.
I'd be on board with this, except the part about the pseudo-[censored]. :lol: Female spotted/laughing hyenas are actually larger than the males and they are dominant in their society, by the way. I'm not opposed to female orcs being bigger and more dominant, as they need to be able to bear litters of orc babies and protect the home. It's the same with many species of raptors, where the female protects the eggs while the smaller male hunts. With these species, the main way to tell them apart is by blood test, so most of the time we just guess based on their size. At my old aviary, we had a redtail who we really thought was male (because she was so small) until she started laying eggs. :oops:

Being predatory and somewhat beast-like, orcs probably have a great sense of smell, and probably rely on pheromones more than we humans do. I'm sure there are other queues in dress, demeanor, etc., but these are things that humans wouldn't pick up on unless they were immersed in orcish culture... and I'm not aware of any Wesnothian ethnographers. :) I'm glad you brought up hyenas, because they're a good demonstration of how animals can develop similar characteristics to each other despite not being closely related. See below.
Which brings us back to the primary issue being discussed here, can there be attraction and love between Humans and Orcs or put another way, would you date an Orc?
I'm not sure we'd share any common interests. :P
Lord-Knightmare wrote:I speculate that interracial breeding is possible in Wesnoth (only in UMCs).
Devs have said multiple times that hybrids in Wesnoth are NOT a thing, and I support that notion. Keep in mind that the different races in Wesnoth may look superficially similar, but are very different in their biology. Elves are as much faerie spirit as they are flesh and blood. Spotted hyenas seem like they'd be closely related to dogs, and their cooperative intelligence is on par with primates(!), but did you know they're more closely related to cats? Given how orc reproduction and development work, I'd say they're pretty far removed from humans. I don't think orc-human hybrids are any more possible than a coyote and a house cat.
It's spelled "definitely", not "definately". "Defiantly" is a different word entirely.
User avatar
Iris
Site Administrator
Posts: 6797
Joined: November 14th, 2006, 5:54 pm
Location: Chile
Contact:

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Iris »

johndh wrote:Devs have said multiple times that hybrids in Wesnoth are NOT a thing, and I support that notion.
Citation needed.
Author of the unofficial UtBS sequels Invasion from the Unknown and After the Storm.
User avatar
johndh
Posts: 591
Joined: June 6th, 2010, 4:03 am
Location: Music City

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by johndh »

shadowm wrote:
johndh wrote:Devs have said multiple times that hybrids in Wesnoth are NOT a thing, and I support that notion.
Citation needed.
Of course. How silly of me. :)

http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=31830
ITT: TSI's and Jetrel's opposition to hybridization, and esr's except for human-elf interbreeding.
Jetrel wrote:
thespaceinvader wrote:Indeed. Half-breeds DO NOT HAPPEN if I have anything to do with it. The whole concept of a half-breed is ludicrous.
Indeed.

The problem with half-breeds is it really, really grounds things that are supposed to be fantastic and alien. It firmly establishes elves/dwarves/etc as being biologically similar to humans. The problem is that this locks out all of the awesome stuff that makes fantasy worthwhile. Like, if you look at much more traditional "fair folk" literature, most of the fair folk were horrifying, amorphous things that were only assuming human form and speech for the purpose of interacting with them. At other times, they were transient things that didn't exist in the real world, and would only fade into existence during conditions that causes the real world and the world of magic to overlap (full moons, storms, etc).
esr wrote:OK, I'm putting on my Mr. Continuity Guy hat....

I think everyone agrees that lots of half-breeding in Wesnoth is a bad idea. I think the world would look noticeably different if it were common, like with a significant population of human/orc halfbreeds in regions where orc raids are common. Nobody wants to go there. So I'm willing to lay down as canon that in general the speaking peoples are not interfertile.

However, humans and elves are a special case. We have it in canon that they respond to each others' sexual signals and can have offspring (Tallin/Eryssa in NR). Unless there's strong sentiment for editing out that bit of history, I therefore add the following facts to canon:

1. Most species combinations are not interfertile.
2. Humans and elves are an exceptions; they respond to each others' sexual signals and can have offspring.
3. Elf/human crosses are infertile or very rarely fertile.

If there's strong sentiment for eliminating the exception, that can be done (that is, we can delete Tallin and Eryssa's son from the NR epilogue). But I think it has dramatic possibilities that shouldn't be lightly discarded.
thespaceinvader wrote:No. Orcs and humans cannot interbreed with any success at all. Let that be an end to the discussion, seriously.
It's spelled "definitely", not "definately". "Defiantly" is a different word entirely.
TheGreatRings
Posts: 742
Joined: January 26th, 2008, 10:39 pm
Location: On the front line of battle, defying hopeless odds

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by TheGreatRings »

Midnight_Carnival wrote:;) I'm just being silly, bit I've noticed how much attention is given to female Elves in fantasy games and wondering about other races.
In most fantasy games and litereature there are Half-Orcs, meaning it is possible for Orcs to breed with Humans.
Those could be hybrids as a result of dark magic though, rather than natural breeding. As I recall, that's at least a possibility with Tolkien's hybrids.
Yet as we have seen in the other thread, Orcs and Humans have different values.
The notion that all members of a race would share the same set of values is absurd.
I personally don't think an Orc would find a Human attractive at all because I think Orcs are attracted to eachother by the way they smell (Orc pheremones are probably quite distinct and may not smell that similar to human pheremones) meaning it is probably the small weak "loser" Orcs who end up breeding with Humans(?)
Any evidence for this? And which setting's version of orcs are you talking about?

Anyway, considering some of the bizarre things humans have been attracted to, I have no trouble believing an orc could be attracted to a human, or the reverse.
Of course I'm aslo going on the assumption that most races would feel that they were somehow superior to others. Since we are not ruling out the possiblity of Orcs eating other races (fairly common) it would make sense to me that Orcs would see themselves as apex predators among humanoids and thus would not want to breed with "food".
More assumptions, albeit some of them plausible.

Not everyone, however, believes in racial superiority.
So if there is this geeky Orc who can't get a date... :geek:

I mean Elves breeding with Humans I can understand because although Elves are notorious snobs, they are (as much as they'd hate to admit it) very similar to Humans.
But Orcs?
It occurs to me that orcs mating with humans is like humans mating with elves, only with humans in the opposite position- being the more "attractive", "civilized" species that sometimes tends to view itself as superior.

Of course, all this is presuming a setting where orcs are not inherently evil creatures.
"One man alone cannot fight the future"-
The X-files

"Send these foul beasts into the abyss"-Gandalf
Greyr
Posts: 7
Joined: December 4th, 2014, 9:48 pm

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Greyr »

I would and I have.
If you are offended by something I've posted, just PM me. It probably wasn't intentional.
User avatar
doofus-01
Art Director
Posts: 4122
Joined: January 6th, 2008, 9:27 pm
Location: USA

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by doofus-01 »

Greyr wrote:I would and I have.
No kidding. What's the big deal? Miscegenation of the races?
BfW 1.12 supported, but active development only for BfW 1.13/1.14: Bad Moon Rising | Trinity | Archaic Era |
| Abandoned: Tales of the Setting Sun
GitHub link for these projects
User avatar
Midnight_Carnival
Posts: 836
Joined: September 6th, 2008, 11:08 am
Location: On the beach at sunset, gathering coral

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Midnight_Carnival »

Any evidence for this? And which setting's version of orcs are you talking about?
In such instances I prefer to refer to Tolkien who invented (or at least named) Orcs.
In Mordor, Tolkien refers to a breed or cast of Orc called a Snagga (I think) which is a small Orc with larege snuffling nostrils used for tracking. The notion that Orcs have superior sense of smell to other races (except perhaps Dwarves s.ometimes) is often encountered in many/most fantasy which includes Orcs in the conventional (Tolkien-compatible sense) - I the notion of Orcs being attracted to one another based on pheromones came from a satirical work, possibly - Grunts by Mary Gentle - but I found it convenient because as far as I can make out it is reasonable to assume the following: Orcs have enhanced senses of smell and even Orcs wouldn't find Orcs appearance attractive - the first is fairly well accepted, the second I have pieced together based on the premise that Orcs' appearance would change drastically due to being bashed up a lot in battle, also many comments I've read in various fantasy stories about orcs finding each other ugly. Similarly the notion that Orcs smell bad and that this is due pheromones is an assumption but one based on the fairly well accepted notions that Orcs are very fertile and strong smelling.

As far as I can tell most of your other questions are just goading such as "who said that they had to be violent? who said that they eat humanoids?" so I won't bother to answer them. Perhaps read more fantasy literature?
...apparenly we can't go with it or something.
User avatar
Dugi
Posts: 4961
Joined: July 22nd, 2010, 10:29 am
Location: Carpathian Mountains
Contact:

Re: Would you date an Orc?

Post by Dugi »

In such instances I prefer to refer to Tolkien who invented (or at least named) Orcs.
He did give them a rigid definition, but orcs are much older. I remember quite clearly that something as old as Beowulf (the ancient epic, not the film) had mentioned orcs (there was something like 'After killing Abel, Cain left into distant swampy lands and bred orcs and other monsters'). And they were named orcneas (probably plural form) in the original version (I could not read the rest because the English language was too ancient for me to read). The name was probably derived Orcus, an evil Roman god, the punisher of those who had taken false oath.
In Mordor, Tolkien refers to a breed or cast of Orc called a Snagga (I think) which is a small Orc with larege snuffling nostrils used for tracking.
I thought Snagga was the name of that particular orc.

The stuff you wrote about pheromones might not be so crazy, the main place from which humans release pheromones is armpit hair after all. Long unwashed orcs should logically stink, but humans didn't wash much in the medieval and stunk too. If I recall correctly, in Lord of the Rings, the hobbits told that the orcs stink sa bad as if they never washed in their life - which is quite possible supposing they lived in Mordor when water is scarce.

Or maybe humans evolved to notice orcish pheromones and interpret them as foul smell warning them of grave danger. There is a compound only humans can smell because they are the only species who needs to preserve meat - it is thioacetone, which is there in very small quantities - and they can smell it in unbelievably small quantities (one drop across a half-kilometre) and feel it as an extremely foul pungent stench (when a flacon of it was first produced in Freiburg, Germany in 19th century, everyone fled the town in terror, puking and fainting on the way). Maybe if orcs existed, they would have a similar reaction to their pheromones.
Post Reply