Orcs Campaign: How, When , Why, What! [important]

[b0rsuk]

'Kruk' in Polish means 'Raven' in English.

The lore in orc breeding grounds talks about infusing corrupting blight into the mothers blood. Personally, I believe the current state of the orcs is being affected like this. The blighted blood in the offspring generates excessive aggression, retards thinking, etc. et

In short, pretty much a copy of Warcraft retcon. For my taste, the campaign tried too hard to make orcs looks abused. There's nothing genuinely likeable about them, their culture is barely more developed than those of Tolkien. I recommend reading Poul Anderson's "Broken Sword" for an interesting example of a villain half-troll with developed personality. It's a great story from start to finish, and would be wonderful for inspiration. It describes a war between trolls and elves in a way that feels epic without being overblown. It's a forgotten classic and one of best fantasy books ever written. Tolkien and Anderson drew from the same sources, but used them in different way.



Orcs in Tolkien's works came... from elves. They were elves captured by Morgoth (Sauron's boss) in the dawn of time, and twisted with torture and dark magicks. Which reminds me a bit of George's Orwell's "1984".

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

Orcs in Tolkien's works came... from elves. They were elves captured by Morgoth (Sauron's boss) in the dawn of time, and twisted with torture and dark magicks. Which reminds me a bit of George's Orwell's "1984".

That was an early explanation, but Tolkien was unhappy with it and said later that this was not their true origin, but he never decided where they really came from. Since the Simarillion and other later published works were just earlier notes and papers edited together, the now no longer valid old explanation still gets read and considered official, but it is not.

[Grey]

Yeah, he retconned it to be made from men, since he didn't want orcs to be immortal like elves. His notes on it are fairly indecisive though. I got the impression he liked the idea of them being former elves, but didn't want the metaphysical problems that arose from that (immortal elven souls).

[HousePet]

Morgoth was powerful enough to do whatever he wanted without needing anyone to retcon things.

[Winddbourne]

Is there any more news about the ork campaign? Is it even still in development?

[darkgod]

Oh yes they are coming
We're playtesting it now

[Effigy]

Very much so, and shaping up quite well!

[Ravenholme]

Oh yes they are coming
We're playtesting it now

This is great news, I keep my eye out for details on the progress but I admit I don't know much beyond the basic premise of the campaign (which sounds awesome).

There is one question I want to ask, if it is permitted, and that is - Will any of the new content made for the new campaign be playable in the Age of Ascendancy campaign? (Classes etc?)

Obviously you want to avoid spoilers about the content (and so do I, actually), I was just curious about whether we would get new goodies in AoA to play with.

[Matanui3]

As intriguing as the steamtech stuff sounds, I don't want to play an orc.

This brings up a good point: there are loads of races in the main campaign; as such, it would seem a little restricting to JUST play as orcs.

[Narindor]

I believe DarkGod mentioned somewhere that Yetis would also be playable, along with maybe one other (potentially non-Orc) race.

[darkgod]

With Embers of Rage you can unlock the tinker classes for the vanilla game yes