Over the DM's Shoulder

Monday, June 16, 2025

Homebrew Setting Clans: Orcs

This guide to important groups of orcs is part of a larger group of articles on clans in my homebrew setting, Evanoch. In this series, I have filled in a large gap that has existed the whole nearly two decades I've been DMing in my world--who are the important people? I'd decided who was in political leadership long ago, but there are more forms of power than political power. And in really thinking about who the important people in Evanoch are, I've learned more about the cultural groups in my world--what values does a group hold that allow a certain person or people to be famous or successful? This has been monumental in changing my homebrew versions of D&D groups into multidimensional populaces instead of monolithic caricatures. With the orcs, I'll be looking to add depth and variation to a group that is much closer to my heart than the humans and dwarves I've already written about. So let's get started. 


I have always been sorely disappointed by the standard D&D presentation of orcs. A nearly mindless, insanely aggressive people who live in a tribal setting is not unique or original and has its roots in racism that promoted global imperialism and genocide, and what's more, it's just not really interesting. To me, having the technologically advanced gnomes and the culturally utopian elves that are standard fantasy fare next to club-wielding stone age orcs is silly and unrewarding from a narrative perspective. For that reason, I've heavily homebrewed my orcs. Their cultural remains tribal, and no massive orcish cities exist in Evanoch; they also place physical might and battle high in cultural values--these things keep the orcs rooted in the tradition they are born of from our perspective as gamers. But my orcs consider combat an honorable sport rather than a way of life, prefer peace, place ultimate cultural power in the hands of wise women rather than war chiefs, and ultimately possess a connection with rustic life that gives them a satisfaction and peace that faster-paced cultures miss out on. It's a mild subversion of classic "noble savage" trope from literature, but in-game, my orcs are more often noble than savage to the point that unless combat is currently raging, an orc would be the most calm and sage about most situations out of all groups in Evanoch. That said, now we need to mix up these ideas. Here are the five most important clans in orcish society: 

The Kragnor Clan

In orcish society, there are two channels for high honor in terms of callings. One of these is through the channel of combat in the form of becoming the leader of orcish militaries and the nominal head of all orcish people, the position of Ragnar. But orcs are a community-based people, not a unified nation, so the Ragnar's power is only exercised at times of crisis. The other calling with high honor is that of wise woman, or curtran. Every village has an elderly orcish woman who is gone to for advice, spiritual guidance, and herbalism tutelage, and these women are the de facto leaders of their communities in a very real way. Historically, curtrans have advised for peace, spiritual dedication, and self-sufficiency, values that define orcish life. The Kragnors, then, have some of the greatest hold on power in orcish society due to the number of Kragnors who have become a curtran. Word of mouth suggests that roughly two in five villages on Grob Island and the Dakor Peninsula (the orcish homelands) are overseen by a Kragnor curtran, something that far eclipses any type of prevalence of one family in that position. But this is not concerning to orcs at large. To doubt a curtran is a grave social faux pas in orcish society, and the Kragnors are actually regarded as some of the finest to grace the position. Their guidance is wise, their support is constant, and their skills are nearly unmatched. It is worth noting that the largest orcish city, Kruush, is large enough to require three curtrans to serve the population, and two of them are Kragnor women. 

The birth of the Kragnor clan can be found relatively long ago by orcish standards, but within living memory for many of Evanoch's more long-lived groups--about 150 years ago. Huret Kragnor was orphaned at four when her parents both died in a skirmish with elven scouts; she was adopted by her village's curtran, who mentored Kragnor well into her adolescence. When Kragnor's mentor died and was replaced by a less friendly curtran, she set out to travel the orcish homelands and dedicate herself to what her curtran her taught her. By her thirtieth birthday, Kragnor had studied with a massive number of curtrans across the region and learned about issues facing orcs across the homelands. She later settled in Kruush and became a wise woman at a remarkably young age; she would adopt orphans and teach them her ways as had been done with her. These students would learn and set out to do as she had done, and this semi-formalized the Kragnor training: apprenticeship with a Kragnor curtran, touring the orcish homelands, and choosing a community to serve and take in new apprentices. And so the unintentional trajectory that Huret Kragnor took in her life became a regimen for developing skilled curtrans, and since a wise woman does not have children by custom, the adoption process creates a mechanism for legacy. Today, villages who have a Kragnor curtran are proud and feel lucky, and some orcs from villages without a Kragnor are known to sneak to villages with one to ask for advice (a huge snub of their own curtran). 

Within orcish society, the Kragnor clan is a trusted group in a way that transcends faith in a group outside orcs. There is no equivalent in, say, Daltoner or gnomish society to the Kragnors. While some clans and families may embody what people think is good about their culture, to orcs, the Kragnors are both paragons and saviors. For an average orc, guidance from a curtran is often a weekly if not daily activity--it's how orcs stay centered and focused in their culture. So for the Kragnors to be excellent, reliable, and well-known curtrans over generations is to say that countless orcs over a century and a half have thought of a Kragnor wise woman as personally making their lives better. Not even other curtrans have a negative word for the Kragnors; curtrans are above petty envy and prestige, and they are genuinely grateful that their people have widespread support and guidance. Generally, because Kragnors reside solely in orcish lands, orcs who leave the homelands often say that the thing they miss most--even more than comfort food, familiar songs, and old friends--is being able to go to Kragnor curtrans in times of need and confusion. Outside of orcish society, curtrans are not generally well-understood. Many non-orcs do not know what to make of traditionalist orcs frequent visits to old women, and halflings in particular, with their total lack of family structure, cannot imagine what orcs gain from these meetings. But only a very dense Evanine would fail to appreciate the reverence with which orcs approach curtrans and especially Kragnors, and only the truly antagonistic ever say anything about it to orcs. The Kragnors are likely to be known by name even by outsides in orc-heavy communities even when one is not present--cities like Torga and Ringsdale have large enough populations of orcs that Kragnors are mentioned reguarly in even these far-from-orcish-homelands cities.

The Ralarr Clan

The modern Ralarr Clan has been a surprising story for many orcs. Two generations ago, Rek Ralarr, the direct descendent of an important orc in early history (for whom the Ralarr Plains are named), began a campaign that has deeply divided the orcs still living in the orcish homelands. He has argued that the traditional orcish way of life has held back orcs from achieving real success; simple life on a barren rock miles from where people are excelling struck Ralarr as wasted potential and started lobbying for the migration away from the orcish homelands. For many orcs living on Grob and on the Dakor Peninsula, this is repugnant--the small population of orcs still in the homeland are all that is left of the old way of life, and Ralarr is effectively encouraging the death of orcish tradition in their eyes. To Ralarr, though, Grob Island is a non-entity in Evanoch--the "Big Nine" does not include Kruush or any orcish city, and the profile of orcs abroad is still dealing with old prejudice while the Grob orcs are less than afterthoughts to many. Current notable Ralarr Karth Ralarr has continued and elevated this activist work to the point of raising money and building settlements outside of orcish lands so that orcs can try for a bit of the success the Ralarrs see elsewhere. This has sparked a decades-long debate amongst orcs about the weighing of tradition versus innovation, and it is very common today for orcs to have heavy conversations about the future of their people and homeland and the value of what remains in the homeland. This has caused a large amount of art and literature to be created on the topic, and the Ralarr Clan is explicitly named by the creators in a notable portion of the works. 

Part of the shock of the modern Ralarr's perspective is that the historical Ralarr was very much a loyalist to orcish traditions. The histories say that the Ralarr Plain was inhabited by a large clan of orcs with the name Ralarr, and the Plain was named after them when the historical Ralarr, Xar Ralarr, made the decision to move all of his people from the Plain to Grob Island to unite the orcish people. Ralarr has been held for centuries as a prosperous and intelligent man who put the wellbeing of all orcs above that of his own clan. For a time in the generations that followed Xar's life, granting a child the first name "Ralarr" became a common thing. In Kruush, which Xar helped to build, the Ralarrs became a trusted clan to the gathering orcs, and Xar was even said to finance different projects to aid struggling orcish communities beyond, always offering them passage and resettling on Grob. Xar Ralarr's name was not forgotten when Rek Ralarr began lobbying for migration and assimilation, and this has amplified the reaction to the modern Ralarr agenda. Certainly, Rek Ralarr intended to trade on the power of his name, but he underestimated the support of his forebear's legacy. As the debate about orcish identity and its future continues, orcs are making an effort to distinguish between the fabled Xar Ralarr and the upstart Rek Ralarr, and many orcs have begun to realize that the question of tradition versus the future goes far beyond where orcs live. 

The Ralarrs are incredibly polarizing. After the War of Kraal less than five hundred years ago, in which two thirds of all orcs died, a great many orcs left the homeland and sought their fortunes elsewhere, and that blow took a great deal of the few remaining orcs away from Grob and Dakor. For orcs in the homeland currently, they are choosing an actively harsher life than they could have if they went just about anywhere else. The Ralarr creed, then, is a very heavy thing. Orcs loyal to tradition, who believe themselves the few remaining practioners of a dying way of life, see the Ralarrs as villainous, stupid, and treacherous. Orcs dissatisfied with their lives hear the Ralarr message and begin to daydream about possibilities elsewhere--the Ralarrs give these orcs hope. Orcs already abroad see the Ralarrs as "preaching to the choir," spreading a message they believe so obvious it need not be said. Outsiders generally see the Ralarrs as unremarkable if curious--the idea of moving around and leaving a place behind is not as complicated for most as it is for orcs, who remained isolationist for far longer than the other groups. There is a special case for the elves, though. For elves who have moved past the War of Kraal, the Ralarrs are just more white noise in the cacophony of everyday life. But for elves who remember the War of Kraal and losing half of the elven population, the Ralarrs are something different. Approximately one-third of elves were alive or even present for the war (whereas no common orcs are still alive), and the bitterness they feel toward the orcish homeland is very real and very caustic. To these angry elves, the Ralarrs are wonderful agents of destruction, dismantling the orcish homeland one migrant at a time. In fact, a few militant elves have even quietly financed the Ralarrs in order to promote the dispersal of orcs from Grob and Dakor. (Were this to be known, diplomatic and potentially military consequences could follow.)

The Deraak Clan

Since the War of Kraal ended nearly five hundred years ago, the orcish culture has changed how it feels about combat. For millennia, orcs practiced non-lethal combat against one another, including as a combat test to determine the military leader, the Ragnar. They extended that to lethal combat for hunting and self-defence until contact with the elves, at which point prolonger wars occurred. But since the War of Kraal, the deadliest war of all time in Evanoch (and which claimed two-thirds of all orcs' lives), militarism has more or less disappeared. This has caused a reactionary group to emerge which argues that militarism must return to the center of orcish life. Members of the group who go further argue that the losses of the War of Kraal must be avenged, stating that renewed war efforts must happen to punish the elves. The Deraak Clan is led by Lokk Deraak, a career mercenary who left the orcish homelands to pursue his fortune; abroad, he witnessed the militarism of the Daltoners and how they had carved out a massive holding through force and wanted the same for what he believed to be a diminished orcish empire. Deraak returned to the orcish homelands and spoke in orcish villages along the way, slowly gathering a flock of followers who also believed that orcs needed to take the world by storm and by might. Today, Deraak leads several hundred orcs in organized militias and has taken to touring just beyond orcish lands to look for enemies to vanquish and lands to settle--they have a small encampment just north of Fort Dagtail but haven't, in their three years of patrolling, actually formed a town or engaged in battle. Deraak counts this as a sign that they haven't created a strong enough foundation and has currently suspended military action to raise more militias via a tour of settlements in broader Evanoch. 

Deraak himself was something of a failed mercenary. He was overly aggressive in combat and made little distinction between enemies and bystanders, and he burned out of six different mercenary companies in five years before finding himself in eastern Evanoch, where he first encountered the Daltoner Empire. To Deraak, Kruush and New Dalton were complete opposites. Kruush was small, community-based, matriarchal in many ways, somewhat unreligious, and isolated. New Dalton was huge, fairly unified, heavily patriarchal, highly religious, and situated in the midst of Evanoch's biggest cities and spacious places. For the young and aspiring Deraak, New Dalton was a symbol of what Kruush could be if only it would join Daltoners in the modern age. Learning of the military conquest by the Daltoners struck a chord with Deraak, and the orc took his dreams back home to spread them. Most orcs are unswayed by Deraak's ideals--they know the worth of their simpler, quieter life and are skeptical of the mindset that brought them to their knees in the fairly recent past. But when Deraak does reach an orc, it's actually through appealing to tradition. He speaks of Ragnars past and the military tradition of the orcs. He describes the splendor of the orcish homeland and his desire to grace it with prosperity. He waxes eloquent about the strength of orcish men and their duty to orcs everywhere. His followers are uniformly young men who are alienated in their home villages socially, though a few older men--particularly career mercenaries like Deraak himself--do also come to follow the Deraak Clan. 

Opinion is divided amongst most orcs. About half of orcs believe that Deraak is misguided and ultimately harmless--his military parades through southwest Evanoch seem more a playacting exercise than a genuine threat. The other half of orcs is more cautious. Some say Deraak is mistaken, and others say he is malicious and manipulative; they agree that his military jaunts diminish orcs in the eyes of the public and that he could cause serious problems he should know better than to cause. The true opposite force in orcish culture to the Deraak Clan is the curtran. A curtran advises for wisdom, peace, and joy; the Deraak Clan preaches power, domination, and exclusion. This is part of why the Deraaks are so universally dismissed amongst orcs--as the cornerstones of their communities, their adherence to another way holds more weight amongst average orcs than the Deraaks' ideas. In many regions of the orcish homelands, small groups of orcs have begun counter-organizing by publicly discussing the matter of the Deraaks and discussing how traditional ideals can solve problems. Lokk Deraak himself seems unconcerned by the opposition, knowing that the young men he recruits are unlikely to be dissuaded by traditional figures of authority. Outside of the orcs themselves, the Deraaks are almost universally despised. One halfling writer captured the general consensus when writing that "The Deraaks take everything beautiful and meaningful and turn their backs on it to light a fire under the whole world." Among the halflings, whose territory has been encroached upon by the Deraaks on several occasions, there has been consistent talk of raising a militia for the first time in thousands of years to combat the incursions. Only the Daltoners have any regard for the Deraaks, and that is qualified; Daltoners agree that the Deraak Clan has the right idea, but also condemn them as monstrous non-humans and freaks who were raised by women. When confronted with this judgment by the Daltoners, Deraak simply said he would prove the orcish people's worth to them one day.

The Klawr Clan

The Klawr Clan is one of the few important groups in orcish society who are neither located in Kruush or in a major city in Evanoch. Rather, they have established a foothold in a smaller city of Nopirock, a small seaside settlement originally founded by halfling explorers. Six generations ago, the Klawr family left their home on Grob Island and followed the coast east and then south, eventually arriving at Nopirock. Today, Nopirock is a curious city of halflings and orcs, a smattering of diminutive and looming buildings and people everywhere. A prominent halfling trading family, the Binds, and the Klawrs effectively but informally govern the city. But the Klawr Clan is not necessarily an important group amongst orcs for political leadership in a small city; in fact, the Klawrs are part of a massive mining and shipping operation that uses Nopirock's position between the orcish lands to the west, the halfling lands to the north, and the dwarven lands to the east. Because Nopirock is far from major cities and is somewhat isolated, only sailors who come here and see how gran the Klawr Clan's properties are. So while the Klawrs are very wealthy and locally powerful, only those in big business in Evanoch are aware that the Klawrs are major players. Further, because of their location in Nopirock, the Klawrs can control trade between the orcs, halflings, and dwarves. The Klawrs have used this influence sparingly, but always to great effect. Today, the mining operations in the Great Cliffs and Kragg Mountains run by the Klawrs export some of the most valuable resources in Evanoch all across its southern half and sometimes beyond. It is worth noting that while the Klawrs have large and effective mining and shipping companies, part of their strength with the Binds is that the Binds own a few smithing companies which the Klawrs work with. As a result, the Klawrs can sell raw ores to the dwarves, specialized tools to the halflings, and weapons and tools to the orcs, creating a system in which they are able to profit at every stage of the process. The current head of the Klawrs is Herlor Klawr, whose tenure as leader has been marked by expanding shipping routes and investing in new types of tools.

The original Klawrs were settlers dissatisfied with the hardness of life on Grob Island, which is rocky, unforgiving, and isolated. The family gathered their things and bought passage to the mainland, following the Great Cliffs and Kragg Mountains around the Marcon Sea. Amongst the family were father Tourn, mother Arba, eldest son Sern, middle daughter Kri, and youngest son Orfeh. The journey took several years because of the difficult terrain and the age of the children--Orfeh was a newborn at the journey's beginning and was carrying his own pack by the time they settled in Nopirock. Once established, the Klawrs set about planning their new lives. The cliffs and mountains they had scaled, Arba recalled, were dotted with sparkling minerals and thick that seemed untouched. Mining was a rare trade amongst orcs; the practice didn't develop until contact with the dwarves was established in the second millennium. But the Klawrs were serious about making opportunity for themselves, so they began a small company that would quickly grow into a major economic force--before Tourn Klawr's death in his seventies, he got to see his company and family enjoy incredibly prosperous times. The discovery of several veins of platinum by Klawr miners brought new success. Through the generations, the Klawrs have maintained status as significant businesspeople who hire almost exclusively orcish laborers, treating their employees well at the mines and at sea. Continued good relations with the Binds, with whom the Klawrs aligned themselves shortly after arriving, have been navigated successfully with very few incidents, and the Klawrs generally have little competition in either mining or shipping, as they began by cornering markets only they competed in. 

The Klawrs are generally off the map of most average people. Were you to approach a random orc in Kruush and ask their opinion of the Klawr Clan, they would be likely to ask who you were talking about--the Klawrs don't reside in orcish lands, and their company names (Marcon Mines and Prockinor Trading Company) do not name the Klawrs. But if you were to approach that same random orc and Kruush and ask their opinion of the family that started mining the Marcon Sea's mountains or of those companies, they would emphatically tell you that those orcs are bad people. The Kragg Mountains and especially the Great Cliffs in particular are holy sites in orcish faith, and mining them was strictly forbidden even for the orcs who lived next to the mountain ranges. To orcs from the homeland, the Klawrs are traitors who sell off parts of their culture and keep the profits for themselves although orcish belief says all orcs have claim to those sites. Orcs beyond the homeland are divided. Those who still identify as loyal, traditional orcs tend to judge the Klawrs as short-sighted at best and dastardly at worst; more assimilated orcs range from having somewhat mixed feelings about the Klawrs to more positive perspectives such as thinking the Klawrs were clever and took advantage of a situation by taking initiative and maintaining success. Beyond orcish society, very few are aware of the conflict that orcs understand intuitively. Were they to be filled in, Faninites, dwarves, elves, and gnomes would be critical of Klawr actions, while Daltoners, half-elves, and halflings would say that the Klawrs acted in a way that is entirely understandable and needn't be considered an affront to anyone. For what it's worth, the Klawrs themselves acknowledge that they went against the values of their people, but also argue that they turned their back on all of that the moment they left Grob, so those values are not of import to them. 

The Hurv Clan

In orcish culture, history and literature and song and all many of art is passed down through tradition. Career artists did not exist in orcish culture until fairly modern times--art was shared in and participated by all, and the goal of making art was not to create beauty so much for the sake of creating art itself. That all changed when Evanoch became a continent-wide community in the early fourth millennium. Cultures with written traditions were everywhere, and orcs could not articulate their different form of oral tradition and amateur art creation in a conversation when all other voices were comparing written histories, religious texts, and literature of all sorts. Culturally, there was a great move in orcish communities to not be left behind and to quickly develop a written tradition as well. Understandably, many of these new works were styled after the works of other cultures, and while the oral tradition is still lived everyday in orcish territories, most orcs (who live outside of Grob Island and the rare traditional orcish village abroad) are far removed from the old tradition of art. Nearly one hundred years ago, though, the Hurv Clan decided to change that. The Hurv Clan is the rare group that has a singular purpose for existence--reigniting the orcish oral tradition and preserving old orcish literature in both old and new forms. Hurv Clan members track down orcs with specific stories, traditions, and philosophies across the world (and especially in the orcish homelands), record them, and bring them back to their headquarters, a stately if humble building in Fort Dagtail, where the works can be catalogued, reproduced, and spread during educational seminars which touring Hurvs teach across southwest Evanoch and often beyond. As a result, there has been a slow but steady resurgence of oral tradition practices in Kruush and across Grob, and the library of what was believed to be all of orcish literature has quintupled. Current Hurv leader, Kalarr Xurxen, believes that in another century, the existing body will quintuple again. Under his leadership, the Hurvs have created a directory of curtrans to find and maintain stories as well as create a sort of ambassador program in which Hurv representatives travel to foreign universities to discuss the clan's work (they have appeared in Curagon, Torga, Ringsdale, Vestry, Talon Gorge, and Finiel--New Dalton, Underhar, and Mishara pointedly declined). Given the position that orcish culture was in before the Hurvs, being allowed to speak at any university would be a success; Xurxen says he won't rest until New Dalton, Underhar, and Mishara accept Hurv speakers. 

The Hurv Clan's creation was unlikely. As a young boy, Rett Karnen was lost by his family in the Shorgon Forest; he was found days later, delirious, at the edge of the Kraal Desert by a family of half-elves. The half-elves, whose family name was Hurv, took Karnen in and returned his health; both Karnen, whose family had been unstable and abusive, and the Hurvs, who were kind-hearted people, were slow to have Karnen go back to where he'd come from. Karnen missed the stories of the orcs most, and he admitted to his parents, Susanna and Robin, that he wished to one day find a way to reconnect with those stories. When Karnen was old enough, Susanna and Robin helped pay his way into Finiel's Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he earned a degree in history with honors and audited many classes on the topics of religion and art. Karnen had been Finiel's Academy of Arts and Sciences' first orcish student, and several have followed in his footsteps, most all of whom have gone on to become Hurvs. On that topic, Karnen made an effort to send acolytes to different universities (currently there are Hurvs enrolled in Finiel, Vestry, Curagon, and Ringsdale with another set to start in Torga in a few months) in order to diversify the ideas the clan has to work with. When Karnen did pass, the Hurv Clan suffered some setbacks in the form of uncertain direction and conflicted leadership. However, a few confident, calm voices did step in, and the Hurvs have since made a consistent track record of both enriching the orcish homeland by restoring its artistic tradition and promoting orcish art across Evanoch, which has led in recent years to something of a renaissance in orcish culture. Current Hurv leader Kalarr Xurxen has created a program because of this that records these new stories, though its focus remains on recovering history. 

Perception of the Hurv Clan is a rare example of a pretty uniformly beloved group of people, which is hard to accomplish when you have an agenda. As far as orcs go, the Hurvs are never hated. Orcs who wish to separate themselves from orcish tradition simply ignore the Hurvs, perhaps most spitefully thinking that they're wasting their time. Orcs who embrace tradition adore the Hurvs, regarding them as selfless and right-minded people doing the gods' work (literally). When a Hurv is greeted to a community to research, they are greeted with gifts and homemade foods and exquisite treatment as though they were mythic figures. Orcs tend to believe that they lost something huge in their culture a millennium ago, then most of their people half a millennium ago--to regain their culture was a blessing they never expected to have. For non-orcs, having an organized group of people to bring the orcish culture in line with others is generally considered good, especially among academics and artists, for whom the Hurvs' work is literally creating a new field for them to study. It is rare, but occasionally those who dislike orcs on principle, such as elves or Daltoners, oppose the Hurv mission, but that is more a matter of racism a statement about the Hurvs. Interestingly, in recent years, it became a fad for young elves to become very well-versed in the Hurvs' work as a sort of rebellious, counter-culture move, and as a result, there are a large number of elven adults who are intimately familiar with orcish art and tradition, and the softening of the tension between elves and orcs is a significant step in relations. It is also worth noting that Finiel's Academy of Arts and Sciences has a classroom dedicated to Rett Karnen, the founder of the Hurvs, and orcish history and literature are taught there. 



And there you have it--a guide to five distinctive and notable clans amongst my orcs. I have to admit: this guide had a different feeling to it than the first three in this series. With the Daltoners, I was trying to diversify cartoon villains. With the Faninites, I needed to flesh out hippies. With the dwarves, I had to come up with my own take on an unchanging classis. But the orcs were different--my orcs are very homebrewed. I've kept that they have military tradition and are tribal and basically reimagined everything else. So when I go to make clans for them, I'm not filling out an incomplete picture like I was with the first three--I'm trying to find ways to create interesting wrinkles in an already complex tapestry I know well. I love my orcs. So often, D&D makes them hulking morons with nothing to say but hilarious grunts. My orcs are thoughtful and matriarchal and very humble and quiet. They actually live the details of tribal traditions. They have more to say than "kill." So how to I add to that? In this case, I made the Kragnors a perfect embracing of what orcs would want, and then I started tweaking core beliefs. The Ralarrs, pushing beyond the homeland, turn against orcish tradition. The Deraaks turn against peace and the orcish tradition in order to embrace combat and the orcish tradition. The Klawrs reject isolationism for big business, which takes advantage of the orcish tradition. And the Hurvs are quite the opposite of tradition, as they leave the homeland to learn other methods and apply them to orcs, but they are actually preserving tradition in a world threatening to consume it. Almost all of the clans in this series ask the question, "But what if this group believed x instead of y?" And doing that with my beloved orcs was a lot of fun--seeing how modern orcs have reacted to the combined forces of history and modernity helped me to understand the orcs not as they were in the stone age or as they were during the War of Kraal but now. The experiences of orcs across Evanoch are more diverse than those in any other group because of their history and present and culture and differences and geography. This clan guide helped me to see that and understand why that is, and I couldn't be happier about it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: clan guides to the elves, half-elves, and gnomes. Until next time, happy gaming!




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