Where the monsters are

[Laurence]

Do your orcs have any traits that allow them to live in some of the nastier deserts or tundras?

If they overtook an existing race I would expect to see mixed race orcs/humans.

 

[skip.knox]

Why not scatter them like the elves, but develop an organic path for their historical conquest?

If I go with the "Livonian Solution" then I'll do something along those lines. Orcs would appear somewhere vague like "the Russian steppes" with an unrecorded history. By the time they appear in the records, they would have a small empire based perhaps around Novgorod or Kiev, and would expand from there.

OTOH, if I put them down in the Balkans, I'd probably go more in the direction of the Seljuk Turks and have them comes down through Persia into Anatolia. Happily, I don't need to decide anything soon. They don't figure in the story Into the Second World, nor into my next book, The Falconer. But at some point I'm going to have to stop dodging the issue!

 

[skip.knox]

Do your orcs have any traits that allow them to live in some of the nastier deserts or tundras?

If they overtook an existing race I would expect to see mixed race orcs/humans.

Right now, they don't have any traits, at least not physiological.

In general, I want to make them close to humans. Only the orcs copy human institutions--they're the only ones with an emperor. I picture them being very good at making use of elements of other cultures, as well as quick to adopt other technologies. The huge dividing line is that they are monotheistic. They worship the god of the sun. All magic flows from the god of the sun through their priests. Ordinary orcs don't do magic; and if they do, they are condemned as witches. Magic is to come from prayer, from invocation and ritual. Other forms of magic are cursed (orcs don't have a devil or a hell).

So, I have some cultural attributes, but nothing physical. If anything, I'd say they are like humans in that they are highly adaptable.

 

[ThinkerX]

Heck...put the Orc Empire in the new world. Maybe replace the Maya/Aztecs. That way, they are mere rumors and isolated visitors to Europe, until your version of Columbus comes along.

 

[skip.knox]

I hear that, ThinkerX. I am remaining resolutely in Europe. I find I have all I can handle to cover 1500 years of history there.

The Roman Empire in the Middle Ages, as I'm sure most everyone knows, split into an eastern and western portion. The empire in the West eventually came to be called the Holy Roman Empire (which Voltaire famously said was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire). Its rulers increasingly regarded themselves as the bulwark of Christianity first against the pagans of eastern Europe, then against the Ottomans. However muddled and self-serving that was, I am using it as a fundamental principle of the Roman Empire of Altearth. It's a bulwark against external threats.

I can place those threats in a variety of lands, but the New World is too remote, even if I let it be discovered centuries early.

The great advantage of working with an alternate history is that so much of the world is a given. The great disadvantage of working with an alternate history is having to work within what is given, and having to be so very careful about what one alters. It does tend to make the author a bit whiny.

 

[ThinkerX]

Hmmm...well, the Orcs in the British Isles could be colonists from the Americas, part of a mass migration/invasion. That would give the Orcs superior nautical technology than your version of the roman empire. Then, at some point a few centuries down the road, the romans gain the upper hand and the Americas become the battlefield.

I have something like this lined up for Aquas (the 'second primary world') - a vast orc (well, goblin, actually, gotta update things) invasion force sailing out of what's believed to be empty sea...but actually contains a sizable continent with issues of its own.