When I started writing fantasy, I had the Orcs be their usually ugly, angry, raiding selves because that’s how I was raised to see them.  I never really considered that they could have depth until I outlined one specific story for way down the road.  Originally, it was supposed to focus on the chaos elves saving the world from an ancient race that has magically enslaved the more honorable races.  Then, the orcs and the giltris (lizardmen) joined the chaos elves.  The orcs proved to be amazingly cunning and possess a primal honor that I never gave them credit for.  So, I had to go back to change the orcs from the bottom up.

I altered their history, so that the original orcs were wiped out by the Hejinn because of a power struggle that they lost.  The orc gods had lost their followers and were being punished by the actions of a few, so they set out to the distant moons to retrieve the orc formula.  Many died, but they succeeded in recreating the orcs and reintroducing them to Windemere.  They returned with a sense of guilt and wisdom that tempered their natural ferocity, which led to the creation of the Growk Council.  This is the ruling body of all orc culture and is a collection of elders with a royal family as a mouthpiece.  There are still rogue groups that act as bandits, but the council leaves them alone as a reminder to the other races of what the orcs used to be.  This way, there will never be an attempt to dissolve the Growk Council.  Things have been rather peaceful under this system if not a little tense and racist toward the orcs.

The physical design was another change that happened.  They always seem to be green or brown, so I made them gray-skinned with perpendicular ears and short noses.  I did make them large, fierce-looking and kind of gross.  This grossness comes from their lack of nose hairs, so they sound like they’re choking on the air because nothing filters out the pollen and dust.

Although, that’s just the males.  If anyone has read Beginning of a Hero, they’d notice there is a female orc at the academy.  A towering, blonde beauty with smaller incisors and the ability to absorb air through her lungs, so she has no need for lungs.  I don’t really know what’s in there though.  Maybe thicker chest bones or an extra heart or two?  Anyway, the female orcs were designed to be the most beautiful of ‘civilized’ creatures, but I did it in a Wonder Woman body type of way.  They have muscles and can bench press a small car, so they aren’t dainty.  I’m not sure why I did this, but I think it has to do with too many people going on about how beautiful elves were.  So, I had a part of orc history where an elven caster cursed the species so that the males found the females too disgusting to mate with.  A band of females went to reverse the curse and the answer was to turn them into beauties that emanate a natural charm that cannot be ignored.  I keep calling them the more gorgeous creature, but in my mind they’re not supermodel-level gorgeous.  There’s a primal aura around them that draws others to them, which is something I’m still trying to figure out.  A big influence on this idea was a race of ‘Beauty & the Beast’ combinations where the males were brutish looking and the women were beautiful, but they’re the same species and see beauty in each other.

I made a lot of backstory to the orcs, which has led to a small collection of ideas that I might put together called ‘Orc Tales’.  It covers the new orcs appearing, the change of the women, how the royal familybecame a spirit channelers, and a few other stories.  Though, I could just leave these as tales to be told throughout all the series.