D20x5 Odd Orcs

M’orc.

D20	These Orcs Come From...
1	Those caught between humanity and beasthood way back when the boundary between the two was made less permeable.
2	The nightmares of a psychic child that marched out of their skull and into the waking world.
3	Goblin-spirits that fattened themselves on mortal flesh until they became too material to return to their unseelie realm.
4	The pioneer species of mortalkind, built for a harsher, crueler world.
5	A caste of constructed soldiers born so that they could be sent to die guiltlessly.
6	The offspring of witches and particularly brutish demons.
7	Populations poisoned by magical run-off.
8	Elves, born in pairs so their elven twin could absorb their virtues and leave them with all the vices.
9	A failed attempt at uplifting hogs to a level of responsibility.
10	Far, far too much inbreeding among a warlike noble line.
11	The children of Adam and the deceptive serpent in Eden.
12	Feral children adopted by totemic predators.
13	Test subjects of alchemical combat drugs.
14	Zealous anarcho-primitivists set on bringing down civilization by force.
15	Carrion-crows that have eaten enough corpses to take on the appearance and intelligence of humans while retaining their hunger for death.
16	Pre-humans molded from rough stone instead of clay.
17	Neotenic ogres.
18	Berserkers who bred with bears in the throes of rage.
19	Mass-produced, degraded clones of an infamous warrior.
20	A hyper-aggressive, oversized sub-species of chimpanzee with advanced mirror neurons that let them mimic human warfare without any other aspect of our cultures.

D20	These Orcs Are Often Encountered...
1	Setting barbed wire nets for an ambush.
2	Breaking in brutal warbeasts.
3	Raiding towns in the dead of night.
4	Testing each others’ pain tolerance with brutal games.
5	Marching somewhere in a mob, trampling anything that gets in their way.
6	Admiring stolen weapons and armour.
7	Drenching a victorious raider with a sacrifice’s guts.
8	Debating and brawling over tactics and strategy.
9	Being branded with the slave-marks of a more powerful orc they’ve sworn loyalty to.
10	Scouting for a larger horde.
11	Composing a new war-song.
12	Ritualistically mutilating the last survivor of a raid to strike fear into the hearts of those who find them.
13	In the throes of drug-induced berserker rage.
14	Looting barrows and old battlefields for rusty killing implements.
15	Playing an aggressive sport with a severed head for a ball.
16	Piling bones by the mouths of caves.
17	Carrying stones for a temporary fortification.
18	Making a bonfire out of splintered homes and books.
19	Reading omens in the patterns of spilled blood.
20	Making captives fight for their amusement.

D20	These Orcs Might Carry...
1	Daggers made from agonite, crystallized torment, which inflict mind-breaking pain.
2	Thewburst potions, which cause rapid and eventually lethal muscle growth, first tearing the skin and then squeezing every last drop of blood from the drinker’s body.
3	Bombshell armour, constructed of blister-like plates that explode outwards (hopefully) when struck.
4	Footwraps made of flayed soles which allow their wearer to creep silently on any surface.
5	A jagged sword that’s always wet with fresh blood. Anything it kills is immediately butchered and cooked to satisfactory quality.
6	A set of fine haruspexy tools for the careful disembowelment of prisoners, so as to produce the most portentous guts.
7	A disposable culverin mounted on someone else’s horse. Firing it will snap the horse’s back in twain.
8	A demon-skin drum which causes localized earthquakes but shatters the bones of the one who beats it.
9	Bottled anti-light that when uncorked cloaks a 50-meter radius area in utter darkness for 1d6 hours.
10	A dusty and beaten horn which rouses all the ancient dead within earshot from the earth when blown, and then crumbles. The dead will kill the living indiscriminately for 1d6 hours, then fall to pieces as the horn did. Has no effect on the already undead.
11	A pouch full of sloughworms, which when sewn on the earth will convert a 10x10x10 area of it into quicksand that’s nearly impossible to distinguish from ordinary dirt. Anyone caught in the quicksand will be fed upon by the worms.
12	A collection of rings still wrapped around the severed fingers of the hand that once wore them.
13	A pike with a head impaled on the end of it. The head’s cheeks and eyelids are cut out. If the head spots an enemy before the orcs do it will shriek to alert them. It will never stop shrieking if taken from them.
14	A pot of crimson war-woad. Anyone slathered with it might be able to pass for an orc from a distance.
15	The eggs of a terror-bird which will imprint on the first thing they see when they hatch. Will hatch in 1d6 days.
16	A limbless toad which eyes you warily while muttering prophetic dooms.
17	Torches stuffed with hallucinatory herbs and rags soaked through with their urine. The torches induce fearsome visions in anyone who inhale their smoke, while the orcs will don the rags to filter it while they’re lit.
18	Hollow glass sling-bullets filled with stinking acid.
19	A dented cauldron, crusty with old gore and the boiled-away husks of toxic weeds.
20	A hunk of meteoric iron affixed to the end of a pole to make a crude but effective sledgehammer.

D20	These Orcs Have Recently Been:
1	Attempting to negotiate a peace with nearby human settlements.
2	Massing under a charismatic warlord.
3	Seen in the service of a reputedly respectable wizard.
4	Seeking a magical weapon of dreadful power.
5	Coordinating huge slave raids and forcing the people they capture into digging out a bizarre excavation.
6	Found to have surgically-disguised agents active among humanity.
7	Accumulating art by barter and theft to unknown ends.
8	Muttering fearfully about a great blind eye whose gaze is death.
9	Mutating into even more dangerous forms.
10	Sighted in the heartlands of civilization, deep past patrols and forts that should have caught them.
11	Exhibiting a long-thought-lost martial arts style.
12	Found to be hosts to a crustaceoid parasites that form “horns” on their heads.
13	Driven from the region, and are believed to be locally extinct. Rumours of hardened survivor-cells planning an epic retribution are to be reported to the authorities.
14	Fortifying themselves within dungeons and other subterranean spaces, refusing to tread the surface, mocking any who try to parley with them.
15	Recruiting human deserters and bandits into their ranks.
16	Kidnapping master architects and city planners.
17	Attacking a particular merchant company’s shipments to the exclusion of others.
18	Operating through subtle conspiracies rather than direct violence.
19	Said to have enslaved a giant big enough to stomp castles into rubble.
20	Inspiring a subversive culinary craze.

D20	These Orcs Are Believed To...
1	Torture captives to make more of themselves.
2	Make cheese from human milk.
3	Be unable to say the names of the gods without spitting.
4	Eat the ghosts of their own fallen kin.
5	Breed with pale insects in the shadow of the earth.
6	Be blinded by sunlight as well as by gold, its earthly reflection.
7	Fear the chiming of church-bells.
8	Hold court with trolls and dryads and other wild sorts.
9	Return from death unless their feet and stomachs are split open.
10	Eat the eggs of birds whole, shell and all.
11	Be nauseated by the smell of cooked meat.
12	Defer naturally to the toothiest among them.
13	Bring blights and pestilence wherever they go.
14	Be the only thing standing between humanity and paradise on earth.
15	Have extensive tunnels beneath every city.
16	Keep the knowledge of their own fallen empire.
17	Be sexually attracted to mules.
18	Be unable to truly learn anything.
19	Spare those who forgive them of their sins.
20	Secretly serve the reigning monarch to put the fear of barbarity in the population.