One significant reason is that over half of all male orks are incarcerated at least once before their sixteenth birthday (justice systems tend to treat them in a harshly punitive fashion)), and three times more orks are in prison than attending college at any one time. The males are absent for a variety of reasons.
From their youngest days orks are brought up in a mostly matriarchal household. Though this trend is building with the youth, there is still an interesting cultural trait that has been developed by the old and young alike, and that is the power of their women. While the great powers of the world will not be brought down by an uprising of enraged orks, they could risk losing a portion of their heavy labor force if said workers were to decide they wanted a nation. It is most interesting to me when looking at this blossoming culture that its greatest proponents, the megacorporations behind orxploitation, are fueling the fires of revolution. The popular lyrics of orxploitation goddess Orxanne-”live fast, die young, best behind a smoking gun”-are not the counterculture rap one would expect, but instead the growing cultural norm for a metatype that is starting to find its stride and possibly turning some of its simmering discontent outward. But it is not a culture that will make much of the world happy. Thus far they have a culture of carpe diem, or more accurately ad diem vivunt: live for the day.Īs the second-most populous metatype on the planet (behind humans) with a growing youth population working alongside the recent discovery of Or’zet and rise in popularity of orxploitation music and films, an emerging culture for orks has strengthened and penetrated the mainstream. For the bulk of the past fifty-five years, orks have been simply trying to exist in a world where they don’t have the time to develop a culture because they have to put so much effort into just living. Add an over-representative number of orks performing for physically taxing jobs and a cultural propensity for confrontation to this biological brevity and you’ll find a difficult window within which to make meaningful change or even to develop a lasting cultural identity of one’s own. Orks have the highest birth rate but shortest natural lifespan of any metahuman race. Orks live a life that they know is going to be too short, but they fight to make it meaningful in the little time they have. Instead, step up alongside your fellow orks to be the bigger metahuman, get together to demand a better wage, or look to those tusked brothers, your pack of orks, instead of the local gangers for a sense of meaning, home, and family.
Stop fighting on the street corners, hanging at the local temp agency to snag some day-laborer work, or opting for a beatdown to get into the local gang. This means you can play the role and act the ignorant brute (or maybe it’s not an act) or you can work to elevate yourself. Yes, the locals may run or avoid looking at you as you intimidate them, but no one gives a devil rat’s hoop about you, or they’ll all slap the PanicButton to get you chased off by the local tin star. Basics // Combat // Magic // Matrix // Driving // Character Creationīeing an ork is about making a choice about which ork you want to be, or accepting the role you’ve been stuffed into.