Porcs: Swine Orcs

Monsters and Manuals pointed out recently what utter bastards boars & their domesticated cousins can be, and how they make for much more sense as a visual and behavioural reference for orcs than simply making them green-skinned humans. Whilst I'm usually more inclined to deviate from the savage side of orcs and and focus instead on developing their culture, I thought having a little bit of a nose dive into this idea could be fun.

There is little structure from here on out (think of each new paragraph as a bullet point and it becomes a lot easier to read). Also the images are from Darkest Dungeon, because their swine are pretty much exactly what I envisage for this idea.

Specifically, this one.

These orcs are boar-like. Maybe they evolved from a pig-like ancestor. Maybe they just look like swine. Maybe their gods created them from the next best thing to primates after all the other gods pushed ahead in the 'choose your chosen race' queue. Maybe the local god of agriculture and farming just had enough with the steady expanse of industrialisation and decided to make a reminder for why people should treat their livestock with respect.

Either way, these orcs:
- Look kinda like pigs
- Think and act kinda like pigs
- Eat people.

As humans evolved, our brain cases increased in size, and as such our jaw size and potential crushing power decreased; for our intelligence to increase, our ability to bite would have to decrease. Orcs didn't get that memo.

Orcs will eat whatever is available. They aren't gluttons; they're just not fussy. Pigs have been recorded eating carrion, but have been caught hunting deer fawns, birds, fish, and at least one documented case of a macaque [source 1, source 2]. It is believed the latter record may be due to the boar removing a potential ecological competitor. Documentation of pigs eating human flesh is much more frequent. Just like with the macaque, the orcs eat people to remove the threat to their role in the environment. It's us or them, and it's much more likely to be us if the them are in our bellies.

Orcs have domesticated humans. It takes time, and cruelty, and lacerations to the joints, but it can be done.

"The quadruped things... had been kept in stone pens, out of which they must have broken in their last delirium of hunger or rat-fear. There had been great herds of them, evidently fattened on the coarse vegetables... I knew now why my ancestors had had such excessive gardens... The purpose of the herds I did not have to ask."
~ The Rats in the Walls, H. P. Lovecraft

Boars are one of only four mammals that have mutations that prevent α-neurotoxin from binding [source]. In other words, orcs have a higher tolerance to poisonous attacks.

Orcs have survived not through cunning, but through endurance and stubbornness. It takes a specialised boar spear to stop a boar from pushing itself along the spear's shaft to gouge at its attackers. This is the approach orcs have to every problem, and the solution that their opponents must learn to find find.

This nature has come from their porcine ancestors/lookalikes/base forms: pigs are amongst the most invasive mammal species in the world, known for living in multiple environments, having highly varied diets, and a level of social working and intelligence that few people truly put in a large perspective.

Commoners that are used to orcish raids show open disdain for pigs. Swineherds are shunned from temples, and are only allowed to marry amongst themselves [based on the following].

Pig skin is similar enough to human skin to use for comparative medical research [source]. Our hearts are so similar that they can be successfully transplanted into primates [source]. It is therefore no wonder that humans and orcs can produce half-orc children. Villagers may claim they have been cursed as 'wereboars' to ease some of the family shame, but the truth is well known.

I'm not a massive fan of the D&D orc pantheon. If I work on this further or edit it in the future, I might try and make some gods of my own- a fertility goddess perhaps (given the number of piglets they have) that is also a war/death goddess (given that many piglet mortalities are caused by their mothers killing them, and how boars entering mating season develop subcutaneous tissue to protect themselves- the hornier the orc, the more violent and armoured they are), and possibly also a god based on Moccus, the Celtic god of pigs and hunting- maybe take inspiration from this art:

by Taran Fiddler
Looks a lot more interesting than a one-eyed orc

So in summary, these orcs are stubborn organic, toxin-resistant terminators with a foul temper, empowered by lust, drawn towards domesticating and subjugating humanoids because of an innate desire to remove the competition for resources and territory. I think I definitely know which orcs I'll be using any time soon.