Kotaku Kristmas Giveaways: Orcs Must Die

What do you know of orcs, Billy?

No, not the stories you have heard, nor the tales of their slaughter told around the campfire. What do you, Billy, know of orcs?

You are young, I would not expect you to know the whys and wherefores of the Orc, nor the circumstances leading to their deaths.

Orcs are not so different from you and I, Billy. They care for their young, and for the first few years of their lives, Orclets are playful and carefree. They would not be out of place playing with your baby sister, truth be told.

Have you ever seen an Orc, Billy? Have you seen their defining features? Their dark green, hardened skin; their heavy brows and deep set eyes; their enlarged snouts and protruding tusks? Yes, you have seen all these things – but have you ever asked why?

I’ve done a lot of research on the whys for Orcs, young Billy. Their green skin is resistant to the sun, yes, but it is not a blessing – oh no, it is slowly ticking timebomb of a curse. Have you heard of the greenhouse effect? It is when heat enters a planet and is trapped, unable to escape. Orcs suffer from a malady known as the “Greenskin effect”, where their bodies, a few years after birth, slowly start to absorb heat and are unable to expel it like you or I would. Their snouts enlarge to provide some comfort, their mouths widen, their bodies become squat – all natural defences to try and expel as much heat as possible while absorbing less.

But it is never enough, Billy. Never enough.

Over the years, the heat builds up, mutating their bodies and slowly driving them insane. Have you ever been in a tent on a roasting hot day? Ever felt irritable due to the heat? Ever felt like you would tear off your own skin for a brief escape from the heat? Imagine that, only tenfold, slowly building over the decades, and what effect it would have on you.

This heat madness drives the older orcs. In their irritability, they find fault with us and our kind, not through jealousy, but through a desperation for a release from their eternal torment. They breed, they rut, they increase in numbers because that is the only joy that remains in their poor, unfortunate lives.

And they hunger. Not for food, not for war. For death.

And so they come. They throw themselves at us, longing for the sweet release that death can offer them – the cool grip of the grave, finally providing mercy from their biological hell.

The Orc is a proud beast – they feel their rational minds slipping over the years due to the heat madness, and they try to stave off the inevitable. But eventually, death is the only solution – but they would not see themselves slaughtered as cattle, oh no. The only noble death they can obtain is through battle, and it is the least we can do to provide them a dignified death.

And so they come. To die.

Do not hate the Orc, young Billy. Do not decry his brutish visage, nor scorn his intellect. In truth, they endure more than any of us could, or could ever know. Were they not to die, they would slowly overrun the fruits of nature, and kill every last living thing on the planet – not by design, but as an effect of their growth.

And so they die, to protect that which scorns them and fears their presence. Praise the Orc, Billy, for his sacrifice.

And so, young Billy, the Orcs must die….

*cue dodgy C-grade sci-fi movie crescendo, camera zooms in on speaker’s face, showing determined, respectful, but remorseful eyes*

…so that we might live.