The trees know your name and you know their face.
Orks are a species of 6 limbed bug-men. They have a pair of legs, a pair of large arms, and a pair of smaller arms that are usually folded against their chest. They live in hives centered around a single queen with several caste morphs that are all physically distinct from each other. The natural morphs are workers, drones, warriors, and queens. In addition to those morphs there exists the berserker and the god-gender morphs which are achieved through a combination of magical and surgical means. There are also grubs and nymphs, which are adolescent orks who have not eaten the caste jelly that will start their transformation into a given caste morph. Orks generally do not conceptualize gender along the social lines that kobolds and some humans do as their physical differences are largely unrelated to reproduction. Some orks choose to describe morphs as genders, and others describe them as castes. Either way all orks, with the exception of drones, refer to each other as "sisters". Even grubs who do not possess sexual characteristic use this term.
The morphs are as follows:
| Proto-orks lived in the old universe and over vast amounts of time became modern orks. They were biologically similar but a modern ork and a proto-ork would not recognize each other. | Grubs and Nymphs are adolescent morphs. Before they are given any caste jelly they are sent on a journey to another hive to shadow orks of various castes and determine what sort of caste they would like to become. The ones that wish to be drones must receive permission from both queens and if they receive it they will stay with the new queen instead of returning with their sisters. Otherwise they return to their home hive and request the caste jelly of their choice. The queen will normally grant their request but if the population of the hive has specific needs (if many workers died in an accident they would need more workers, if they are at war they might need more warriors) the grub's request may be denied. |
| Workers normal dudes, like 5 foot tall on average. | Queens are queens, they are able to communicate telepathically with other queens and serve both as the mother to much of their hive but also as a librarian. Ork queens also commonly serve as messengers between cities as their telepathic communication makes them one of the faster common communication methods, although bandwidth is limited. Queens are in charge of both laying eggs as well as producing caste jelly that causes grubs to undergo the orken equivalent of puberty. When the queen mates they store the material from the drone which is used as needed to produce eggs. |
| Drones are in charge of protecting the queen and of accompanying grubs on trips outside of the hive. Drones are the only morph that is capable of sustained flight. They are the only morph that is male and the only non-queen morph that is fertile. They are roughly 6 foot tall. | Berserkers are warriors that have consumed magical fungus. This fungus is extinct in the narrative present. |
| Warriors are big and fighty, they cannot fly but are able to use the wings for what are effectively long and/or high jumps. They generally have very large pincers on their heads, spikes on their arms and legs, and large horns on their either their shoulders or their backs depending on the hive. They are roughly 7 foot tall on average. | The god-gender You take a grub, make a fancy mix of caste jellies, mix that with health potion, do some surgery periodically to keep things going smoothly, and then you get an ork that has the strengths of all the morphs plus some additional stuff going on |
Orks are the oldest race in the setting, although they are not entirely aware of the full extent of their age themselves. They are often regarded as aggressive or violent by other races and while their culture has historically seated the god of war at the head of the pantheon, orks are not any more aggressive or prone to violence than any other group and most orks do not worship the classical god of war and instead observe some combination of local gods, household gods, and ancestor worship. Regardless many groups, especially ones unfamiliar with orks, do not understand how caste morphs work or how orken society is organized and tend to view the existence of a warrior caste as as proof that they are violent.
Additionally, orken biology works differently than other species when they are fighting. An ork does not become rash or impulsive when fighting or engaging in other rigourous physical activity the way someone from another species typically would. Instead they gain a sense of focus from the action that allows them to think more clearly. This is a large part of the violent stereotype sometimes ascribed to orks. If two orks have a disagreement they may take to fighting immediately as that will help them think about the disagreement with increased clarity, while if humans did this it would not resolve the issue and would make things worse. The orken mind simply processes agression and physical conflict in a different way.