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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Orcs are an iconic foe in many fantasy campaigns, serving either as blood-thirsty foes or bumbling minions to greater threats. Despite their long history in D&D, orcs haven't received a lot of love or detail aside that found in the monster manual/bestiary. Orcs of Golarion seeks to redress this point, at least in the Pathfinder universe and default setting, by providing not only a detailed history and cultural explanation of the Orcish people, but also providing rules opening up the possibility of using them as a fully-detailed player character race. This includes details on racial traits, feats, magic, and faith. In addition, the hybrid race of half-orcs are fleshed out in greater detail.
The book is 32-pages long, with the first 21 being dedicated to detailing the Orcs of the Golarion fantasy setting. This includes a detailed history of the Orcish race, beginning with their origins in the Darklands and how they were forced to the surface by the Dwarven race's Quest for Sky to a land of eternal night that followed the falling of the Starstone. This marked the beginning of the time known as “The Sacking” during which the Orcish people stormed across the surface world, slaughtering or enslaving any who stood in their way. For a time they found themselves the dominant race for centuries before the skies began to clear and the other races banded together to end the orcs' reign, though it was a long and hard fought process during which the orc warlord Belkzen rose and fell from power. Thousands of years later we find ourselves in Golarion's current time period, with the orcs still scattered and disorganized, but growing in numbers and just waiting for the rise of the next warlord to lead a great horde forth.
After the history section, the book details the many physical and mental traits of Orcs, examining their physical capabilities, senses, diet, breeding practices and lifespan. Orc culture is also discussed, providing insight in to how the culture revolves around dominance, and relies on conquest and slavery to maintain its needs. The role of females is given an especially long discussion, though oddly enough not a single illustration of a female orc is evident in the book. The chapter also includes subsections detailing with all bits and features of orc culture including duels, hunting, clothing, body art, religion, and magic, along with detailed descriptions of the major tribes of Golarion and their heraldry. There's a lot more in the chapter as well, including details on half-orcs and where they fit in to Orcish society. Finally the section finishes up with a lengthy (23 in total) list of Orc Traits which can be used to flesh out PCs or NPCs.
Like the other racial companion books, Orcs of Golarion then includes chapters discussing specific topics pertaining to combat, magic, faith, and social features. The combat section details horde tactics, though this largely involves only providing a list of “horde specific” combat feats. The faith section details cults and orc shaman, and provides a list of the common Orc gods. The magic section provides some information on orc witch doctors along with some very colorful Orc specific spells (my favorite being Spontaneous Immolation). Finally, the social section provides details on how an orc fits in to the various class roles which is helpful should someone decide to take the plunge and run a full-blood orc as a PC, though GMs will also find this information useful for creating NPCs.
My Verdict
Overall I like Orcs of Golarion. I found the history and cultural information interesting to read and I've incorporated pieces of it into my own fantasy campaign, despite the fact that I neither play the Pathfinder RPG nor have set my campaign in Golarion. I think the weakest part of the book though is the details on half-orcs which in the PFRPG is a fully-playable PC race that's detailed in the Core Rulebook but which unlike the other races covered by the Companion series, really gets short shrift here with only a couple of pages of dedicated information and not a lot of “half-orc” specific feats, etc. Instead, much like the PC race, they're stuck just scraping together information from their parent races, which may be right in line with the race in play, but they probably deserve at least a little more attention.
IR#31
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