Half-orc

Half-orc

(Creature)

Type

Humanoid
(human, orc)

CR

By class level

Environment

Any

Alignment

LG	NG	CG
LN	N	CN
LE	NE	CE

Adjective

half-orc

Images of half-orcs

Source: Core Rulebook, pg(s). 510

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Half-orcs are a race of Golarion-native humanoids descended from humans and orcs, although due to the rarity of full-blooded orcs in the Pact Worlds system, most have half-orc parents.

Appearance

Half-orcs are usually tall, strong, muscular and green- or grey-skinned. Many have slightly pointed ears, large brows, and tusk-like canines protruding from their lower jaws. Most half-orcs stand from 5 to 7 feet tall and weigh 130–200 pounds.

Ecology

Traditionally, half-orcs are the children of unions between a human and an orc, though due to the rarity of orcs after the disappearance of Golarion, most half-orcs have been the result of true breeding between half-orc parents. Half-orcs mature at 14 and naturally live up to 80 years.

Society

Most half-orcs in the Pact Worlds live in Apostae as second-class citizens to the ruling drow. Outside Apostae, half-orcs are not treated much better, due to prejudices that predated the Gap, sometimes leading to a vicious cycle where half-orcs to be driven to become the villains that society expects them be. Half-orcs usually find acceptance among other half-orcs, androids or other marginalised groups, with the vesk, who come from outside the Pact Worlds and lack the traditional prejudice against them, or in militaristic groups where their fear could be weaponised.

Some half-orcs, shunned due to their appearance, take to extreme body modification with piercings, plastic surgery and cybernetic enhancements to set themselves out. Many join the Augmented, in the process no longer seeing themselves as half-orcs and looking down on their non-'steelskin' (as they refer to themselves) kin.

Some half-orcs venture beyond the Pact Worlds to build colonies elsewhere, either to settle there and live in peace, or to serve as first-wave pioneers on inhospitable planets, enduring the hardest period of a colony until selling the right to settle to 'softer' colonists. The latter job is particularly dangerous and skilled but well-paid, so half-orc professional pioneers in groups like the Halfblood Frontier Company are quite wealthy.