tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4522018539311056682.post4735703811567602305..comments2024-03-27T01:28:28.346-07:00Comments on False Machine: Orcspjamesstuarthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13288777018721199748noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4522018539311056682.post-29683473360567718572013-05-08T00:53:02.926-07:002013-05-08T00:53:02.926-07:00Nice Post - to me it raises a question though. Wh...Nice Post - to me it raises a question though. What does Greyhawk look like in 500 years? So you've got orcs, and they are monsters, brutish, violent, a force of despoiling chaos and you've got Franks - same thing. <br /><br />Yet, in one hundred years the people of the Middle East were trading with the crusader states and interbreeding, and forming hybrid kingdoms (which again got taken over, but still they left a mark). Is this what happens in Greyhawk - are most people 1/32 orcish at a certain point, and all orcs except the wild orc of the far wastes 1/32 human or elvish or whatever? Do orcish rituals and concepts sneak in to human culture - do human concepts get taken back to the orcish homelands and spread like crazy?Gus Lhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14872819206286105195noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4522018539311056682.post-80150145163416895732013-05-07T08:30:14.027-07:002013-05-07T08:30:14.027-07:00This comment has been removed by the author.jacintohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15830023557305593115noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4522018539311056682.post-90025729059694374352013-05-07T02:16:21.698-07:002013-05-07T02:16:21.698-07:00I will put it on my big list of books-to-buy-and-r...I will put it on my big list of books-to-buy-and-read Tompjamesstuarthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13288777018721199748noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4522018539311056682.post-13389272614967616722013-05-07T00:45:37.652-07:002013-05-07T00:45:37.652-07:00I've mustered so much enthusiasm for this part...I've mustered so much enthusiasm for this particular post that I don't know quite what to say. Bohemond appears in my favourite novel of all time - Russell Hoban's Pilgermann (1983)- wherein he manifests as a kind of embodiment of the inexorable motion of the universe. Bohemond is inevitability. <br /><br />You should read that book, Patrick. The thing Hoban does with the exoticisation of the banal and the mundanification of the abhorrent is magic.Tom Fitzgeraldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14893168729760333884noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4522018539311056682.post-74483407442335137512013-05-06T22:49:29.930-07:002013-05-06T22:49:29.930-07:00I think orcs were spawned from the need to have mu...I think orcs were spawned from the need to have murderous squads of pseudo-humans that our heroes could cut down without remorse. As a result, they sort of got loaded down with all the worst and most violent stuff we could think think of. So when you say they "are more like orcs", I think "are the worst incarnation of violent assholes imaginable." It's tough to turn the volume up on an orc. They're already sort of a conceptual maximum.<br /><br />Although I really like the idea of blond orcs on a mission from from the orc pope. Not a king chief warlord orc, but the orc pope.Arnold Khttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12603155377769597516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4522018539311056682.post-5288461854858255002013-05-06T18:09:05.392-07:002013-05-06T18:09:05.392-07:00"Now it [Bohemond] was such as had never befo..."Now it [Bohemond] was such as had never before been seen in the land of the Romans (for it was a marvel for the eyes to behold, and its reputation was terrifying)."<br /><br />I'll take "What is the Varangian Guard?" for $200. Anna Comnena was writing in a literary form that consciously echoed Classical 'us and them' military/ethnographic literature (Herodotus, Sallust, Caesar, Tacitus, etc.).<br /><br /><i>Because history hasn’t taught them that yet.</i><br /><br />Doubly ironic considering how the Caliphs, and later the Seljuks themselves, rose to prominence.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04072272223837426211noreply@blogger.com