Ogre [Dragonlance]

These ogres resemble ogres anywhere: towering, heavily muscled, big-headed, with high brows, pointed ears and flat noses. A bony ridge shades small dull gray or blood-red eyes, and greasy, lice-ridden hair hangs in mats. Dry skin, orange-yellow to deep brown, is crusted with scabs, grime and hairy warts; teeth are sharp, brown and filthy, and black claws tip fingers and toes. Females are shorter and less brawny. Untanned skins become smocks, loincloths and capes that stink of rot, calluses replace shoes, and some wear stone beads or crude body paint. Leaders, chieftains and 10% of others speak common besides ogre.

Stupid, cruel and quick to rage, they meet almost any problem with violence and will fight to the death over nothing. With no grasp of tactics they pound a foe until someone dies, and must sometimes be dragged off corpses. Strangers, even other tribes' ogres, are attacked rather than spoken to. Weapons are looted or crudely made from stone and wood but work as well as fine ones: clubs, maces, spears, battle axes. They scorn missiles as clumsy and robbing them of the joy of hands-on slaughter. Fitting armor is rare, but big ogres may wear furs studded with stone chips for AC 4.

Leaders are AC 3 with 30+ hp, attack as 7 Hit Dice creatures and add +1 weapon damage; chieftains are AC 4 with 34+ hp, attack as 7 Hit Dice and add +2. Youngsters aged 5-20 have at most 3 hp per Hit Die, punch for 1d4, and use clubs, axes and other simple weapons at -3 damage.

Legend calls ogres the world's first awakened race, once graceful and lovely but bent toward evil. A wise early chieftain warned that wickedness would doom them; rejected, he left with followers who became the fair ogres. His prophecy came true: elves and dwarves slaughtered them, humans exiled them, minotaurs betrayed and enslaved them, and tribal wars did the rest. Now they cling to remote wastes, shunned by the good and used by the evil.

They settle in grim country of dead grass, cracked earth and foul water. Most live in villages of crude stone huts around a water hole, three or four per hut, with private huts for the leader and chieftain. Huts hold only sleeping furs and weapons; outside, meat dries over smokeless charcoal. Each village has a treasure hut and a pit of wolves, bears or snakes into which weak tribesmen are tossed for entertainment.

A mated pair raises one or two children, one birth per year, and at 20 the young build their own huts. Those too old to be useful are killed. Ten members means a leader; twenty adds a chieftain with the leader as deputy. Females, at most half the tribe, are treated as inferior, and excess daughters beyond the number of sons are killed. Slaves, about a fifth of the population and mostly human with some elves and dwarves, are always in short supply because ogres kill them for fun and eat them when hunting seems like too much work.

Hunting parties of a leader and roughly six armed males range for days or weeks. Leaders abuse followers, even using the weakest as bait, and followers sometimes arrange an accident and promote one of their own. Rulers are absolute. Cowardice, theft, betrayal and unjustified murder bring slow deaths: baking hung upside down from a cliff, drowning sewn into a snake-filled sack, or sinking in quicksand to cheers. All loot goes home; the chief takes half, finders get about a tenth, the rest fills the treasure hut, and the chief's 'awards' for great deeds mostly go to himself.

Evil armies sometimes hire these ogres for dangerous or vile jobs too simple to botch, and some minotaur communities keep them as slaves; everyone else avoids them. They hunt wolves, wolverines and other forest game but prefer human, dwarf and elf flesh, with gnome and wanderkin as delicacies, and 'fish' by collecting dead ones on the beach. No one trades with them, and intertribal deals often end with one side plying the other with strong ale and cutting drunken throats.

Island Ogres: On remote northern islands lives a shorter, fatter, duller but equally aggressive race with oily gray skin, stringy blond hair and webbed extremities, swimming at double land speed and holding their breath 20 rounds. Weaker and more prone to panic than other ogres, they try to lure foes into the sea. They carry daggers and battle axes plus a bird-catching iron boomerang on a long metal cord that snares targets up to 30 yards away without damage (not underwater). They throw it at +3; others use it at -2. Each round a snared victim may try a Dexterity check at -2 to untangle; if that fails, a Strength check at -4 must succeed or he is dragged ten yards toward the thrower. They live in rough shoreline shacks, hunt and fish, and build tall round stone shrines to an evil sea goddess that sailors recognize from miles off. Family elders rule jointly and settle quarrels by combat. Their caches hold little magic but plenty of pearls and seabed gems.