Star Orc

Star orcs resemble heavily muscled orcs who stand straight and proud, keeping the pig snout but with high, humanlike foreheads and human eyes that glow sickly green in dim light. Their sharpened canines and ears are hung with tiny tribal totems. Hide color varies widely, from gray, orange, tan or green to black, with rare albinos. They wear immaculate black studded leather with every stud filed to a point and painted, a night-blue cloak, and a tribal patch on shoulder or chest, but no banners. Beyond their orcish dialect many speak flawless elvish, kept alive so they can tell elves, in their own tongue, who is wiping them out.

War is their highest art. They fight well in any setting, keep tight discipline, pair orcish ferocity with real tactics, respect most rules of war (never firing on messengers or truce flags), and are not hampered by sunlight. Their habit of opening with long, alliterative insults can startle veterans into losing initiative.

Every four warriors have a sergeant; every ten add a captain and a war priest (a 5th-level cleric/mage with a +2 to +4 weapon and 1d4 assorted magic items). Only the largest hosts include an Almighty Leader. Weapons by percentage: arquebus with hand axe 25; long sword with dagger, spear with hand axe, and short bow with short sword 15 each; scimitar, and polearm with dagger, 10 each; arquebus with wheellock pistol, and crossbow with battle axe, 5 each. Captains and bodyguards have a 75% chance of a wheellock and Almighty Leaders almost always do. In melee, sergeants and war priests attack three times per two rounds, captains and Almighty Leaders twice per round. Those with two melee weapons may optionally fight with both.

Nearly all (95%) are trained brawlers who punch twice a round at +1 for 1d3 plus Strength bonus, most adults having Strength 16+ and Constitution 15+; 30% add a spiked glove for +1. Armor spikes deal 1d4 to anyone slammed into them, and 5% are smeared with type D poison (30 damage after a minute, 2d6 on a successful save). Failing all else, a star orc bites for 1d3. A bite kill is marked with a gem on its canine and the victim's tooth on a fang-necklace; steal that necklace and the owner goes berserk (+2 to hit and damage, AC worsened by 4, attacks doubled).

Law and custom bind them to total loyalty, and each has a duty to fill. Leaders are obeyed unless they prove cowards, when the strongest must topple them. The hidden homeworld, Ghorvagh, holds tidy, spartan cities of 10,000 to 100,000 with strong towers, forts and shipyards. Its 24 ranked tribes each answer to an Almighty Leader, and over all of them sits the Ultimate High Overlord, a star orc of 16 HD whose guard is one captain from every tribe.

Soldiers each know three of these: armorer, blind-fighting, endurance, land riding, literacy, rope use, running, tracking, weaponsmithing. Sergeants know four, captains five, and war priests four plus spellcraft, religion, herbalism and healing. Conquest does not interest them. Their holy goal is to purge every groundling human, demihuman and humanoid from the void between worlds, then enslave the native space races. They are waiting for the right moment.

Like orcs they breed fast, with litters of 1d4+1 that mostly survive, but they live about 80 years.

They descend from orc hordes that lost a great war against the other races of space. Survivors settled a remote world under a huge orc, Ghorvagh, the first Almighty Leader, who saw that mindless brutality had doomed them. He drilled his people in organized war, survival and culture, made them read books salvaged from wrecks, and required fluent elvish so no one would forget the enemy. Dying, he proclaimed a new race greater than any orc. The world bears his name, and his tomb floats above its north pole, watching.