Orc and Hobgoblin tribes of the Flanaess

[GRWelsh]

Does anyone know where EGG placed all of the orc and hobgoblin tribes named in MM? I think he mentioned some orc tribes in some FTSS articles, as well as module WG4, but I'm not sure if there are any other references. I thought he may have also designated at least one tribe in the Dungeons of Castle Greyhawk, as well (Dripping Blade, perhaps?).

The orc tribes mentioned in the MM were: Vile Rune, Bloody Head, Death Moon, Broken Bone, Evil Eye, Leprous Hand, Rotting Eye, and Dripping Blade.

The hobgoblin tribes mentioned in the MM were: rippers, leg breakers, skull smashers, flesh renders, marrow suckers, flayers and slow killers.

[Scott]

Vile Rune and Death Moon were Bone March orcs. Forgotten Temple specified one. There were two tribes involved with the Greyhawk dungeon. One was based in the dungeons, the other outside the dungeons. Gary told me the names, i think they were the Bloody Head and Dripping Blade orcs. That's all I can think of.

[grodog]

Jason Zavoda's index has the entries:

Vile Rune Tribe (Orc)[CLN]
DRG#57 - 14
DRG#63 - 16
LGG - 11
UA - 121

Bloody Head Tribe (Orc)[CLN]
LGG - 11

Death Moon Tribe (Orc)[CLN]
DRG#57 - 15
DRG#63 - 16
LGG - 11,74
TAB - 125
UA - 119


Broken Bone Tribe (Orc)[CLN]
LGG - 11
UA - 119

Evil Eye Tribe (Goblin)[CLN]
DUN#73 - 64

Evil Eye Tribe (Orc)[CLN]
LGG - 11
UA - 119

Leprous Hand Tribe (Orc)[CLN]
LGG - 11

Rotting Eye, Orcs of the (Tribe)[CLN]
LGG - 11
WG4 - 8

Dripping Blade Tribe (Orc)[CLN]
LGG - 11

Dripping Eye Tribe (Hobgoblin)[CLN]
DRG#167 - 12
SLV - 83

Skull Smasher Tribe (Hobgoblin)[CLN]
LGG - 11

Ripper Tribe (Hobgoblin)[CLN]
LGG - 11

Flesh Render Tribe (Hobgoblin)[CLN]
HART - 48
LGG - 11

Marrowsucker Tribe (Marrow Sucker)(Hobgoblin)[CLN]
COG:C# - 17
LGG - 11

Flayers Tribe (Hobgoblin)[CLN]
LGG - 11


Several of the hobgoblin tribes weren't in his index. If you don't have a copy, grab one at www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/encyclopedia-2003-08-31.txt

Allan.

[geneweigel]

They all had CG pedigrees at one time and then they were extrapolated to "WOG". So in retrospect, they can be justified as magically relocated small contingents of tribes at CG by the mad archmage.

The Pomarj humanoids would be the exception of course because the only thing that I got out of Gary about them was basically the premise of the Slavers that they have human leaders aligned under the various shield devices for each type (Orcs of the Pomarj, etc.). Plus, keep in mind that he said B2 would be ideal by the Pomarj too so that really puts it in perspective.

[GRWelsh]

Thanks for the responses. I'm not familiar with all the acronyms on Jason's index. I know DRG is Dragon Magazine, and it looks like DUN is Dungeon Magazine. Not sure about the others. I'm mainly looking for Gygax-era references, or EGG's own comments on where he placed these tribes.

I set B2 on the border of the Pomarj anytime I ran it in the World of Greyhawk, with the "Realm" to the West being the Principality of Ulek. At other times, B2 was the basis for an original campaign world, or -- one time -- was set in the Known World right after I got X1. That was pre-Gazetteer, when you could just make up whatever you wanted for that world -- and I did!

[grodog]

Apr 28, 2017 8:20:11 GMT -5 GRWelsh said:

Thanks for the responses. I'm not familiar with all the acronyms on Jason's index. I know DRG is Dragon Magazine, and it looks like DUN is Dungeon Magazine. Not sure about the others. I'm mainly looking for Gygax-era references, or EGG's own comments on where he placed these tribes.

At the beginning of the index file there's a key for the abbreviations. I didn't sift out the post-EGG references when cutting/pasting the info, but you can certainly ignore those easily, Gary

Allan.

[geneweigel]

Apr 28, 2017 8:28:24 GMT -5 grodog said:

I didn't sift out the post-EGG references when cutting/pasting the info, but you can certainly ignore those easily, Gary

Allan.

Yeah, its hard some times to just ignore the post-mortem D&D stuff and then you open it up and its crawling with beetles and centipedes (this actually happened to me when I found a dead bear and I wanted to find out the cause of death.). I used to group a lot of Greyhawk logo-ed material together but then it gets confusing. Anything that relates to Sargent material I have to look at as contaminated. The POV carries a dulling sensibility with it of what Greyhawk feels like exactly so in the world of flowing ideas of mental-based fantasy its nice to stay in the zone to piece things together with solid anchors and keep the overwritten penny-a-word musings at bay. Even it means treating Mona/Moore/Sargent material like some kind of fringe porno! (Don't leave that around for Grandma! )

[Zenopus]

Back in October I compiled a list of all the references I could find to Gygax's Orc Tribes in the 70s - early 80s:

Gygaxian Orc Tribes

See also this K&KA thread where we discussed it:
knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=14297

The clearest placements were Vile Rune and Death Moon in Bone March (Dragon #57), Rotting Eye in the Yatils (WG4), and the Orcs of the Pomarj (possibly also called Grinning Skull).

[GRWelsh]

Thanks Zenopus, that's exactly what I was looking for.

[geneweigel]

Nice link but I just have to add, not lightly either, that I don't consider the race gods of E. Moore to be actual D&D and Greyhawk related even though they were grabbed wholeheartedly to fill up the "SAVE TSR BOOK" (UA) with barely "official" easy grabs.

The line in DRAGON MAGAZINE #62 (AUG 1982) regarding DEITIES AND DEMIGODS race gods (not the POINT IF VIEW article gods which were already published) in official Greyhawk:

The pantheon of deities in the Flanaess is very broad, and
many humanoids and demi-humans serve deities which do not
have an aspect that exactly matches the race in question, be it
dwarven, elven, orcish or whatever. However, for communities
of demi-humans or humanoids outside human areas of settlement,
or for large enclaves therein, some racial deities are
needed. For such, you should feel comfortable employing the
“Nonhumans’ Deities” section of the DEITIES & DEMIGODS™
Cyclopedia, but with the following changes:
Maglubiyet’s plane is Gehenna; Kurtulmak’s plane
is Acheron; Gruumsh’s plane is Gehenna.
Treat flinds as gnolls, ogrillons as either orcs or
ogres, and norkers as goblins for the purpose of
selection of a deity of this sort.
Shaman maximum levels are: Ogrillons, 3rd level;
Flinds and norkers, 5th level; Xvart, 7th level.
Witch doctor maximum levels are: Norkers, 2nd
level; Xvart, 4th level.
There is only one addition to the list of deities which I would
recommend. That addition is the xvart deity, Raxivort.

This is the add-on in the UA appendix section to the "E. Moore" content right after such "mainstays" like the various alternate non-lethal combat rules:

The material on the following 13 pages, written by Roger E. Moore,
originally appeared in issues #58-63 of DRAGON@ Magazine. It is reproduced
here as an adjunct to the “Non-Human Deities” section of
the Legends & Lore book (which was previously titled the DEITIES &
DEMIGODS’” Cyclopedia). Descriptions of certain major deities mentioned
in this text can be found in Legends & Lore.

That doesn't sound like any Gygax universal race god blessing to me. It sounds like weak filler which is what it was. Psionics has more relevance than this but you wouldn't think so from how many times that I've heard these cringingly named race deities.

If I were to use the UA deities, and I don't allow them for player grabs, I would have them as a joke.

[foster1941]

Gary gave his "official" blessing to Moore's new gods in his Sorcerer's Scroll column in Dragon #71, which is presumably why Mohan, Mentzer, and Grubb grabbed them for inclusion in the "Save TSR Book":

One more thing about official material. Roger Moore did such a splendid job with the non-human deities (see DRAGON issues #59-63) that I have urged TSR to include them in the next edition of the DEITIES & DEMIGODS™ Cyclopedia, whenever such a revision takes place. Meanwhile, you should most certainly regard the work as “Official”! (Those AD&D players who are employing the WORLD OF GREYHAWK™ setting for their campaign can likewise incorporate this material into their activities if they so desire, although some alterations should be made to make sure the non-human deities reflect the WORLD OF GREYHAWK mode, as presented in several previous issues of this Splendid Journal.)

I don't know why Gary was so enthusiastic about this stuff (or Moore's Astral Plane article from Dragon #67, which also got the "official" blessing), but for whatever reason he was. I suspect at some level he was just happy that somebody was writing new material that fell within his conceptual framework rather than trying to change things (how the planes are structured, how gods are depicted, etc.).

[geneweigel]

I think what he was trying to say is something like they would be in the DEITIES AND DEMIGODS book because some of them were already in it under the Corellon entry "Hanali" and "Labelas" but he told me they would have been scrapped as well. The particular subject that I had out with him revolved around why he approved the elves in DEITIES & DEMIGODS because it seemed like it wasn't intended with Lolth and the Greyhawk Deities seeming so well put together.

[GRWelsh]

Interesting how EGG kept going back to the Grinning Skull/Bloody Head and Bloody Axe/Dripping Blade motifs for the orc tribes.

About the only thing I like about the non-human deities articles are the illustrations, in particular Ilneval and Maglubiyet. Holloway captured pretty closely how I imagined orcs, goblins, dwarves, elves, halflings, etc. I think there are enough Greyhawk-specific gods to use for evil humanoids and good/neutral demi-humans.

[geneweigel]

When my campaign that was shared converted over to official Greyhawk in 1986 around there was a mounting need to make the leaders of every place and group so it was like a factory to get itall laid out. It seems ridiculous in retrospect but I made up the monster leaders from whole cloth and a few were from tribes but I'm not sure if they were names from something. Many of them I deported from my Greyhawk files because I retrofitted them back into the pre-Greyhawk campaign. One leader of the ogres of Bone March is based on my brother. Gaah!