What will GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION be about?
I am now on Chapter 12 of 21 of GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION, which puts me at over the halfway point!
So what will be the plot in GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION?
Let’s have a brief preview.
It has to do with the nature of orcs in fantasy literature and games.
Overall, in fantasy literature and games you will see two different kinds of orcs – I call them the “Warcraft” orcs and the “Tolkienian” orcs.
The “Warcraft” orcs are kind of like fantasy Klingons – sort of Proud Warrior Race Guys who love battle and whatever their conception of honor is. I call them “Warcraft” orcs because I think WORLD OF WARCRAFT really popularized this version of orcs, so much so that while orcs always used to be Chaotic Evil in older versions of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, in modern versions they’re less so. These versions of orcs can be good and loyal friends or terrible foes, the same way that the Klingons have been either bitter enemies or loyal allies of Starfleet depending on the particular STAR TREK show. Either way, these versions of orcs love battle and are frequently violent, but in a fantasy setting that can be a good thing. The point is that the “Warcraft” style orcs aren’t inherently evil – they can be evil, but they are no more likely to be evil than humans.
In the FROSTBORN and HALF-ELVEN THIEF books, I went with these kind of orcs.
The second kind of orcs I call “Tolkienian”.
These orcs are inherently evil because they were made that way. In the THE SILMARILLION, the first orcs were Elves that the Dark Lord Morgoth captured and tortured, mutating and ruining them into horrible versions of their previous selves, and then Morgoth used them to breed his armies. The orcs were warped and hideous forms of life, one that inspired revulsion in any who looked upon them, and while they weren’t as strong as the Elves they were a lot more numerous. For that matter, the orcs’ nature was likewise ruined, and they became sadistic, cruel, and violent. Yet at some level they were aware of what was done to them, and they hate Morgoth and Sauron for it, but they cannot resist their cruel masters. This isn’t a new idea – all cultures have legends of monsters that used to be human but have given themselves over irrevocably to evil – werewolves, vampires, warlocks, and so forth. In fact, the very word “monster” comes from a Latin word that refers to something evil outside the normal moral order of the universe.
I used these kinds of orcs for GHOST ARMOR when I decided to introduce more fantasy creatures to the Caina setting as part of the plot.
Interestingly, Tolkien himself was never 100% comfortable with this version of the orcs, since he didn’t like the idea of a creature that was born evil and remained that way. In a couple of his earlier drafts, he considered having the orcs grown from slime or mud or be created from animals. When his son Christopher put THE SILMARILLION in order after Tolkien died, the “corrupted elves” version was the one that was most common in Tolkien’s writings, so he settled on that version for THE SILMARILLION.
So what does this have to do with GHOST IN THE CORRUPTION?
In the book, one of the lords of the orcs is ordered to kill Caina for all the trouble she had caused the serpent priests. Except the lord of the orcs doesn’t care about that.
Caina’s death might be the way to achieve a long-sought goal and take revenge on his serpent priest masters at the same time…
-JM