» Tue May 18, 2010 2:18 am And while I'm plugging, someone bug Albides for his Orcish Creation Myth. It's so good I consider it the Monkey Truth.
Yeah, well, all right. Here it is:
Orc Creation Story
I write this so others learn. They think we were gold elves so we believe like gold elves. Do we look like gold elves? I have a big, brawny green hand that holds this pen but would be more comfortable as a fist! I think that says contrary, yes? But my kin bow and scraqe towards Imperials, and file down their tusks so they not gore their general's wives when stooping to kiss their hand, and do not keep alive the old myths of the pariah folk, and Gortwog is to blame for that. He has even forsaken Malak and taken up worship of his once self, The Trinimac. But the Afterdark Society survives, to write oaths to Malak in the blood of the weak and foolish lost in their own cities. So I will write of what we learnt from Malak God-King.
In the beginning there was a great beast grazing in the quiet. It is not important what the beast was or what it was grazing on, but beast there was and graze it did. But then it had not enough to eat, so it ate itself, which is silly, because it died. Now the beast rots, and as everyone knows, rotting meat creates things, like fleas and flies and other such vermin. And these were golden gadflies and gilded fleas because of the richness of the meat, and they ate and ate and sometimes even ate each other on this land of plenty, and their dung mixed with the meat and it got very messy indeed until a carrion lizard was born. The lizard said, "Stop your eating! You have bad manners! There will be a breakfast, a lunch and a dinner for all of you, so this messy eating will be stopped." And that fixed that.
So the flies and the fleas and the lizard continued about their eating, but their dung still mixed with the meat. So the lizard decided to fix that too, and told the flies and fleas who liked dung to go elsewhere and take their dung with them, which they did, for they feared the carrion lizard. And the lizard, the biggest eater, ate and excreted that way too, in kindness or in contempt, who knows, but it was a hated realm anyway, so who cares? And that fixed that.
So it happens that there was a mischievous Scarab is born outside in the dung realms. Let the customary curses be flung upon him like reeking turds, as prescribed in Malak's Book of Invective: "May the Scarab's hands turn into hooks and his extremities be forever itchy! May the bastard be overcome by the miasma of his own excrement-encrusted body! May a noose be formed of his entrails that he may hang himself from it until his beady black eyes burst in viscera explosions! May he sink deep into his own ordure like the merdivorous cackard that he is!" And so on.
As you can see, we do not like the Scarab. He is a s**t. The Scarab did not agree with the way things were fixed, so he rolled some dung together into a ball, as scarabs do, and he rolled and rolled and rolled until it became a huge ball, and he rolled this right back into the world of dead meat.
The fleas and flies and other vermin of the world of meat saw the ball coming toward them, and they did not know what it was until the Scarab piped up, saying; "Help me, help me push this out and away!" By the time the fleas and flies could try and stop the ball, it had already rolled its way through the land of plenty, picking up whole realms and populaces, and grown so vast that the many fleas and flies and even the lizard strained at getting it out of the way and could not stop it.
"Oh s**t," they thought, suddenly realising their abject silliness as they sunk into it.
"And that fixes that," thought the scarab as he kept doing what he loved to do, which was rolling his ball of dung.
But eventually the ball of dung came to the limits of the world and came tumbling into the nothing, leaving pieces of meat flying into the void.
At this point, Ol' Maggie the Pure, who liked nothing more than a quiet sit, reading from the scrolls he had made from the skin of the dead beast and having a nice full belly, decided that how would do whatever it takes to free himself from a s**t-stained death. Focussing all his will on his last meal bubbling inside him gut, with face crumpled with huge thought, Maggie power-farted a thunderous power-fart that shook the very foundations of the dung-ball, making of its spinning a wobbly thing, and catapulting him up into the heavens like a cannonball.
Stuck in the dung ball and dizzy with horror, as well as with the dung globe's constant spinning, the fleas and the flies and the carrion lizard could only watch the bright glow of his bum-gut's roaring exhaust with deep regret as it ripped a hole back to the world of meat. They had enough trouble keeping the index of their guts down, let alone turning it into a power-fart!
But then the carrion lizard had a plan. Using the reach of his long neck, he picked up a strong ancestor called The Trinimac and pulled him free of the mire. The Trinimac then bravely confronted the terrible scarab, and his face was death and murder, and the sinews of his neck nooses and his hands severing blades.
"Why have you done this horrible thing?" asked the Trinimac in something a little more than deadly glances.
"I refuse to tell you," replied the Scarab with less than words.
To which the only response was for The Trinimac to strike him a terrible blow that dented his skeleton without and knocked the Scarab back. Then he plunged his hands deep into the chest plate of his insect armour and pull out his insect heart beating hideous ichor, sprays of bugjuice pouring out of the steaming hole at a volume yet to be rivalled by all the brewers of bugjuice brews to this day.
In ichor beats the heart said, "I cannot be destroyed for the secrets of my pumping are hidden in the depths of the dung ball, so that I not bear witness against my owner."
This sore puzzled The Trinimac, who threw the heart far away from him where it sailed in the air to describe the first triumphal arch, yet to be realised in glorious iron like the conquests of our heroes, and which went to land with a heavy, sloppy thump on the other edge of the ball. By this time, the rest of the gang had freed themselves and thanked and lauded him, but could not do so for long, for although the ball had slowed somewhat in its spinning after the scarab had died, still much work was left to done, and quick, to ensure at least some would survive. They worked together, breathing on the dung ball with great breaths that its spinning would be more gentler to them and its odours more pleasanter, and with their godly powers they shaped and otherwise made stable the dung ball. Some even died in the attempt, but in the end, there were survivors where there might not have been none, though they were left weak and impotent.
Long after the carrion lizard had grown wings, which is another tale, after long generations of dung-ball dwellers were born on the globe and The Trinimac had cried and continued to cry many new rivers over his not being able to return to the Land of Plenty a group of young upstarts lead by the tricksy Bothog, a Dung Prince, challenged his authority and his teachings and those of the Carrion Lizard, and spoke words of praise for the hated Land of Dung and the heroes of the war. The Trinimac got very angry, but was not strong enough to stand before them, being wrung dry with tears and scrawny with malnourishment from being separated from the Land of Plenty. So the hated Bothog, may his bowels bleed in unusual colours, plucked him from the earth and placed him in his mouth, and using foul magicks, spoke with his voice. The followers of the Trinimac averted their gaze and stoppered their ears with their tapering women-hands - which is kind of like plugging a bathtub with straw ha ha - and did the only thing they knew how to do, which the Trinimac had taught them, which is to wail and bemoan it all in shrill tones.
Meanwhile, The Trinimac passed through the slimy labyrinth of the Prince of Plots' intestines, fleshy walls squeezing him onwards in the darkness. There was no time for tears within Bothog's bowels, and soon The Trinimac lost himself in a blind turning, all sobs and sweetness having been digested and vomited back from out of the lesser of Bothog's two stench-holes, but it was as Malak that he saw the light at the end of the passage like a brilliant star in the fundament, renamed to suit his second birthing.
When Bothog relieved himself of his meal, the followers of The Trinimac rent their robes and wailed and rubbed the faeces upon their bare chests. But then they heard a voice shrieking from the mess, and it said, "Stop rolling like pigs amongst the faeces and get out of the way of my sunlight, you stupid f**kers."
And the followers of Trinimac were sore confused at this, and asked amongst faecal tears who addressed them so.
"Like iron buried in the bowels of the dung-globe, so you have found your god. Dry your tears, for the correct response is a curse. Your tusked and snouted forms reveal this, and henceforth there is no other way except up."
And we saw that we were changed, like our god, and that this was true.
"And now you see that pearls can be found amidst the swill. You thought you were born from golden gadflies, but it was a fool's gold, as pliable as copper. But now you have been elevated to iron; hardy, strong and resilient. You are my favoured children, the first to hear the vagitus of your deity who is the new dyad of dung and meat, abstersive double conception, and in me the tathagatagarbha represented, which is actually a rebarbative bastard, just like me."
The last bit we did not understand as it was skew-wise and godspeak besides, but then we were covered in sh*t and feeling somewhat goofy from all the new things come upon us as if, instead of Malak, we had just found and eaten a mushroom growing there of the kind that our shamans are fond that grant sacred visions, and for which reason are a sign of our covenant with him. Malak went on to teach us many things, and made us strong, and gave us curses and oaths to scream at our enemies, and cruel words that better described them, twisting inside their guts and driving them to insane hate-rages.
That is the truth and may your bum-gut drop off and have an affair with a detested neighbour if you do not believe it all. And a curse upon Gortwog, who is no longer one of the people of iron, but of pig-iron, and may his palace fall down upon him, that it squeeze out his innards and form his double beside him, for I believe some mercy should be shown and he should have company in his last days.
