Ironclaw Orc

The Ironclaw tribe is a group of orcs which, over the course of many generations, have managed to entirely breed out the instinct of rage in battle. Many tribes of orcs are aggressive to a fault, refusing to admit defeat until their weapons are wrenched from their hands, or until they lie dead on the battlefield. The Ironclaw orcs have no such predisposition. When fighting a losing battle, for the Ironclaw orcs, it is better to live to fight another day. While this is partially because the Ironclaw orcs realize that “living to fight another day” means “living to fight,” it’s also because the Ironclaw tribe is quite simply made of cowards.   Cowardly Genetics As peaceable as any clan of orcs can be, when the Ironclaw tribe eliminated all of their nearby competition hundreds of years ago, they did not seek wider pastures. Rather, they turned towards milking the resources they had obtained, and using generations of humanoid slaves to care for their needs. Over time, any orc aggressive enough to upset this status quo was seen as more of a threat to the clan than anything else, and was quickly put down. Generations of eliminating the most aggressive of their species, and living in the lap of relative luxury, removed the hard edge of battle from the blood of the Ironclaw orcs.   Cowardly Tactics The Ironclaw tribe still lives in relative isolation, but their territory has recently been shrinking, with both humans and elves willing to risk encroaching on the orcs’ territory. And because their lives are now more valuable than the growth of the clan, the Ironclaw warrior strategy is to retreat first, swing your weapon later. Still dangerous, the Ironclaw clan is more intelligent than the average group of orcs, and they do use slaves in battle as front-line troops to dissuade their enemies from wholesale slaughter. But the Ironclaws have developed several strategies which allow them to escape with their lives in the event that a battle turns against them.