Ogres of Ogria

Description

The Ogres of Ogria are a towering, thick-skinned people of the Frost Wastes, surviving where few others could. Their minds are slow and dimwitted, but their strength is unmatched. They roam the icy plateaus and jagged ravines of ancient Hyperborea, where the wind howls and the ground itself bites back. What they lack in wit, they more than make up for in sheer force.

Ogres eat nearly anything they can lay hands on: beast, man, wood, or stone. If it fits in their mouth, it’s fair game. Cannibalism is not taboo, it’s tradition, especially in times of hardship. Even the bones of their dead are often kept for gnawing or crafting into crude tools and charms.

Ogre Clans

Urgog - Stone Eaters

• Traits: Enduring, stubborn, slow to act but impossible to stop.
• Reputation: The most enduring of the Ogre clans, Urgog Ogres are known for their incredible fortitude, both physical and mental. They are the largest of their kind, with slate-colored skin and thick calloused hands capable of crushing stone. When they march, the ground trembles, though they seldom do so with haste.
• Culture: They believe in the strength of the earth and often ritually consume stones as a way of "anchoring" themselves to the land. Their shamans speak of memories locked within boulders, and some believe they can divine past battles or ancestral wisdom this way. Urgogs rarely initiate violence, but when they do, they commit to it with implacable resolve.

Kunchkog - The Howlers

• Traits: Nomadic, loud, frighteningly fast for their size.
• Reputation: Feared across Ogria for their war-cries that echo across the mountains, the Kunchkog clan thrives on chaos. They paint their pale hides with blood and ash before battle, and are known to chant as they charge, each voice contributing to a rising sonic dread.
• Culture: Kunchkogs revere sound and believe the world was "howled into existence". Their chieftains are often bellowers, Ogres whose roars can burst eardrums and drive off beasts. Strangely, their oral traditions are remarkably complex, involving long war-poems roared into the night sky.

Clan Nyemog - The Swollen Ones

• Traits: Lazy, gluttonous, cunning in their own way
• Reputation: Considered foolish by other clans, the Nyemog are incredibly corpulent and rarely engage in combat unless forced. But their size is deceiving, many wield massive strength with little effort and possess a disturbing knack for manipulation when it comes to obtaining food.
• Culture: Nyemogs live in sheltered glacial pits or thermal caves, where they lounge in filth and warmth. They treat food as both currency and art, and some among them even keep human or goblin "chefs" captured from raids. Their clan is led by the largest eater, known as the "Grubfader".

Clan Teptog - The Iron-Blooded

• Traits: Furious, militaristic, relentlessly brutal.
• Reputation: Teptogs are the most violent and organized of the Ogre clans. Their warriors wear crude spiked armor, often hammered from scraps of old battlefield loot. They provoke conflict even among their own kind, viewing internal fighting as "culling the weak".
• Culture: Their society revolves around dominance. The strongest rule, the weaker serve or die. Their warbands often operate in shock troop-like formations, a rarity among typically chaotic Ogre tribes. They do not recognize truces, only temporary pauses in violence.

Shared Culture

Ogre society is primitive and violent. They do not forge steel or write words, but they know slavery, dominance, and pain. “The Small Ones”, as Ogres call all smaller folk, are often taken captive to serve as laborers, pets, or emergency snacks. Humans, Goblins, Dwarves, and even Kobolds are all fair game.

Above all else, Ogres revere "Big Mountain", the colossal peak at the northern most edge of Ogria’s skyline. They believe it is the oldest, biggest thing in the world, too strong for even the gods to kill. Its size alone makes it sacred. From this belief stems their primal creed: "Da biggest leads". Ogres rarely settle disputes with words, dominance is decided by height, heft, and havoc. Because of this, clans are in constant conflict over who’s "biggest". A never ending chain of bruises, broken bones, and battered egos.