Get three extinct animals raised to life as monsters in D&D: https://www.scintilla.studio/extinction

Episode transcript: https://scintilla.studio/monster-extinction-aurochs-nazis-orcs/

Guides:

Steve Sullivan, director of the Hefner Museum of Natural History at Miami University in Ohio

Jessica Marcrum, Uncaged Author and producer of the Threeflings actual play podcast, www.jessicamarcrumwrites.com

James Mendez Hodes, game designer and orc historian: https://jamesmendezhodes.com/

Did you like this stat block? Let me know on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SparkOtter

"Extinction Theme" by Alexandre Miller, The Boy King of Idaho

Closing music by Jason Shaw at Audionautix.com

We have to talk about the aurochs.

It's maybe the biggest, hairiest

cattle anyone has ever seen.

In short, it's a bunch of bull.

Aurochs were the first beast

added to Dungeons & Dragons 5th

edition after the core rulebooks.

As far as monsters go it seems pretty open

and shut, I mean, D&D needs big, hairy

animals for its big, hairy magical world.

But it's never that simple.

Aurochs are the extinct wild cattle

of ancient Europe, a beast ingrained

to the continent’s mythology and

culture, and the Forgotten Realms

setting has painted them as the sacred

animal of Gruumsh, god of the orcs.

So if we're going to talk about

the aurochs, I'm going to have

to tell you one heck of a story.

From the Ice Age to Nazi supercows

to bioessentialism in TTRPGs, the

aurochs is maybe the most challenging

extinction story in Dungeons & Dragons.

I'm Lucas Zellers, and I'm

resurrecting extinct animals for the

world's greatest roleplaying game.

Extinction.

Your aurochs is no more

real than my Lamborghini that I made

out of foam and spray painted real good.

But when you look under the hood,

you suddenly see maybe there's

some important differences.

I read through

the part about all the orc deities

and they're all, they're all terrible.

And then there's one of them.

And then he rides an aurochs around,

and this is like the only good thing

orcs ever do, they're nice to cows.

Standing over 6 feet tall and

weighing more than a ton, the aurochs

was a keystone species for forests and

grasslands across Eurasia, from, in

modern-day terms, Portugal to Korea.

With its wide horns and broad,

striped back covered during the winter

season in a thick mantle of hair,

the aurochs was a striking animal

that left a huge impression on the

folklore of an entire continent.

In the cave paintings at

Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc, aurochs are

depicted opposite saber-toothed

tigers and cave lions.

At the city of Babylon, aurochs

were depicted on the Ishtar Gate,

the eighth gate to the inner city.

In the Greek myth portrayed in The Rape

of Europa, Zeus was able to kidnap Europa

by transforming into an aurochs bull.

Europa was so enamored of the new white

bull in her father’s herds that she came

near to stroke it and eventually climbed

on its back, at which point Zeus did his

Zeus thing and swam the Mediterranean

to strand Europa on the island of Crete.

By the 14th century, hunting the aurochs

was a privilege of nobles, who would

often drink from the slain aurochs’ horns.

One such drinking horn was a prized

possession of King Sigismund III

of Poland was an ornate drinking

horn, longer than a grown man’s arm

and as thick as an elephant tusk.

There are depictions of

Romans throwing nets over these things.

You can imagine what it would take to

capture one of these and breed them.

This is Steve Sullivan, Director

of the Hefner Museum of Natural History

at Miami University, and one of the first

people I interviewed about the connection

between extinct animals and D&D.

One of the charismatic

species that used to be there

that is no longer is the aurochs.

The aurochs is this amazing cattle

species, probably six feet tall at the

shoulder, massive horns, oftentimes

this deep fawn, chestnut color

with a dark stripe down the back.

The aurochs was the progenitor

of modern cattle, and for centuries

they existed alongside their scions.

By the 17th century, everything that kills

species had conspired to kill the aurochs,

including unrestricted hunting, loss

of habitat due to farmland development,

and diseases from domestic cattle.

The last recorded aurochs, a

female, died of natural causes in

Jaktorów Forest, Poland, in 1627.

Domestication is in many

ways, the dumbing down, the increasing the

childlike characteristics in a species.

So all these cattle that we have, dairy

cattle and beef cattle and whatever,

they're basically baby aurochs who

are able to sexually reproduce.

And so that's what we've done

through domestication, whether it's

cows or sheep or dogs or whatever.

So fundamentally the species

aurochs still exists, but in this

neotenic or "juvenilized" form.

In the case of the original domestication

of the aurochs, we want a small cow

that we can handle, that's docile.

With black Angus, for example, if you

go to the grocery store and try to buy

black Angus meat, whether it's hotdogs

or steaks, it used to be super expensive.

It's much less expensive now that's

because when we bred black Angus

for its meat characteristics, we

kinda narrowed its hips a little bit

and we made its teeth real small.

We did that by accident.

We were focused on the meat.

And so frankly, a lot of the babies died

and they didn't thrive if they didn't die.

When they were birthed.

Now we've bred them with

bigger teats and bigger hips.

Shazamm!

We can have more black Angus!

So this then implies that the genes of

aurochs are still floating out there.

Maybe some are amplified in one place

and others are amplified in other places.

Similarly with the tarpan, the wild horse.

So people have engaged in these

processes to find the individual animal,

cow or horse, that is most like its

progenitor and then breed those back

in until we recreate something that is

six feet high at the shoulder, and has

these massive horns from the outside

many cases, they've done a good job.

There's a breed called the Heck cattle.

They look great.

It's a German breed.

They look an awful lot like what

we imagine aurochs must look like.

And here is where

the story gets complicated.

The Heck cattle was named for its creators

the Heck brothers, Lutz and Heinz, who

went into the family business running

the Berlin Zoo in the early 1900s.

Zoology in Europe at the

time seemed eerily in line

with 1896's The Island of Dr.

Moreau - debating the role of humans in

preventing extinction and even creating

new species, blissfully unaware of

the role of genetics in the process.

Lutz

Watson and Crick, that

was what, 1952, when we discovered,

what DNA looked like thanks to their,

piracy, a little bit of Rosalind

Franklin's work, uh, but, uh, however that

history happened, we finally understood

really not just that as Alfred Russell

Wallace and Charles Darwin showed

that species can change, but we then

also began to understand the genetic

makeup of how things could change.

Lutz Heck's particular fascination

was in resurrecting what he called

"primeval German game" like the aurochs.

This was the 1930s.

In Berlin.

So you can guess who might have

shared Lutz's interest in a mythic

German past free of racial impurities.

Lutz became a member of the Nazi

party and a close friend to Hermann

Göring, right-hand man to Adolf Hitler.

Göring gathered political titles

The Gathering cards;

he was simultaneously the prime

minister of Prussia, commander in

chief of the Luftwaffe, and Reich

Hunt Master and Forest Master.

Göring even gave a title to his friend

Nature Protection Authority.

In these roles, Göring seized land

from Poland, especially from the

Białowieża Forest, for nature preserves.

He hoped Lutz would fill with this

personal playground with mythic

beasts resembling those in ancient

epic poetry like Nibelungenlied,

which Göring could then hunt

with spears and in period dress.

Lutz's breeding program selected for

phenotype, or visual characteristics,

from a huge cross-section of European

breeds including Spanish fighting bulls.

The result was not the aurochs, but

a new breed called Heck cattle whose

individuals vary widely in their

physical characteristics and are

often aggressive enough to attack

without first giving a threat display.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are not

the pleasantly sympatric herbivores

hoped to rewild Europe alongside humans.

Lutz’ stock of Heck cattle were

exterminated after the war, but

today there are still about 2,000

Heck cattle in existence - all of

which trace back to Heinz’ stock.

The ideas that drove Heck and Göring

reverberated in European academia and

left an echo in a perhaps surprising

a British officer named J.R.R.

Tolkien.

And we can't continue to understand

the aurochs in D&D without

understanding Tolkien's orcs.

This is from letter

number 210 by Tolkien when he was

talking about a movie treatment of the

Lord of the Rings that he didn't like.

So he was like, let me tell you

what I think orcs looked like.

And he said, and I quote, "the

orcs are definitely stated to be

corruptions of the quote human

unquote form seen in elves and men.

They are, or were, squat, broad, flat

nosed, sallow skinned, with wide mouths

and slant eyes, in fact, degraded

and repulsive versions of the, to

Europeans, least lovely Mongol types."

And I was like, damn, I'm

squat, broad, flat nosed, sallow

skinned, wide mouth a slant eye.

Does that mean I'm degraded and repulsive?

Um, so yeah.

James Mendez Hodes is an

Ennie-award-winning writer game

designer and cultural consultant.

His design work includes Thousand Arrows

and Scion; his consulting work, Magic:

The Gathering and the Jackbox party

packs; and he last appeared on this

show for his work on the design team

Legends, the tabletop RPG

The Last Airbender.

Mendez, welcome back to the show.

What's good.

It's good to be here.

Thank you for having me back.

I asked Mendez on the show

because he had already done some pretty

heavy lifting to untangle how these

ideas would have influenced Tolkien,

and through him how they would have

contributed to Dungeons & Dragons.

So reading that

blew my mind because, growing up in

America, I think the racial stereotypes

and the most virulent kinds of

racism that I grew up around I think

were often directed towards, black

people and towards American Indians.

In the particular context

of my upbringing, that's

often what I saw the most.

And so, I was used to seeing a lot

of that kind of racist language

directed towards orcs as well.

So my assumption was that once I started

researching the racial underpinnings

of orcs, that I would find things

like I might've seen an American

racism towards native people and

towards anybody of African descent.

But then when I went and I looked

at Tolkien's original conception of

orcs, I realized that, the way that

he envisioned orcs was kind of as

this Asian hoard with fangs and tusks.

That was Tolkien's version of, of orcs.

Uh, so they started out as this

purpose-built Asian stereotype.

I started looking at like, what kind

of influences might have moved Tolkien

to create a fantasy race that he

described essentially as Asian people.

And I realized that in British academia,

he would have encountered these theories

of scientific racism about like Caucasoid

and Mongoloids and Negroids, all of

these really uncomfortable terms that

we have for the different subspecies of

humanity, which of course modern science

has thrown out the window and further.

Tolkien certainly would have

encountered those things during

the course of his education.

Then Tolkien and joined the army and in

the British army, there was a conception

of Indian people called the administrative

races and the martial races.

So the British Raj and the British

army classified all the different

ethnicities in India into, "Okay.

We think these guys over here, they

live in cities and they're good at math.

And then these guys over, over there,

they're these big, tough, strong guys

who are not very smart and they make

excellent soldiers, but they'll probably

just run amok and do evil stuff unless we

put some white people in charge of them."

So practically speaking, of course, the

reason that different populations in

different places, struck the British

as being tough but obedient soldiers

on one hand or, good at bureaucracy

at the other, on the other hand, had

a lot to do a lot more to do with how.

Those with the way that the British

related to those people than it did with

any particular inherent quality, of them.

However, this idea of warrior races

ended up spreading throughout the

British consciousness and, this

term, this idea of the martial race

or the warrior race, ended up being

applied to people in Scotland,

east Africa, and Polynesia as well.

Basically anytime anybody beat the

British in a fight using technology

that they thought wasn't as good, the

British would be like, "Oh, they beat

us because they're a martial race.

They are somehow naturally

inclined towards fighting."

So the intersection of these two ideas,

scientific racism and the concept of

the martial race, these were things

that Tolkien could not possibly have

avoided during the course of his life.

And he happens to have created something

in the orcs which lines up with pretty

much all of both of those stereotypes.

And I got a couple of articles

which go into it in depth.

Yeah, there were a great read.

I highly recommend them.

Thank you.

So, yeah, so then there's a, the first

article focuses on Tolkien and then the

second focuses on orcs in the context

of Dungeons and Dragons, and how in the

historical context of the United States,

the way that white people viewed Asian

people and black people and native people

was starting to change in certain ways.

So when orcs appeared in Dungeons and

Dragons, which was created by conservative

white men in the Midwest, the stereotypes

that were applied to orcs and the

way that orcs were described there

started to shift and they started to

move away from American stereotypes of

Asians, which were focused on a concept

primarily called the model minority,

which America had a purpose-built

through immigration policies and in a

complicated way, and started to shift

more towards the way that white racists

and racists of all, all ethnicities,

really, viewed black and native people.

And then even in more positive portrayals

of orcs, such as, those I grew up with in

Warcraft, the orcs still adhere to sort

of positive, but still harmful stereotypes

like the concept of the noble savage,

where there's this primitive race, which

is in some ways better at certain aspects

of humanity or stronger, or closer to

living in closer harmony with nature and

their own spirits or something like that.

You can read Jean-Jacques Rousseau

to get a deep dive into that.

But even in the portrayals of orcs

that I like there are still some

of those positive stereotypes.

There's definitely portrayals

of orcs out there, which have

moved in different directions.

I'm reading a great book right now

called The Unspoken Name which has

an orcish main character who's great.

My friend Carly wrote a piece

called "The Thousand Cousins,"

which is a version of orcs you can

drop into many different games.

I don't know if these orcs are good

necessarily, but I think the orcs

in Warhammer 40,000, which are based

on British football hooligans are a

really interesting thing to study.

I don't know if it's like a

good version of orcs, but I

think it's fascinating to study.

How many times do you

think you've told this story?

The article that

I first published, the first part

of the article was in January 2019.

For that year, I told the story, like, I'd

say like once every couple of weeks then

things slowed down a little bit through

2020 and 2021, I'd say, meh, once a month.

But yeah, it, it, it

comes up all the time.

The most important point that I could

make about orcs is that if we sit down

to play a role playing game and the way

that the game, or the other players or

the DM, that someone involved portrays

orcs reminds me a little bit too much of

the way it feels when I and my friends

experience racism in the real world, then

I have a hard time enjoying the game.

Because honestly, even if Tolkien hadn't

done this on purpose - I do think he, he

did it on purpose, or perhaps he did it

based on like a great deal of unconscious

bias - but even if he hadn't, the thing

that he made still causes problems for

us in the present day when we try to

have a fantasy game with these different

species and we try to do that without

bringing in too much real world racism.

Even if this thing was

created unintentionally, it

still causes us problems.

And I think it's not nearly as cool as

some of the orcs that we could have.

So it, you know, it comes up a lot.

And even if this, even if you don't

buy that, this is actually racism,

even if none of that moves you,

then at the end of the day, okay.

So this is a creative

preference that I have.

Like some people don't like disco

music, some people don't like orcs the

way that they're originally portrayed

in old editions of Dungeons & Dragons

or the early part of fifth edition.

I just don't like it.

In addition to thinking that it's racist.

So if your friend really doesn't

like something in a game, then

you probably wouldn't want to

force them to play that game.

Right.

And if they wanted something different

in the game, if they wanted the game

to have different options, like you

could have an orc who fits a bunch of

racist stereotypes or you could have

a different kind of orc, I'd want to

be able at least to have the choice.

It's not very important to me that

you have the racist orcs in the game.

It's easy enough to just like

take the kind of orcs that I would

like to see and make them fit all

the racial stereotypes you want.

But I like having the

option not to do that.

Do you ever get

tired of telling this story?

Not

really like, it's my job.

It's my job.

So I'm, I'm used to telling it,

it feels like a, you know, a

teacher telling kids to be quiet.

You got to tell two kids to

be quiet a few times a day.

It just, it goes with the job.

And for me talking about orcs

just kind of goes with the job.

But, the other element of this

is that I like talking about

orcs cause I think they're cool.

Cause I had that first positive

experience of, watching my friends make

a bunch of cool orcs in, in Warcraft

which ended up kind of setting the tone

for me and if the first orcs I'd ever

seen were in, in Dungeons and Dragons,

I probably wouldn't have felt that way.

To understand the aurochs' place

in this conversation, we have to talk

about that early portrayal of orcs.

I think D and D has kind of covered

its tracks with orcs by suggesting

that, some of these objectionable

stereotypes or these objectionable

traits of the culture or the race as

a whole belong to a deity of the orcs

that they've given the name Gruumsh.

Yes.

Let me give you

a couple of examples.

There was a Dragon Magazine

number 62 from June, 1982.

If listeners want to look that up,

there was an article called, the gods

of the orcs and it ran with a tagline,

the word from above, make war not love.

And then we had Deities and

Demigods 20 years later in 2002.

And I'll quote from that directly just

" Gruumsh,

deity of orcs, is chaotic evil.

He appears as a hulking orc

in black full plate armor.

He has one unblinking central eye."

From his dogma, "Gruumsh demands that

his followers be strong; that they

cull the week from their numbers;

that they take all the territory

Gruumsh thinks is rightfully

theirs, which is almost everything.

He tolerates no sign of

friendliness from his people.

Unceasing warfare is his creed.

Though," and this is interesting,

"Gruumsh does not object to simple

colonization, if that can be arranged."

Yeah, so my

academic background is in religion.

And one of the things that I always

complain about in fantasy religions

is that people give religions a bunch

of interesting qualities that they

think are going to make for really

good storytelling but very often not

that much attention is paid to what

makes a religion worth practicing?

What is the appeal of a religion?

So for example, with a lot of

fantasy versions of Christianity or

Catholicism, um, there's so obviously

terrible that, uh, that it starts

to be a little bit unbelievable.

Why, uh, you know, say the majority, um,

like, let's say, let's say that your hot

take is Christianity is bad actually.

And so you make a fantasy

version of Christianity.

They're the biggest

fish in the real world.

They can take a few knocks, right?

It's not like marginalizing

the Jewish right?

Christianity that they

can take a few hits.

I think they'll be okay.

So great.

So you make your, you make your fantasy

version of Christianity you pick all

the worst Popes and all of the worst,

prosperity gospel preachers on TV

and you, you populate the religion

entirely with them and they're the bad

guy religion, um, which, okay, sure.

Why does anyone do this religion?

Um, they would have to have so many

evil inquisitors running around

forcing people to do the religion at

sword point, that just, it would just

not be, not be a manageable task.

Um, so anytime a religion, there's

like a fantasy version of a religion

and it's just like, all of the worst

cult stuff without even any of the

stuff that cults do to make people

want to be in a cult, um, I find that

creatively unsatisfying, shall we say?

And, uh, more importantly, if I'm trying

to create stuff in the world, it makes

storytelling difficult because, uh,

you know, what am I going to be like?

So everyone in this town practices

this religion, um, and then all my

players are going to be like, why?

And I'll be like, ah, I don't know.

So, so this makes, this makes

my job as the dungeon master

or as the player difficult.

So the first problem that I see with

this Gruumsh guy, is that I'm like, how

are you going to live a whole sentient,

sapient life without friendship?

I believe that orcs, the,

the stereotypical org travels

in a hoard, is that correct?

And you would think that, uh, you know,

uh, your, your average orc might, I dunno,

put some value on unit coherency, if

he's going to try to do a colonialism.

Um, so this guy's like no

friendliness, no friendship.

You can conquer people and

show off your strength.

This doesn't really make sense to me.

It's also like, having a race that's

completely evil, first of all, as I often

say, if everybody in a certain race or

a species rather, cause I hate saying

race, if everyone in a certain species

is born evil and they don't have the

choice about whether or not to do evil and

there's no chance that they can do good,

well, that's not really evil, that's

more like a, there's a force of nature.

They don't really have a choice about it.

That's not evil as, as I understand it.

That's just like having a

destructive nature that they

don't really have a choice about.

So, okay.

So if, if Gruumsh is chaotic evil, and

he demands this from all the orcs, it

does not sound like a religion that

I would bother practicing, even if

I did like violence and colonialism,

it doesn't sound like a good time.

When I bring up the idea that it, it might

be a little sketch that all orcs are evil.

Very often the first response I

get is, well, it makes sense that

they're that way in the setting.

And my response is like, really?

Cause I think Gruumsh isn't real.

Someone made him up.

So someone made up the reasons for

them all to be evil in the setting.

And even if they do have a reason to

be evil in the setting, that still

makes the process of interacting with

them for me, kind of uncomfortable.

Like my personal experience of orcs

being uncomfortable is still going

to be the same, whether or not

there's like a good reason for it.

Moreover, the idea of God making a

certain subgroup of sentient beings a

certain way in response to like their

past crimes or something like that,

that's also a really common talking point

in racist depictions of certain people.

And, uh, again, when I bring up this

point, a lot of the time people say to

me, "Well, you're making that connection.

I would never have thought that

before you made this connection

between orcs and whoever it is."

To which my response is, "Yeah,

I'm making that connection because

racists said to, said it to me first.

And unfortunately now I can't forget

that because racism still exists."

So having there be a God whose

fault it is, doesn't really

make the situation worse.

And when you characterize a whole people

and their whole ass religion as built

entirely on these harmful and hateful

ideas, that's how we do religious

intolerance in the real world also.

And I don't enjoy that usually.

you mentioned at the top of the

interview, that Volos is the worst.

What is it about Volos

guide that bugs you?

oh my God.

Um,

Is that too much of a question?

um, so,

so for comparison, let's

look at the orcs in Eberron.

I don't love a lot of things

about their portrayal.

This was before the Tasha apocalypse and

the end of race-based ability scores.

Yeah, that was going

to be my next question.

yeah, so

this is before that, right?

So the orcs still a little, uh,

so they get a plus two to strength

and a plus one to constitution.

So that means that all of the most

optimal orcs are going to be fighters,

clerics, paladins, barbarians.

You're not going to see a lot of orc

monks, rogues, wizards or warlocks.

The most optimally built orcs

are all going to be in like

certain martial categories.

Age orcs, reach adulthood at

age 12 and live up to 50 years.

Alignments, the orcs have ever

honor a passionate people given to

powerful emotion and deep faith.

They are generally chaotic,

but can be any alignment.

I like that they can be any alignment.

I get that, but characterizing a

whole species as whole culture as

chaotic, that's a little weird, right?

Aren't there different,

different cultures of orcs?

There's different cultures

of humans, probably different

cultures of elves, dwarves, right?

Why don't we got different

cultures of orcs?

Um, maybe some can be chaotic

and some can be ordered.

Size they're medium, speed, 30

feet, they have dark vision.

Sure.

Okay.

as a bonus action, you

can move up to your speed towards an

enemy of your choice you can see or

hear, you must end this move closer

to the enemy, then you started."

so if we're going to give all orcs an

aggression power, then I think it would

be useful for there to be a reason why.

Because otherwise we're saying like

all, every single orc is aggressive

and that is also an uncomfortable

thing that people say about certain

groups in, in the real world.

you count as one

size larger when determining your

carrying capacity and the weight

you can push drag or lifts."

I don't have like the biggest

problem with that in the world.

Cause like, I guess it's reasonable

to say, I don't know people from

Senegal or Scandinavia are often very

tall, so they are, but that, like,

we don't even do that with humans.

So saying like all of this, everybody

here has a very powerful build.

It's just not that exciting a power,

but I guess it could be worse.

" Primal Intuition," this one's weird.

"You have proficiency in two of the

animal

handling insight, intimidation, medicine,

nature, perception and survival."

So I think this goes back to those noble

savage ideas that I mentioned, right?

This is kind of the, this feels

like the Warcraft version of embark.

So that's an orc in, uh, in Eberron.

I got some problems with it.

There's some things where I'm like,

oh, I'm not sure I got to think about

this one, but, uh, let's look at Volos.

No.

The

version of orcs that we got in

here, monstrous adventurers.

All right.

So ability score increase strength

and constitution as the same

strength and constitution that

we just saw in the other book.

And your intelligence

score is reduced by two.

So they're all dumber.

Great.

So this is, this is exactly, this is

a, a, an ability score-enforced martial

race bonuses to strengthen constitution,

but they have worse intelligence,

orcs are vicious raiders who

believe that the world should be theirs.

They also represent, uh, respect, strength

above all else and believe the strong

must bully the weak to ensure that

weakness does not spread like a disease.

They're usually chaotic evil.

orcs are usually over six feet tall

and weigh between 230 and 280 pounds.

Your size is medium."

Fine.

30 feet.

Dark vision.

They have dark vision.

Then aggressive is in here.

Menacing, they're trained in

the intimidation skills, so they

all run around scaring people.

Powerful Build, same as before.

And that's, that's an orc mechanically.

So they are one of the few species

in this game that actually has a

negative modifier to an ability score.

So that to make sure that we

all know, that orcs are dumb.

So, I hate it.

Even at the time of this interview,

the so-called "Tasha-pocalypse" had begun

to address these issues by re-writing

the source material in question.

The November 2021 sourcebook Tasha's

Cauldron of Everything made ability

score increases a matter of player

choice rather than being determined

by race, accompanied by a large number

of mechanical changes to the game.

A massive set of errata released

that December removed racial ability

score penalties as well as adjusting

some of the lore in the Player's

Handbook regarding orcs and drow,

another problematic racial symbol.

The May 2022 release of Monsters of the

Multiverse made previous printings of

orcs and other creatures "legacy content"

and replaced them with updated versions.

For orcs, the "Aggressive" trait was

replaced with a movement buff called

"Adrenaline Rush" that doesn't target

enemies, and the "Menacing" trait was

replaced with "Relentless Endurance" which

allows the orc character to return to 1

hit point instead of falling unconscious.

Gruumsh still appears as an influential

figure in orcish culture, though

he is now cited as "an unstoppable

warrior and powerful leader" known

for his tougness and tenacity.

Despite a generally warm

reception, these changes were

not received without controversy.

Nor can they erase the printed

words in Volo's Guide, Deities

& Demigods, or Dragon Magazine.

Mendez's criticisms are no less

relevant now than they were when

we recorded them in January.

I did want to bring it back around to

Book of Extinction and the aurochs itself.

Cause this is another one of those things

that just kind of snuck its way rather

unremarkably into the back of Volos Guide.

It's another beast.

It's a very large cow, CR 2?

But the section of lore that we got

tied it to Gruumsh and his son Bahgtru.

It cast it in the role of, of mount

like a mount chosen of a deity,

which happens a lot, in myth and

culture over the course of history.

Before this

interview, I read through the part

about all the ORC deities and they're

all, they're all, they're all terrible.

And then there's one of them.

And then he rides an aurochs

around, and this is like the

only good thing orcs ever do.

They're nice to cows.

This is, this is like the only

positive things said about orcs.

And like this whole chapter is that

they're nice to this one kind of cow.

And then sometimes they've

ride them into battle.

And there's a lot going on here.

Why weren't horses good enough?

Why does it have to be a bull?

Did they need something that was just

bigger and hornier than like the human,

the thing that humans were riding around?

Um, what happened to riding on wolves?

That's also kind of weird, but

I thought they used to, is that

just for goblins now, but, okay.

So now they have these sacred

cows, um, which I don't think has

anything to do with like, like

in, in real world, like yeah.

there are, there are cows that

are sacred in, in south Asia.

I don't think that, oh,

wait, martial races.

Ah, they are connected aren't they.

Damn it.

All right.

All right.

I hope that was an accident.

So I it's awkward because it

reminds you of Nazi stuff.

Right?

And I think a lot of, there are a lot

of, fascist movements which have eco

fascist tendencies where they have

like a, a Vokish ideology or some

similar thing like that, which is

connected to a certain understanding

of how, people are connected to land.

In the case of Heck and Göring,

this idea was lebensraum, or living

space, and a return to the heroic past.

Classical nationalism

is built on a lot of different shared

qualities, but language culture, history,

usually religion and territory are often

elements of classical nationalism as

opposed to like the messed up versions

of nationalism we have today, but we're

talking about like the stuff that led

to the formation of early nation states.

So, a lot of the time that's

connected to certain qualities

of nature or animals or plants.

In this case, the Nazis were attempting

to create a living animal symbol of

their idea of the German relationship

with the German country and the German

climate and the German animals, I guess.

In addition to the, the racialized

aspects of orcs, um, portrayals

of orcs are also heavily gendered.

The masculinity and the toxic masculinity

of orcs is often heavily exaggerated.

So the, the bull here seems

to be a symbol of masculinity.

And then the aurochs, as an exaggerated,

like, you know, super swole, uh, version

of the bull seems to be connected to

a kind of exaggerated masculinity.

Um,

yeah, this is uncomfortable.

Forgotten Realms lore from

earlier editions also showed this

gendered portrayal in the form of

Gruumsh's wife, Luthic, another

part of the orcish pantheon.

Luthic gets really poorly

treated in a lot of the lore because

she does all of this really cool stuff.

She gives the orcs like visions of

the blood moon, which incites them to

battle and makes them into warriors.

She's there when every orc is born,

she's there when every orc dies.

And yet she's really ignored by most orcs

and just seen as like Gruumsh's wife and

kind of disregarded by the rest of the

pantheon, most of which are her children.

This is Jessica Marcrum,

who created an adventure around

Goddesses, the

DM's Guild adventure anthology we

covered at the top of the season.

So her husband and her

children all treat her like trash and

the orcs, except for like her clerics

who are called the Orc Claws of Luthic,

all also kind of are like, whatever about

her, but it's canon that she's like the

smartest person in the pantheon and the

only one who's good at battle strategy.

She's also the only one who

knows how to heal apparently.

So, you know, she, she does all

this and doesn't get any credit.

Jessica's criticisms hit very

differently in light of the conversation

around martial and administrative races.

The gendered portrayal continues

as Luthic is also associated with

an Ice Age giant, the cave bear.

They're one of

her sacred animals and she is

known to transform into cave bears.

Cave bears we know are the

fulcrum where archaeology turned

from fable to fact, as they were

so often conflated with dragons.

It's easy to hear the same echo of a

mythic, dragon-slaying past written

in Luthic that we hear in Gruumsh,

uncomfortable associations and all.

So as far as

like corrections, I would like to see

made to orcs, uh, you know, D and D

has already moved past a lot of the

things in Volo's Guide to Monsters.

The connection to aurochs, uh,

it's not my biggest problem here.

Like if you fix a lot of the other

stuff, if their gods aren't all just

monsters, and if they themselves,

aren't just monsters than I think the

fact that they have very large bulls

is not, not my biggest problem here.

That that seems okay.

It's just weird, you know?

Yeah, I do.

It's part of why I wanted

to talk to you about it.

This is a lot of information that I

was genuinely unsure what to do with.

But I can't not talk about it.

It would be the same as

pretending it didn't happen.

It's a great story.

Even if you're going to, even if you're

going to leave the, the aurochs from

Volos guys to monsters in there, like

it's, this is a fascinating story.

Yeah, I will say that

to kind of bring it back around

and put a button on this.

The aurochs has gotten what I

consider to be a redemptive moment.

Uh, it's one of a handful of species

that scientists are actively trying

to bring back from extinction.

We're at a point technologically

where we are able to talk about

whether we can de extinct something.

And now today, with, with

CRISPR technology, we can kind of cut

up genes and chuck new bits in there.

And, in fact with the mammoth, that's been

in the news recently, we can take Asian

elephants and we can take some of these,

frozen mammoths that have been in the

permafrost for so long, which thanks to

climate change, the permafrost is thawing.

So we're able to find these, but so

well-preserved, we can even eat the meat.

We can find the genes

within those organisms.

We can splice them into Asian

elephants, and it is entirely

conceivable that we can make a mammoth.

A more recent program to de extinct

the aurochs, rather than being based on,

uh, Göring's idea of what an aurochs might

have been, it's based on a sequence of

the aurochs genome using material from

a bone discovered in Derbyshire England,

They also used genetic material

from museum artifacts, including

King Sigismund III's drinking horn.

So this is like, this is straight out

of a summer blockbuster and it's the

Taurus program is doing it, a cooperation

between European conservation groups.

And they hope to create a modern

version of the aurochs that more

closely matches that genome and there

they're being very careful about it.

It matches the genome.

It matches depictions we have of the

aurochs from ancient history and it's

being re-introduced to areas like

the Rhodope Mountains, the Southern

Carpathians and the Oder Delta,

and it hopes to create functional

ecological landscapes sustained

by natural processes like forest

regeneration and free flowing rivers.

So we've, we've back-bred the

aurochs, this time as a part of a

really sophisticated land management

strategy to address the problems

of conservation and extinction.

Well, that's great.

That's pretty cool.

What if orcs did that?

And I do have to say for accuracy's

sake that this story doesn't end neatly

in the way that most true stories

don't but Heinz Heck, it must be said,

didn't share his brother's ideology.

He was imprisoned at the Dachau

concentration camp for his connections

to the communist party and his

brief marriage to a Jewish woman.

Wow.

I just, I just opened up his Wikipedia

page and it says, Heck also played

an important part in saving the

European bison from extinction.

so this guy is, this guy is the hero

of this whole episode, Heinz Heck.

Yeah.

This guy is, this guy is cool.

He's a pretty rad dude.

Yeah, let's

enjoy this five minutes before

the internet milkshake ducks him.

I'm sure if someone in the responses to

this episode is going to be like, actually

Oh, I'm, I'm fully prepared

for people to point out the limits of

my research and I, and I will, I, it

is worth mentioning also, please do

point out the limits of my research.

I'm a journalist, not a historian,

so if you've got information

I don't, I'd love to hear it.

Let's start a better

conversation around this.

Yeah.

I am just like, I feel like I'm

just starting to scratch the

surface of this topic myself.

The aurochs will appear in

The Book of Extinction, a bestiary of

extinct animals for 5th edition coming

to Kickstarter in November of 2022.

My version takes after the Tauros

Programme rather than the Nazi supercow.

I've mythologized it as the briar bull,

a creature of druidic power that brings

new life to the forests where it walks.

You can find out more about the

project, including the illustration

of the aurochs on the cover, at

scintilla dot studio slash extinction.

You can download the first three

monsters in the book, themselves

stories of giants and primeval forests.

Pay what you want for it, and every

penny we earn will go to supporting

the Center for Biological Diversity, a

legal and media advocacy organization

based in Portland working to protect

endangered species and wild places

in the United States and worldwide.

Thanks for listening to

Extinction.

There is so much more to say about this

immense topic on the back of the aurochs.

In the show notes is a link to the

most important resources you'll need to

navigate this topic, including a fantastic

Smithsonian article on the Nazi supercow,

Mendez' excellent "orc-ticles" on the

martial race myth, and more about the

TaurOs Programme and Rewilding Europe.

My thanks to this episode's guides,

Steve Sullivan, director of the

Hefner Museum of Natural History

at Miami University in Ohio;

Jessica Marcrum, Uncaged Author

and producer of the Threeflings

actual play podcast, online at

jessicamarcrumwrites dot com;

and featuring James Mendez Hodes,

game designer and orc historian.

You can find

me on Twitter at Lula Vampiro.

I just posted actually a, another video.

It's an interview with me talking

about the magic, the gathering cyber

future set, coming out on Neon Dynasty.

And, uh, yeah.

Thank you.