They could have been chiefs of their clan, but orcs typically bear their young in sets of twins (one for each teat). The anomaly of three brothers was not respected, so the brothers left their clan to walk the earth like Caine, progenitor of all their kin. Unused to the wider world, they stuck together like socks in the dryer.
Together, they joined the army, did good service in the infantry, banked their monies with the gnomes of Zurich, saved every cent, and upon honorable discharge bought a thousand acres of good bottom land, which they divided into three farms. Each brother built himself a little house on the portion he farmed.
The first young orc built his house as his people always had. It was quick to build, and cheap, but otherwise was not much of a house.
The second young orc copied a structure he had seen in the Winterlands. He figured what was good for a beaver on the ice would be good for an orc on the river bottoms. The results were mixed, as is ever the case with new untried ideas. The house of sticks was not a significantly better house than the straw house built by his brother, but it was considerably lower maintenance.
This inspired the third young orc make himself a study of structural engineering. He put all his stubborn orcish craft into making his house a house that would last. It was no architectural marvel, but it was sturdy.
For a while, the three young orcs worked their land and all was well.
And then, the Skinchanger came.
The Skinchanger! In French, the term is rendered le loup garou — the wolf who changes. In Latin, it’s Lupus Magnus Malus Virum — the Wolf-Man. But the Skinchanger is neither wolf nor man. It’s something ten thousand times worse.
The Skinchanger is a hunger spirit.
It came to the house of the first young orc and knocked on the door. Orcs are not accounted among the conspicuously wise. But they are a warrior people.
The first young orc shut the door in the Skinchanger’s face. The Skinchanger knocked again, perhaps more softly than before.
“Little orc, little orc, let me in. Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin? Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house in,” the Skinchanger said in imitation of Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrence, Caretaker of the Overlook Hotel.
And so the Skinchanger spake the Charm of Unweaving:
When that April with his show-rest sooty
Had raped the drought of March in the bootie
He slathered every vein in sweet liquor
Of which virtue remembered is the floor.
And the winds did howl and the skies did rend and the poor young orc’s house was swept away like soot from the street. Orcs are not accounted among the conspicuously wise. But they are a warrior people. The little orc was ready as he could ever be and gave the Skinchanger what for.
He did his best, but his best was not enough. The Skinchanger seized the hapless little orc about his pointy ears and proceeded to do things to him.
So horrible were the things the Skinchanger did, that the little orc’s ghost even today cries out in agony. If you go out on your balcony on mowing day just after the lawn’s been shorn and listen with the right kind of ears, you just might hear him.
But the havoc thus wrought only whetted the Skinchanger’s appetite for destruction and gathered its guns and roses and it hied itself over to the house of sticks. The second young orc was ready and didn’t even let the Skinchanger knock before giving it what for. He did his best, but his best was not enough.
This made the fiend very angry. It spake the Charm of Arising:
Know that other booths
To be flayed on ye.
Freemen set the will
Orc forsaken shall, soul barren-dry.
Naked or nude, nothing bears on ye
Grind before ending, ground is the store
There his lich home has, laying fast in bed
Sleeping after feasting.
And lo! There came a slurping and a squelching and a hideous moaning and a chorus of calls for “Braaaiiiins!” and the Dead crawled from the river, surrounded the house of sticks, tore it and then its hapless occupant to shreds, ate his brains like he was Krendler on toast (with less finesse but equal relish) and shambled back to their watery graves. The Skinchanger did gather the shredded bits of the second young orc and proceeded to do things to them.
To this very day, if you go out on the unholy Trinity’s river bottoms at sunset, with the moon in just the right phase, with the right kind of eyes you just might see the little bits of the disorganized young orc trying to knit themselves back together.
But the Skinchanger was still not satisfied (it never is!) so it loped over to the stolid sturdy house. From there inside the little house, behind his claymores, the surviving orc lay in wait. With a roar and a rattle the claymores did their bit for orc and homestead. The Skinchanger, however, stood and took all the ball bearings they could throw and emerged if not unscathed, still whole and sound.
Then the Skinchanger got out the Horn and called the Paladin.
The Paladin barked like Cerebus, the God of Dogs.
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
But no one there heard. The Paladin was too far away. Near the twenty-four kilometer limit of its range. So what the orc and the Thing did hear has been said to sound like a Shinkansen—a bullet train—behind schedule encountering a sleeping wall:
Schwaaaa—POOM!
The three 155mm High Explosive shells fired from the 39 caliber M284 Howitzer mouted on the broad back of the M109A6 Paladin self-propelled artillery system converged upon the house in a time-on-target attack.
But the house was sturdy.
When the dust cleared, the house still stood.
Only a small hole had been knocked in the roof.
The Skinchanger deemed that to be enough.
With a gleeful cry of “Wendy, I’m home,” the Skinchanger leaped through the hole in a single bound.
The orc inside the house turned the flamethrower upon it.
The nitrogen propelled nastiness called Napalm-B enshrouded the Skinchanger in a cloak of polysterene, benzine, and the same fuel that fires a 1973 Ford XB Falcon Hardtop (“Last of the V-8 Interceptors!”) The petrol burned at a mere 1200º C, but the thickeners made it adhere to the Skinchanger’s flesh. This was very upsetting. Even to the Skinchanger.
It gave a bowel-liquefying howl and tore out the house and across the bottoms like a Silver Streak sans silly smile. The monster threw itself into the mud and rolled there like the waves of the sea.
The orc calmly popped the straps on his flamepack, shrugged it to the ground, drew his K-Bar, and followed. He did not waste time changing his pants.
Ten minutes later, the Skinchanger fell still, slightly smouldering and sputtering. Disabled, but still very much alive. It lay like a hedgehog swaddled in clay and baked in the ashes.
The orc fell upon it with a savage cry.
When that work was through, the last young orc took bread, and when he had given thanks he break it, and gave it up to crumbs with which he dusted his prize in preparation for its appointment with the deep fryer.
The orc then ate the Skinchanger’s liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Slip, slip, slip, Slip, slip, slip, Slip, slip, slip!
Rent of bile, the Spirit of the Skinchanger departed for another host, and up rose the True Form stolen by the curse of the Beast: a girl of uncanny beauty not marred but enhanced by her whirling pinwheel eyes.
“My hero,” she said.
Orcs are not accounted among the conspicuously wise. But they are a warrior people. The orc and the maid-made-monster-made-maid made the beast with bouncing backs and thus sealed their union.
The orc repaired the hole in the roof. Many years passed. The orc’s monster-bride bore him strong sons and cunning daughters. They built a larger house under the guidance of a capable architect and turned the sturdy little house into a pig-barn. Together they tilled the thousand acres and the land bloomed with corn and wheat. Prosperity followed and the orc invested a little money in excellent orthodontia. Then he got a little rhinoplasty and got his ass waxed. The monster-bride took to wearing sunglasses so as not to frighten the neighbors.
They lived well and in good compass, and by the time their fruitful middle years began to wane into inevitable decline, it had become impossible to tell that the piggish brute and his monster bride were anything less than fully human.