>>21508421
It was really just some setting wank, I don't know if I want to get too into it. The five distinct Orcish groups are the ones that remain culturally stable/independent after a huge racial migration centuries ago. The players were all part of the Orcs of the Great Plains, which is vastly the most numerous group and the 'final' one, the society produced after the arrival of the migration to the sort of Orcish promised land.
They're really, fanatically individualistic and the choices of an individual are of utmost importance in their society. There's plenty of loners and small groups but what gatherings and clans you get follow 'kings' who are named after their particular talents like Axeking, Cruelking, Mageking, Beastking, etc. (king is a gender-neutral word to Orcs because it's a word they borrowed from the empire to avoid using the Orcish title which is associated with the super-oppressive, super-authoritarian society the migration broke out from - which still exists, one of the five groups, and is called the Unmoved). Every so often there's a Howl, a huge booming noise from the central mountain range in the Great Plains.
The Howl has absolutely fucking nothing to do with Orcish destiny and is caused by the spawning of a new mother-bug of a weird translucent insect-crab race that live under the plains (these guys are child-snatching bogeymen in Orcish folklore) but to Orcs the Howl is a sign that its time for the kings to duke it out for supremacy and decide which is the Trueking, who'll lead them out of the plains to conquer the earth... which hasn't worked yet, but hey they keep trying. It's sort of a uniquely binding ritual in their society. So the game was about a Howl and the consequences of it.
The other three groups were the Orcs of the First Gate, Orcmen of the Highlands and the Black Orcs (named for their armor, not for any physiological difference).
Like I say, setting wank.