5

By now you've had many of the hated monthly baths. The latest of these indignities, in an outside mud puddle, presents a chance for exploration.

The gaze of grown orc watchers wanders from your general direction. A surge of curiosity and energy boosts you away, splashing through the mud. Where are you going?

Across kicked-up boar tracks and scrap heaps, you've made it! Just beyond the boundary stakes, you survey a sodden expanse of dirt and shrubs.

Suddenly, a blur of fur and a snapping maw rushes from a bush.

POW! You smack the wolf cub as hard as you can. It yelps and scurries away and you feel strong! Yes, you have felled your first great beast!

A shadow appears over you. It's an adult orc, come to finish your bath. On seeing the wolf cub vanishing over the horizon, the large orc grunts admiringly at your work.

Orcs mature quickly, as least physically if not mentally. Soon you will reach the fourth year since your crop's blooming and, as such, you must be named to take your place in the tribe.

Big orcs escort you from the play-sty to a bigger tent, decked out with straw, wooden bunks and wooden axes. You are also given sack cloth shirts and boar leather jerkins since, by now, you are expected to know not to poop your nappy.

Snooky, the shaman, dances around, muttering to Krog, seeking inspiration for the best names to bestow upon you and your fellow orclings. Names, after all, are very important and speak of an orc's character.

None can forget the great appetite of Lardo, the cunning of Gorkius or the brutality of Bone Cracka. In the same way, all remember the shameful existences of the idiot Donce, who tried to eat a campfire, the weakling Putz, who was felled by the walking stick of an elderly halfling and, worst of all, the Krog-forsaken demon orc Red Eyes, who sought blasphemous artefacts and pledged his soul to the Powers of Beyond and Below.

"Ah, you are an interesting little baborc." Snooky dribbles and spits, eyeing you madly. "I have a few suggestions for your name, see what you think. Would you like to be called…"