General Information
Ogres do not build cities or even towns. They live in small family groups and don’t have formal political organization. No laws, only traditions. And contracts. Contracts are foundational for ogres.
Ogres are slow to anger, slow to rejoice. You can outrun an ogre, they say, but you can’t out-walk one. Ogres are philosophical. They think slowly and deeply. Their memory is unmatched.
Ogres have few children. If there is surplus, the child is groomed to leave. If the family unit is too small, the child is recalled—no one knows how this works. If the unit cannot replace itself, it dies out. Suppose A has two sons. One will take a wife and remain, while the other will take a wife and leave. Works the same with females.
Historically, ogre families were semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers, excelling at trapping and fishing. In more heavily-settled regions, they tended to hire out. For centuries, they were favorites of mercenary captains and commanders of armies. Although they are slow thinkers, they are fast learners.
Ogres have very specific magic. Traps. Some level of communication with animals. Good with languages though not with writing. Bags of holding, generally believed to go back to their nomadic days.
Ogres file their teeth. Purely decorative. A sign of having reached maturity.
Ogres keep their traditions through Gatherings—seasonal, annual, and generational. They gather, tell stories, feast, have games. The whole purpose is to recapitulate the tribe. Also commerce and marriage. Settle contracts. The seasonal gatherings are local and brief. The big function is contracts, including marriage.
The annual gatherings are regional. Roughly ten days of travel. Annual gatherings are mostly tradition: stories, feasts, dances. Highly formal.
Every fifteen years is High Feast. In theory, all ogres attend. In practice, some families only send representatives. The games are hugely important, winning renown for families. The games are not just physical. Art. Music. Theater. Debates.
Sites move, but the Games are always centrally located. The annual events are called Feats, the seasonal are Dances. Spring Dance. Summer Dance.
At Dances and Feasts, bachelor ogres will wear their wealth to attract a mate. They will also perform, in whatever capacity best suits them. Female ogres flirt openly, engaging in conversation, dance, etc. Trying to find an acceptable mate. Some can wait till next time, others cannot.
Both female and male ogres hire out as mercenaries. Females are a bit more rugged, males are stronger and quicker but more prone to exhaustion or injury. One must have a care, for an ogre is like a horse—you can run him to death.
One of the things done at Feasts and Dances (but not Games) is a review of contracts and employers. When an ogre travels to a new region, he looks for the next Feast or Dance. A bad employer review will ensure you’ll never hire an ogre.
Ogre Magic
Ogres have magic, but theirs is the most difficult to penetrate, save perhaps for pixies. Nobody knows if pixies really can work magic or if they’re just annoyingly clever.
Ogre magic derives from family. Every family has its own magic, carefully kept secret from the outside world. Children are taught magic by their parents only. An ogre cannot “learn a spell.”
Theirs is heavily craft magic, but there are also elements of nature magic, blood magic, and ritual magic. Most ogres meditate, and it’s widely believed this has something to do with cultivating their magical power. No ogre has ever submitted to scientific testing, though, so much is speculation.
They are a little more open on the subject of how their skills are passed through generations. When a marriage is arranged—and all ogre marriages are arranged—the two families will negotiate what each partner brings to the family by way of magic. Each has a kind of dowry of magic, which is to be imparted to each of the offspring. Not all teaching takes, so that some magic is inevitably lost. But every ogre, upon reaching their majority, is expected to cultivate their own magic—which usually takes the form of modifications and elaborations upon known skills. Each ogre, however, is allowed to keep certain magic to themselves.
The result is a complex web of knowledge that is continually being re-woven. Some elements remain comparatively constant. So, for example, träger magic has been found in ogre-kind as far back as records can be found. Tunnelers can also be found in even the earliest records. Other types are rarer but likewise long-lived, while some appear, then disappear, only to reappear. Still others are rare to unique. All ogres can do magic of one kind or another, so the notion of wizards or mages is foreign to them. They don’t call it or regard it as magic. To ogres, it’s just skills.
There are no ogrish books of magic, no schools, no lore, save for the private lore within families. The magic belonging to each family is regarded as a kind of private garden, nurtured by its members with an impenetrable fence to wall off outsiders.
History
Ogres first show up in fragments of obscure references and indirect evidence, in the early 12thc. The issue is complicated by the difficulty of distinguishing (in the record) between giants, ogres, trolls, and other larger monsters.
The first solid historical record is during the great invasions of the 12th century AUC; specifically, when they are recorded as crossing the Rhenus River on 31 December 1162 AUC, along with tribes of kobolds. Where the kobolds went is unknown, but we know the ogres turned south, entering the Italian Peninsula in the following year. This is the year (1163) when ogres sacked the City of Rome, causing terror all across the Empire. Seemingly by divine intervention, their king, Alaric, died of a fever later than same year. His people buried him in the bed of the Bucentius River, which they dammed then let the undammed waters cover his grave.
In their early centuries, ogres were truly dangerous, easily angered and quite violent. They have mellowed over the centuries, for reasons unclear to researchers, but only to the extent they are now slow to anger. Once roused, however, an ogre is still violent and dangerous.
They have taken sides in wars at times, while at other times they have refused all offers and threats.
Ogres say this.
There was a beginning but no one knows it. There will be an end; no one knows that, either. Ogres have lived beneath the sun for as long as any ogre remembers and so say their parents and grandparents. Beyond that, who can say? No one who was there, is here.