Ideas for races

Orcs

One of the weaknesses I have observed in creating a world with races like orcs is coming up with a plausible way for an orc society to function in such a way as to keep them sufficiently "evil", but also to maintain a level of organization necessary to be a credible opponent.

One possible mechanism to achieve this would be to have orc societies entirely based around slavery: orcs themselves would not work as farmers, or miners, or any low skilled jobs, but would have these roles entirely fulfilled by slaves. The presence of slavery maintains the "evilness" required, whilst giving a coherent mechanism by which an orc society might flourish.

Another angle that is often infrequently explored is how orcs breed; female orcs are rarely portrayed. A possible mechanism by which orcs could breed would be through rape of other species such that the other species would become a host for a parasitic foetus. Orcs could thus be a masculine asexual parasitic species, which fits well with their "evilness" as they would kidnap female members of other species to serve as hosts.

Of course another mechanism to maintain the "evilness" of orcs is that the feed on other species. However, it would probably be necessary that they be omnivorous in order to maintain a sizable population.