The running bamboo forest was one of the primary renewable resources for materials on Rothera. It snaked and slithered all about the ground before branching straight up, casting thin and leafy branches high. It was barely warm enough for the essence augmented bamboo to grow. Textiles could be woven from the fiber, scaffolding grids quickly slung together to repair or raise great lugs, furniture and paper. It was a bit stiffer, less ductile than Protorcan bamboo. Sometimes bamboo cloth could feel itchy, but generally orcan skin was too tough for them to pay any mind. Bamboo paper, while less used than hemp paper now, was often used for fancy packaging, but also bindings for notebooks, notepads, bamboo pulp could even make for a nice clipboard, to write on the run. Shelter, warmth, knowledge - keys to survival and growth.

  So of course, to prepare for the razza, the Lions had indiscriminately cut down the bamboo with chainsaws. The bamboo provided excellent cover from prying parental eyes, but they also needed space to dance, and shit to burn.

  They felled a great clearing and repurposed the bamboo to build big platforms for the performers, or little huts and gazebos for some ting, and of course great artistic structures that could be climbed. It was hazardous on design and a false step could send the stepper to a grisly impalement, but that was the point. It was for displays of bravado, usually to attract the attention of sexual partners, for orcans were generally dexterous enough to trust themselves not to fall to fatal death, and the thrill of exercising just the precise muscle control to toe the line between tar o dar was in itself euphoric. Of course, when it came to impaired orcans, these installations became death traps.

  It became custom in these things to burn any burnable structure at the very end of it. There was enough unused space on Orca to really sprawl out, just lok off away from the embers, they had felled so much. So, there was never any concern about getting burned when playing with fire.

  “Oh, skai…”

  They had finally gotten to the spot, and the mass of orcans was so great it felt like mountain ranges of people, oceans of people all around them. There were so many bikes and bicycles that it would be nearly impossible to find their own if they let themselves get fucked up. But atul were definitely going to let themselves get fucked up spinsum ghash tang, baby. Eh, whatever, we’ll find it eventually, they all thought. The music was already blasting! Leeroy! ?Vamos!

  Zhak, scanning keenly through the crowd with his mogged low-light vision, suddenly spotted someone, tapped Githarie on the shoulders and then hopped off the back of her racer.

  “Wanna go gimb a friend, I’ll catch up later, Rie.”

  He gave a quick salute with two fingers to the durban’s daughter, “On Lok, Zilnok, Law!”

  And then he sprinted off.

  “Huh.”

  Lawrah just shrugged, her hands still on the handlebars, before revving down, locking up, and making a note of where she pegged her bike. But it was hopeless.

  “Let’s go!”

  They squeezed their way in and met up at the designated spot, the Hip Hop Stage. Hip Hop was by far the Horde’s favorite genre of music, and the Hip-Hop tent would be where it was at.

  “Law-Law!”, “Zholly!”, this time they didn’t just hug, they kissed on the lips. Blech. And she didn’t mind him calling her Law-Law? Only ‘father’ calls her that! It’s too intimate, even Gith couldn’t call her that. What was happening?

  “Well, if it isn’t the birth-rote gurl,” Deyandra, “How’s sha sweet sixteen goin’ sis? Sha quinceanera?”

  “It’s goin’ kop, gof gurl.”

  “Oh! It’s sha birth-rote? Happy Birth-rote, to you-”, it was Gromnir. But this time she successfully cut off the birth-rote song by slapping her hand over the diva’s flapping trap. “Zip it, Grom.” Grom was younger than her. Seniority.

  They broke into excited chatter, trying to plan their path through.

  “Oi, atul gotta hit the drum and bass tent-”

  “I’d rather we check out the temple. Yah, Zholl?”

  “Yah. Fully. Allow it.” Of course he had to agree, at this point he didn’t even care about the music, he cared about the zug-zug.

  But their itinerary building was interrupted by a shout,

  “Oi! Sha snaga lionbois!”

  Kullmang Yep, Bheely Bhuck, and Sarvok Unchev, three beastly orcbois from San Martín and members of the Hyena gang of San Martín, stepped up to the pham. Kullmang was wiry and skinny and twitching erratically, he was the de facto leader of the crew and thought himself the baddest, goffest orcan fucker in Reath, who could do no wrong because he was just so damn good at everything. Kullmang was a compulsive liar and had been banished from village after village before he stumbled into San Martín, where he could finally bully the other orcbois to submission.

  Bheely Bhuck was always so stoned that he couldn’t tell what was going on half the time, though he still had a friendly and warm disposition. Dulled from scorching his brain with substances, as well as naive and gullible, he was the first to fall under Kullmang’s manipulations. Portly and sporting a big gut, he nonetheless had a nasty hook, and a nastier jab.

  Sarvok Unchev towered over most orcans, and no olog in San Martín, and probably Rothera too, could match his capacity for berserker rages. When other rages would putter out, Sarvok’s would keep going, unrelenting in his murderous bloodlust. Clad in a ramshackle strung heavy polymer plate armor instead of scantily like atul else, it betrayed that Sarvok wasn’t really here for the razza, he was here to wagh out tang tang.

  All who knew Sarvok feared him, and he could have been the boss, the durban of their triad. But Sarvok also knew that Kullmang was smarter than him. One thing that Sarvok understood was that he was gezzno. And that was okay with him. He was the brawn to Kullmang’s brains, and together they would durb.

  “Whatsha want, snaga hai?”, Zholl strode forward and shoved his chest right into Kullmang’s.

  “Ska-ai, whatsha so mad about, glob?” sneered Kullmang as he shoved right back, pressing his tusks right up against Zholl’s. They growled at each other.

  “Y’all fuckin’ Hyenas better know that sha on Lion turf. If sha sell that fucked up nuk-nuk ice shit to any Rotheran…”, Zhon leapt forward and poked Bhilly Bhuck hard in the rib.

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  “Ha-a-i!”, Bheely hissed, “O whatsha gonna do about it, sha hai orc?”

  Beside him bald, blade-tusked Sarvok folded his arms around his chest and looked stony cold. His eyes looked like dark coal pits, boring into Zhon’s, as if daring him- make a move snagaboi. Try me. Zhon gave him back a glunch, briefly considered attacking, and then thought better of it.

  This faceoff continued for not much longer – the rancor seemed so thick that they would wagh the fuck out at any second – before Lawrah pushed her way in and separated Zholl and Kullmang.

  “Bois, bois, bois! C’mon! Not at the razza!”

  The Village of San Martín was in a sorry state. First, there was never very much there. In the Lost Age, there were but around a dozen scattered buildings, and the largest – the main house: two back-to-back two-story houses to be found at the site, the garage, and a lab by the water – offered most of the shelter. The other buildings were just shacks. For shacks they were sizable, but they were still a shack. They sat on the base of a little island on Marguerite Bay. The double-glazed walls were painted bright red, a pocket layer of trapped air insulating the humble interiors. By the time orcans had arrived, the island was partially submerged, and all of these shelters were flooded.

  When orcan migration reached these shores, there came a problem for the banished. In the first revolutions after the Exodus, as the first villages laid their foundations, there was a wave of banishments. Orcan warriors, skins scarred, and minds broken by trauma, lashed out on their fellow villagers. These first banished, the first nomads, served the Horde in much greater measure than those who banished them, for they pushed the migration forward and it was this development that opened up new avenues for resources, trade, and colonization.

  The first banished who came to settle in these godforsaken red shacks had to squeeze together for refuge, for huddling for warmth together was one of the few ways to conserve fat stores against the icy cold. But they hardly got along. And as the band grew over the revolutions with imports of banished orcans, the lot developed a nefarious reputation as raiders. When it was finally incorporated as a village, San Martín was infamous as a hive of scum and villainy. For after all, San Martín was still Rothera’s neighbor. There was no closer village. While Rothera Island prospered, stagnating San Martín watched with envy from across Marguerite Bay.

  Zholl thrust up his chin, “We don’t need to waste any more time on these nakaz snaga skai sha hai orcs. Let them gerekt pokgai.”, and he protectively slung his arm over Lawrah’s shoulder – she instinctively curled up to him – and led her away. Quickly the pham linked up in the same way, forming a phalanx of backs turned all in a row – Gromnir, Zhon, Zholl, Lawrah, Githarie, and Deyandra, in that order – and marched away from these San Martín fool globs.

  But the tweaked out, strung out Hyenas all just cackled, doubling over with hideous laughter that rang out into the night in shrill high pitches, slapping each other too hard on the backs, before whipping out their glass pipes, still screeching laughter until it met their lips.

  “AAH! HA-HA-HA! Nakaz pussy whipped snaga orc bitches! AH- heh-”, the flame licked the poisonous crystal and foaming little specks percolated all along, turning from clearish, pasty baby blue to putrid sick sepia, the orc inhaled hard on the vapor, which was thick and foggy like death mist “-HAAH! HA-HA-HA!”

  They hadn’t slept in rotations, and were delirious with crazed thoughts, as they often were back in that freezing nuk-nuk red shack, scheming endlessly for how they could dole out some orc justice on those Lions. Just when they found a reliable income stream – selling crystal meth – those rotten Rotherans had taken to just robbing them of their precious nazge! – their force multiplied by their numbers meaning the Hyenas had little choice in the matter, and so they hated that bastard Bear Brigade so bitterly so.

  That’s why the Hyenas plotted to get them back with some good old-fashioned terror. Just they wait and see.

  This razza would get waghed to the high holy hells.

  A tradition popularized by the Godlikes of the Black Rock City and passed down to the orcans. It really took off with the Orcan Horde. There was something primeval about staring into open flame, and the bigger the better. Without the divine magicks of the Godlike Beings to keep them entertained, orcans entertained themselves by setting things on fire. Because orcans loved fire. Fire, after all, was revered. Fire was holy. In the land of Orca, fire kept you warm.

  [人山人海]

  All the better to read his books at any hour. The sun was skimming the horizon just a little bit more now that it was later, and light had become a little scarcer. In open space it posed no problem but now the forests became shrouded by labyrinthine shadows.

  She could see what’s happening. And they didn’t have a clue.

  Deyandra lived in Carvajal, she was great friends with all the sex workers, it was a profession she respected, and anyway any johns who crossed the line would just get the snot beaten out of them by their lady of the night- Deyandra had never met more proficient fighters than the hookers. She sparred with them all the time to try and get an edge, she was like their adopted daughter. There was of course a very rich social fabric in the neighborhood, mariachis strumming their lutes, and Carvajalians were always known for their tang tang block parties right before lent.

  ‘Zug-zug’, orcish slang generally for sex but also meaning anything that was just excellent- dope, wicked, hella tight, the tits, like ‘bub’ and ‘bubhosh’. But usually what it meant specifically was the most rompy, ridic ruttin’, the kind of sex that left one laying down, staring up, and wondering ‘wow, how wonderful was that?’ And even more specifically, it was lesbian sex, because sex that good only happens when you know what you’re doing. Zug-zug. It revealed a lot about the patriarchal nature of orcan society, even though the gynous outnumbered the androus – and perhaps that only engrained it more by supply and demand – that the word for ‘gurl’, repeated, meant sex. As if a gurl was just an object. Lawrah and Githarie detested the term, all orcan gurls did. Only gross snagabois said it.

  They called themselves the Hyenas because they were high. All. The. Time.

  Princess Senjya’s flood of methamphetamine had only just begun to hit Orca, and the Hyenas were one of the first to connect to the rogue traders who carried this strange icy crystal, sometimes dyed blue. When they saw how insanely cheap it was – just a few satoshis for a pound! – they immediately set to making profit. At such margins, it didn’t matter if they broke the most cardinal rule of dealing – don’t get high on your own supply – they would still rake it in. And they could smoke all the ice that they wanted for free!

  If he really thought so, then why did he stoop to selling drugs? One of the easiest jobs ever.

  It was very Mad Max.

  Which really wasn’t saying much for Kullmang, but a lot for how stupid Sarvok felt himself- it was his own lack of self-worth that held him back.

  By constantly thinking he was gezzno, he inadvertently transmogrified himself to have the most base orcan intelligence, and if he had just seen himself differently it could have gone in a very different direction. But perhaps for the best, an orc like Sarvok would make a terrifying villain if given geshzugas. Like most orcans, his potential was only limited by his sense of self-worth.

  Of course, the Lions were aware of the crystal meth. They hotly debated whether to pick up the trade themselves. Then the Bear Brigade tried it and went wagh as hell, and it became a split: the normal Lions avoided it while the Bear Brigade went all in, competing with the Hyenas.

  Though perhaps not quite the most wretched one in all the galaxies, here, or far, far away.

  If this cis het scum Bhilly had considered that he hadn’t a single gynous orcan friend, then he might have realized how gezzno he sounded. Now these three had made deals with this shady worker Vyerna, who he had absolutely thought about forcing himself upon. But Kullmang, who did all the negotiating, told him he would rip his tusks out and plunge them into his eyes if he dared touch her. And he would take lunas upon lunas transmogrifying his sight back. Bhilly, weak-minded, believed him, even though such a heinous act would have surely gotten him banished for even San Martín had limits. But Bhilly was lucky to have had his friend stop him from his ugly impulses, for Vyerna, an assassin, would have fed his gonads back to him before he could even rip off her jumpsuit.