Darker Gods of Arcanum - the World

Shakar, the Orcish God of War

Shakar was an ancient god, worshipped by almost all orcish tribes before the Age of Legends. Shakar was a frightening creature, with the head of a ram, four arms, and the tail of a scorpion. For many years orcs sacrificed their first born to Shakar, who demanded the first and best of everything. Orcish lore says that Shakar changed his mind about the sacrifices when he saw that the orcs were truly warlike and then demanded only the finest weapons as offerings. Traditionally, these were bone-handled knives and swords...bone to represent Shakar's great horns, and tempered steel to represent his will.

Often an itinerant adventurer will discover the ruins of an ancient orcish tribe, and invariably they will find such bone-handled weapons among them. The Orcs were very serious about their god, and they carried such weapons to remind them of his ferocity.

Torg, God of the Ogre Heart

The ogre god Torg is still worshipped by the more primitive ogre tribes, and was earliest of the ogre deities to survive the Age of Legends. Ogre lore tells that Torg was the father of many children, and that long ago there were many gods to rule over the ogrish people. As time passed, Torg saw that his children had forgotten what it meant to be ogrish, and slew them all. From the bodies of his children he pulled their still beating hearts and ate them, bringing into himself all the best parts of them, and threw the rest into the sea.

Torg is known as the God of the Ogre Heart, and every year the ogre tribes who still worship him eat the hearts of hunted stags in deference to him. The bodies of the stags are thrown to the western sea, where the ogres lament Torg's lost children, and praise his strength and wisdom.