Anyway, to distract once again from vicky moloch vs the World part 823729, have another short-write-up!
These orcamen can basically be shifted to wherever the fuck you like in Creation. Because killer whales live in whatever the fuck ocean they want. There's nothing particularly tying them to the south west.
Incidentally, these are the sort of orcamen who have got plenty of time for fetishisation. Of people who look like orcas. Not so much time for fetishising humans, who're a little... small. Also, edible.
The Orcamen of the South-West
Among the tropical waters of the far South West live one of the most divergent branches of humanity within Creation. Sailors know that some of the creatures that dwell in these waters are far too cunning and tricky for any gods-fearing sailor to deal with. The orcamen are some of the more feared. Unlike true orcas, orcamen will capsize or sink a ship to get their hands on its contents - including the crew - and they have human minds so know how to avoid whalers and hunters. They are feared as both as merciless monstrous killers and as cruel tricksters who'll steal a ship's anchor and let it drift away.
In truth, most of the ship-hunters are groups of young males, who attack ships to steal metal tools and rope as gifts when courting girls from another pod. Though they do eat people, there is better prey for them in the deeps than the danger of attacking a ship. However, young males leave the clan they were born in and travel to find a partner.
Most of the southwestern orcamen live in matriarchal clans split up into smaller family groups. A daughter stays with her mother all her life. If both she and a sister have children she may form a new family group when their mother passes away, but some women choose to stay with their sister's family. Men travel between clans to find a partner, but in some clans they marry and are adopted into their wife's family, while in others the males form a loose, secondary clan who exist in parallel to the main matrilineal group.
Orcamen are carnivores, much like their animal counterparts. They hunt fish, squid, whales and dolphins through the warm southwestern waters. Sometimes a clan will gather together to hunt one of the great krakens of the deeps, a fearsome struggle against a mighty predator that usually ends with the loss of lives.
The orcamen have ritual spiritual traditions, divided by sex. The females are expected to give reverence primarily to their ancestors, while the men give their first attentions to the sea spirits and the ocean gods. Women are much more solid, dependable and reliable - linked as they are to generations of women before them - while men are fey and whimsical, driven by the tides and by their heart and so better suited for the inhuman ways of spirits. Perhaps due to the problems of aquatic life they have put much effort into their song-magics and most clans have many accomplished thamauturgists. They use this to their advantage when facing foes who hunt them with harpoons, coaxing up bad weather, calling upon their ancestor ghosts and cursing them with ill luck.
The orcaman clans hold many long and enduring grudges against the Lintha. Their ancestor-spirits call out for Lintha blood. The monstrous sea-beasts of the pirate fleets steal their prey and leave strange demonic taints in their water. Someone seeking to destroy the princelings would find a willing ally among them - if they could find a way to communicate with them, since orcamen cannot speak human language and normal humans lack the means to speak their whale-tongue.
Strangely enough, the elders of the men shun the Sun and the Moon in their devotions. They instead worship as the highest of the gods Big Yellowfin, queen of the currents, and the Blue Serpent, lord of the waters. Barely recognisable elements of their rituals suggest that the former is a face of Mercury, while the latter has traces similar to the Immaculate Faith's worship of the Water Dragon.
Appearance
In its own way, it is a minor miracle that such beings exist. They must surely push the limits of the human form. Their minds and souls are those of men, but in form they much more closely resemble an orca. Though a little smaller than a natural orca, an adult still measures a good five to six metres from nose to tail. They have the distinctive fin and black and white pattern of their animal counterpart, and while they have residual legs, these bones seldom break the surface of the skin. Their skulls are rounder, their brains larger, and they have molars like human beings. Their eyes are totally human, though few ever get close enough to see this.
However, the seafarers of the South-West have learned to tell the difference. The most obvious distinction is that the orcamen have fully functional arms, though their hands are large and their fingers are webbed. These let them manipulate objects, and so they commonly wear harnesses made of sea-plants which let them carry things with them. They weave nets from bone and seaweed to catch fish and carry rocks to help them lever open shells. When they latch onto large prey - like whales, for whom they are a voracious predator - with their teeth, they will customarily stab away with hand-axes or weapons stolen from ships. Some of their clans practice ritual scarification and almost all of them engage in body piercings, using brightly coloured coral, salvaged metal and other things that contrast their black and white hides.
History
Unknown to the orcamen, they have two completely separate origins. Part of their heritage is as the progeny of the Leviathan, part of the beastman army he raised to wage endless war against the Shogunate. The elder Lunar took wild orcas and twisted them in body so much that they would sire creatures with human souls and minds.
However, more of their descent traces back to the Balorian Crusade. As the chaoswinds swept over the South, the madness dreams of the Wyld rose in the minds of sailors. Their terror of the Leviathan twisted them, their fears resculpting their flesh until they resembled his dreadful orca form. The first generation of these wyld-mutant beastmen were quite, quite mad - but still they had children and in the tattered world that arose, those children built their own pidgin culture.
The surviving spawn of the Leviathan found some of these packs, and assumed that they were simply lost children of their own kind, somewhat twisted but still sane unlike their parents. They were grateful enough that they did not question such fortune, as they had taken heavy losses in the Crusade as they threw themselves at the fairy hordes on their master's orders and too many of their woman were barren or only gave birth to mewling wyld-things. After all, they had to be kin as they found they could breed together.
However, this kiss of the Wyld upon their heritage has left a few markers that an expert of the occult might notice. Sometimes a child will be born with fish-like scales, a metallic sheen to their skin or - utterly confusingly to the orcamen - as a human baby with black and white skin. When exposed to the chaos wastes, too, they are prone to mutation and some of their pods in the Deep South have acquired additional deformities which breed true - such as the tentacled orcamen that dwell around Alahi. Most pods have strong cultural obsessions about dietary cleanliness and ritual purification, and will flee an area if they taste the wyld in the water.
Around 150 years ago, one clan found the ruins of a sunken First Age manse - and one which was scaled such that they could fit within its mighty halls. Its partially flooded condition was coincidentally perfect for them, as they could both breathe and move within it. The essence-projections within try endlessly to speak to them, but there is a mutual lack of comprehension. Still, the women of that tribe have declared it a sacred place of their ancestors and it has become a safe place to give birth and nurse. This clan has thrived since the discovery, and the preaching of their men has driven other clans to try to find secret places hidden on the seabed.
Stats
Orcaman mutation package
Note - Orcamen represent their Kick natural attack with a Bite.
Physical Mutations
Deadly (Bite) (2)
Natural Weapon (Bite) (4)
Large (6)
Swift (Swimming) (6)
Aquatic-Only (Benefits of Aquatic, but cannot survive on land) (0)
Tough (2)
Greedy (-4)
Picky (Carnivore) (-1)
Air Drowner (Can't Breathe Water Despite Living In Water) (-4)
Social Mutations
Howler (5)
Cosmetic (Look, they look like orcas) (0)
Mental Mutations
Sonar (2)
Total cost: 18 Mutation Points.
