Orcs

Common Orc belief holds that a soul strengthens only by meeting hardship and getting through it. Stepping into another person’s challenge uninvited is therefore not merely rude, it is a real injury. You have stolen their chance to grow.

Asking for help is intimate in the same measure. Depending on what already stands between two Orcs, a request can draw them closer or land as an intrusion far too personal to forgive.

Children are everyone’s

Children are the clean exception. As far as most Orcs are concerned every child is the responsibility of the whole community, whoever bore them, and whether or not the child is an Orc at all. An Orc who finds a child alone in the woods starts feeding it before asking a single question, which is where most Half-Orcs come from.

Friction

Orc neighbors read as cold or outright hostile in Core towns, since they neither ask for aid nor offer it, and meet unasked-for help with anger. The rumor that Orcs steal children comes from the same place: an Orc who cannot find where a lost child belongs, or who does not care for the look of the home it came from, will simply keep it.