November 17, 2024 • 42 mins
It's a Book Club Rerun!
Margaret Killjoy reads her short story, The Free Orcs of Cascadia.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cools Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Book Club book Club, book Club book Club. Hello and
welcome to the Cools one Media book Club, which is
going to be a rerun episode because, as you can
maybe tell by my voice, I'm too sick to record
an audio narration.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
So that's why.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm going to run a rerun and I hope you
like it. We're going to rerun a story called the
Free Orcs of Cascadia, and I think as things are
falling apart, it's important to remember all the people who
choose to live in the cracks of the system and
possible futures that that might bring, especially if those people
(00:45):
all have swords. Isn't that what matters? I think that's
what matters. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and
we'll be back soon with my voice not being destroyed
by coughing.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
It could happen here to welcome THEE Evans Robert podcast.
End of the World at the beginning of news. Yeah,
I think we did it right.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Evans Evans Robert. Who's here with us?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
That would be kill Joy, Margaret and Lichterm and Sophie.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I like this.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
M m's keep it. Lichtman Komma, Sophie, kill Joy Comma, Margaret,
Margaret Commas. Also, I could also attorneys general. You kill
Joy's Margaret. One of my hobbies is anytime I pluralize something,
attorneys generally it Margaret. How are you. How are you
(01:46):
doing on this beautiful December.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Day.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm good. I just got my booster shot and the
negative effects haven't kicked in yet.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
That's good. How does it feel to have like, has
your internet sped up?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Now? I have a boost? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I'm making the same fighting that everybody makes because it's
easier than thinking about the fact that Omicron looks like
it's going to be a real, real nightmare and the
world's never going to go back to you know, it's
not going back to normal. I miss it's it's being
able to walk into a bar and not worry that
I was going to catch a new variant of a plague.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah, yeah, that's a yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Yeah, I don't know. How are you doing with the plague?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I live completely alone and isolated, so yeah, well, which
I you know, I'm not sure this is how I
would have built my life if I hadn't done it
during a plague. Yeah, I mean I dream about interacting
with humans.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yeah, just like a hugging a person that that you
don't know all that well, and it not being like
involving both of you risking your life.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, it's like a blood pact to Yeah, we're going
dug Yeah, and if.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
We wind up in Hell, we'll scream at Satan together.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Come what may, you will hug.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
You have written another story. I mean you wrote this
a while ago, as you did with the last one.
But we're doing We decided one of the things we
wanted to do to close this year out was a
little bit more fiction, because fiction, I think plays an
underappreciated role in revolutionary practice, in kind of every aspect
(03:32):
of being someone who envisions a different world. So we've
always i mean, it could happen here. From the beginning,
there was always a strong kind of focus on fiction.
And I'm really happy to be presenting another one of
your stories today.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Thanks.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
You want to tell me introduce this piece?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Sure? This piece is called The Free Yorks of Cascadia.
It was first published in Fantasy and Sign Fiction, which
is the name of a magazine, and this one was
actually really important to me because Fantasy and Science Fiction
FNSF was one of the magazines that my dad had
a subscription.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
To Yeah they go. This was a while.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, this was a very and it was a very
important piece for me that it got published there.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yeah, that's awesome. Well let's uh, let's let's let's take
a take a hop in a publicly funded bus and
roll down to Storytown.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Speaking of taking one's life in one's hands. The story
is called The Free Orcs of Cascadia. You all know
the first part of the story. The song ended in blood.
It was two years ago in the summer. Rick Green,
(04:55):
the singer of Goblin Forest, crooned in his Osborne esque
voice to fifteen thousand Goblin Metal. A short man wearing
green body paint and brown leather stepped out from backstage,
drew a sword and cut the singer down from behind.
The last lyrics Greene ever sang were take me Back,
take me Back, take me Back to the Misty Mountains.
(05:15):
The man with the sword, of course, was Golfen Bull,
the rhythm guitarist for Crimpetool the opening act. He and
his bandmates escaped in the ensuing chaos and remain at
large to this day. Neither band has released a song
or played a show since the rest of Goblin Forrest
decided to call it quits. Without Green and Crimpetool, no
one knew what happened to Crimpetool. Fans deserted the genre
(05:37):
and droves, and overnight Goblin Metal went from stadium rock
fad to a niche interest of the obscure Canadian orc
cults were originated. It was no longer hip to be Green.
If golfen Ball had been trying to take the Goblin
Metal throne, as it were, he failed spectacularly. Rumors have
flown about motives and locations, but there have been no
(05:57):
arrests and no public statement from the band. All we've
had to work with were rumors until now. Earlier this month,
Orc Folk act Alcrith listed golf and Ball as the
harpist in their liner notes of the single The Gray
Fog of a Ruined Forest. Alcareth was as obscure as
Crimpetool was infamous. The band had never done an interview,
(06:19):
not even a photoshoot. Like everyone else these days in
countercultural music, their videos featured only masked performers. I've been
casually obsessed with post civilization culture ever since the Communicate
from the Junkyard Rats of the Rust Belt, and I've
been covering music of pretty much every secessionist movement and
subculture I coud sink my teeth into. Since after I
(06:40):
saw those liner notes, I put out feelers to friends
and friends of friends, and I waited, and last week
I was invited to go to an orc village hidden
away in the burned forests of Cascadia. I was invited
to be the first person to tell golf and Ball's story,
a Hellfire Harriet exclusive. Usually I post full interviews for everyone,
but reserve my travel diary for the patron to my blog.
(07:01):
This time, though, I'm foregoing that this story is too important,
so I've interspersed to the two below. All I knew
before I went was what everyone else knew. Three years ago.
A bunch of metal heads and hippies and burners and
nerds all decided to dress up like orcs and goblins,
and some of them took it too far and decided
to distance themselves from the rest of society. They got
(07:21):
really famous one summer, then that fame died in a
single bloody act, and who knows what kind of weird
ship they're up to. Now. Before you get worried, no,
I will never offer a platform to a fascist fascist. Fascism,
as it turns out, is the furthest thing from golf
and Ball's mind. What he's into is a lot weirder
than that. Still, it's sort of lucky that I survived
(07:42):
to write this story. So you killed a guy, Yeah,
I killed a guy. We stared in silence at one
another for a while. He wore rawhide and fur, and
not much of either. He wasn't painted up, but his
skin was sort of natural olive. His lower teeth were
filed down the fangs like any serious Orcs. There is
(08:02):
still something unassuming about him that I have a hard
time describing.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Yeah, waiting for me to tell you about it, aren't you?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
The interview was not off to a good start. Are
you worried about how your words will sound in court?
Speaker 4 (08:17):
I killed Rick Green on stage with a sword in
front of thousands of witnesses. Talking to the media isn't
going to make anything worse for me at this point,
and I don't respect the authority of the US government
to hold me accountable for my actions. I will not
go to court.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So why'd you do it?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
The old world is dying My world, the free Orcs
of Cascadia. We're not going to replace the old world,
but we will be part of its replacement. In order
to do that, we have to take ourselves seriously. An
element of that struggle is the struggle to create meaning,
to create a new sacred. I killed Rick Green because
he was defiling something meant to be sacred. How so
(08:55):
we share an esthetic, but he didn't understand what it
meant to be an orc.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You killed him because he was a poser.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
I guess you could put it like that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
So the lesson here is, don't be a poser.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Don't be a poser.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
You heard it here first. Kids, don't be a poser,
or golf and ball will literally murder you. They picked
me up in the parking lot of grocery outlet in
northeast Portland. That's a mundane detail, I suppose, but perhaps
the single most remarkable thing about my trip was the
ever present contrast between mondanity and the bizarre. I bought
a case of coconut water while we waited, orcs might
(09:33):
like coconut water. Who doesn't like coconut water? They showed
up in a mid teens Honda Civic Sedan, and I'd
been hoping for something out of Mad Max. The two
women who got out, one cis one trans, both white,
were dressed in clean gray tank tops and leggings, like
half the women who live in Portland. To be honest,
I only noticed them in the parking lot at all
because the trans woman was cute. Hell Fire the sis
(09:56):
woman asked. She was tall and severe, with the fierce
but almost trustworthy look of a lone shark, or, as
it turned out, an Orcish enforcer. That's me, I said Fenric.
The this woman offered her name, but no handshake, fist
bump or hug. I nodded. Nor Inda, the trans woman said,
Like a lot of trans women these days, she didn't
bother to feminize her voice. Her name sounded familiar, but
(10:18):
I couldn't place it. How is this going to work?
I asked. We're going to drive around back where no
one can see us. Fenric said, We're going to take
your phone and laptop and any electronics and put them
in a faraday in the car. Then we're going to
put you in the trunk and drive out to the forest.
We'll provide you with a recorder and notebook when we arrive.
You'll get your stuff back when we leave. I nodded.
(10:38):
I'd pretty much expected this. Do you need to use
the bathroom? Nor Inda asked, have any medical conditions we
should know about? No, and no, I said, either of
you want a coconut water. Goblin Forest sang in English,
but Crimpetole's lyrics were all in Tolkien's Black Speech Dark Speech.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Our lyrics were in dark Speech.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Stokin referred to the language as black speech.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Tolkien meant well, but he was about the most influential
unconsciously racist author of the twentieth century. All his villains
were either Green or Middle Eastern. When you engage with
the work of historical authors, especially when you make derivative
works a century later, you have to adapt to one's
own social context. Calling the language black speech today is
at best wildly misleading. Its name is a translation anyway,
(11:26):
It's possible that dark speech is just as accurate. Besides,
Tokien didn't write the language. He only wrote like sixteen
words or something. We wrote the rest. Most of us
prefer to translate the name of it as dark speech.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Since when are murderers pc?
Speaker 4 (11:43):
My status is a person who has ended the life
of another person, carries no implications about my personal ethics
other than that I clearly believe there are circumstances under
which it's okay to kill someone.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Imagine being at the Renaissance Fair when the apocalypse hits
and you're stuck trying to reach creates society surrounded by
swords and minstrels and these and thows. You know how
that sounds like either heaven or hell, depending on who
you are and also who you're stuck there with. That
was my first impression of the village of Gray Morrow.
The fires out west have burned forest after forest and
small town after small town, and no one tries to
(12:17):
deny that pretty much every bio region on the planet
is going through transformation right now. It's in the worst spots,
these dead ecologies that the post civilization movement has found
its roots, like wild flowers growing up between paving stones
or rats hiding in the walls, I guess, depending on
who you ask. Gray Morrow sits in the scorched graveyard
of a Douglas Fir forest, halfway up a mountain, occupying
(12:39):
the remains of an evacuated town. Slab foundations are all
that remain of the original structures. A seasonal creek runs
through what was recently a river bed at the edge
of the village and long abandoned train tracks skirt the
ridge above town. Even armed with all of that information,
you'd still have at least seventy or eighty possible spots
to search satellite imagery with help. Of course, I can't
(13:01):
imagine that the Big six techs or the US government
don't know where Gray Morrow is. The residence of gray
Morrow in general and Golfenboe in particular, had an awful
lot to lose by letting me write this report. Noorinda
let me out of the trunk, and she smiled when
she saw me. Her bottom teeth were filed. That should
have been unnerving, but I've always been a sucker for
face tattoos or anything that really shows someone as going
(13:23):
for broke. Fenrick just stared at me severe. Being severe
was pretty much her thing, as far as I could tell.
She took a sip from her coconut water. Three other
cars filled a makeshift parking lot. The village itself was
surrounded by a wall built from blackened logs, set upright
and buried in the ruins of the road. My escorts
had changed clothes en route. Fenrick looked like a bandit
(13:45):
out of Skyrim, complete with iron puldron on one shoulder
and a hand axe strapped to her belt. I won't lie,
it was a good look. I'm no fashion reporter, but
I figure half the magazines in New York would love
to get someone out here and take pictures of Orcs
like her. Noorinda wore a simple, modest dress of undyed wool.
Imagine a Viking kindergarten teacher who also wears a rather
(14:06):
large dagger horizontally on her belt at the small of
her back. My crushing on her intensified. She handed me
a spiral notebook in an old fashioned digital recorder, and
we walked into the village. A lot of people say
that you killed Rick Green because you were jealous of
Goblin Forest's success. That the Orcish code insisted that if
you wanted the throne, you had to kill the reigning monarch.
(14:29):
Golf and Bull stopped fidgeting and stared directly at me,
his dark brown eyes boring into me.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
That's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's like three layers deep of bullshit.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
He was still staring at me. I was starting to
regret this line of questioning.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Okay, to start, there are pretty much two ways to
interpret the Orcish Code of Honor. It's not written down anywhere,
but there's some strong central themes, like an interdependence between
individual sovereignty and collective identity. We value strength. The idea
is that everyone develops their own strengths, whatever they may be,
for the benefit of all. One should be as self
(15:06):
reliant as one is able to be, both for one's
own sake and again for the community's sake. I care
deeply about this. That same basic idea, though, can be
interpreted two different ways.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
So there's a split in the orc community.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Damn right, there's a split. The free Orcs are matriarchal
and the or Scene are patriarchal.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Golfin Will produced a cigarette from god knows where, considering
how little he was wearing, and lit it with a
lighter from the same mysterious origin. It wasn't tobacco, it
wasn't weed, maybe mugwart.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
The matriarchal way of interpreting those tenets is roughly anarchist.
It's anti authoritarian, an anti nationalist. At the very least.
We respect the wisdom of elders, children and women, self
identifying women, but the hierarchy is anything but rigid, and
the guidelines are anything but laws. Most importantly, our sense
of community or tribe is fluid. Gray Morrow is a
(15:58):
free orc village. Go fifteen miles southeast and you'll find
a larger village lonely mountain there or scene. The patriarchal
way of interpreting Orkish tenants is roughly fascistic. Authority is absolute.
Rank within the hierarchy affects every aspect of one's own life.
It's not racialized, but it's nationalistic. There are very specific
(16:18):
considerations of who is and isn't a part of any
given social grouping, and definitions of strength tend to skew
toward boring shit like physical size and power.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
So you tell any doubters that you weren't trying to
claim the Goblin throne because your faction of Orcs doesn't
work that way.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
No Orkish culture works that way. Even those fascistic shits
don't work that way. Among the or scene. If you
kill your superior, people aren't going to just suddenly start
kissing your ass. They will literally flay you and turn
your skin into a battle flag. You advance in rank
by demonstrating your capacity to lead. This isn't some fucking
Hollywood bullshit. Evil is a lot more banal than that.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
I didn't have the heart or maybe the courage to
tell him that. To me, to pretty much any outsider,
Hollywood bullshit is exactly what the whole place looked like.
When you say battle flag, what do you mean? Who
do they do? Battle with?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Us? The free orcs? Are you at war for the
very soul of our culture?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
How'd that start?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
When I cut down Rick Green the Mountain King?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
You killed him because he was the leader of a
rival faction, then, not because he was a poser.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
They weren't a rival faction until I killed him, But
sure he was a poser, though all fascists are posers.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Did you go on tour with Goblin Forrest specifically to
murder him?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah? Probably?
Speaker 3 (17:38):
What do you mean probably? That was a very specific
question about a very specific intention.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I mean, I guess I'd been thinking about killing him
for a while. It was premeditated, and it wasn't you know.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
No, I don't know, because I've never killed anyone.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
So it's like, I've known Rick Green almost five years.
He and I and maybe thirty other people. We started
this whole thing. Goblin Metal of the Orcs all of that.
Rick Green's always been a fucking bastard. I figured I'd
probably kill him one day for being kind of a
Nazi or whatever. Then we go on tour together and
I tell myself, hey, if this goes badly, I can
always just kill him on stage. You've got to understand,
(18:15):
Orcis culture wasn't even a year old at that point.
We weren't split into the Free Orcs and the or
Scene yet. There were only maybe five villages total. We
were just starting to explore what it meant to be ourselves,
what kind of culture we could build. Then, while we
were on tour, I hear he's got himself crowned the
Mountain King. And this isn't a game. I don't know
(18:35):
how to get that through to you or your readers.
This is our life. It's one thing to put on
a silly hat and pretend to tell people what to
do in some larp somewhere. But Rick Green had gotten
himself coronated for real dictator over actual people. So I
killed him. The Free Yorks split off the or Scene,
closed ranks, and we've been at war ever since.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Am I safe here? He didn't answer me, at least
he didn't stare me down again. He just looked off
into the distance, maybe towards lonely mountain. I've been to
LARPs before, where when you show up, they make you
put on garb. That is to say, they make you
wear period appropriate clothes, or whatever weird interpretation of period
appropriate that particular group of LARPers had come up with.
(19:17):
As I met the denizens of the village, they all
came out to the parking lot to introduce themselves. I
realized they didn't insist on anything like that because they
weren't LARPing. Pretty much, every one of them was dressed
like either a Viking re anactor or a fantasy game villain,
but it wasn't an act. About thirty adults and eight
kids lived there, running the age gamut from six months
(19:37):
to seventy eight years. They told me their names and pronouns.
About a third told me she, a third he in
the third day. Many of them were white or past
as such, but a significant minority were black. Neurinda told
me later their orc villages with substantially higher proportions of
people of color. That might be true, but I got
the impression she said it to convince herself or me
that the free Orcs aren't a specifically white phenomenon. No One,
(20:01):
no one decent, likes looking around their community or seen
and seeing only white faces smiling back. After everyone introduced themselves,
immediately forgot all their names. There are only so many
fantasy names like Lazari and de Molin that you can
hear before they all just sound the same. Narinda and
Fenrik flanked me as we walked through a gate in
the wall into the village. It's strange to say village
(20:22):
in America. We don't really have villages here, But in
some ways Gray Morrow isn't the United States. And to
be certain, it was a village, maybe ten or fifteen
houses crowded together along either side of a single potholed street.
Two architectural styles reigned, junkyard shacks built out of railroad
cars and regular cars, and traditional American log cabins, many
(20:43):
of them were adorned with solar panels. At the end
of the street, near the black palisade, the beginnings of
a stone tower stood fifteen feet high. I wasn't sure
if I was impressed or not. On one hand, the
village couldn't have been around longer than three or four
years and they had already done so much. On the
other hand, and it was filthy. Everyone was filthy. I'm
kind of obsessed with the post civilization movement, so I
(21:05):
wish I could tell you everyone looked well fed and happy.
They didn't. People looked proud, and they didn't look miserable.
But there was an intensity in everyone's eyes you simply
could not mistake for happiness. A trash pile needed tending
near the front gate, and some of the animal hides
stretched for tanning had begun to rot. Everything looked like
it was about to fall apart, both physically and metaphorically.
(21:26):
What now, I asked when we reached the central square,
a stone cobbled chunk of what had been once an intersection,
now decorated with poorly tended gardens and rustic benches of
dubious quality. You're here to interview Golfenbah, are you not,
Fnrick asked. I am. Golphen Bol doesn't live here. I
waited for her to elaborate. Golfenbol lives in the forest
with the rest of his band. He's on his way.
(21:48):
You'll meet him a bit outside of town. I'll take
you to him when he gets there. Someone near the
gate shouted and both of my escorts flinched bodily and
turned to look. It was just a kid chasing in
another k with a wooden sword. Fenrik and Nerindo were
on edge. Something was about to happen. Tell me about
your new band, Alcareth. What does the name mean?
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Alcareth is the dark speech word for the phase of
the moon on the last night before the new moon,
the last sliver of light. Alcareth is a holy day,
a day of self reflection. Our band's music attempts to
capture that spirit of self reflection. On Alcaireth, we listened
to our naysayer and think about ourselves and our community
(22:32):
your naysayer. Free Orkish villages don't have leaders, We have naysayers.
Two years ago we tried rotating leadership. It was ineffectual.
We didn't need leaders. We stuck with it anyway because
we felt like we had to, because those were the
rules we had come up with. Then one person said, basically,
this is bullshit. We don't need someone to tell us
(22:52):
what to do. We need someone to tell us what
to stop doing. We need someone to tell us what
we're doing wrong. Every new moon, every village picks a
new name naysayer. That person spends the month picking up
heart group structures, observing what's happening, being critical on alcareth.
We fast and listen to the naysayer. They don't offer
solutions necessarily, but instead bring our problems to light. Does
(23:14):
that work surprisingly well? Except about a third of the
naysayers end up leaving after their month. Some go to
other villages, Some go to live in the forest, like
Nearinda al Sareth's singer did, but most leave the woods.
As we put it, most go back to civilization.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
That's why Nearinda's name is sounded familiar when she didn't.
She introduced herself. To be honest, I saw your name
listen in the liner notes and didn't pay much attention
to the rest.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
That's an argument for me to take my name off
our next release.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
If there is one, why did you put it there
in the first place, Why did you agree to this interview?
And what do you mean if there is one?
Speaker 4 (23:50):
I told you we're at war. Yeah, we're losing that war.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm.
He didn't strike me as a man who was afraid
to cry, but he was clearly trying to keep his composure.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
There's no way that Gray Morrow would have let you
talk to me here if any of us thought that
Gray Morrow had a future. There's no way I would
have talked to you at all if I thought I
was going to be alive to see another Ulcereth.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Why are you losing? Why are you going to die?
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's not a question of military efficacy, or of bravery
or strength or any of that shit. It's just a
question of numbers. Orsine Society is a military society. Every
member fights. As far as we can tell, They've got
fifteen hundred warriors. We've got five hundred.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
So use guerrilla tactics. Golfenbal shook his head.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Striking Rick Green down from behind was a cowardly action.
I can justify it almost by the fact that Green
had declared himself my monarch. But the Orsine warriors are
my peers. They would not stalk me in the night.
I will not stalk them. That sounds, I know how
it sounds. So this interview I want to be remembered.
(25:01):
I want the free Orcs of Cascadia to be remembered.
I put my name on the liner note, so that
someone like you, an anti fascist music blogger, would talk
to me. I leveraged my own infamy to draw attention
to what we're doing, what we've done.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I fucking hate the tragic utopian trope? What like seriously,
like fuck you? Okay, I know I'm here as a journalist,
but I'm not going to write your fucking obituary. I
don't think I've ever turned on an interview subject like
that before. I get it. Hopeless causes are beautiful, But
as I understand it, the whole goddamn point of holding
on to your honor more firmly than your life is
(25:35):
because the world is a better place for everyone if
more people did that. Right, Okay, the world isn't a
goddamn better place if you let your subculture. And I'm sorry,
I know it's very serious and I'm not trying to
downplay it, but that's what this is, A musical subculture
be taken over by fucking Nazis, and I respect that
you're going to fight them for it. That's cool. But
if you consider buying some guns, maybe a few drones.
(25:56):
They'll come in here with spears, right, and you'll fight
them off with other spears. It's twenty twenty five. Man,
there are fucking Nazis everywhere. If you don't give a
shit about going to jail or dying, then fucking shoot
the Nazis who are trying to kill you.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
You don't understand, You're fucking right.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I don't, if I'm being honest. Most of the time
I was waiting, I spent flirting with Narinda and avoiding
talking to Fenric. Miorinda asked me to keep our conversation
off the record. We didn't talk about Gray Morrow or
the orc thing much. Anyway. Everything I learned about the
village and its culture I learned by observation only. An
elderly man came by and offered us cold tea and
(26:30):
wooden mugs steeped BlackBerry leaves, sweetened with juice from the berries.
He said, no caffeine, no other particularly strong medicinal effects.
The three of us took cups from his platter, and
he continued down the street passing out drinks. No one
else approached us. I watched people go about their lives,
though the tension in the air was thick. I saw
a few people look at cell phones and spent a
(26:52):
not inconsiderable amount of time trying to decide if that
was hypocritical and or bad opsec Eventually I gave up,
because frankly, it wasn't my business, and one of the
most interesting things about all the post civilization groups is
all the bits and pieces they choose to carry over
from mainstream culture. Finally, after an hour, Fenric stood up
come with me. I followed her to the other side
(27:14):
of town and through a smaller gate. On the other side,
a box truck that had seen better days sat on
a road that had too. We skirted around the truck
and up into the black forest. The scorched hills looked
more like meadows than forests, with green grass and undergrowth
broken only by black spikes of burned trees. We followed
the path this way and that, and soon I was lost.
(27:35):
Soon after fog set in, I was further through the
looking glass than I had realized. I imagined us lost
a mile from a town full of people who give
a double meaning to the word stranger, and probably at
least an hour's drive from civilization. My guard hadn't shown
me much in the way of kindness, and I was
on my way to meet someone I knew to be
a murderer. It's the kindest shit I live for. If
I'm being honest, I love my stupid, fucking weird job
(27:57):
and the stupid fucking weird world we live in. Thank you,
my readers, for making that possible for me. Be sure
to check out my Patreon page if this is the
first thing you've read by me. Lots of members only
content over there, including a few snippets of orc song
from Narinda. The only thing I saw in the distance
was a single black spire, thicker than the dead snags
around me. As we approached, it came into focus as
(28:17):
a boulder jutting up into the sky like an angry finger.
Sitting at the base of it was a short man
with a sword across his lap. Golfenbol. I'll leave you
to to it, Fenric said. She left me alone with
an armed murderer. I sat down across from him, took
out the notebook and recorder, and asked him questions. All right,
convince me.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
We can't fight them dishonorably, because you can't protect an
idea by defiling that idea. We don't want them to
destroy our way of life, but we don't want to
destroy our way of life ourselves either.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
The basic problem with the ore scene is that they're
interpreting your coat of honor to mean might makes right. Yeah. Yes,
By facing them an open battle and nobly dying or
whatever for your goddamn plan is, you're just letting them
make might right. You're letting their superior numbers dictate what
your culture has to look like. It's like majority voting,
but even dummer because more people die. I expected them
(29:12):
to double down on his position. Most men would.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
What do you suggest instead.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Fuck, I don't know. Don't be here when they attack,
Go somewhere else, stay on the move, build your strength.
Oh shit, that's what Rick Green was doing, wasn't it.
Huh Goblin Forrest singing in English, a stupid name like
Rick Green. All that shit was designed to make Goblin
metal more palatable to the masses, to get fans, to
get recruits for his stupid, fucking fascy goals.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yep, do that.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
I mean, don't become fascists or change your name or
make your music worse. Everyone knows Goblin forst and have
shit on krimpatool. Just don't be obscure for the sake
of being obscure. Fucking advertise you have a decent thing
going here. People are abandoning mainstream society left and right.
No political pun intended. Make it easier for them to
get here. Make it so that when you fight the
fashion your epics, swords and spears, Viking deathmatch, you win
(30:07):
better yet, make it so they don't even want to
fuck with you because they know they lose.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I don't know whether that would work.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, but dying doesn't work either.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
The Ark way of life isn't meant to be some revolution.
It's not meant to supplant the mainstream. It will never
appeal to the mainstream, not without losing its soul. Would
you live like this? Would you want to?
Speaker 3 (30:28):
You're right, I'm obsessed with you weird subcultures, but I
wouldn't want to live like you. We both stared at
each other in silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. We're
both just thinking, okay, scrap that. You're never going to
get big numbers. You don't need big numbers. You don't
want big numbers. You don't need recruits, you need allies.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
What would that look like?
Speaker 1 (30:49):
God?
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Damn all Orkish men not actually listen to women's ideas.
I'm used to guys just talking over me or shutting
down completely. If I get mad.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Free Orkish men, I would hope know how to listen.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Guns break the spell and the spell you're casting here
it's powerful, it's good. So no guns. Other people have guns, though,
Let those people stand guard or make their arm presence.
Note outside or scene camps, other people have access to,
say doxing, how many recruits are the or scene going
to get if every time some wanna be forest Nazi
dude joins, someone tells his mother what they're about, or
(31:21):
access to the media, How many recruits are going to
join if everyone knows the orsine or posers putting out substandard,
watered down goblin metal just to try and lure in
impressiable military aged men to fight their holy war.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
You'll write those stories.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I'm not going to write you any propaganda, but sure
I'll tell the truth.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
How do we get allies?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
But at another single, maybe a full length? The Gray
Fog of a Ruined Forest was the best shit I've
hurt in years. You're redefining folk music just like you
redefine metal. Put out shit like that and I'll cover it.
Talk to more press, maybe someone other than you. Not
everyone's going to be sympathetic to what you did, even
if that fucking guy was a fucking tree Nazi. A
hunting horn cut through the fog and through our conversation,
(32:03):
and my subject's face fell into despair for a half
second before determination took over.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
What's that interviews over? I thought there would be more
time another day. At least, we have to get you
out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Turns out Fenrick had taken us on a purposefully circuituitous
route into the woods. It wasn't a quarter of a
mile straight down hill before Golfenbolt and I reached the
box truck at the back entrance to Gray Morrow. Miorinda
and Fenrick stood there talking with a kid, maybe fifteen,
who was out of breath. She was dressed in scraps
of fur and leather and cloth, like you might imagine
a medieval beggar. It wasn't until I noticed all the
(32:39):
twigs and sticks and moss tangled up in the fabrics
I recognized it as camouflage. I saw about thirty the scout,
for that's what she was said about. Fenerick asked exactly
thirty ten with pikes, ten with tower shields and swords,
five archers, two scouts to command, one noncombatant. I'd guess
a surgeon, but I couldn't promise how far away I asked.
(33:00):
Fenric glared at me for interrupting. Five miles Nearinda said
probably three and a half by now downhill. We have
time to get you out with the children and the elders.
The scout had just run five miles up hill because
she was too stubborn to use a walky talkie or
a cell phone. We should evacuate every one. Gulfenbol said
what Fenrick asked. We've got walls and almost even numbers.
(33:22):
Fuck them, this is our home. I wanted to shout
at her. I wanted to shake her, to tell her
this wasn't a fucking game, that it wasn't the twelfth century,
and that killing people or dying over some squatted chunk
of nowhere was somewhere between stupid and reprehensible. I didn't,
though I'm a good journalist, this isn't the place for
us to debate this, Nernda said, and all four of
them walked through the gate and left me standing by
(33:43):
the truck. That was why the gardens were untended, and
the trash was piled up and the hides were left
to rot. They were expecting this. They'd lost their will
to pretend like their lives were going to continue to
progress forward. I'm not the first to suggest that nihilism
is the dominant affect of society today, with climate change
destroying communities and bioregions all over the map, with the
(34:05):
economic crisis deepening, in the wealth gap widening. I think
all of us are guilty of forgetting to tend our gardens.
All of us have a hard time figuring out why
it matters whether or not we deal with our trash.
All of us have proverbial or literal Nazis marching on us.
The Nazis the free Orcs of Cascadia are dealing with
are the literal variety. Some costplaying fascist was about to
(34:26):
stick a sword between Nearinda's ribs. Bill rose in my throat.
I don't know I believe in love at first sight
or any of that shit, but I just couldn't handle
the idea. I fucking hate honor. I will never be
an orc. I got lost running through solutions to the
problem of hypothetical arrows and swords that were going to
interfere with Lorenda's continued existence. Most of those solutions involved
(34:49):
assault rifles, which I didn't have access to. Cars though
were available. What's thirty warriors of medieval armor versus one
station wagon driven by an angry woman with a lead
foot put the odds and my favor. I wasn't going
to do it, though. Instead I waited to evacuate. I
don't think that speaks well of me. Individually and in groups,
(35:09):
people came out through the gate and loaded bags and
baskets onto the back of the truck Neriinda returned with
a simple backpack sewn from rawhide. Most of her belongings
were probably wherever she and Golfenboul and the rest of
Alserth lived. She handed me my phone, I didn't have service.
I wondered whether or not she and golfenbul were dating.
It wasn't relevant to the present moment exactly, but my
(35:31):
mind always as a way of thinking about bullshit to
avoid thinking about impending doom. Another important effect of our
generation distract ourselves with disaster with petty things like love
and jealousy. I don't know what you said to Golfenbolnerinda said,
but whatever it was worked. He just convinced everyone to evacuate. Everyone,
I asked, shocked, everyone except him and Fenrik and Gorn.
(35:52):
Which one's Gorn, the man who brought us tea? Do
you remember him? He's old as shit, though, I said,
because I have no fucking manners or common sense ones, Yeah,
he's old as shit. He's a linguist by training. His
main hobby is writing morbid poetry and dark speech, and
when he can't figure out how to say something, he
just makes up new words. He developed about a third
of the language, did all that shit before orc culture
(36:13):
was even around. He's also a widower three times over.
He doesn't give a shit about dying. His last chat
book was called soon I will return to the earth. Oh,
Gorn is going to die today. Golf and Bull and Fenric,
they're going to hold the wall as long as they
can and then fall back to the woods. And you,
I asked, I'm driving us out of here to another village.
(36:34):
Then I'll take you home after that. I don't know, girl,
I don't know. If I signed up for this, I
might leave the woods go back to being a vettech.
I just nodded. I was too biased to offer objective
life advice. Oh, and golf and Ball said, to give
you this. He said, it's in case he dies. He says,
you're right, you shouldn't have to write his obituary, so
he wrote his own. She handed me a piece of paper.
(36:56):
I piled into the back of the box truck with
forty other people, many of them in tears, many of
them in shock, and we drove away from Gray Morrow.
None of the three Free Orcs survived the battle. Gorn
died impaled on a spear while holding the gate. Fenric
was killed by an arrow that struck her in the
back of the neck as she and Golfenbol ran. Golfenbol,
(37:17):
Fenric's lover turned and stood his ground over her body.
I didn't know any of that yet. I found out
when Mirinda found out two days later. Maybe all three
of them would have survived if I hadn't interfered, and
they'd all fought with equal numbers, Maybe more of them
would have died. Maybe I can forgive myself, Maybe there's
nothing to forgive. In the back of the truck, by
(37:38):
the light coming in through a crack in the steel wall,
I read Golfenbol's note.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
All my life, I didn't give a shit about anything.
I liked weed and metal in whatever counterculture trend was
big in a given year, but my heart wasn't in it.
I just went through the motions until I became an
orc saying I'm an orc and meaning it isn't like
a trans man saying he's a man in meaning it.
Gender is a social construct that goes back as far
as I understand, to the beginning of humanity. There has
(38:05):
always been gender, and there have always been people who
transgress the roles assigned to them at birth. An orc
is a social construct that we just fucking made up.
I mean, I guess the orc is an archetype too,
but it's a fantasy archetype. We know what's make believe.
Make believe is what gave my life meaning. I promise
you that for me. The day we decided we were
orcs was the first day that the sun shone benevolence
(38:27):
upon the world. It was the first day that color
radiated from everything I saw. It was the first day
that the rain on my roof tapped out codes of meaning.
It was the first day of my life, my real life,
my first ulcerat I fell in love with the world.
Everyone finds meaning in different ways. I found meaning by
believing in some shit we made up and letting that
(38:48):
be real. I was born Jason Sanchez. I died Gulfumble.
I'm not sorry. That was great.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
That was so fun.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
I mean, not my narration, the story. The story, not
my narration. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
The second way finished, we all just got that little
smirk on our face, like.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
That was delightful. Yeah, Margaret, you're the best. Oh yeah,
I mean, if I were going to be in orc
there would be rifles but problems.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Yeah, this is absolutely This is like a really good
example of what I mean that when I write utopian
fiction or like fiction about other societies. I'm not saying hey,
everyone go do this or like this is what people
should do.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
No, I mean I liked that. I like it. I
like that I've had that experience in other cultures, you know,
places like slab city and different kind of encampments and
whatnot that I've spent a lot of time and as
a journalist where it's like I'm fascinated by and I
respect aspects of this, but like I I also think
some of these things are that you're doing or dumb
or I don't understand why you do it or this
(40:05):
isn't like you know, but you don't. Your notes don't matter.
You know, that's not your job, although actually having an
impact in that way is kind of Yeah, I don't know.
Somebody go, somebody go make an orc village. Yeah, yeah,
I'll go out there, I'll report on it.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
We'll go.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
It'll be fun.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Don't take the band name all sorts, though I already
stole that.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Yeah, there's a number of dope band names in here.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
All right, people should make orc folk. I'd be really
excited to.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Hear make orc folk abandon civilization to live as fantasy creatures,
fight fascists, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like to plug?
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Well? I do you have a new book out or
a reprint of an older book called A Country Ghosts
that is a more directly utopian book. It's out from Akpress,
came out last month, and I think that's it. That's
the main thing. Oh, you can support me on Patreon,
although it's no longer supporting me on Patreon. It's supporting
a publishing thing that I'm starting back up with people
(41:20):
called Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness, and it will publish
fiction and memoir and like the kind of like more
culture side of radical politics and less the like theory
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
What's the patreon.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Patreon dot com slash Strangers in Entangled Wilderness? Because why
would I pick short names for things?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, And we have a live
show coming.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Up right, Robert, that doesn't sound like us.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
It's a virtual live show of for Behind the Bastards
with our friend prop that's on Thursday, February seventeenth, allegedly
momenthouse dot com slash Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
I can't confes more deny that.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Okay, Yeah, we've got you a lawyer on here before
you can.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
Yeah, let's let's get Moira on the horn and.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
More come on the horn and tell us if we're
actually doing this thing show?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Are we also?
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Are we alive?
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That's another question? Oh?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
I text her that most days. All right, Well, thank
you Margaret, and thank you all for tuning in in
the first year of the rest of the next year.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Yeah, yo, it could happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts, you can find sources
Cools Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Book Club book Club, book Club book Club. Hello and
welcome to the Cools one Media book Club, which is
going to be a rerun episode because, as you can
maybe tell by my voice, I'm too sick to record
an audio narration.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
So that's why.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
I'm going to run a rerun and I hope you
like it. We're going to rerun a story called the
Free Orcs of Cascadia, and I think as things are
falling apart, it's important to remember all the people who
choose to live in the cracks of the system and
possible futures that that might bring, especially if those people
(00:45):
all have swords. Isn't that what matters? I think that's
what matters. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the story, and
we'll be back soon with my voice not being destroyed
by coughing.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
It could happen here to welcome THEE Evans Robert podcast.
End of the World at the beginning of news. Yeah,
I think we did it right.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Evans Evans Robert. Who's here with us?
Speaker 4 (01:20):
That would be kill Joy, Margaret and Lichterm and Sophie.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
I like this.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
M m's keep it. Lichtman Komma, Sophie, kill Joy Comma, Margaret,
Margaret Commas. Also, I could also attorneys general. You kill
Joy's Margaret. One of my hobbies is anytime I pluralize something,
attorneys generally it Margaret. How are you. How are you
(01:46):
doing on this beautiful December.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Day.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
I'm good. I just got my booster shot and the
negative effects haven't kicked in yet.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
That's good. How does it feel to have like, has
your internet sped up?
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Now? I have a boost? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
I'm making the same fighting that everybody makes because it's
easier than thinking about the fact that Omicron looks like
it's going to be a real, real nightmare and the
world's never going to go back to you know, it's
not going back to normal. I miss it's it's being
able to walk into a bar and not worry that
I was going to catch a new variant of a plague.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah, yeah, that's a yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
Yeah, I don't know. How are you doing with the plague?
Speaker 3 (02:34):
I live completely alone and isolated, so yeah, well, which
I you know, I'm not sure this is how I
would have built my life if I hadn't done it
during a plague. Yeah, I mean I dream about interacting
with humans.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
Yeah, just like a hugging a person that that you
don't know all that well, and it not being like
involving both of you risking your life.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Yeah, it's like a blood pact to Yeah, we're going
dug Yeah, and if.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
We wind up in Hell, we'll scream at Satan together.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
Come what may, you will hug.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
You have written another story. I mean you wrote this
a while ago, as you did with the last one.
But we're doing We decided one of the things we
wanted to do to close this year out was a
little bit more fiction, because fiction, I think plays an
underappreciated role in revolutionary practice, in kind of every aspect
(03:32):
of being someone who envisions a different world. So we've
always i mean, it could happen here. From the beginning,
there was always a strong kind of focus on fiction.
And I'm really happy to be presenting another one of
your stories today.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Thanks.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
You want to tell me introduce this piece?
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Sure? This piece is called The Free Yorks of Cascadia.
It was first published in Fantasy and Sign Fiction, which
is the name of a magazine, and this one was
actually really important to me because Fantasy and Science Fiction
FNSF was one of the magazines that my dad had
a subscription.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
To Yeah they go. This was a while.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Yeah, this was a very and it was a very
important piece for me that it got published there.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
Yeah, that's awesome. Well let's uh, let's let's let's take
a take a hop in a publicly funded bus and
roll down to Storytown.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Speaking of taking one's life in one's hands. The story
is called The Free Orcs of Cascadia. You all know
the first part of the story. The song ended in blood.
It was two years ago in the summer. Rick Green,
(04:55):
the singer of Goblin Forest, crooned in his Osborne esque
voice to fifteen thousand Goblin Metal. A short man wearing
green body paint and brown leather stepped out from backstage,
drew a sword and cut the singer down from behind.
The last lyrics Greene ever sang were take me Back,
take me Back, take me Back to the Misty Mountains.
(05:15):
The man with the sword, of course, was Golfen Bull,
the rhythm guitarist for Crimpetool the opening act. He and
his bandmates escaped in the ensuing chaos and remain at
large to this day. Neither band has released a song
or played a show since the rest of Goblin Forrest
decided to call it quits. Without Green and Crimpetool, no
one knew what happened to Crimpetool. Fans deserted the genre
(05:37):
and droves, and overnight Goblin Metal went from stadium rock
fad to a niche interest of the obscure Canadian orc
cults were originated. It was no longer hip to be Green.
If golfen Ball had been trying to take the Goblin
Metal throne, as it were, he failed spectacularly. Rumors have
flown about motives and locations, but there have been no
(05:57):
arrests and no public statement from the band. All we've
had to work with were rumors until now. Earlier this month,
Orc Folk act Alcrith listed golf and Ball as the
harpist in their liner notes of the single The Gray
Fog of a Ruined Forest. Alcareth was as obscure as
Crimpetool was infamous. The band had never done an interview,
(06:19):
not even a photoshoot. Like everyone else these days in
countercultural music, their videos featured only masked performers. I've been
casually obsessed with post civilization culture ever since the Communicate
from the Junkyard Rats of the Rust Belt, and I've
been covering music of pretty much every secessionist movement and
subculture I coud sink my teeth into. Since after I
(06:40):
saw those liner notes, I put out feelers to friends
and friends of friends, and I waited, and last week
I was invited to go to an orc village hidden
away in the burned forests of Cascadia. I was invited
to be the first person to tell golf and Ball's story,
a Hellfire Harriet exclusive. Usually I post full interviews for everyone,
but reserve my travel diary for the patron to my blog.
(07:01):
This time, though, I'm foregoing that this story is too important,
so I've interspersed to the two below. All I knew
before I went was what everyone else knew. Three years ago.
A bunch of metal heads and hippies and burners and
nerds all decided to dress up like orcs and goblins,
and some of them took it too far and decided
to distance themselves from the rest of society. They got
(07:21):
really famous one summer, then that fame died in a
single bloody act, and who knows what kind of weird
ship they're up to. Now. Before you get worried, no,
I will never offer a platform to a fascist fascist. Fascism,
as it turns out, is the furthest thing from golf
and Ball's mind. What he's into is a lot weirder
than that. Still, it's sort of lucky that I survived
(07:42):
to write this story. So you killed a guy, Yeah,
I killed a guy. We stared in silence at one
another for a while. He wore rawhide and fur, and
not much of either. He wasn't painted up, but his
skin was sort of natural olive. His lower teeth were
filed down the fangs like any serious Orcs. There is
(08:02):
still something unassuming about him that I have a hard
time describing.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Yeah, waiting for me to tell you about it, aren't you?
Speaker 3 (08:10):
The interview was not off to a good start. Are
you worried about how your words will sound in court?
Speaker 4 (08:17):
I killed Rick Green on stage with a sword in
front of thousands of witnesses. Talking to the media isn't
going to make anything worse for me at this point,
and I don't respect the authority of the US government
to hold me accountable for my actions. I will not
go to court.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So why'd you do it?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
The old world is dying My world, the free Orcs
of Cascadia. We're not going to replace the old world,
but we will be part of its replacement. In order
to do that, we have to take ourselves seriously. An
element of that struggle is the struggle to create meaning,
to create a new sacred. I killed Rick Green because
he was defiling something meant to be sacred. How so
(08:55):
we share an esthetic, but he didn't understand what it
meant to be an orc.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
You killed him because he was a poser.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
I guess you could put it like that.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
So the lesson here is, don't be a poser.
Speaker 4 (09:09):
Don't be a poser.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
You heard it here first. Kids, don't be a poser,
or golf and ball will literally murder you. They picked
me up in the parking lot of grocery outlet in
northeast Portland. That's a mundane detail, I suppose, but perhaps
the single most remarkable thing about my trip was the
ever present contrast between mondanity and the bizarre. I bought
a case of coconut water while we waited, orcs might
(09:33):
like coconut water. Who doesn't like coconut water? They showed
up in a mid teens Honda Civic Sedan, and I'd
been hoping for something out of Mad Max. The two
women who got out, one cis one trans, both white,
were dressed in clean gray tank tops and leggings, like
half the women who live in Portland. To be honest,
I only noticed them in the parking lot at all
because the trans woman was cute. Hell Fire the sis
(09:56):
woman asked. She was tall and severe, with the fierce
but almost trustworthy look of a lone shark, or, as
it turned out, an Orcish enforcer. That's me, I said Fenric.
The this woman offered her name, but no handshake, fist
bump or hug. I nodded. Nor Inda, the trans woman said,
Like a lot of trans women these days, she didn't
bother to feminize her voice. Her name sounded familiar, but
(10:18):
I couldn't place it. How is this going to work?
I asked. We're going to drive around back where no
one can see us. Fenric said, We're going to take
your phone and laptop and any electronics and put them
in a faraday in the car. Then we're going to
put you in the trunk and drive out to the forest.
We'll provide you with a recorder and notebook when we arrive.
You'll get your stuff back when we leave. I nodded.
(10:38):
I'd pretty much expected this. Do you need to use
the bathroom? Nor Inda asked, have any medical conditions we
should know about? No, and no, I said, either of
you want a coconut water. Goblin Forest sang in English,
but Crimpetole's lyrics were all in Tolkien's Black Speech Dark Speech.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Our lyrics were in dark Speech.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Stokin referred to the language as black speech.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
Tolkien meant well, but he was about the most influential
unconsciously racist author of the twentieth century. All his villains
were either Green or Middle Eastern. When you engage with
the work of historical authors, especially when you make derivative
works a century later, you have to adapt to one's
own social context. Calling the language black speech today is
at best wildly misleading. Its name is a translation anyway,
(11:26):
It's possible that dark speech is just as accurate. Besides,
Tokien didn't write the language. He only wrote like sixteen
words or something. We wrote the rest. Most of us
prefer to translate the name of it as dark speech.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
Since when are murderers pc?
Speaker 4 (11:43):
My status is a person who has ended the life
of another person, carries no implications about my personal ethics
other than that I clearly believe there are circumstances under
which it's okay to kill someone.
Speaker 3 (11:55):
Imagine being at the Renaissance Fair when the apocalypse hits
and you're stuck trying to reach creates society surrounded by
swords and minstrels and these and thows. You know how
that sounds like either heaven or hell, depending on who
you are and also who you're stuck there with. That
was my first impression of the village of Gray Morrow.
The fires out west have burned forest after forest and
small town after small town, and no one tries to
(12:17):
deny that pretty much every bio region on the planet
is going through transformation right now. It's in the worst spots,
these dead ecologies that the post civilization movement has found
its roots, like wild flowers growing up between paving stones
or rats hiding in the walls, I guess, depending on
who you ask. Gray Morrow sits in the scorched graveyard
of a Douglas Fir forest, halfway up a mountain, occupying
(12:39):
the remains of an evacuated town. Slab foundations are all
that remain of the original structures. A seasonal creek runs
through what was recently a river bed at the edge
of the village and long abandoned train tracks skirt the
ridge above town. Even armed with all of that information,
you'd still have at least seventy or eighty possible spots
to search satellite imagery with help. Of course, I can't
(13:01):
imagine that the Big six techs or the US government
don't know where Gray Morrow is. The residence of gray
Morrow in general and Golfenboe in particular, had an awful
lot to lose by letting me write this report. Noorinda
let me out of the trunk, and she smiled when
she saw me. Her bottom teeth were filed. That should
have been unnerving, but I've always been a sucker for
face tattoos or anything that really shows someone as going
(13:23):
for broke. Fenrick just stared at me severe. Being severe
was pretty much her thing, as far as I could tell.
She took a sip from her coconut water. Three other
cars filled a makeshift parking lot. The village itself was
surrounded by a wall built from blackened logs, set upright
and buried in the ruins of the road. My escorts
had changed clothes en route. Fenrick looked like a bandit
(13:45):
out of Skyrim, complete with iron puldron on one shoulder
and a hand axe strapped to her belt. I won't lie,
it was a good look. I'm no fashion reporter, but
I figure half the magazines in New York would love
to get someone out here and take pictures of Orcs
like her. Noorinda wore a simple, modest dress of undyed wool.
Imagine a Viking kindergarten teacher who also wears a rather
(14:06):
large dagger horizontally on her belt at the small of
her back. My crushing on her intensified. She handed me
a spiral notebook in an old fashioned digital recorder, and
we walked into the village. A lot of people say
that you killed Rick Green because you were jealous of
Goblin Forest's success. That the Orcish code insisted that if
you wanted the throne, you had to kill the reigning monarch.
(14:29):
Golf and Bull stopped fidgeting and stared directly at me,
his dark brown eyes boring into me.
Speaker 4 (14:35):
That's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's like three layers deep of bullshit.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
He was still staring at me. I was starting to
regret this line of questioning.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Okay, to start, there are pretty much two ways to
interpret the Orcish Code of Honor. It's not written down anywhere,
but there's some strong central themes, like an interdependence between
individual sovereignty and collective identity. We value strength. The idea
is that everyone develops their own strengths, whatever they may be,
for the benefit of all. One should be as self
(15:06):
reliant as one is able to be, both for one's
own sake and again for the community's sake. I care
deeply about this. That same basic idea, though, can be
interpreted two different ways.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
So there's a split in the orc community.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Damn right, there's a split. The free Orcs are matriarchal
and the or Scene are patriarchal.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Golfin Will produced a cigarette from god knows where, considering
how little he was wearing, and lit it with a
lighter from the same mysterious origin. It wasn't tobacco, it
wasn't weed, maybe mugwart.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
The matriarchal way of interpreting those tenets is roughly anarchist.
It's anti authoritarian, an anti nationalist. At the very least.
We respect the wisdom of elders, children and women, self
identifying women, but the hierarchy is anything but rigid, and
the guidelines are anything but laws. Most importantly, our sense
of community or tribe is fluid. Gray Morrow is a
(15:58):
free orc village. Go fifteen miles southeast and you'll find
a larger village lonely mountain there or scene. The patriarchal
way of interpreting Orkish tenants is roughly fascistic. Authority is absolute.
Rank within the hierarchy affects every aspect of one's own life.
It's not racialized, but it's nationalistic. There are very specific
(16:18):
considerations of who is and isn't a part of any
given social grouping, and definitions of strength tend to skew
toward boring shit like physical size and power.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
So you tell any doubters that you weren't trying to
claim the Goblin throne because your faction of Orcs doesn't
work that way.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
No Orkish culture works that way. Even those fascistic shits
don't work that way. Among the or scene. If you
kill your superior, people aren't going to just suddenly start
kissing your ass. They will literally flay you and turn
your skin into a battle flag. You advance in rank
by demonstrating your capacity to lead. This isn't some fucking
Hollywood bullshit. Evil is a lot more banal than that.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
I didn't have the heart or maybe the courage to
tell him that. To me, to pretty much any outsider,
Hollywood bullshit is exactly what the whole place looked like.
When you say battle flag, what do you mean? Who
do they do? Battle with?
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Us? The free orcs? Are you at war for the
very soul of our culture?
Speaker 3 (17:16):
How'd that start?
Speaker 4 (17:17):
When I cut down Rick Green the Mountain King?
Speaker 3 (17:21):
You killed him because he was the leader of a
rival faction, then, not because he was a poser.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
They weren't a rival faction until I killed him, But
sure he was a poser, though all fascists are posers.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Did you go on tour with Goblin Forrest specifically to
murder him?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah? Probably?
Speaker 3 (17:38):
What do you mean probably? That was a very specific
question about a very specific intention.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
I mean, I guess I'd been thinking about killing him
for a while. It was premeditated, and it wasn't you know.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
No, I don't know, because I've never killed anyone.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
So it's like, I've known Rick Green almost five years.
He and I and maybe thirty other people. We started
this whole thing. Goblin Metal of the Orcs all of that.
Rick Green's always been a fucking bastard. I figured I'd
probably kill him one day for being kind of a
Nazi or whatever. Then we go on tour together and
I tell myself, hey, if this goes badly, I can
always just kill him on stage. You've got to understand,
(18:15):
Orcis culture wasn't even a year old at that point.
We weren't split into the Free Orcs and the or
Scene yet. There were only maybe five villages total. We
were just starting to explore what it meant to be ourselves,
what kind of culture we could build. Then, while we
were on tour, I hear he's got himself crowned the
Mountain King. And this isn't a game. I don't know
(18:35):
how to get that through to you or your readers.
This is our life. It's one thing to put on
a silly hat and pretend to tell people what to
do in some larp somewhere. But Rick Green had gotten
himself coronated for real dictator over actual people. So I
killed him. The Free Yorks split off the or Scene,
closed ranks, and we've been at war ever since.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Am I safe here? He didn't answer me, at least
he didn't stare me down again. He just looked off
into the distance, maybe towards lonely mountain. I've been to
LARPs before, where when you show up, they make you
put on garb. That is to say, they make you
wear period appropriate clothes, or whatever weird interpretation of period
appropriate that particular group of LARPers had come up with.
(19:17):
As I met the denizens of the village, they all
came out to the parking lot to introduce themselves. I
realized they didn't insist on anything like that because they
weren't LARPing. Pretty much, every one of them was dressed
like either a Viking re anactor or a fantasy game villain,
but it wasn't an act. About thirty adults and eight
kids lived there, running the age gamut from six months
(19:37):
to seventy eight years. They told me their names and pronouns.
About a third told me she, a third he in
the third day. Many of them were white or past
as such, but a significant minority were black. Neurinda told
me later their orc villages with substantially higher proportions of
people of color. That might be true, but I got
the impression she said it to convince herself or me
that the free Orcs aren't a specifically white phenomenon. No One,
(20:01):
no one decent, likes looking around their community or seen
and seeing only white faces smiling back. After everyone introduced themselves,
immediately forgot all their names. There are only so many
fantasy names like Lazari and de Molin that you can
hear before they all just sound the same. Narinda and
Fenrik flanked me as we walked through a gate in
the wall into the village. It's strange to say village
(20:22):
in America. We don't really have villages here, But in
some ways Gray Morrow isn't the United States. And to
be certain, it was a village, maybe ten or fifteen
houses crowded together along either side of a single potholed street.
Two architectural styles reigned, junkyard shacks built out of railroad
cars and regular cars, and traditional American log cabins, many
(20:43):
of them were adorned with solar panels. At the end
of the street, near the black palisade, the beginnings of
a stone tower stood fifteen feet high. I wasn't sure
if I was impressed or not. On one hand, the
village couldn't have been around longer than three or four
years and they had already done so much. On the
other hand, and it was filthy. Everyone was filthy. I'm
kind of obsessed with the post civilization movement, so I
(21:05):
wish I could tell you everyone looked well fed and happy.
They didn't. People looked proud, and they didn't look miserable.
But there was an intensity in everyone's eyes you simply
could not mistake for happiness. A trash pile needed tending
near the front gate, and some of the animal hides
stretched for tanning had begun to rot. Everything looked like
it was about to fall apart, both physically and metaphorically.
(21:26):
What now, I asked when we reached the central square,
a stone cobbled chunk of what had been once an intersection,
now decorated with poorly tended gardens and rustic benches of
dubious quality. You're here to interview Golfenbah, are you not,
Fnrick asked. I am. Golphen Bol doesn't live here. I
waited for her to elaborate. Golfenbol lives in the forest
with the rest of his band. He's on his way.
(21:48):
You'll meet him a bit outside of town. I'll take
you to him when he gets there. Someone near the
gate shouted and both of my escorts flinched bodily and
turned to look. It was just a kid chasing in
another k with a wooden sword. Fenrik and Nerindo were
on edge. Something was about to happen. Tell me about
your new band, Alcareth. What does the name mean?
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Alcareth is the dark speech word for the phase of
the moon on the last night before the new moon,
the last sliver of light. Alcareth is a holy day,
a day of self reflection. Our band's music attempts to
capture that spirit of self reflection. On Alcaireth, we listened
to our naysayer and think about ourselves and our community
(22:32):
your naysayer. Free Orkish villages don't have leaders, We have naysayers.
Two years ago we tried rotating leadership. It was ineffectual.
We didn't need leaders. We stuck with it anyway because
we felt like we had to, because those were the
rules we had come up with. Then one person said, basically,
this is bullshit. We don't need someone to tell us
(22:52):
what to do. We need someone to tell us what
to stop doing. We need someone to tell us what
we're doing wrong. Every new moon, every village picks a
new name naysayer. That person spends the month picking up
heart group structures, observing what's happening, being critical on alcareth.
We fast and listen to the naysayer. They don't offer
solutions necessarily, but instead bring our problems to light. Does
(23:14):
that work surprisingly well? Except about a third of the
naysayers end up leaving after their month. Some go to
other villages, Some go to live in the forest, like
Nearinda al Sareth's singer did, but most leave the woods.
As we put it, most go back to civilization.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
That's why Nearinda's name is sounded familiar when she didn't.
She introduced herself. To be honest, I saw your name
listen in the liner notes and didn't pay much attention
to the rest.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
That's an argument for me to take my name off
our next release.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
If there is one, why did you put it there
in the first place, Why did you agree to this interview?
And what do you mean if there is one?
Speaker 4 (23:50):
I told you we're at war. Yeah, we're losing that war.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm.
He didn't strike me as a man who was afraid
to cry, but he was clearly trying to keep his composure.
Speaker 4 (24:04):
There's no way that Gray Morrow would have let you
talk to me here if any of us thought that
Gray Morrow had a future. There's no way I would
have talked to you at all if I thought I
was going to be alive to see another Ulcereth.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
Why are you losing? Why are you going to die?
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's not a question of military efficacy, or of bravery
or strength or any of that shit. It's just a
question of numbers. Orsine Society is a military society. Every
member fights. As far as we can tell, They've got
fifteen hundred warriors. We've got five hundred.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
So use guerrilla tactics. Golfenbal shook his head.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Striking Rick Green down from behind was a cowardly action.
I can justify it almost by the fact that Green
had declared himself my monarch. But the Orsine warriors are
my peers. They would not stalk me in the night.
I will not stalk them. That sounds, I know how
it sounds. So this interview I want to be remembered.
(25:01):
I want the free Orcs of Cascadia to be remembered.
I put my name on the liner note, so that
someone like you, an anti fascist music blogger, would talk
to me. I leveraged my own infamy to draw attention
to what we're doing, what we've done.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I fucking hate the tragic utopian trope? What like seriously,
like fuck you? Okay, I know I'm here as a journalist,
but I'm not going to write your fucking obituary. I
don't think I've ever turned on an interview subject like
that before. I get it. Hopeless causes are beautiful, But
as I understand it, the whole goddamn point of holding
on to your honor more firmly than your life is
(25:35):
because the world is a better place for everyone if
more people did that. Right, Okay, the world isn't a
goddamn better place if you let your subculture. And I'm sorry,
I know it's very serious and I'm not trying to
downplay it, but that's what this is, A musical subculture
be taken over by fucking Nazis, and I respect that
you're going to fight them for it. That's cool. But
if you consider buying some guns, maybe a few drones.
(25:56):
They'll come in here with spears, right, and you'll fight
them off with other spears. It's twenty twenty five. Man,
there are fucking Nazis everywhere. If you don't give a
shit about going to jail or dying, then fucking shoot
the Nazis who are trying to kill you.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
You don't understand, You're fucking right.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I don't, if I'm being honest. Most of the time
I was waiting, I spent flirting with Narinda and avoiding
talking to Fenric. Miorinda asked me to keep our conversation
off the record. We didn't talk about Gray Morrow or
the orc thing much. Anyway. Everything I learned about the
village and its culture I learned by observation only. An
elderly man came by and offered us cold tea and
(26:30):
wooden mugs steeped BlackBerry leaves, sweetened with juice from the berries.
He said, no caffeine, no other particularly strong medicinal effects.
The three of us took cups from his platter, and
he continued down the street passing out drinks. No one
else approached us. I watched people go about their lives,
though the tension in the air was thick. I saw
a few people look at cell phones and spent a
(26:52):
not inconsiderable amount of time trying to decide if that
was hypocritical and or bad opsec Eventually I gave up,
because frankly, it wasn't my business, and one of the
most interesting things about all the post civilization groups is
all the bits and pieces they choose to carry over
from mainstream culture. Finally, after an hour, Fenric stood up
come with me. I followed her to the other side
(27:14):
of town and through a smaller gate. On the other side,
a box truck that had seen better days sat on
a road that had too. We skirted around the truck
and up into the black forest. The scorched hills looked
more like meadows than forests, with green grass and undergrowth
broken only by black spikes of burned trees. We followed
the path this way and that, and soon I was lost.
(27:35):
Soon after fog set in, I was further through the
looking glass than I had realized. I imagined us lost
a mile from a town full of people who give
a double meaning to the word stranger, and probably at
least an hour's drive from civilization. My guard hadn't shown
me much in the way of kindness, and I was
on my way to meet someone I knew to be
a murderer. It's the kindest shit I live for. If
I'm being honest, I love my stupid, fucking weird job
(27:57):
and the stupid fucking weird world we live in. Thank you,
my readers, for making that possible for me. Be sure
to check out my Patreon page if this is the
first thing you've read by me. Lots of members only
content over there, including a few snippets of orc song
from Narinda. The only thing I saw in the distance
was a single black spire, thicker than the dead snags
around me. As we approached, it came into focus as
(28:17):
a boulder jutting up into the sky like an angry finger.
Sitting at the base of it was a short man
with a sword across his lap. Golfenbol. I'll leave you
to to it, Fenric said. She left me alone with
an armed murderer. I sat down across from him, took
out the notebook and recorder, and asked him questions. All right,
convince me.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
We can't fight them dishonorably, because you can't protect an
idea by defiling that idea. We don't want them to
destroy our way of life, but we don't want to
destroy our way of life ourselves either.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
The basic problem with the ore scene is that they're
interpreting your coat of honor to mean might makes right. Yeah. Yes,
By facing them an open battle and nobly dying or
whatever for your goddamn plan is, you're just letting them
make might right. You're letting their superior numbers dictate what
your culture has to look like. It's like majority voting,
but even dummer because more people die. I expected them
(29:12):
to double down on his position. Most men would.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
What do you suggest instead.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Fuck, I don't know. Don't be here when they attack,
Go somewhere else, stay on the move, build your strength.
Oh shit, that's what Rick Green was doing, wasn't it.
Huh Goblin Forrest singing in English, a stupid name like
Rick Green. All that shit was designed to make Goblin
metal more palatable to the masses, to get fans, to
get recruits for his stupid, fucking fascy goals.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
Yep, do that.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
I mean, don't become fascists or change your name or
make your music worse. Everyone knows Goblin forst and have
shit on krimpatool. Just don't be obscure for the sake
of being obscure. Fucking advertise you have a decent thing
going here. People are abandoning mainstream society left and right.
No political pun intended. Make it easier for them to
get here. Make it so that when you fight the
fashion your epics, swords and spears, Viking deathmatch, you win
(30:07):
better yet, make it so they don't even want to
fuck with you because they know they lose.
Speaker 4 (30:11):
I don't know whether that would work.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
Yeah, but dying doesn't work either.
Speaker 4 (30:16):
The Ark way of life isn't meant to be some revolution.
It's not meant to supplant the mainstream. It will never
appeal to the mainstream, not without losing its soul. Would
you live like this? Would you want to?
Speaker 3 (30:28):
You're right, I'm obsessed with you weird subcultures, but I
wouldn't want to live like you. We both stared at
each other in silence. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. We're
both just thinking, okay, scrap that. You're never going to
get big numbers. You don't need big numbers. You don't
want big numbers. You don't need recruits, you need allies.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
What would that look like?
Speaker 1 (30:49):
God?
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Damn all Orkish men not actually listen to women's ideas.
I'm used to guys just talking over me or shutting
down completely. If I get mad.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Free Orkish men, I would hope know how to listen.
Speaker 3 (31:01):
Guns break the spell and the spell you're casting here
it's powerful, it's good. So no guns. Other people have guns, though,
Let those people stand guard or make their arm presence.
Note outside or scene camps, other people have access to,
say doxing, how many recruits are the or scene going
to get if every time some wanna be forest Nazi
dude joins, someone tells his mother what they're about, or
(31:21):
access to the media, How many recruits are going to
join if everyone knows the orsine or posers putting out substandard,
watered down goblin metal just to try and lure in
impressiable military aged men to fight their holy war.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
You'll write those stories.
Speaker 3 (31:35):
I'm not going to write you any propaganda, but sure
I'll tell the truth.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
How do we get allies?
Speaker 3 (31:41):
But at another single, maybe a full length? The Gray
Fog of a Ruined Forest was the best shit I've
hurt in years. You're redefining folk music just like you
redefine metal. Put out shit like that and I'll cover it.
Talk to more press, maybe someone other than you. Not
everyone's going to be sympathetic to what you did, even
if that fucking guy was a fucking tree Nazi. A
hunting horn cut through the fog and through our conversation,
(32:03):
and my subject's face fell into despair for a half
second before determination took over.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
What's that interviews over? I thought there would be more
time another day. At least, we have to get you
out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Turns out Fenrick had taken us on a purposefully circuituitous
route into the woods. It wasn't a quarter of a
mile straight down hill before Golfenbolt and I reached the
box truck at the back entrance to Gray Morrow. Miorinda
and Fenrick stood there talking with a kid, maybe fifteen,
who was out of breath. She was dressed in scraps
of fur and leather and cloth, like you might imagine
a medieval beggar. It wasn't until I noticed all the
(32:39):
twigs and sticks and moss tangled up in the fabrics
I recognized it as camouflage. I saw about thirty the scout,
for that's what she was said about. Fenerick asked exactly
thirty ten with pikes, ten with tower shields and swords,
five archers, two scouts to command, one noncombatant. I'd guess
a surgeon, but I couldn't promise how far away I asked.
(33:00):
Fenric glared at me for interrupting. Five miles Nearinda said
probably three and a half by now downhill. We have
time to get you out with the children and the elders.
The scout had just run five miles up hill because
she was too stubborn to use a walky talkie or
a cell phone. We should evacuate every one. Gulfenbol said
what Fenrick asked. We've got walls and almost even numbers.
(33:22):
Fuck them, this is our home. I wanted to shout
at her. I wanted to shake her, to tell her
this wasn't a fucking game, that it wasn't the twelfth century,
and that killing people or dying over some squatted chunk
of nowhere was somewhere between stupid and reprehensible. I didn't,
though I'm a good journalist, this isn't the place for
us to debate this, Nernda said, and all four of
them walked through the gate and left me standing by
(33:43):
the truck. That was why the gardens were untended, and
the trash was piled up and the hides were left
to rot. They were expecting this. They'd lost their will
to pretend like their lives were going to continue to
progress forward. I'm not the first to suggest that nihilism
is the dominant affect of society today, with climate change
destroying communities and bioregions all over the map, with the
(34:05):
economic crisis deepening, in the wealth gap widening. I think
all of us are guilty of forgetting to tend our gardens.
All of us have a hard time figuring out why
it matters whether or not we deal with our trash.
All of us have proverbial or literal Nazis marching on us.
The Nazis the free Orcs of Cascadia are dealing with
are the literal variety. Some costplaying fascist was about to
(34:26):
stick a sword between Nearinda's ribs. Bill rose in my throat.
I don't know I believe in love at first sight
or any of that shit, but I just couldn't handle
the idea. I fucking hate honor. I will never be
an orc. I got lost running through solutions to the
problem of hypothetical arrows and swords that were going to
interfere with Lorenda's continued existence. Most of those solutions involved
(34:49):
assault rifles, which I didn't have access to. Cars though
were available. What's thirty warriors of medieval armor versus one
station wagon driven by an angry woman with a lead
foot put the odds and my favor. I wasn't going
to do it, though. Instead I waited to evacuate. I
don't think that speaks well of me. Individually and in groups,
(35:09):
people came out through the gate and loaded bags and
baskets onto the back of the truck Neriinda returned with
a simple backpack sewn from rawhide. Most of her belongings
were probably wherever she and Golfenboul and the rest of
Alserth lived. She handed me my phone, I didn't have service.
I wondered whether or not she and golfenbul were dating.
It wasn't relevant to the present moment exactly, but my
(35:31):
mind always as a way of thinking about bullshit to
avoid thinking about impending doom. Another important effect of our
generation distract ourselves with disaster with petty things like love
and jealousy. I don't know what you said to Golfenbolnerinda said,
but whatever it was worked. He just convinced everyone to evacuate. Everyone,
I asked, shocked, everyone except him and Fenrik and Gorn.
(35:52):
Which one's Gorn, the man who brought us tea? Do
you remember him? He's old as shit, though, I said,
because I have no fucking manners or common sense ones, Yeah,
he's old as shit. He's a linguist by training. His
main hobby is writing morbid poetry and dark speech, and
when he can't figure out how to say something, he
just makes up new words. He developed about a third
of the language, did all that shit before orc culture
(36:13):
was even around. He's also a widower three times over.
He doesn't give a shit about dying. His last chat
book was called soon I will return to the earth. Oh,
Gorn is going to die today. Golf and Bull and Fenric,
they're going to hold the wall as long as they
can and then fall back to the woods. And you,
I asked, I'm driving us out of here to another village.
(36:34):
Then I'll take you home after that. I don't know, girl,
I don't know. If I signed up for this, I
might leave the woods go back to being a vettech.
I just nodded. I was too biased to offer objective
life advice. Oh, and golf and Ball said, to give
you this. He said, it's in case he dies. He says,
you're right, you shouldn't have to write his obituary, so
he wrote his own. She handed me a piece of paper.
(36:56):
I piled into the back of the box truck with
forty other people, many of them in tears, many of
them in shock, and we drove away from Gray Morrow.
None of the three Free Orcs survived the battle. Gorn
died impaled on a spear while holding the gate. Fenric
was killed by an arrow that struck her in the
back of the neck as she and Golfenbol ran. Golfenbol,
(37:17):
Fenric's lover turned and stood his ground over her body.
I didn't know any of that yet. I found out
when Mirinda found out two days later. Maybe all three
of them would have survived if I hadn't interfered, and
they'd all fought with equal numbers, Maybe more of them
would have died. Maybe I can forgive myself, Maybe there's
nothing to forgive. In the back of the truck, by
(37:38):
the light coming in through a crack in the steel wall,
I read Golfenbol's note.
Speaker 4 (37:44):
All my life, I didn't give a shit about anything.
I liked weed and metal in whatever counterculture trend was
big in a given year, but my heart wasn't in it.
I just went through the motions until I became an
orc saying I'm an orc and meaning it isn't like
a trans man saying he's a man in meaning it.
Gender is a social construct that goes back as far
as I understand, to the beginning of humanity. There has
(38:05):
always been gender, and there have always been people who
transgress the roles assigned to them at birth. An orc
is a social construct that we just fucking made up.
I mean, I guess the orc is an archetype too,
but it's a fantasy archetype. We know what's make believe.
Make believe is what gave my life meaning. I promise
you that for me. The day we decided we were
orcs was the first day that the sun shone benevolence
(38:27):
upon the world. It was the first day that color
radiated from everything I saw. It was the first day
that the rain on my roof tapped out codes of meaning.
It was the first day of my life, my real life,
my first ulcerat I fell in love with the world.
Everyone finds meaning in different ways. I found meaning by
believing in some shit we made up and letting that
(38:48):
be real. I was born Jason Sanchez. I died Gulfumble.
I'm not sorry. That was great.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
That was so fun.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
I mean, not my narration, the story. The story, not
my narration. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
The second way finished, we all just got that little
smirk on our face, like.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
That was delightful. Yeah, Margaret, you're the best. Oh yeah,
I mean, if I were going to be in orc
there would be rifles but problems.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Yeah, this is absolutely This is like a really good
example of what I mean that when I write utopian
fiction or like fiction about other societies. I'm not saying hey,
everyone go do this or like this is what people
should do.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
No, I mean I liked that. I like it. I
like that I've had that experience in other cultures, you know,
places like slab city and different kind of encampments and
whatnot that I've spent a lot of time and as
a journalist where it's like I'm fascinated by and I
respect aspects of this, but like I I also think
some of these things are that you're doing or dumb
or I don't understand why you do it or this
(40:05):
isn't like you know, but you don't. Your notes don't matter.
You know, that's not your job, although actually having an
impact in that way is kind of Yeah, I don't know.
Somebody go, somebody go make an orc village. Yeah, yeah,
I'll go out there, I'll report on it.
Speaker 3 (40:26):
We'll go.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
It'll be fun.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Don't take the band name all sorts, though I already
stole that.
Speaker 4 (40:30):
Yeah, there's a number of dope band names in here.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
All right, people should make orc folk. I'd be really
excited to.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
Hear make orc folk abandon civilization to live as fantasy creatures,
fight fascists, all that good stuff.
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like to plug?
Speaker 3 (40:59):
Well? I do you have a new book out or
a reprint of an older book called A Country Ghosts
that is a more directly utopian book. It's out from Akpress,
came out last month, and I think that's it. That's
the main thing. Oh, you can support me on Patreon,
although it's no longer supporting me on Patreon. It's supporting
a publishing thing that I'm starting back up with people
(41:20):
called Strangers in the Tangled Wilderness, and it will publish
fiction and memoir and like the kind of like more
culture side of radical politics and less the like theory
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
What's the patreon.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
Patreon dot com slash Strangers in Entangled Wilderness? Because why
would I pick short names for things?
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Yeah, don't do that. Yeah, And we have a live
show coming.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Up right, Robert, that doesn't sound like us.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
It's a virtual live show of for Behind the Bastards
with our friend prop that's on Thursday, February seventeenth, allegedly
momenthouse dot com slash Behind the Bastards.
Speaker 4 (41:59):
I can't confes more deny that.
Speaker 3 (42:01):
Okay, Yeah, we've got you a lawyer on here before
you can.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Sure.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
Yeah, let's let's get Moira on the horn and.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
More come on the horn and tell us if we're
actually doing this thing show?
Speaker 3 (42:15):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (42:15):
Are we also?
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Are we alive?
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That's another question? Oh?
Speaker 4 (42:20):
I text her that most days. All right, Well, thank
you Margaret, and thank you all for tuning in in
the first year of the rest of the next year.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
Yeah, yo, it could happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts, you can find sources
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
Show Links
AboutPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton tackle the biggest stories in news, politics and current events with intelligence and humor. From the border crisis, to the madness of cancel culture and far-left missteps, Clay and Buck guide listeners through the latest headlines and hot topics with fun and entertaining conversations and opinions.