Oronci

You guys keep showing the love to the orcs!  Thanks!  (Between that and your gnoll love, I should have just called this blog The Daily Humanoid.)  So I bet you’re all excited about the oronci…

*crickets*

Don’t have the Inner Sea Bestiary?  Courtesy of Jim Groves, the oronci is an orc-centipede centaur in the vein of a drider—and indeed, created by the very same drow fleshwarping techniques.  (They and several disgusting cousins were first mentioned but not statted up in J. D. Wiker and Darrin Drader’s “Abominations of the Drow” from Pathfinder #16: Endless Night.)  As you might guess, they’re everything one typically expects from orcs—green skin, big damage—with everything one expects from giant centipedes—poison bite and spit attacks—with the added bonus of a once-per-day frenzy attack that acts like a three-round haste.  So, uh, don’t get them mad.

Obviously, the quickest way to make your oronci special is to mess with their origin story and established dynamic…

Adventurers in the Deepearth of Vasharen need to beware oronci, the foul shock troops of the dark elves, who use their arthropodean skill at climbing to launch spit attacks from cavern ceilings.  But even oronci on the march must beware driders.  Failed results of the drows’ first fleshwarping efforts, the spider-creatures proved untameable and now hunt drow, oronci, and surface dweller alike.

Adventures exploring the Realms Below run afoul of strange orc/centipede crossbreeds.  Some of these can even breathe water, and appear to be marines of some kind.  Following the trail of the oronci leads to supply lines manned by elite skum troops and shamans.  And if skum are involved, then can aboleths not be far behind?

The savage Northmen say oronci are the first orcs, crafted to be soldiers by the goddess Hela from the worms that bore ceaselessly beneath her palace.  But this does not explain their presence in the rainforests of the Southlands, where oronci dwell in the darkness beneath the canopies and even full-blooded orcs fear to tread.

—Inner Sea Bestiary 36