@sozz Curse you for that image! 😉🙂 Seem to be a Larian theme.
@ladydub. Yes, you're right I vaguely remember reading that and not thinking much of it at the time - I never got into the hordeland supplements. The grey orcs seems a mistake. (although I don't see anything saying that their alignment is neutral - even if the description does indicate that they are)
There are some changes to the races in 3.5 that were regressions from 2e. The 3.5 story of the drow being the worst - in 2e the drow had obsidian skin and white hair because of their long exposure to faerzress, in 3.5 the coloration of the drow was the result of curse cast upon them by the good gods 😬🤢 The 2e story was and is the best.
Likewise it seems that grey orcs were an initial attempt to make Faerun's orcs into Warcraft orcs. To my mind if you want to have enemies who are " smart, having honour, culture, their own history and reasons for war " it sounds like you don't need orcs, humans will do - church of Bane? The Zhenatrim? The Shadovar? 3.5 thay?
I don't see chaos and destruction as stupid - I see them as the expression of divine will. It makes stories grand, it gives them a sense of metaphysical mystery. The Illiad would be a less interesting story without the gods in it - without the god you have some people going to war over an affair. Achilles was the embodiment of war. War itself; divine war. And the Trojans had frackin' Apollo on their side, how do you defeat that.
It's not that I wouldn't play a game based in Westeros with the Dothraki serving as enemies that were "smart, having honour, culture, their own history and reasons for war " but I prefer Faerun to Westeros and want it to remain a magical place where the forces of good and evil confront one another.
