The Free Orcs of Cascadia, Ft. Margaret Killjoy

How are you? How are you doing on this beautiful December day. I'm good. I just got my booster shot and the negative effects haven't kicked in yet. That's good. Um. How does it feel to have, like, as your interne sped up, now that I have a boost? Yeah, I'm making the same fight that everybody makes, because it's easier than thinking about the fact that, oh, Macron 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. Yeah, yeah, that's a yeah. Yeah, how are you doing with the plague? I live completely alone and isolated, so yeah, 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, well, I dream about interacting

with humans. Yeah, just like hugging a person that that you don't know all that well and it not being like involving both of you risking your life. It's like a blood packed Yes, we're going, Doug, and if we wind up in how we'll scream at Satan together. Hu, 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 we 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 uh revolutionary practice, in kind of every aspect of being someone who envisions the different world. Um. So we we've always I mean it could happen here from the beginning, there was always a strong kind of um uh focus on fiction. Um. And I'm really happy to be presenting another one of your stories. Today. Thanks.

You want to introduce this piece? Sure. This piece is called The Free Yorks of Cascadia. It was first published in Fantasy and Science Fiction, which is the name of a magazine. Um and this one was also really important to me because Fantasy and Science Fiction F and s F was one of the magazines that my my dad had a subscription to. Yeah. Yeah, this was a very um uh and it was a very important piece for

me that it got published there. Yeah, that's awesome. Um 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. 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, the singer of Goblin Forest, crooned in his Osborne esque

voice to fifteen thousand Goblin metal fans. 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 Green ever sang were take me back, take me Back, take me back to the misty Mountains. The man with the sword, of course, was Golfin Bull, the rhythm guitarist for Crimpatool 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 Forest decided to call it quits. Without Green and crimp Atool, no one knew what happened to Crimpatool. Fans deserted the genre 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 golf and Bull 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 arrests and no like statement from the band. All we've had to work with were rumors until now. Earlier this month, Orc Folk act Alsith listed golf and Bull as the harpist in their liner notes of the single The Gray Fog of a Ruined Forest. All Syreth was as obscure as Crimpatool was infamous. The band had

never done an interview, not even a photo shoot. 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 could sink my

teeth into. Since after I 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 Bull's story hell Fire Harriet Exclusive. Usually I post full interviews for everyone, but reserve my travel diary for the patrons of my blog. 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 with 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 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 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 raw hide and fur, and not much of either. He wasn't painted up, but his skin was sort of natural olive is Our teeth

were filed down to fangs like any serious works. There was still something unassuming about him that I have a hard time describing. You're waiting for me to tell you about it, aren't you. The interview was not off to a good start. Are you worried about how your words will sound in court? 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, So why do you do it? 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 mint to be sacred. How so we share an aesthetic, but he didn't understand what it meant to be an orc. You killed him because he was a poser. I guess you could put it like that. So the lesson here is, don't be a poser. Don't be a poser. 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 mandanity and the bizarre. I bought a case of coconut water while we waited. Works might like coconut water. Who doesn't like coconut water. They showed up in a mid teens Honda Civic sedan, and I've 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 this, this woman asked. She was tall and severe, with the fierce but almost trustworthy look of a loan shark, or, as it turned out, an Orchis enforcer. That's me, I said, Fenrik. This 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 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 fair day in the car. Then we're going to put you in the trunk and drive out to

the forest. Will provide you with a recorder and notebook when we arrive. You'll get your stuff back when we leave. I nodded, I'd pretty much expected this. Do you need to use the bathroom? Nor? In asked, have any medical conditions we should know about? No, and no, I said, either of you want a coconut water? Goblin forests sang in English. But Crimpletool's lyrics were all in Tolkien's Black Speech. Dark speech are lyrics were in Dark Speech. Each Token

referred to the language as black speech. Token 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, It's possible that dark

speech is just as accurate. Besides, Token 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, since why our murderers PC My status as 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. Imagine being at the Renaissance Fair when the apocalypse hits and you're stuck trying to recreate society, surrounded by swords and minstrels and these and thous. 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 deny that pretty much every bioregion on the planet is going through a 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, half way up a mountain, occupying 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 would help, of course, I can't imagine that the Big six texts of the U. S. Government don't know where Gray Morrow is. The residence of Gray Morrow in general, in golfing Bole in particular, had an awful lot to lose by letting me write this report. Nourinda 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 some one is going for broke. Fenric just stared at me. Severe. Being severe was pretty much her thing, as far as I could tell. She took a sip from her cocoanut water. Three other cars filled a makeshift parking lot. The village itself was surrounded by a wall built from black and logs set upright and buried in

the ruins of the road. My escorts had changed clothes, and rout Fenric looked like a bandit 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.

Nornda wore a simple, modest dress of undyed wool. Imagine a Viking kindergarten teacher who also wears a rather 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 Ritt Green because you are jealous of Goblin Forest's success. That the Orchish code insisted that if you wanted the throne,

you had to kill the reigning monarch. Golfin Bull stopped fidgeting and stared directly at me, his dark brown eyes boring into me. That's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's like three layers deep of bullshit. He was still staring at me. I was starting to regret this line of questioning. Okay, to start, there are pretty much two ways to interpret the Orchish 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 veou you strength, but the idea is that everyone develops their own strengths, whatever they may be, for the benefit of all. One should be as self reliant as one is able to be, both for one's own sake and again for the community's sake. I cared deeply about this. That same basic idea, though, can be interpreted two different ways. So there's a split

in the ARC community. Damn right, there's a split. The free Orcs are matriarchal and the or Seene are patriarchal. Golfin Bill 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. The matriarchal way of interpreting those tenants 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 free or village. Go fifteen miles southeast and you'll find a larger village lonely mountain there or seen. The patriarchal way of interpreting Orcish tenants is roughly fascistic. Authority is absolute. Rank within the hierarchy effects every aspect of one's own life. It's not racialized, but

it's nationalistic. There are very specific 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. 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. No, Orcish culture works that way. Even those fascistic ships 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 flee you and turn your skin into a battle flag. You advance and rank by demonstrating your capacity to lead. This isn't some fucking Hollywood bullshit. Evil is a lot more banal than that. 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 us? The free Orcs? Are you at war for the very soul of our culture? How did that start? When I cut down Rick Green, the Mountain King? You killed him because he was the leader of a rival faction, then, not because he was a poser. They weren't a rival faction until I killed him. But sure he was a poser though all fascists opposers. Did you go on tour with Goblin Forest specifically to murder him? Yeah? Probably? What

do you mean? Probably? That's a very specific question about a very specific intention. I mean, I guess I had been thinking about killing him for a while. It was premeditated, and it wasn't you know, No, I don't know, because I've never killed anyone. 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 has 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, Orcas 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 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 corornated for real dictator over actual people. So I killed him. The free Orcs split off the or scene, closed ranks, and we've been

at war ever since. Am I safe here? He didn't answer me, at least, he didn't dare 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 larbers had

come up with. 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 reenactor or fantasy game villain, but it wasn't an act. About thirty adults and eight kids lived there, running the age Gamut from six months to seventy eight years. They told me their names and pronouns.

About a third told me she a third heat in the third day. Many of them were white or past as such, but a significant minority were black. Nourenda 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 specif typically white phenomenon. No One, no one decent, likes looking around their community or scene and seeing only white faces smiling back. After

everyone introduced themselves, immediately forgot all their names. There are only so many fantasy names like Lazarre and Demlin that you can hear before they all just sound the same. Noriinda and Fenrik flanked me as we walked through a gate in the wall into the village. It's strange to say village in America. We don't really have villages here,

But in some ways Graymorrow 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 in regular cars, and traditional American log cabins, many 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 much. On the other hand, it was filthy. Everyone was filthy. I'm kind of obsessed with the post civilization movement, so I 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. 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. Golfing

Ball or you're not, Fenrick asked, I am. Golf Ball doesn't live here. I waited for her to elaborate. Golfing Ball lives in the forest with the rest of his band. He's on his way. 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 another kid with a wooden sword. Fendrick and Narindo were on edge. Something was about to happen. Tell

me about your new band, Ulsare. What does the name mean? Alsyrith is the dark speech word for the phase of the moon on the last night before the new moon, the last sliver of light. Ulsareth is a holy day, a day of self reflection. Our band's music attempts to capture that spirit of self reflection. On Alcyreth, we listened to our naysayer and think about ourselves and our community your naysayer. Free Orchish 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 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 naysayer. That person spends the month picking apart group structures, observing what's happening, being critical and Alsareth, we fast and listen to the naysayer. They don't offer solutions necessarily, but instead bring our problems to light. Does that work surprisingly well, except about a third of the naysayers end up leaving after their month. Some go to other villages, some good to live in the forest, like Narinda Alsareth singer did, but most leave the woods. As we put it, most

go back to civilization. That's why Noarinda's name sound of familiar when she didn't she introduced herself. To be honest, I saw your name list in the liner notes and didn't pay much attention to the rest. That's an argument for me to take my name off our next release, 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? I told you we're at war? Yeah, we're losing that war.

He took a deep breath, trying to keep himself calm. He didn't strike me as a man who is afraid to cry, but he was clearly trying to keep his composure. 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 alsirath. Why are you losing? Why are you going to die? It's not a question of military efficacy, or of bravery or

strength or any of that ship. It's just a question of numbers or seen society. As a military society, every member fights. As far as we can tell, they've got fifteen hundred warriors, We've got five hundred, so use guerrilla tactics. Golfing Bull shook his head. 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 orseeen 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 that an interview I want to be remembered. I want the free Orcs of Cascadia to be remembered. I put my name on the liner notes 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. 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 gonna 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 onto your honor more firmly than your life is 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, they'll come in here with spears, right and you'll fight them off with other spears. It's there are fucking Nazis everywhere. If you don't give a shit about going to jail or dying, then fucking shoot the

Nazis were trying to kill you. You don't understand, You're fucking right, I don't, if I'm being honest. Most of the time I was waiting, I spent flirting with Norenda and avoiding talking to Fenrick. Horenda 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 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 bladder, 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 not inconsiderable amount of time trying to decide if that was hypocritical and or bad ops sec. Eventually I gave up, as 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

of town and through a smaller gait. 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. 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 gave 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 kind of shift I live for. If I'm being honest, I love my stupid, fucking weird job 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 Nearinda. 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 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, golfing bull. 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 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. The basic problem with your scene is that they're interpreting your code of honor to mean might makes right. Yeah. Yes. By facing them in open battle, nobly dying or whatever your goddamn planet is, you're just letting them make my right. You're letting their superior numbers dictate what your cultures to look like. It's like majority voting, but even dumber because more people die. I expected him to double down on

his position. Most men would. What do you suggest instead, funk? I don't know. Don't be here when they attack, Go somewhere else, stay on the move, build your strength. Oh ship, That's what Rick Green was doing, wasn't it. Huh Goblin forest singing in English, a stupid name like Rick Green. All That ship was designed to make Goblin metal more palatable to the masses, to get fans, to get recruits

for his stupid, fucking fashy goals. Yep, do that. I mean, don't become fascists, or change your name, or make your music where everyone knows Goblin Forest and have shipped on Krimpazol. Just don't be obscure for the sake of being obscure. Fucking advertise you have a decent thing going here. People abandoning mainstream society left and right, no coal 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 better. Yet, make it so they don't even want to funk with you because they know they lose. I don't know whether that would work. Yeah, but dying doesn't work either. The Earth 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? 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. What would that look like? God damn due all Orcish 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 free Orkish men, I would hope know how to listen. Guns break the spell and the spell you're casting here'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 seen camps other people have access to, say dock singe.

How many recruits are the or Sine gonna get if every time some want to be forest Nazi dude joins, someone tells his mother what they're about for access to the media, How many recruits are going to join if everyone knows the or scene or posers putting out substandard water down goblin metal just to try and lure an impressionable military age men to fight their holy war. You'll write those stories. I'm not gonna write you any propaganda, but sure I'll tell the truth. How do we get allies,

but at another single, maybe a full length. The gray fog of a ruined forest was the best ship of hurtin years. You're redefining folk music, just like you redefined metal without ship 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. Not see a hunting horn cut through the fog and through our conversation, and my subject's face fell into despair for a half

second before determination took over. What's that? Interviews over? And I thought there would be more time another day. At least we have to get you out of here. Turns out Fenric had taken us on a purposefully circatuitous route into the woods. It wasn't a quarter of a mile straight downhill before golf and bowl and I reached the box truck at the back entrance to Graymorrow. Norinda and Fenrick stood there talking with a kid, maybe fifteen, who

was out of breath. She was dressed in scraps of fur and leathern cloth, like you might imagine a medieval beggar. It wasn't until I noticed all the 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. Fenrick asked, exactly thirty, ten with pikes, ten with tower, shields and swords, five archers, two scouts to command, one non combatant. I'd guess a surgeon,

but I couldn't promise how far away I asked. Fenrick glared at me for interrupting. Five miles Nourenda 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 uphill because she was too stubborn to use a walkie talkie or a cell phone. We should evacuate everyone. Gulf and Bull said what Fendrick asked. We've got walls and almost even numbers. 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. It didn't though I'm a good journalist. This isn't the place for us to debate this, Nourenda said, and all four of them walked through the gate and left me standing by the truck. That was why the gardens were untended, and with 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 Nila him as the dominant effect of society today, with climate change destroying communities and bioregions all over the map, with the economic crisis deepening and 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 cosplaying fascist was about to stick a sword between Noranda's ribs. Biole rows in my throat. I don't know I believe in love at first sight or any of that ship, 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 Norinda's continued existence. Most of those solutions involved 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. I put the odds in 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, people came out through the gate and loaded bags and baskets on to the back of the truck. Noriinda returned with a simple backpack sewn from raw hide. Most of her belongings were probably wherever she engulfen Bule and the rest of Allsareth lived. She handed me my phone, I didn't have service. I wondered whether or not she engulfen Bule were dating. It wasn't relevant to the present moment exactly, but my 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 Golfen Bull, Randa said, but whatever it was worked. He just convinced everyone to evacuate. Everyone, I asked, shocked, everyone except him and Fenric and Gorn. Which one's Gorn, the man who brought us tea? Do you remember him? He's old a ship, though, I said, because I have no in manners or common sense. Yeah,

he's old as ship. 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 ship before orc culture 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. 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 vet tech. I just nodded. I was too biased to offer objective life advice. Oh, and golf and Bull 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 I piled into the back of the box truck with are to other people, many of them in tears, many of them in shock, and we drove away from Graymorrow. None of the three free Orc survived the battle. Goren died and paled on a spear while holding the gate.

Fedric was killed by an arrow that struck her in the back of the neck as she and Golfing Bull ran golf and Bull, 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 had 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 the light coming in through a crack in the steel wall, I read Golfing Bull's note. 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

transman saying he's a man and meaning it. Gender is a social construct that goes back as far as I understand, to the beginning of humanity. There has 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 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 Also, I fell in love with the world. Everyone finds meaning in different ways. I found meaning by believing in some ship we made up and letting that be real. I

was born Jason Sanchez. I died gulfing Bull. I'm not sorry. That was great. That was so fun. I mean, not my narration, the story. The story, not my narration. Mm hmm. The second we finished, we all just got that little smirk on her face. Think that was delightful. Yeah, Margaret, you're the best. Yeah. I mean, if I were going

to be an orc, there would be rifles but problems. 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. No, I mean I liked that. I like 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 also think some of these things are that you're doing or dumb or I don't understand why you do it, or this 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 is kind of Yeah, I don't know. Somebody go, somebody go make an work village. Yeah, yeah,

I'll go out there, I'll report on it. We'll go. It'll be fine. Don't take the band name all sort though I already stole that. There's a number of dope band names in here. All right, people should make orc folk. I'd be really excited to hear make orc folk abandon civilization to live as fantasy creatures. Um, fight fascists, all that good stuff. Yeah, Margaret, is there anything you'd like to plug? Well? I do have a new book out, or a reprint of an older book called A Country

Ghost that is a more directly utopian book. It's out from a K Press, came out last month, and um, 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 called Strangers and a 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. What's the patreon patreon dot com slash Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness? Because why would I pick short names for things? Don't do that? Yeah, and we have we have a live show coming up right, Robert h. That doesn't sound like us. It's a virtual live show of for Behind the Bastard to put our friend prop that's on Thursday February allegedly moment House dot com slash Behind the Bastards. I can't confirm or deny that. Okay,

you gotta a lawyer on here before you can sure. Yeah, let's get Moira on the horn and where come on the horn and tell us if we're actually doing this thing that show? Yeah? Are we also? Are we alive? That's another question? How I text here that most days? Um? All right, well, thank you Margaret, and thank you all for tuning in in the first year of the rest of the next year. It could happen here as a

production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.