The following story is extremely new territory for me in regards to writing style. Lemme know if it works, or if it’s just confusing.
—-
Hello. I am just a simple orc.
I have a farm. I live in a hut. It is made of rock and wood. I made it myself. I got the stone from Grimmsh friend of mine who runs a… a quu… a place where he farm stone. I traded him meat and wood for stone. The wood I got myself. Cut down some trees.
I did not fight in wars. I heard about wars. Orcs goes away, does some fighting somewhere, orcs comes back. I do not know why no one tells me why. I am just a simple orc you see.
I own an axe I use to cut trees. Sometimes snake or scorpid gets close to my boars and I need to kill it. So I hit snake or scorpid with axe and sometimes they go away. Sometimes they do not but they stop moving so I can make stew.
I do not know what night elf is. Maybe is because I sleep at night. My friend Hyggar tells me orcs fight night elfs because night elfs stand on wood and orcs needs wood to make hut. I do not know why night elfs do not share wood. Do they not need stone?
I do not know what draenei is. I heard about them. We used to be neighbours long ago. Then orcs fought them because demons made them. I was not born on Draenor I do not know draenei. I was born here in Durotar on this farm. Old hut was destroyed a while ago. I made new one.
I know Tauren. Have met a few. They are tall. They like to talk slow which is good because I like to talk slow too. No point in talking fast then you run out of things to say.
Orcs fight humans a lot. I do not know why. There once were humans across the gorge from my farm that wore green and fought orcs. They were mean and tried to kill orcs. But we killed them first and now we are okay and they are not.
Other humans do not wear green so I do not know why they fight us. Maybe the dwarfs and gnomes make them fight us. They are small and shoot guns. A dwarf came to my farm once. He waved his arms and shot one of my boars so I hit him with my axe and he stopped moving but I do not know how to make stew from dwarf.
I am told I am a brave warrior of the new Horde. I am just a simple orc. I do not know what a Horde is. My friend Tozzijan is a troll and was a wizard once. He told me Horde means lots. There is only one me so I do not know how I am a Horde. The big H is important.
I do not brave warrior even though I am told I do. I farm. I have boars and a hut and an axe. My son does brave warrior though. He has an axe too but it is much bigger than mine. He says he goes to fight dead things really far north. His name is Raxx. I am proud of him.
I do not know how he fights things that are dead already. He calls them Scourge and they are evil. The big S is important too. He fights them and sends me letters that I cannot read but that is okay because my daughter Kirta can. Kirta is very smart. I am proud of her.
I do not know when Raxx is coming home. His last letter was very different. It was sealed and had very neat writing. Kirta cried when she read it. She told me it was very sad because Raxx would not come home for a while.
But that is okay. I have a farm. When Raxx comes home I will make him stew. I can not send him stew because Kirta tells me he is very far away and stew would be cold when it gets to him. Cold stew is evil and Raxx fights evil and I do not want my son fighting my stew.
I need to go get some wood now before the sun goes down. I tell Kirta this but it is a lie. Every night I visit your grave. You died a while ago when the hut was destroyed. But that is okay because I love you and I made a new hut and I am making sure our children have good lives.
I sit on the ground and I touch the stone I put there to mark your grave. I feel very sad when I do this. I do not know why it is a very good stone. It is warm when I touch it.
I wish you were still here. You were warm to touch too. But that is okay because someday I will die too and we can be together again.
I have to go now. Kirta is wondering where I am with firewood.
Preposterous Pretentious Prattle 
Brilliantly written, great insight into the peon life. Love it!
great.. i am almost speechless…
and i think there is a small tear in my right eye..
wow…
Perfectly written. You didn’t overuse certain terms (using the same word too many times in a paragraph is a huge problem with fanfic authors, I think) except where it would fit the character. The Peon’s thought pattern was nice and simple, as a peon should be. His preoccupation with wood and stone and food, the basics of his life, was perfectly done. He’s not the brightest but not an all out fully blown joke (as peons in the game tend to be). I wasn’t expecting the details about his family at all, or the ending.. there may have been a tear in my eye.
Well done, I enjoyed reading this immensely!
Awesome. Love the ending – didn’t see it coming at all but makes the whole thing very poignant.
It’s nice as a short story, but I can’t see a style like this lasting much longer than that. Still, I really liked it 🙂
Yeah, the peon style is somewhat limited to, well, peons.
Like! Really did Like! (always felt bad for slapping the peons around in quests sigh)
This was great. And I agree with the previous commenters. Thanks!
Honestly- I’m not a fan of it. While reading it, I felt like your eloquence came through his speech patterns. Granted, I’ve always felt that writing “down” is extremely difficult due to the fact that if you write like an unintelligent person truly thinks, it becomes difficult to understand, therefore we make it intelligent for comprehension thus ruining the point of the writing in the first place.
Like I said, I have a bias against this sort of writing style and have not enjoyed works where we are given an insight into a being of “lesser intelligence.” The way around this is to instead have those who are smarter than the person or the narrator explain the simpleton (See: Of Mice and Men).
Anyway, figured you’d enjoy a dichotomy of opinions. Keep up the great work, your pen is fantastic!
Yeah. Pretty much this is what I was afraid was going to happen. Hence the forward that this is awfully new territory!
Though the intention never was to portray the guy as stupid or unintelligent, just simple and uneducated. Just because one’s occupation in life is raising boars doesn’t mean one is an idiot.
Still, I doubt I’ll be returning to the “talking down” format for a very long time, or ever, due to precisely these reasons.
The big H is important.
Haha, this was great.
But is he that kind of orc?
I love the branching into the style of starting the sentences with a personal pronoun – usually, it would make it sound like a list, but in this case, I think it’s one of my favorite things you’ve done.
Damn you, Rip, stop making me cry!
No, actually, don’t stop. Just remind me not to read these at work. :p
Wow! Very well done. I’m not generally a fan of “writing down” as somone above mentioned, but you did it very well.
One possible thing to look at (if you care to)
– when you write a twist or surprise like that, make sure that the story makes sense once you add that info back in.
Since we know at the end that Peon is talking to his dead wife, and that he does so every night, some of what he says really doesn’t make sense, unless he thinks his wife is more of a dullard than he is. (he tells her stuff she would have known, or would have heard last night)
So, possibly make it a long, rarely occuring pilgrimage, or maybe make the news more “topical” in that it just happened:
“Kirta read me today’s letter, Raxx won’t be coming home for a while.” I need to learn to read.
Maybe not.”
Anyhow, I think it was a VERY well done story. :)))
The twist itself was poorly written in my opinion. I’m not especially proud of it. It worked, yeah, but it could have been way better.
Oh well! That’s why I do these things. Make mistakes, get better, then it sucks less next time.
Ah, I would say it FAR from sucked. I was one of those with a tear in my eye as I read it.
VERY well done.
I was just being picky and noting a small thing that could be improved.
I was expecting a Don’t Stop Believing pun.
JUST A SMALL TOWN ORC
It’s both simple and profound at the same time, I don’t know if that was intentional. The ending was quite the curveball, all in all very enjoyable.
Bravo, Rip, that was marvelously done.
DWARF SOUP
(Someone had to say it, and everyone else appears to either be wimping out with the crying thing or preoccupied with actual critique. Also, I can’t do my usual thing of picking over your grammar because everyone else says my critique for me, so.)
you made me cry. heavy feeling in my chest, stuffy ears kind of cry.
I didn’t expect that ending, which is one of the most amazing things an author can accomplish IMO.
Well… I liked it. I like reading anything though.
But curse you for bringing a tear to my eye. -_-
Zug Zug, simple Orc. ; ;
(also DORF SOUP!)
I liked this one.