It Could Happen Here - The Free Orcs of Cascadia, Ft. Margaret Killjoy

Episode Date: December 30, 2021

Margaret Killjoy reads her short story, The Free Orcs of Cascadia. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It could happen here to welcome the Evans Robert Podcast.

End of the world. Beginning of new. Yeah. I think we did it right. I think we did it right. I think we did it right. Evans Robert, who's here with us. That would be Killjoy Margaret. And Lichterman Sophie.

I like this. Let's keep it. Lichterman comma Sophie. Killjoy comma Margaret. Margaret. Comma is my middle name. I could also attorneys general you kill joys margaret one of my hobbies is anytime i pluralize something attorneys generally

it um margaret 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. How does it feel to have, like, has your internet sped up? Now that I have the boost, yeah. I'm making the same 5G joke that everybody makes, because it's easier than thinking about the fact that Omicron looks like it's going to be a 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 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. I don't know. How are you doing with the plague? I live completely alone and isolated so yeah well i 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 miss people i dream about interacting with humans 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

yeah it's like a blood pact to hug someone yeah it's like we're going to hug and if we wind up in hell we'll scream at Satan together come what may we will hug 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 revolutionary praxis in kind of every aspect 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. Thanks. You want to introduce this piece? Sure this piece is called the free orcs

of cascadia it was first published in fantasy and science fiction which is the name of a magazine and this one was also really important to me because fantasy and science fiction fnsf was one of the magazines that my my dad had a subscription to yeah they go back a while yeah this was a very um uh i don't know 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 a publicly funded uh bus and roll down to story town speaking of uh taking one's life in one's hands. Welcome.

I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted

Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story's called The Free Orcs of Cascadia.

You all know the first part of the story. The song ended in blood. 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 15,000 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 Golfinbull, the rhythm guitarist for Krimpatool, 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 Krimpatool. No one knew what happened to Krimpatool. Fans deserted the genre in droves, and overnight Goblin Metal went from stadium rock fad to a niche interest of the obscure Canadian orc cults where it originated. It was no longer hip to be green. If Golf and Bowl had been trying to take the Goblin Metal throne, as it were, he failed spectacularly. 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 public statement from the band.

All we've had to work with were rumors. Until now. Earlier this month, orc folk act Alcerith listed Golf and Bowl as the harpist in their liner notes of the single The Gray Fog of a Ruined Forest. Alcerith was as obscure as Crimpetool 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 communique 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, Cascadia. I was invited to be the first person to tell Golf and Bull's story, a Hellfire 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 was what everyone else knew. Three years ago, a bunch of metalheads 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 shit 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 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 to fangs like any serious orcs. 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 U.S. government to hold me accountable for my actions. I will not go to court. So why'd you do it? The old world is dying. My world, the free orcs of Cascadia. We're not go to court. So why'd 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 meant 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 mundanity and the bizarre. I bought a case of coconut water while we waited. Orcs might 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. Hellfire? the cis woman asked. She was tall and severe, with the fierce but almost trustworthy look of a loan shark. Or, as it turned out, an orcish enforcer. That's me, I said.

Fenric, the cis woman offered her name, but no handshake, fist bump, or hug. I nodded. Norinda, 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 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. I'd pretty much expected this. Do you need to use the bathroom, Norinda 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 Krimpatool's lyrics were all in Tolkien's black speech.

Dark speech. Our lyrics were in dark speech. Tolkien referred to the language as black speech. Tolkien meant well, but he was about the most influential, unconsciously racist author of the 20th 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, Tolkien didn't write the language. He only wrote, like, 16 words or something. We wrote the rest. Most of us prefer to translate the name of it as dark speech. Since when are 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 Grey 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 wildflowers growing up between paving stones, or rats hiding in the walls, I guess, depending on who you ask.

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 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 riverbed 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 70 or 80 possible spots to search. Satellite imagery would help, of course. I can't imagine that the Big Six techs or the U.S. government don't know where Gray Morrow is. The residents of Gray Morrow, in general, and Golf and Bowl in particular, had an awful lot

to lose by letting me write this report. Norinda 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 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 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. Fenric looked like a bandit out of Skyrim, complete with iron pauldron 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. Narenda 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 crush on her intensified. She handed me a spiral notebook and 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. Golfinbol 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 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, 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 care deeply about this. That same basic idea, though, can be interpreted two different ways. So there's a split in the orc community? Damn right there's a split. The free orcs are matriarchal and the orcine are patriarchal. Golf and Bull 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 mugwort? The matriarchal way of interpreting those tenets is roughly anarchist. It's anti-authoritarian and 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 orc village. Go 15 miles southeast and you'll find a larger village, Lonely Mountain. There or seen. The patriarchal way of interpreting orcish tenets 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. 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 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'd 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 shits don't work that way. Among the orcine, 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.

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'd 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 are posers. Did you go on tour with Goblin Forest specifically to murder him? Yeah, probably. What do you mean, probably? That was a very specific question about a very specific intention. I mean, I guess. I'd 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 30 other people, we started this whole thing. Goblin Metal, 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, Orcus' culture wasn't even a year old at that point. We weren't split into the Free Orcs and the Orcine 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 coronated, for real, dictator, over actual people. So I killed him. The Free Orcs split off, the Orcene closed ranks, and we've been at war ever since.

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. 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 a fantasy game villain, but it wasn't an act. like either a Viking reenactor or a fantasy game villain. But it wasn't an act. About 30 adults and 8 kids lived there, running the age gamut from 6 months to 78 years. They told me their names and pronouns. About a third told me she, a third he, and a third they. Many of them were white or past as such, but a significant minority were black. Narendra told me later there are 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, no one decent, likes looking around their community or scene and seeing only white faces smiling back. After everyone introduced themselves, I immediately forgot all their names. There are only so many fantasy names like Lazari and Damolin that you can hear before they all just sound the same. Norinda and Fenric flanked me as we walked through a gate and a wall into the village. It's strange to say village in America. We don't really have villages here. But in some ways, Graymarrow isn't the United States. And to be certain, it was a village. Maybe 10 or 15 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 of them were adorned with solar panels. At the end of the street, near the Black Palisade, the beginnings of a stone tower stood 15 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, 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 Golfenbull, are you not? Fenric asked. I am. Golfenbull doesn't live here. I waited for her to elaborate. Golfenbull 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. Fenric and Norinda were on edge. Something was about to happen. Tell me about your new band, Alcerith. What does the name mean? Alcerith is the dark speech word for the phase of the moon on the last night before the new moon, the last sliver of light. Alcerith is a holy day, a day of self-reflection. Our band's music attempts to capture that

spirit of self-reflection. On Alcerith, we listen to our naysayer and think about ourselves and our community. Your naysayer? Free Orcish 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. Does that work? Surprisingly well. 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 go to live in the forest, like Norinda, Alcerith's singer, did. But most leave the woods, as we put it. Most go back to civilization. That's why Norinda's name sounded familiar when she introduced herself. To be honest, I saw your name listed 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 was afraid to cry, but he was clearly trying to keep his composure. There's no way that Grey Morrow would have let you talk to me here if any of us thought that Grey 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 Alcereth. 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 shit. It's just a question of numbers. We're seeing society as a military society. Every member fights. As far as we can tell, they've got 1,500 warriors. We've got 500. So use guerrilla tactics.

Golf and 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 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. 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. 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 holding on to 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 2025, 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. 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 Norinda and avoiding talking to Fenric.

Norinda asked me to keep our conversation off the record. We didn't talk about Grey Mara 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 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 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 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 two. 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 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 kind of shit 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 Orcsong from Norinda. 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. Golf and bowl. I'll leave you two 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 the Orcine is that they're interpreting your code of honor to mean might makes right, yeah? Yes. By facing them in open battle and nobly dying or whatever 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 dumber because more people die. I expected him to double down on his position. Most men would. What do you suggest instead? 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 Forest, 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 fashy goals Yup Do that I mean, don't become fascist or change your name or make your music worse Everyone knows Goblin Forest enough shit on Krimpa Tool

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 Fash in your epic swords and spears viking deathmatch, you win. Better yet, make it so they don't even want to fuck with you because they know they'll lose. I don't know whether that would work. Yeah, but dying doesn't work either. The orc 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 were 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? Goddamn, do 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 orcish men, I would hope, know how to listen. 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 Orcene camps.

Other people have access to, say, doxing. How many recruits are the Orsine going to get if every time some wannabe forest Nazi dude joins, someone tells his mother what they're about? Or access to the media. How many recruits are going to join if everyone knows the Orsine are posers, putting out substandard watered-down goblin metal just to try and lure in impressionable military-aged men to fight their holy war? You'll write those stories?

I'm not going to write you any propaganda, but sure, I'll tell the truth. How do we get allies? Put out another single, maybe a full-length. The Gray Fog of a Ruined Forest was the best shit I've heard 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 threw our conversation and my subject's face fell into despair for a half second before determination took over. What's that?

Interview's over. 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 circuitous route into the woods. It wasn't a quarter of a mile straight downhill before Golf and Bull and I reached the box truck at the back entrance to Gray Morrow. Norinda and Fenric 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 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? Fenric asked. Exactly thirty. Ten with pikes, ten with tower shields and swords, five archers, two scouts, two command, one non-combatant, I'd guess a surgeon, but I couldn't promise. How far away, I asked. Fenric glared at me for interrupting. Five miles, Norinda 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, Golfenbull said. What? Fenric 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 12th 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 Narenda 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 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 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 at Cascadia are dealing with are the literal variety. Some cosplaying fascist was about to stick a sword between Norinda's ribs. Bile 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 Narendra's continued existence. Most of those solutions involved assault rifles, which I didn't have access to. Cars, though, were available. 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 onto the back of the truck. Norinda returned with a simple backpack sewn from rawhide. Most of her belongings were probably wherever she and Golf and Bull and the rest of Alcerith lived. She handed me my phone. I didn't have service. I wondered whether or not she and Golf and Bull were dating. It wasn't relevant to the present moment exactly, but my mind always has a way of thinking about bullshit to avoid thinking about impending doom. Another important affect of our generation.

Distract ourselves with disaster, with petty things like love and jealousy. I don't know what you said to Goff and Bullner and 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 as shit, though, I said, because I have no fucking manners or common sense. 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 our orc culture was even around. He's also a widower three times over. He doesn't give a shit about dying. His last chapbook was called Soon I Will Return to the Earth. Oh. Gorn is going to die today. Golfinbol 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 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. I piled into the back of the box truck with 40 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 Golfenbull ran. Golfenbull, Fenric's lover, turned and stood his ground over her body. I didn't know any of that yet. I found out when Norinda 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 the light coming in through a crack in the steel wall, I read Golf and Bull's note. All my life I didn't give a shit about anything. I liked weed and metal and 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 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 it'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 ulcereth, 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 be real. I was born Jason Sanchez. I died Golfenbull. I'm not sorry. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturn, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That was great. That was so fun.

I mean, not my narration, the story. The story, not my narration. No, your narration was perfect. The second we finished, we all just got that little smirk on our face like, ooh, 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 it's its own 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. other cultures you know places like slab city and different kind of encampments and whatnot that i've spent a lot of time in 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 are dumb or i don't understand why you do it or this isn't like you know but you don't job um yeah 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 fun don't take the band name allsworth though i already stole that

yeah there's a number of dope band names in here. People should make Orkfolk. I'd be really excited to hear it. Make Orkfolk, abandon civilization to live as fantasy creatures, fight fascists, all that good stuff. Yeah margaret is there anything you'd like to plug uh 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 uh it's out from ak press came out last month and um i think that's it that's 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 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 what's the patreon uh patreon. slash strangers in the tangled wilderness. Because why would I pick short names for things? Yeah. Don't do that. Yeah.

And we have, we have a live show coming up, right, Robert? That doesn't sound like us. It's a virtual live show of behind the bastards with our friend prop. That's on Thursday, February 17th.

Allegedly. Moment house.com slash behind the bastards. for Behind the Bastards with our friend Prop that's on Thursday, February 17th. Allegedly. momenthouse.com slash behindthebastards. I can't confirm or deny that. Okay. Yeah, we gotta get a lawyer on here before he can... Sure. Okay. Yeah, let's get Moira on the horn.

Yeah, Moira, come on the horn and tell us if we're actually doing this thing. Are we doing a live show? Yeah, are we? Also, are we alive? That's another question. Oh, I text her that most days. Alright, well, thank you Margaret and thank you all for tuning in in the first

year of the rest of the next year. Yay! Yay! It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Brass. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of riot. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.