Looking for community
Though orks are the most populous metahuman race, society at large has made less effort to accept and acknowledge them than it has elves and dwarves. They have had to fight—sometimes literally—for everything they’ve gained and the struggle has taken a toll on the beleagured group.
Seattle’s ork population largely retreated to the ancient tunnels and passages which spiderweb beneath the city, following the infamous Night of Rage in 2039. Though it further separated them from society as a whole, it allowed them to create a living and breathing community all their own. In short order the Ork Underground was born.
After goblinizing in high school, Cecil saw first-hand the ostracization and derision his fellow orks faced, and how easily humans—including those with whom he had been friends for years—pushed him aside. Sighing heavily, he turned his back on the human-dominated world and set his sights beneath the streets.
Naturally charismatic, which tended to catch people off-guard, Cecil started brokering deals to ensure goods and services continued to flow into the Underground, undertaking more than a few covert operations to “reappropriate” stockpiles of medicine, food, and other homestuffs. Not only skilled at negotiation, Cecil developed a steady hand behind the wheel, and provided many much-needed getaways in his years serving the greater ork population.
Even marginalized groups, however, aren’t immune to prejudice and bias themselves. As the second Matrix Crash rocked the world—both above and below the surface—Cecil started to see the cracks in the “unified front” of the Underground. He learned about how dwarves had been all but forcibly ejected from the community in the past, and how those orks and trolls who didn’t toe the party line, as it were, were ostracized—either into conformity or removal.
Still doing his part to help his fellow societal outcasts, he found himself ultimately doubting that the Underground was ultimately treating people more fairly than the surface world. He started plying his talents among the larger Seattle shadow community, gradually moving farther and farther from his adopted home.
The team’s betrayal at Baker’s hands—and their subsequent forced exile from Seattle—cut Cecil to the core, reigniting the feelings of loss and lack of community. While he may be smiles and professionalism on the job, in those quiet moments between gigs the backstabbing’s wound still festers.