On the Constitution and Conduct of Ogres

An Ogre is commonly described as an Aesir enlarged and ill-tempered, a description which has the convenience of requiring no acquaintance with either people. The resemblance deserves investigation: the proportions of the limbs, the broad dental arch and certain features of the skull are sufficiently alike to warrant comparison. They do not establish descent. I have examined skeletons upon which two celebrated authorities founded incompatible genealogies, and found that both gentlemen had omitted the pelvis. My own examinations establish that the Ogre carries considerably more flesh upon a frame whose articulating surfaces are also enlarged. Whether this constitution arose through kinship with the Aesir or through some history we have yet to recover, I do not know.

The most consequential feature of Ogre strength is the weight which accompanies it. A large Ogre can begin moving a loaded wagon which several Humans have failed to stir; once moving, however, his own body requires substantial effort to arrest or turn. At the goods yard in Tarrow I objected to a foreman’s practice of placing Ogre labourers between descending trucks. He assured me that they were exceptionally strong. I agreed, and asked how strength was expected to avail a man whose feet had left the ground. We quarrelled sufficiently loudly to suspend unloading, during which interval an Ogre named Grell demonstrated the proper use of a drag-chain. The company subsequently purchased six. Their report attributed the improvement to managerial vigilance, an anatomical faculty I had failed to detect during my visit.

Their hands require more careful description than the familiar accusation of clumsiness permits. The fingers are thick, and their movements less independent than those of Humans; tasks requiring one finger to flex while its neighbours remain extended are therefore difficult. Sensibility to pressure is excellent. In trials with concealed weights, several Ogre subjects distinguished differences which escaped my Human assistants, though I should want a larger series before pronouncing upon either people generally. Grell could detect an imperfectly seated axle by resting his fingers against the housing while the wheel turned, yet he could not comfortably use the yard’s standard oil-can. I initially took his spillage for haste, and told him so; after attempting to operate the same lever in a padded glove, I had a broader handle fitted and apologised. Gremlin workmanship supplied the alteration. Neither party appeared to require a philosophical account of their co-operation.

The skin is thickest across the shoulders, back and outer surfaces of the limbs, where it affords useful protection against abrasion. It has encouraged a disastrous belief that Ogres are difficult to wound. A penetrating injury reaches vessels and organs which bleed and fail in the usual fashion, while the depth of the tissues may conceal a considerable injury beneath an unimpressive opening. Pain is also imperfectly estimated by observers who expect a Human expression upon an Ogre face. At Tarrow I insisted that a labourer who had become unusually silent should be relieved and examined, against his overseer’s assertion that he was sulking. A broken fragment of packing iron had entered his thigh. His companions had already recognised that something was wrong; the overseer had declined to hear them because they were shouting. Those entrusted with workmen would profit from learning which sounds convey information.

Great bodily mass entails a considerable demand for food, although the tavern estimates of Ogre consumption generally include the bones, crockery and occasional traveller supplied by the narrator’s imagination. Ogres digest a varied diet: the communities I have visited ate grain preparations and roots whenever these were obtainable, with meat taking a larger share during hunting seasons. Their food caches were carefully placed above flood-water, and several contained separate portions reserved under agreements extending into the following season. Hunger plainly increases the danger of a dispute, particularly where many households depend upon uncertain supplies. It cannot explain every violent act, and a well-fed aggressor remains an aggressor. It does explain why comparisons between a provisioned Dwarven township and an Ogre encampment displaced from its winter stores tell us very little about inherited disposition.

Ogre violence is sufficiently frequent and formidable to merit plain treatment. Their mass makes lethal a blow that would merely disable if a Human struck it, and some communities expressly honour retaliation. Yet the variation between communities is considerable, as it is among the Principal Peoples, and any account which omits crowding, scarcity and local expectations has abandoned much of its subject. Two expectations recur widely: a speaker is to be allowed to finish, however loudly he speaks, and another person’s food is not to be touched without leave. I once interrupted an elder’s account of a boundary quarrel to correct his estimate of distance. He waited until I had finished, then required me to hear the account again from its beginning. I deserved the inconvenience. Afterwards we measured the disputed ground together; his estimate proved the better one, since my map omitted a bend in the stream.

The capacity to plan an ambush, maintain a cache or renew a seasonal agreement should already dispose of the notion that Ogre conduct consists of appetites erupting without thought. Their routine dealings with traders furnish further evidence, though trade alone is a poor examination of sapience: I know accomplished scholars whom I would hesitate to send out for coal. Of the Other Sapient Peoples, Ogres have suffered the worst treatment, and the resulting distrust now supplies their mistreaters with an inexhaustible stock of evidence against them. I would have every comparative account distinguish observed conduct from the conditions under which it was obtained. We can state much concerning Ogre strength and bodily construction; we can describe particular customs with reasonable confidence. Our knowledge of their development, longevity and possible relationship to the Aesir remains deficient. Filling those deficiencies will require access to households whose inhabitants have substantial reasons to refuse us, and scholars capable of recognising that refusal as a judgement.