Talk:Oscray

So I only just recently began collecting and reading material for the Living Jungle campaign... and I have some opinions about the oscray and their origins. I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to engage me on this, but... here's my theory: I do not believe the oscray are scro.

It is true that the name (which is just "Scro" in pig latin) and recycled artwork suggest a connection. But beyond that, nothing else fits. The scro we know in the Spelljammer setting were an enlightened breed of orc: motivated by revenge to study and refine themselves. Famously, they were admonished by Dukagsh to learn the Elven tongue, so that, when they returned to take their vengeance, they "can tell their victims, in their own tongue, who is doing this to them." Scro society is an inherently literate society; advanced by any metric that we might use to compare fictional D&D cultures with one another. But when we meet the oscray in Malatra, we are told that they are mostly illiterate – even their wizards can't read or write. (I understand why this is so; they didn't want to break the balance of the pre-literate, largely stone-age Malatra campaign by introducing a powerful alien race that has the ability to read, but still)

Second, they are actually very poorly equipped for an advanced spacefaring race, possessing weapons and armor of brass rather than iron and steel. This seems really, incredibly incongruous with the scro race, who I'm sure had knowledge of advanced metalwork, and part of their standard kit included things like a suit of specially-made spiked studded leather armor, and starwheel pistols!

Lastly, several aspects of oscray culture are just... off, if we're assuming they're scro. There is no mention of a toregkh in the oscray monstrous entry. The toregkh is a necklace of trophy teeth that scro keep, bearing a tooth from each of a warrior's kills. There is also no mention of Dukagsh – the scro race's founder, who receives worship and is deified by scro priests. Instead, the oscray seem to worship a deity named "Minardin." Their alignment tendencies also appear to skew toward Neutral and Good, rather than Evil, which doesn't jive at all.

My personal theory is that the oscray are similar to scro, but not the same. Perhaps they share a common origin story: descended from spacefaring orcs who fought in the first Unhuman War, who fled into the stars after their defeat at the hands of the elves. While the scro spent the intervening centuries bettering themselves and being driven by revenge, maybe the oscray chose a different path. They settled down, on an isolated world somewhere, gradually shifted away from their evil tendencies and took up worship of their god. Discovered brass and made lots of brass chain mail for everybody! And then the scro found them, pressed them into service at the start of the second Unhuman War... and there were, of course, dissenters, some of whom fled aboard a ship and found themselves marooned in Malatra.

I'd be curious to hear the thoughts of anyone else who knows a thing or two about the Living Jungle... Fred Druidson (talk) 01:05, 23 January 2023 (UTC)


 * Oh yes. You are correct, they are likely Scro but Living Jungle had rights issue so they coudl not use names as they are - aka Saurials. So they renamed them. But unless stated officially, we can assume they are close relatives. Hopefully, it will be one day resolved.
 * P.S. if you have some adventures that are among the "lost ones" I would love to hel you log them and index them for the wiki.- Artyom.pavlov (talk) 01:21, 23 January 2023 (UTC)