As we approached the village I asked Shnack if the village was using their rather substantial defences regularly, she replied, "No, but due to the recent wars with the humans a lot of the males have been drafted into armies and too many don't return." she said with a far away look, "the walls are there because the village is probably 70% Orcess', which means it's pretty vulnerable compared to most other Orc villages. Which means that this village is very unique. I know you don't remember anything so if you ever go to another Orc settlement, don't expect it to be the same."
"What makes it unique compared to the other Orc settlements?" I inquired
"Well, for starters I think this is the only settlement with a female chief, also most male Orcs have at least 2 wives, if you have 1 or less, you are considered weird. And the rest of it is that because there are just less men but shit still needs to get done, there are a lot more female hunters, fighters, you name the more typical male role, there's probably a woman doing it in this village."
"Interesting, does it cause any friction with the remaining 30% of males that are still around?"
"Yeah, but that's mostly related to the strict hierarchy that is normally present in our culture, and for the most part, men dominate that hierarchy in terms of settlement leadership, so there have been some issues with people disrespecting the Chief, but they quickly change their behaviour."
"So anyway, quickly show me to the village of beautiful Orcess' that want to become my wife so that we can take one back to our hut." I jested. But Shnack hadn't been looking and didn't see the smile on my face, she turned around with a face of thunder. She quickly swung her arm wide and it was aimed at my face, I leant to the side so it was only a glancing blow but then I grabbed her hands so she couldn't repeat the action. "It was a joke, I was joking, you weren't looking but if you saw my face you would have seen it was a joke."
She was squirming in my grip trying to get her hands free but as she listened to me and saw my look of distress at her response, she started calming down, once I deemed her not aggressive, I slowly let her hands go out of my grip. She then slowly punched me in the arm and then came in and hugged me and started explaining this seemingly out of nowhere act of violence.
"Sorry I just extremely over reacted, I know this is all my fault but after you said that I thought you were just gonna replace me with a younger, more beautiful Orcess. It's only been a day that you've been conscious, but I've got a lot of future plans in my head and they all seemingly just crumbled to dust, but it was just my insecurity. I'm sorry."
"We'll talk about this more when we get back, but I think if we just put it behind us for now, we should be good." I declared, not really wanting to talk about it just before my first time in the village.
As we entered the village, the guard at the gate looked at me very suspiciously, apparently they don't get many newcomers in this area, but he still allowed me in. I thought to myself that Shnack seemed to have some pull with the guards because even though they looked like they really didn't want to let me in, they didn't say a word because of Shnack.
As we entered the village, I followed Shnack along the main road, there were all kinds of things being sold along the main road and most things didn't have much variety, due to it being a village and all. For the most part there was only one shop for each profession. For example, there was only one blacksmith shop in the city, only one tailor that sold clothes. Most traders only had specific types of wares, one would specialise in trinkets and the other in fruits, as an example.
As I was looking all over taking in all the sights to see, Shnack went over what she wanted to do, "first we were going to sell our meat to the butcher while it was still fresh. Then I'd like you to meet some of my friends that live here, sound good?"
I nodded in agreement.
We walked further into the centre of the village and then we turned off the road, went left, right, then down an alleyway and another right. I had no idea where we were anymore and I was all turned around.
Then I spotted where we going with, the butcher stood there with a variety of cuts of meat and a similarly impressive array of knives that seemed to be used to cut the pieces of eat. For somewhere off the beaten path, it was a rather substantial shop.
Seeing as there was nobody up at the counter, she knocked loudly on the door adjacent to the shop front.
Behind the door, I could hear a fair few decibels of movement, and during that time, I realised that this would be the first person other than Shnack that I would be meeting, and I was actually feeling a bit nervous, I wiped my brow of a tad of perspiration. Made sure nothing about was completely off to try and make a good first impression.
The door opened and a very large Orc came out, not large in terms of height, he was in fact only average Orc height, but was by far the widest Orc I had seen in the short time I had been walking through the village.
Shnack went up and embrace this wide Orc, "Kogan, nice to see you, it's been too long. I've got some especially nice cuts for you, I've got some lion and sirloin venison for you that I'm sure you're gonna love, found on a buck this morning."
"Ohhhh it has been too long Shnack, I was just about to open but now I'm gonna have to rearrange everything, good thing you made it here as fast as you did." Then gesturing to me "who's the friend."
"This... this is my hubby, we only announced it recently." She ended their embrace and came back to me to hold my hand.
Kogan then seemed to appraise me in a way he hadn't been about 10 seconds ago.
He then walked up to me, we grasped forearms. He gave an extra squeeze to try and gauge something about me, I just matched the strength then gave a short squeeze at the end to signify I could squeeze harder but there was no need.
And that was how I met Kogan.