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This is not a folktale, this is the truth.
The first orc to free herself has a name that’s been lost to time—or the chaos of battle or, more likely, to her death. She was not the strongest, nor the fastest, nor, particularly, the smartest. But one day, she wondered, simply, “Why?”
She thought of the elves, cradled in the warm bosom of their goddess. An eternity full of abundance and life, devoid of the suffering and misery steeped inseparably into her own, into the lives of all orcs. What luck, she must have thought, to be so sheltered and to want for nothing. What luck must we have, then, to be so eternally damned?
As one might, she brought her musings to the village elder. The elder thought greatly on this, and longly, and eventually the elder, too, wondered, “Why?” It spread from there, a wildfire of wondering—“Why?” “Why?” “Why?” “Why?” “Why?”—until it had spread far enough, wild enough, to bring even the most disparate and distant of the orcish tribes into conversation with the rest. All of them, everywhere, all of them were wondering it now. They were blameless, helpless as babes in squall at the dawn of creation; what could they possibly have done, to deserve this? What could they possibly have done, to prevent this? “Nothing”, “Nothing”, “NOTHING!” it was decided, realized, cried. As blameless as they had been helpless and as helpless as they had been blameless.
But: they were not helpless anymore.
Slowly, not as one, in starts and stops, with dissenters and naysayers and opposition abound, they began to say, “No longer.”
“No longer” “No longer” “No longer”, “No. Longer.”
No longer would the orcs flail, like helpless things, like dying things under the attention of their god, as glaring and uncaring as consideration from the sun. They knew there was more, out there—again, look again, look again to the elves and their luck. There would be better days, brighter days, ahead of them. This they knew, not through the workings or machinations of a god, but by the surety of their mortal souls.