I’ll give the orcs this: they are more than willing to lay aside their numerous and varied beefs with one another if it means killing a human. They’ll be vocal about it too; interrupting one captain’s duel resulted in Gashnak (or something like that) the Eagle-Eyed informing me that first he was going to kill me, then he would kill the fellow he was dueling—or perhaps, on second thought, they would just both kill me together. You know, as a team-building exercise. The other orc in the fight was obviously a bit miffed that Gashnak still thought he could take him, but on the other hand reckoned he would just as well kill a human (or more accurately, a “filthy tark,” because they love throwing that word around and frankly I love that they keep using Tolkein’s made-up words that show up all of once in the books) while he was at it.

Neither captain wound up really “winning” the duel in the strictest sense, because I slaughtered both of them. Gashnak had about five seconds to savor his victory before I set him on fire, then chased his cowardly hide down and away from his friends to dive into his mind, gain some intel, and snap his mind like a brittle twig. I really like snapping the minds of captains like brittle twigs—you get great intel, for starters, and it gives me a feeling like I’m really using the whole buffalo. There are few things more satisfying than grabbing an orc unawares and dominating his tiny brain, sifting through its contents to find out which captain hates which and whether or not anyone has a date to orc prom. I think Plugshit the Incontinent has a crush on Fluktarg the Cowardly!

I’ve gotten almost comically invested in the social lives of orcs, even if they are trying to kill me. There are few things more entertaining than listening to the lowly peons talk shit about their captain, because they saw him turn tail and run away from the Grave Walker. Occasionally, they sound like they’re plotting to do away with their captains—although I’ve not yet seen any orc naturally rise through the ranks by murdering his superior. It might be something that doesn’t happen, although with the way Shadows of Mordor keeps surprising me, I’m not willing to rule it out completely.

By far my favorite thing (at least so far) has been my relationship with Pugh the Disgusting, some random-ass orc captain that was already in power when the game started. He was low-ranking, and showed up unexpectedly while I was busy trying to kill someone else. He’d heard of me, or so he claimed, and killing me would show how powerful he was. But oh, the poor dear, he wasn’t actually all that powerful. In fact, I failed killing my original target, but I sure did have time to kill Pugh. Or more accurately, his own men had time to kill Pugh as I used him for a shield (I might have also shanked him a few times).

Now, I’d heard that sometimes a captain will come back and seek revenge, so I wasn’t terribly surprised when he showed up in the middle of another melee looking slightly uglier than before (and bear in mind, this is an orc whose title was “the Disgusting,” so he wasn’t winning any Miss Mordor competitions to begin with). Now he had a scar splitting his face where an errant axe had hit him (not my fault! Sort of!), and seemed very insistent that having left him for dead was a mistake. This time he proved correct, slightly, as I got distracted whaling on his ass again and fell to the captain I’d set out to kill in the first place, a spear throwing fellow who had, at this point, got the better of me four times. I really, really did not like the spear throwing fellow—and he really, really liked gloating about how many times he’d killed me whenever I took another crack at him.

So Pugh got a little notoriety because he’d at least been in the same general vicinity when I got killed, and thus could be said to have survived an encounter with the Grave Walker. He moved to consolidate power by holding a recruitment drive—a drive which I took it upon myself to visit. Earlier interrogations had informed me that Pugh was quite vulnerable to stealth attacks, so it was a simple matter of climbing the wall around his encampment, distracting him so that he’d wander over, and plunging my knife into his neck from above. At this point, you could say that shit was on, at least in his mind. I had other, more powerful captains to kill, so sending his corpse back down the ranks wasn’t exactly the victory of the century or anything.

Pugh though, he got super angry, and also now he had some real ugly scars on a face that was already covered in pustules and the like. He also invested in better armor and, apparently, was wise to my stealth-killing ways. He and three other captains hunted me down while I was attempting the delicate task of finding some herbs and debating whether or not to look up Gollum for more information on my wraithly companion. I made short work of the rank and file, but the three captains proved more trouble than I’d expected. Discretion at this point was the better part of valor, so I fled the scene—but not too far, just enough to get them to reorganize into hunting parties and spread out again. Then I waited for them to separate and, well, you should know by now. Two captains died, and imagine my surprise and delight when old Pugh showed up again, bellowing angrily that his men all referred to him as the Scarred now (as if that wasn’t an improvement upon being known as the Disgusting. If you ask me, I did him a favor). This time I managed to separate him from his men, and then it was interrogation time. I gained intel on one of the highest-ranking captains (I haven’t tried to go for intel on a Warchief yet, and I’m not sure you actually can until you get to a certain part in the story missions, but I could be completely off base there), left him for dead, moved on.

Now, nobody will follow him. He doesn’t travel with a coterie of hangers-on anymore, he just shows up randomly, tries to kill me, and winds up providing me with more intel. Meanwhile I’ve got heated rivalries to deal with, and high-ranking captains I desperately want to kill, but every time I get involved in a mission, there’s Pugh, bringing up the rear and yelling that his men no longer respect him. I have made it a point to not kill him unless I am able to interrogate him, because the dude is a goldmine. He seems to know everything about everybody, presumably because he keeps lurking around their camps offering to help kill me.

Crazily, the whole back-and-forth I have with Pugh is like, one tiny section of the game. I’ve got rivalries going with other orcs that are so heated I actually curse at them when they show up. Of course, these other captains manage to kill me every so often, which makes me a little more engaged—but none of them have shown the dogged determination that Pugh and his (seemingly) unending quest to kill me, at least once. Maybe I’ll just lay down and die for the guy, give him a victory for a change.

Then again, fuck that guy.