The Bax Crusades

Overview
Since the early periods of Spauria's history, the mingling of humans and orc-kind has been far from unheard of. Willingly or otherwise, tusked children with genetics from both races were occasionally born during the Pre-Spaurian and Early Spaurian Ages, when travelers were abducted by orc raiders, and human settlements sometimes interacted with less brutal Trollspine tribes to trade resources and information. The mingling of the two humanoid nations would at first only yield the occasional shunned and abhorred "monster child," but would eventually give rise to the minority culture of persons known as half-orcs.

Half-orcs, in most ways, are very similar to humans, but carry many orcish features. The most common include tusks, colored skin, increased muscle mass, heightened constitution and others. Unfortunately, mental issues often abound in the more heavily orcish offspring, including learning disabilities, impaired judgement, and a heightened emotional state. Despite these disabilities being quite treatable in most cases, the monstrous nature of their ancestors combined with their wanting mental state has given Spaurian's reason to doubt the humanity of half-orcs, and sometimes treat them more as beasts than men.

During the First Age, the half-orc population was made up of forgettable few, which were commonly driven from major settlements, or abused and used for cheap labor therein. However, as the centuries passed and the number of half-orcs grew, Spaurian's were forced to recognize half-orcs as a sub-race minority of the empire. Though humans no longer mingled with orcs in the same capacity that they had during Spauria's infant stages, half-orcs now lived and bred with one another, growing in numbers as a race of people that now could not be ignored.

The Bax Crusades
Half-orcs had long been mistreated by Spauria and the "pure races" of Glaun Encaru. The public viewed half-orcs as illiterate powder-kegs, waiting to go off and hurt someone who got them angry. Often subjugated to poor living conditions, a lack of food, and little to no educational opportunities, half-orcs relied on manual labor to get by, usually in secluded and less prestigious lines of work. This continued for many years, until the beginning of the Bax Crusades.

The Crusades began in IA 285 with Bax Walter, a half-orc owned by an abusive logger in a small southern town outside the Trollspine regions. When the woodworker suddenly passed away, his wife insisted that Bax and the other half-orc workers go free, but when they did, they quickly realized that the unforgiving empire offered them few other places to go. Thus, Bax and his brothers began a peaceful crusade by marching across Southern Spauria, working for free and relying only on the scraps and game they could find along their journeys and visits. This effort to prove the humanity and good nature of the half-orc race harbored much attention, but was far from successful. Southerners who caught onto Bax's "game" refused to do service with the merry men when they marched into town, and the half-orcs were often driven out of cities by angry citizens.

The crusader known as Bax, along with his brothers and their revolution, died a year after beginning their march through the south, after being driven into the wilderness with no food and weakened constitution. However, their story would not be forgotten over the ages. Half-orc minorities and free-thinking Spaurian's would rise up against the empire's racial prejudice in the centuries to come, reigniting Bax's fire every few decades, and bringing the issue of half-orc citizenship into the public agenda.

These, however, were not the Bax Crusades as they are referred to in modern times. The Crusade itself began in IA 125, when pro half-orc movements unified under Bax's name, pushing strongly for a cultural change. Such a revolution was something that the empire could not ignore, and serious debates concerning the issue arose within both the public and the government itself, though half-orc citizenship was often met with heated opposition.

The Tusk Act
Finally, after incessant debate and radical action from both the pro and anti half-orc sides, the Spaurian government passed the Tusk Act in IIA 144, decreeing that half-orcs would hold the same status as Spaurian citizens of the pure races. This meant that acts of violence, mistreatment or discrimination against half-orcs could be tried as if the victim was human, and that schools, businesses and other agencies were expected to treat them as such.

The Tusk Act was seen by many as a momentous step forward on the path of good, but overall was met with fierce and prejudiced opposition. It would take nearly a decade for the Tusk Act to fully set into Spaurian culture, and even then, harsh discrimination and hate against half-orcs would continue in many places. Though the Tusk Act gave half-orcs unhindered rights as citizens of the empire, it did little to change the hearts of the more calloused Spaurian people, who still saw them as half-breed monstrosities. Centuries of prejudice and racism could not be so easily undone by law.