Oh I didn’t realize how good the ORC license actually is.

No more “this entire book is Product Identity”. The default is all crunch copylefted (strongly copylefted rather than permissive) and all fluff is reserved (proprietary😰). Licensors can designate some or all of the fluff as copylefted but they can’t proprietarize the crunch!

The Rings of Power‘s answer to Tolkien’s moral dilemma seems to be that the orcs are terrified of becoming thralls of Sauron, and that Sauron can mind-control them to some extent but not completely. I like it; it sort of tracks with how some of the men in his army were forgiven in The Return of the King. Like all attempted answers to the dilemma, including Tolkien’s own attempts, there might be a couple of weirdnesses and contradictions.

In the Trilemma setting it seems to me that orcs are people who ate the ashes of their ancestors. They are are a faction among others, in the game you can trade with them or even be them. (And of course in Zakhara all enlightened beings are equal; orcs are like any other person and can be good or bad or anything in between. It’s a setting with many lines of conflicts but your species usually isn’t one.)