Magic is woven into ordinary Orcish life. Across the kingdom, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of spells are taught in homes, workshops, fields, schools, temples, and guilds. This is not a complete spellbook. It is a selection of civilian spells a young Orc might plausibly have learned before enlisting or being drafted into the army.
Your character has learned two of these from relatives, teachers, employers, or neighbors. Consider who taught you each spell and what that reveals about your upbringing. These are civilian skills, not military training; some may nevertheless prove useful during the retreat.
All spells listed here require mana. Unless stated otherwise, a spell requires an action to cast, and a creature must be willing if a spell describes it as such.
Agriculture and animal husbandry
Furrow Friend • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Loosens and turns ordinary soil in a 10-foot square to a depth of 8 inches. Does not remove rock or roots.
Root’s Invitation • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 24 hours
Advances a 10-foot-square patch of healthy growing plants by up to one week of ordinary growth over the next day; adequate light, water, and nutrients are still required. An individual plant will only respond to this spell once a week.
Blight Watch • 2 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: Instantaneous
Identifies visibly healthy versus diseased or infested plants in range; reveals affected patches, not the exact cause.
Shepherd’s Call • 2 mana • Range: 300 feet • Duration: 1 minute
Calls familiar domestic animals that can hear the magical summons. They will approach if not compelled into danger.
Gentle Beast • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 10 minutes
Calms one animal not currently attacking; does not charm or override instinctive self-preservation.
Harvest Hand • 4 mana • Range: 10 feet • Duration: 1 minute
Gathers ripe produce from a 10-foot square into an open container; does not harvest unripe crops.
Construction and craftsmanship
Carpenter’s Agreement • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Permanent
Joins two fitted wooden surfaces, each no larger than 1 square foot, as firmly as a sound glued joint; can be broken normally.
Stone’s Memory • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Rejoins pieces of a nonmagical stone object of up to 100 pounds if all major pieces are present; cannot replace missing stone.
True Edge • 2 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Until dulled
Sharpens one ordinary metal cutting edge up to 3 feet long; does not grant a magical attack bonus.
Shape the Clay • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Shapes up to 1 cubic foot of moist, unfired clay into a simple form; does not fire or harden it.
Mason’s Eye • 3 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: 1 minute
Shows the caster major stresses and load paths in one visible structure; grants insight into the safety of a structure but no guarantees.
Medicine and caregiving
Steady Hand • 2 mana • Range: Self • Duration: 1 hour
Suppresses ordinary hand tremor. Gain advantage on all Dexterity checks requiring fine manual precision during the duration; then the spell ends.
Healer’s Inquiry • 2 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Reveals the broad category of the target’s most significant current ailment: injury, infection, noninfectious illness, toxin, magic, none of the above, or unknown. Does not identify a specific cause.
Gentle Sleep • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Up to 1 hour
Helps one willing creature fall asleep in suitable surroundings. Loud noise, pain, or danger can awaken it normally.
Pain’s Respite • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 1 hour
Suppresses ordinary pain in one willing creature. Removes disadvantage on ability checks imposed specifically by pain, but does not restore HP, remove conditions, or prevent injury.
Blood’s Patience • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 1 hour
Stops bleeding from one accessible wound. A creature at 0 HP is stabilized (not healed); further damage ends this protection and may restart death saves.
Sterile Hands • 2 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Sterilizes the caster’s hands and up to six small nonmagical medical instruments; does not sterilize an entire wound or room.
Commerce, administration, and scholarship
Honest Weight • 2 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Determines the mass of one object up to 1,000 pounds within approximately 1 percent.
Ledger’s Friend • 3 mana • Range: 10 feet • Duration: Instantaneous
Accurately performs basic arithmetic on up to 100 clearly written numbers; the caster must specify the operation(s).
Scribe’s Companion • 4 mana • Range: 10 feet • Duration: 5 minutes
Copies up to ten pages of legible nonmagical writing onto supplied blank pages using supplied ink; reproduces errors faithfully. The process takes about five minutes.
Seal of the Sender • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Permanent
Places a distinctive magical signature on a document; a person taught that signature can recognize it by touch.
Tongue’s Courtesy • 4 mana • Range: Self • Duration: 1 hour
Grants fluent use of one language the caster already knows imperfectly; cannot grant an entirely unknown language.
Memory’s Shelf • 3 mana • Range: Self • Duration: 1 minute
Recalls with perfect fidelity a book personally studied within the past month.
Hospitality, entertainment, and domestic trades
Hearth’s Plenty • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 1 hour
Heats a cooking pot of up to 5 gallons evenly without fire; food can still scorch if neglected.
Flavor’s Hand • 2 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Adjusts flavor and seasoning of up to ten servings of food; does not remove poison or add nutrients.
Fresh for Tomorrow • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 7 days
Prevents ordinary spoilage in up to 10 pounds of fresh food; does not reverse existing spoilage.
Music in the Air • 3 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: 10 minutes
Creates simple instrumental accompaniment audible within 30 feet; requires the caster to know the tune.
Perfect Pitch • 2 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Tunes one ordinary musical instrument; tuning can be subsequently lost as per normal for that instrument.
Welcome Home • 4 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: 10 minutes
Tidies and cleans one room no larger than 15 feet square; cannot discard valuables or find hidden objects (but might make a subsequent search for hidden objects easier).
Travel, transportation, and exploration
Traveler’s Bearing • 2 mana • Range: Self • Duration: 1 hour
The caster senses true north continuously; no map or knowledge of destination is granted.
Sure Footing • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 10 minutes
One willing creature gains advantage on ability checks made solely to maintain balance on slippery or uneven ground.
Lighten the Load • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 1 hour
Halves the effective carried weight of up to 50 pounds of nonliving equipment; actual mass and inertia remain unchanged.
Wheelwright’s Blessing • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 8 hours
Reduces ordinary axle and wheel friction in one cart or wagon; cannot repair broken components.
Clear Passage • 4 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: 1 minute
Moves loose brush, pebbles, and debris totaling no more than 100 lbs in weight off a 10-foot length of path; cannot move anchored obstacles or living creatures.
Trail’s Memory • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Reveals whether creatures crossed a 10-foot section of trail in the last 24 hours, with a rough count and direction; no identities.
Social, ceremonial, and religious magic
Ancestor’s Candle • 2 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 24 hours
Lights a small flame that consumes no fuel; provides candlelight and can be extinguished normally.
Vow Remembered • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Permanent
Imprints a token with the memory of a spoken promise made willingly by two participants; does not enforce it.
Shared Song • 3 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: 10 minutes
Up to ten willing creatures hear the same melody clearly over ordinary background noise; does not drown out alarms.
Festival Lights • 4 mana • Range: 60 feet • Duration: 10 minutes
Creates harmless colored lights filling an area up to 30 feet across; lights provide dim illumination.
Parting Gift • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Until used
Stores a ten-second harmless sensory impression in a small object, released once by its holder.
Voice of Welcome • 2 mana • Range: Self • Duration: 10 minutes
Makes the caster’s voice intelligible to attentive listeners within 100 feet despite ordinary crowd noise.
Sanitation and public health
Clean Water • 3 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Makes up to 10 gallons of water safe from ordinary microbes and organic contamination; does not remove dissolved chemicals or magic.
Pest’s Departure • 3 mana • Range: Self (20-foot radius) • Duration: 1 hour
Repels ordinary insects and small vermin; does not affect swarms under magical control.
Rot’s Warning • 2 mana • Range: 10 feet • Duration: Instantaneous
Identifies food or drink spoiled by ordinary microbial processes; does not identify toxins or poisons.
Mining and resource extraction
Ore Sense • 4 mana • Range: Self (30-foot radius) • Duration: 1 minute
Indicates direction of the nearest concentration of a named common metal ore; not its quantity or purity.
Stone’s Warning • 3 mana • Range: Self (15-foot radius) • Duration: 1 minute
Reveals unstable natural rock and hidden fractures nearby; does not predict exactly when a collapse will occur.
Miner’s Breath • 3 mana • Range: Self (30-foot radius) • Duration: Instantaneous
Detects dangerously low oxygen or hazardous concentrations of ordinary gases, but not specific chemicals.
Split the Stone • 5 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Creates a controlled fracture in up to 1 cubic foot of ordinary stone; cannot affect a creature or a worn item.
Firefighting and environmental control
Quench • 3 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: Instantaneous
Extinguishes nonmagical flames within a 5-foot cube; a continuing fuel source may reignite.
Firebreak • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 1 hour
Makes a strip of ordinary vegetation up to 10 feet long and 2 feet wide resistant to ignition, not fireproof.
Rain’s Welcome • 5 mana • Range: Self (30-foot radius) • Duration: 10 minutes
Encourages light rain beneath suitable existing clouds; has no effect under clear skies.
Dry Shelter • 3 mana • Range: 30 feet • Duration: 1 hour
Deflects ordinary rain and snow from a stationary area up to 10 feet across; does not stop wind or projectiles.
Communication and relationships
Voice Carried • 3 mana • Range: 1 mile • Duration: Instantaneous
Sends up to 25 spoken words to one familiar creature; both caster and recipient must be outdoors. The recipient cannot reply through this casting.
Find My Kin • 4 mana • Range: 1 mile • Duration: 1 minute
Senses direction, not distance, to one familiar willing creature in range; fails silently if out of range.
Truth of the Heart • 4 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: Instantaneous
Senses the dominant emotion of a creature: fear, grief, anger, contentment, or another broad feeling; not thoughts. The creature is aware of the spell and what it does.
Memory’s Gift • 5 mana • Range: Touch • Duration: 10 seconds
Shares a single ten-second sensory memory with one willing creature; it is subjective and not proof of accuracy.