As far as I'm aware, even the second mightiest human psyker (most likely Malcador, if we're excluding the Emperor's own creations like Magnus the Red) has but a fraction of the Emperor's psychic ability. And I'm pretty sure Eldar farseers are also dwarfed by His power, so it's as if the world's tallest man came from a tribe of pygmies.

Interestingly, the Emperor also long predates the Eye of Terror and other realspace manifestations of Chaos that may have favored the birth of psykers.

Is the Emperor just a fluke, or is there some explanation provided for this?

.

It….depends. If the Realm of Chaos origin story remains? The Emperor is a unique being, comprised of the souls of Shamas.

The tale goes the Shaman could once reincarnate after bathing in the powers of the warp. Once the Warp started going wonky, they realised it was too dangerous.

So they all took their own life, met in the warp, and were reborn as a single entity - The Emperor.

If that holds? His power level comes from his gestalt nature. Ahem…the power of one, the power of two….the power of many.

The Emperor also had thousands of years to hone his abilities and gain esoteric knowledge to increase his power.

One of his first campaigns was to take the Tower of Babel to try and master Enuncia, a language that directly channels the power of the Warp (which, personally, I hate as a stupid Dan Abnett insertion).

Given they have never retconned the shaman creation, that's still canon.

He's a walking eldar infinity circuit.

The shamans were all proto hominids with seemingly a pure connection to the warp. They died out by making the emperor, putting that power in a single entity.

The eldar warlock titans have seer choirs and infinity circuits of dead seers and are able to turn back time and manipulate reality. They are pretty insane.

Now imagine that 1000x time quantity of psykers and you get the emperor's soul gestalt.



If however they decide that the best more interesting idea they can go with for the emperor is that he's just a random highlander immortal that was born just because conveniently humanity has a race of gods randomly born amongst them and he became powerful, because Abnett decided that the concept of a perpetual needed to crammed into 40k. Well there's your answer.

On Perpetuals? That may simply be a side effect (intended or not, we don’t know) of the Old One’s Fiddling.

Certainly we’re told the Eldar of old were all Perpetuals, doing the same as the Shaman of Old Earth. And that their gods appear to have had mortal origins, only later achieving godhood.

The mechanism I’m not sure of. Is it celebration turned adulation turned worship that empowers them? Or is it an inevitable consequence of a race designed to be psychic, and sooner or later notably powerful individuals will arise from the general population, in the same way some are born with a greater capacity for learning, greater physical strength limits etc.

Regrowing from atoms is a lot different from just not being able to die of old age or disease.

The shamans shared the reincarnation that the eldar had which doesn't seem very similar to the abnett perpetual.

Reincarnation is that the soul remained cohesive after death and attached to a newly forming life, being reborn to live again. That's got a lot more narrative consequence and long story compared to the wolverine esque growing back your body as it was previously.

The reincarnation concept slots neatly into 40k metaphysics and how most souls dissolve after death while powerful ones retain coherence.

Atom regeneration is just comic book kitsch and it has very little narrative value, except to make your character look cooler

Yeah, Perpetuals as a basic concept aren't terrible. It's the execution that's dumb. Being unable to die of old age, disease, etc and being able to heal from otherwise fatal wounds all seems kind of fine. It's stuff like people being atomised and then getting better that is monumentally stupid.

It kind of fits though if you consider living beings in the 40K setting to be living in two realms at once. The Physical and the Chaos.

Whilst for the most part you're in one or the other its clear that beings can exist in both at once.

Eg Chaos demons from the big four chaos Gods are simply splinters of that God itself. Thus existing in part in both the physical and Chaos realm

Tyranids do the same, there's clearly a Warp Entity/manifestation of them in the Warp itself plus the countless numbers outside of the Warp in the regular universe.


So you could argue that Perpetuals are simply creatures that exist across both thus being able to repair their form in either realm so long as their form persists in the other.

There have been a number of origin stories for the emperor and I don’t think any of them are true in typical 40K fashion.

Do we see the emperor, in any novels, before his trip to molech? I strongly suspect that the emperor wasn’t particularly empowered before his deal with chaos. I also suspect that malcadore was given a portion of the emperors power to function as a proxy emperor.

I like the gestalt idea because it also allows for the idea that the Emperor has different personalities 'in charge' at different times. This allows for inconsistent writing and very obviously stupid decisions made by him to be explained by different personalities, some of whom are crazy or damaged. I prefer to think he was a Dark Age weapon though maybe with implanted memories.

I believe the shaman thing is even further teased in newer books like Siege of Terra, so yeah, seems canon.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I believe the shaman thing is even further teased in newer books like Siege of Terra, so yeah, seems canon.

Then the other question is where did the other perpetual come from?? Perhaps they are the emperor’s children (not those). Biological children I mean. It would explain why they are less super than him if they are half human

mrFickle wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I believe the shaman thing is even further teased in newer books like Siege of Terra, so yeah, seems canon.

Then the other question is where did the other perpetual come from?? Perhaps they are the emperor’s children (not those). Biological children I mean. It would explain why they are less super than him if they are half human

It could be that the remaining perpetuals we see throughout the Heresy are those that chose not to join the rest in gestalting themselves into what became the Emperor, as that could be one way to link the newer perpetual lore to the older "shaman gestalt" lore.

 Da Boss wrote:
I prefer to think he was a Dark Age weapon though maybe with implanted memories.

Yes him being a rogue Dark Age weapon is for me a far better 'hidden truth'.

mrFickle wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
I believe the shaman thing is even further teased in newer books like Siege of Terra, so yeah, seems canon.

Then the other question is where did the other perpetual come from?? Perhaps they are the emperor’s children (not those). Biological children I mean. It would explain why they are less super than him if they are half human

Ollanius claims to be older than the Emperor, so it's possible at least he was "naturally" formed (a psychic fluke, perhaps).

We know some other perpetuals are engineered, like Vulkan and John Grammaticus.

Technically, all these things could be true at once.

Imagine, if you will, one of the first perpetuals born many thousands of year ago. He's also a psyker. Not an especially powerful one, but just a man.

At some point a bunch of other psykers (or shamans), some of the earliest of humanity, choose to club together to make one of their number the biggest baddest psykers around. Perhaps to defend their clan/organisation from another, or to deal with a bunch of drukhari who stopped by for the week, whatever. Point is, they all feed their souls into the Emperor. He gets stronger. Not crazy God-like power, but his power is now above the average psyker level. Beta or Alpha level.

Roll on to the Dark Ages of Technology. Our future Emperor is very powerful, but not absolutely unique or all-omnipotent. That's why he hasn't ruled all of humanity yet. But oh no!Humans are fighting [insert Xenos, enslavers, AI, Iron men, whatever] and the decision is taken to try and soup up some of their psykers to deal with the problem. We've seen in the Cain novels how it is possible to augment a psyker's native power with technology. Our future Emperor is chosen for the upgrade treatment. But where the other candidates all go mad, the fact our lad got his power from a combination of shamans back in the day allows him to hang onto his mind. He's pushed up to Zeta Plus or the like. He's now the most powerful human psyker ever. What a guy. He helps to end the machine rebellion or whatever it is.

Unfortunately, Slaanesh gets born and the galaxy blows up. Human government disintegrates. Our boy is now alone in the world, but extremely powerful. He pulls in as many perpetuals as he can do, knowing them all from the previous 25,000 years of human history. And goes off on his little jolly around the galaxy as he formulates his plan. En-route, he wanders through the portal at Molech - and like Horus, emerges empowered even further still. His body has bathed in the pure liquid oceans of the warp, and his very being is now suffused with it.

Our Emperor is now absurdly powerful. He didn't start that way. It's a unique confluence of circumstances that led him here. He's a basic perpetual and psyker, but he got sufficient power ups along the way that he's become a walking warp God in the flesh. He's a shonen character several training arcs in.

But even a walking warp God can't be everywhere at once. And the other powers of the warp now fear him. Enter the Heresy.

Neat write up

Definitely some interesting ideas. But, we can also view it in other ways.

Again, we’ll start with the best starting point we have, that of the Shamans of ancient Earth choosing to collectively reincarnate as a single entity.

This entity was The Emperor. Or would become The Emperor.

We’re told they’d masquerade as different historical figures, nudging mankind’s development along, using its skills and abilities of precognition to do so.

So….why didn’t he take control much longer?

Well….we can’t rule out that he never wanted to fully dominate mankind as a species. His prior actions were nips and tucks to keep us on what we have to assume was The Best Path, however rutted and knackered and full of potholes it might’ve been. So long as that path has fewer than the other possible paths? It’s still the Best Path. Best not equating to Perfect.

We also need to mature as a species, alongside our technological development. To get to the stage where, to paraphrase Dr Ian Malcolm? To get to the stage where we can reckon with Could and Should regarding technology.

Real world example? Eugenics. Purely as a concept, it has merit. We could use it to greatly reduce the instance of genetic diseases. But there’s currently No Way To Ethically Implement It. Because it infringes on free will and that.

It could easily be implemented. But we shouldn’t. Not only are there a range of implementations of varying moral quality? You’re also opening the door to some douche nozzle deciding and enforcing what is and isn’t desirable.

Could a truly ethical version exist in the future? Possibly. Through say, active gene editing. You let people have children with whomever they want, then use currently sci-fi level gene mucking about to remove deleterious genes from the resultant offspring. And only the deleterious genes. But that’s way, way off. And honestly given the potential for horrors on the way to that, I hope we never see it.

Anyways.

If The Emperor simply imposed himself and his authority from the get go? You risk Humans turning out lesser. Always looking to a higher authority. Never taking risks, calculated or not, which might lead to massive success. Technologically you could turn us into the Pakled of Star Trek. Able to use the advanced tech, but never really understanding it. A species of stunted understanding.

And so, it’s not until mankind has Really Buggered Things Right Up (Age of Strife) that he perhaps decides “I really didn’t want to become Dictator for Life. But, it seems this is the Only Way Now”. The last resort. Once last roll of the species survival dice.

There is of course a far more sinister explanation. He needed to nudge and gently guide mankind to the Golden Age, then the Age of Strife, so that when he made his big play for Galactic Dominance? We’d spread among the stars, had at least a toehold on as many resources as possible, but were now in a position That A Massively Powerful Benevolent Dictator With Massively Powerful Armies Was Indeed Exactly What People Needed.

Like disaster capitalism on a species wide scale.

Maybe there’s a way the emperor can force other perpetuals or psykers to do what the shaman did, dying and merging their power into his. That’s why he became so much more powerful eventually.

And it would add something to the need to kill psychers to keep the golden thrown powered and the emperor alive.

And highlander is the only 90s movie GW haven’t ripped off for 40k

Well….that depends.

The Shaman were perpetual because once their physical body died, their souls could bathe in the then stable energies of The Warp, and regenerate. Then be reborn in a new body.

The whole amalgam thing came about because the Warp was becoming unstable. And so what was once presumably a pretty small chance you wouldn’t survive to reincarnate grew to be a much greater risk.

So, whilst the going was good? Everyone Off, have your bath, then everyone into the same body.

Presumably, The Warp has only become worse and worse since then. And importantly? The gestalt that is The Emperor hasn’t had the bath for millennia so far as we know*.

Whilst I don’t want to rule out The Emperor’s mere existence being able to act as a lodestone to attract the souls of fallen Perpetuals? The fact he hasn’t had to reincarnate may suggest that’s off the table.

*I mean, it could’ve happened. Just that the resulting soul is strong enough to recharged regardless. But we’re not directly told that happened, so can only speculate.

Malcador did it with the Perpetual from Molech, Alivia Sureka.

It was part of a ritual during the gambit to bring Magnus the Red back into the Imperial fold.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well….that depends.

The Shaman were perpetual because once their physical body died, their souls could bathe in the then stable energies of The Warp, and regenerate. Then be reborn in a new body.

The whole amalgam thing came about because the Warp was becoming unstable. And so what was once presumably a pretty small chance you wouldn’t survive to reincarnate grew to be a much greater risk.

So, whilst the going was good? Everyone Off, have your bath, then everyone into the same body.

Presumably, The Warp has only become worse and worse since then. And importantly? The gestalt that is The Emperor hasn’t had the bath for millennia so far as we know*.

Whilst I don’t want to rule out The Emperor’s mere existence being able to act as a lodestone to attract the souls of fallen Perpetuals? The fact he hasn’t had to reincarnate may suggest that’s off the table.

*I mean, it could’ve happened. Just that the resulting soul is strong enough to recharged regardless. But we’re not directly told that happened, so can only speculate.

I think you're stretching the definition of perpetual.

The Abnett perpetual was a biological invention, their bodies just don't die. Ollanius Pious is dead when his body finally died. his soul didn't survive death. Having souls that stay coherent after death is a bit different to that. Soul metaphysics is old 40k and tied to the warp and chaos.

I think its important that the distinction is kept, reincarnation of a coherent soul and a biological body that can't be destroyed aren't the same and have different consequences.




The shaman gestalt is actually why I don't think the emperor's plans were as Dune-ishly perfect as they imply. The shamans were neolithic and effectively one with nature. Their goals and desires for humanity are wildly different from industrialised society. In fact the formation of civilisation was one of the reasons they decided to form voltron in the first place. so the shamans' goals were at odds with what society was doing. They might have wanted everyone to go back to being one with nature to avoid the heightened emotional waves created by the greed and jealousy of civilisation.

Maybe driving humanity through apocalypse after apocalypse until humanity is back to his caveman origins is the intent all along. Not to uplift, but to degenerate back to an Eloi- like existence. One that deprives the chaos gods power by its very simplicity.

Which is basically what the exodites did.

In addition to being an amalgam of, at minimum, thousands of psykers together, it is implied that the Emperor has been absorbing the souls of the psykers fed to him while he sits on the Golden Throne. ~1k psykers a day for 10k years. IIRC when Gulliman speaks to him some of what the Emperor says is confirming that some of his personality has been gained since he was interred from the psykers he has been absorbing.

I don't think the original Shamen psykers were perpetuals. They were just doing what was presumably natural for human psykers, and maybe all psykers in general, prior to the Warp becoming what it is in the modern day. If the warp was calm, a psyker's soul could basically do what it wanted to in there. And finding its way back to reality and possessing a new body wouldn't be much of a hurdle.

I doubt also that the Emperor's original plans are really valid anymore. He seems to be more concerned with adapting to the current situation than continuing a previous plan or trying to undo what has happened. His conversation with Gulliman seemed to imply he is different than he used to be or has resigned himself to the changed situation.

Can we also rule out that the worship directed toward The Emperor is changing him?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Can we also rule out that the worship directed toward The Emperor is changing him?

I don’t think so. The more I think about it the more I’m convinced that the the emperor came back from molech a perpetual/warp entity hybrid. Drawing down on warp power was essential for him to be able to reunite humanity but he still needed to be a material human in real space. I’ve just been reading about Erda and how her genetics were required to make the primarchs becuase they were old stable perpetual genes and the emperors genetics were now full of crazy warp energies that were unstable.

Also if GW are lining him up to be a warp god of order or humanity, the clumsy way Erda was introduced might be to stop people saying it doesnt make sense that he could make the primatchs using his own genetic material if he was a warp being all along.

There is basically zero chance that it isn't. The unified beliefs of mortals has a direct effect on the warp and gods. Quadrillions of people worshipping the Emperor is going to do something.

It's already implied that that is the source of the magical-blessings that the Sisters of Battle are blessed with in combat.

Even if its not the "Emperor" there's certainly some Warp entity taking all that belief power and spitting it out again

Yeah, I’ve my own pet theory that there are in fact two The Emperors.

The physical, “real” one. We know where he is, he’s on the Golden Throne still sulking.

The second one is a Warp Entity, which began gaining power during the Great Crusade, possibly during Reunification.

This is tenuous, but not entirely unsupported. My main claim of evidence is in the original HH Trilogy, where something is channeling power through Euphrate Keeler. She’s no Psyker, or so we’re told. But is able to cast out a Daemon using golden light, and perform other outright miracles.

At that time of course, The Emperor was still denying divinity. But surely if it was Him channeling power through Keeler, he’d have known something was rotten at the heart of the Sons of Horus.

But. If it was a reflection of him in the warp, empowered by and responding to prayers of the nascent faithful? It explains how the help arrived, and how The Emperor remained unaware.

Of course, these are not the only possible explanations. So feel free to add your own.

But if I’m right? I’d argue The Emperor as a fully fledged Warp God won’t fully awaken until the physical Emperor’s soul fully passes over. The two will then merge, and bingo, God Of Humanity. Possibly strong enough to do to the Chaos Gods what Slaanesh did to the Eldar Pantheon. After all, The Emperor has untold trillions of daily worshippers, a percentage of which are absolute true believers. That’s….thats a lot of Warpy Go Juice, no?

Whether it would be sane entity is entirely open to debate of course.

It could indeed be a bit like Gork and Mork in that the line between when its one or two becomes very confusing in the Warp.

There's also potential that they are two fully separate entities that will never combine and that they will have huge differences between them. One created by its own ideas and thoughts then sealed on a Throne for 10K years and the other birthed from belief in an idealised Emperor which has had its vision of who that is twisted over those same 10K years. Imagine how much Chaos would laugh if the Imperium abandoned the true emperor upon his throne (save for his 1K psycher meal a day) and instead embraced a powerful regular Chaos God that, whilst it might opposed the Great 4, is just another one of them at the end of the day. With its own twisted form of morality and understanding of the mortal realm.

Gork and Mork are an interesting one. Certainly it could be we end up with more than one God of Humanity.

But their power is of interest. We’re shown in the original Rogue Trader books that the brothers are more than a match for other warp powers. But as reflections of their mortal charges? They’re kinda lazy until the mood for a Waaagh! takes them. But once they’re rolling? All but unstoppable.

Probably the most interesting bit of storytelling around this is the creation of a Gargant.

Very potted version? Mekboy sees and survives an Imperial Titan’s attack. Orks being Orks, he wonder if that Da Emprah the Humies are always going on about, come to give the Orks a kicking. And so he gets it into his head to build bodies for Gork and Mork, so they can gang up on Da Emprah and given him a kicking.

This created a chain reaction of attracting Gork & Morks attention, and a Waaagh! begins to form around the Mek’s efforts.

So from that? We can see the world realities clearly influencing each other. Mekyboyz stroke of inspiration draws the eyes of Gork and Mork, who suitably enthused begin to influence other Orks to help being the Mek’s vision to fruit. And of course, the more excited the Boyz get? The more excited Gork & Mork get.

I don't subscribe to the emperor being directly affected by worship. The chaos gods aren't real world entities that absorbed warp power. They are warp entities first and foremost.

Even in 40k worshipping a person doesn't power them it just coalesces power in the warp.

Just because you say the name emperor when you pray hard doesn't mean the warp knows where to send it. No one has a true image of the emperor in their mind to find him in the warp anyway.

The reason chaos gods are empowered by worship is because they are emergent properties of emotions in the warp. A person can't directly send worship to khorne, but rage and aggression manifest in the warp and stick to other rage and aggression. That khorne is powered by it is actually beside the point. It would coalesce whether an emergent intelligence appeared or not.

You can't snort drugs 'for khorne'. That excess won't go to him because it doesn't stick.

The emperor isn't an emotion. So the metaphysics of 40k would imply that a warp entity that is an emergent intelligence from say blind faith or authoritarianism might be forming.

The half living emperor could then by retro association actually become basically a daemon Prince of his own warp mirror, given the similarities.

But it wouldn't literally turn him the person into a god, because that's no how warp gods work.

Eh, after the "Greater Good" warp entity incident with that one Tau expansion wave, I think we have to accept that there could be a warp entity of the Worshiped Emperor - though I agree it may not be linked to the Golden Throne Emperor at all.

It's well documented that worship of something has the potential to create a Chaos being that lives off that worship directly.

The concept of a "Chaos God" isn't really a type of chaos entity its simply a really really powerful entity within the warp with a vast following and amount of power.


I recall that at least Khorne and Nurgle were supposed to be birthed from human worship/emotions during history. Slaanesh was birthed by the Eldar and their hedonistic ways.
We have the more recent Greater Good entity.


So the idea that either an existing or new Chaos entity has arisen based off the belief of the Emperor makes perfect sense. What that entity might be and what its goals and intent are is up for debate and impossible to truly know.
We know the Emperor tried to snuff out belief as a concept, most likely because he knew what it would do in the warp.

The big question is if the actual Emperor is connected to the Warp entity or indeed if there's only one. There's potential that there could be two - one the True Emperor and another the twisted form of Emperor that's been created in the minds of people over 10K years.

If that latter idea was true it might explain why the Sisters of Battle gain belief powers whilst many others don't. That they've tapped into belief in one of the entities which is more powerful in warp energies and thus able to feed it back to them in the phyiscal world.

 Overread wrote:
It's well documented that worship of something has the potential to create a Chaos being that lives off that worship directly.

The concept of a "Chaos God" isn't really a type of chaos entity its simply a really really powerful entity within the warp with a vast following and amount of power.


I recall that at least Khorne and Nurgle were supposed to be birthed from human worship/emotions during history. Slaanesh was birthed by the Eldar and their hedonistic ways.
We have the more recent Greater Good entity.


So the idea that either an existing or new Chaos entity has arisen based off the belief of the Emperor makes perfect sense. What that entity might be and what its goals and intent are is up for debate and impossible to truly know.
We know the Emperor tried to snuff out belief as a concept, most likely because he knew what it would do in the warp.

The big question is if the actual Emperor is connected to the Warp entity or indeed if there's only one. There's potential that there could be two - one the True Emperor and another the twisted form of Emperor that's been created in the minds of people over 10K years.

If that latter idea was true it might explain why the Sisters of Battle gain belief powers whilst many others don't. That they've tapped into belief in one of the entities which is more powerful in warp energies and thus able to feed it back to them in the phyiscal world.

In the Dark Imperium novels, the Ulthwe Farseer Illiyanne Natasé has a discussion with Guilliman about what gods might be. Admittedly it is an in-universe discussion so it could be fallible, but one of the theories advanced was whether a being could become a god. The original soul might gather to itself the power from worship, but possibly be changed by this. That could be be what happened to the entity that was the Emperor of 30K. Over thousands of years of worship, the Imperium's faith in the Emperor and the dying souls of the faithful have coalesced into a god that also calls itself the Emperor, except it is the Emperor as imagined by the faithful so it is xenophobic and tyrannical. The original Emperor and this warp Emperor could have willingly or unwilling merged together and now the Emperor has more warp power than ever before even while being physically still nearly dead and shackled to the Golden Throne. The influence of the warp Emperor might also have changed the original Emperor's mind and views. We know Guilliman's experience of communicating with the Emperor was confusing and that the Emperor's mind was very fragmented so that might explain the seemingly illogical or inconsistent actions such as why SoB get miracles at a far higher frequency (enough to be reflected in-game) whereas even faithful Guardsmen and Space Marine Chapters that worship the Emperor as a god don't (outside of rare incidents in novels).

 Hellebore wrote:
Maybe driving humanity through apocalypse after apocalypse until humanity is back to his caveman origins is the intent all along. Not to uplift, but to degenerate back to an Eloi- like existence. One that deprives the chaos gods power by its very simplicity.

Which is basically what the exodites did.

There is some implication that Doombreed is Genghis Khan ascended to Daemonhood, so Chaos was definitely around even in tribal times.

 Overread wrote:
It's well documented that worship of something has the potential to create a Chaos being that lives off that worship directly.

The concept of a "Chaos God" isn't really a type of chaos entity its simply a really really powerful entity within the warp with a vast following and amount of power.


I recall that at least Khorne and Nurgle were supposed to be birthed from human worship/emotions during history. Slaanesh was birthed by the Eldar and their hedonistic ways.
We have the more recent Greater Good entity.

The original fluff from realms of chaos had the modern khorne tzeentch and nurgle awaken during the human mediaeval period.

But again it wasn't due to worshipping them as they didn't exist. It wasn't even due to the worshipping of the concepts that compose them. It was because of the sheer amount of murder, despair and deceit that was occuring at the time.

Similarly slannesh wasn't worshipped into existence, it was emoted into existence. The chaos gods are intelligences that emerge from concentrations of emotions in the warp. If there was no intelligence formed those emotions would still congeal together in the warp.

Khorne is rage given animus through sheer concentration of rage. Its analogous to human consciousness forming when you get a critical mass of neurones interconnecting.

And those that worship khorne only do so through khornate emotions. A khorne worshipper isn't fuelling khorne with deception. So worship as a concept can't do anything, it has no presence in the warp. If it did it would fuel a chaos god of faith, not somehow act as a metaphysical emotion divvying machine.

The worship happens alongside the active ingredient, it isn't itself the active ingredient. If it were then only rage performed in a khornate worshipful manner would fuel khorne, despite it being a fact of 40k that all rage and murder fuels him which is why you can never get rid of chaos. Sentience begets it as a dark mirror.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Maybe driving humanity through apocalypse after apocalypse until humanity is back to his caveman origins is the intent all along. Not to uplift, but to degenerate back to an Eloi- like existence. One that deprives the chaos gods power by its very simplicity.

Which is basically what the exodites did.

There is some implication that Doombreed is Genghis Khan ascended to Daemonhood, so Chaos was definitely around even in tribal times.

His original entry in 2nd Ed said a great human warlord and a lot people would theory hammer he was Hitler, khan, xerxes, or any number of historical warlords.

Ghengis khan was from the 1200s.

The reincarnating shamans all died in 8000 BC, right when civilisation was ramping up in humanity. They chose that date on purpose as it's just before the oldest cities we have from the archaeological record. Lost and the damned said they felt chaos getting more dangerous as humanity moved away from it's hunter gatherer roots. So the original fluff makes it clear that the shamans wanted to prevent civilisation corrupting humanity.

There used to be a chaos god called Malal, now called malice due to copyright reasons.it was chaos turned against choas.

Perhaps when the emperor went to molech Malice saw him as a power agent of order a weapon against the other choas gods and the bound themselves to each other. This granted th emperor Malice’s warp power and Malice the power of the worship of trillions of human souls

mrFickle wrote:
There used to be a chaos god called Malal, now called malice due to copyright reasons.it was chaos turned against choas.

Perhaps when the emperor went to molech Malice saw him as a power agent of order a weapon against the other choas gods and the bound themselves to each other. This granted th emperor Malice’s warp power and Malice the power of the worship of trillions of human souls

That would be dumb.

 RaptorusRex wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
There used to be a chaos god called Malal, now called malice due to copyright reasons.it was chaos turned against choas.

Perhaps when the emperor went to molech Malice saw him as a power agent of order a weapon against the other choas gods and the bound themselves to each other. This granted th emperor Malice’s warp power and Malice the power of the worship of trillions of human souls

That would be dumb.

Why?

mrFickle wrote:

 RaptorusRex wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
There used to be a chaos god called Malal, now called malice due to copyright reasons.it was chaos turned against choas.

Perhaps when the emperor went to molech Malice saw him as a power agent of order a weapon against the other choas gods and the bound themselves to each other. This granted th emperor Malice’s warp power and Malice the power of the worship of trillions of human souls

That would be dumb.

Why?

Because Malal/Malice/who gives a cuss was never that important or integral to the setting. Whenever he's referenced, it's a wink and nudge thing.

Because we know the Emperor made a deal with the Four and Malal doesn't exist and cannot exist outside of vague references about Chaos hating everything including itself.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Overread wrote:
It's well documented that worship of something has the potential to create a Chaos being that lives off that worship directly.

The concept of a "Chaos God" isn't really a type of chaos entity its simply a really really powerful entity within the warp with a vast following and amount of power.


I recall that at least Khorne and Nurgle were supposed to be birthed from human worship/emotions during history. Slaanesh was birthed by the Eldar and their hedonistic ways.
We have the more recent Greater Good entity.

The original fluff from realms of chaos had the modern khorne tzeentch and nurgle awaken during the human mediaeval period.

But again it wasn't due to worshipping them as they didn't exist. It wasn't even due to the worshipping of the concepts that compose them. It was because of the sheer amount of murder, despair and deceit that was occuring at the time.

Similarly slannesh wasn't worshipped into existence, it was emoted into existence. The chaos gods are intelligences that emerge from concentrations of emotions in the warp. If there was no intelligence formed those emotions would still congeal together in the warp.

Khorne is rage given animus through sheer concentration of rage. Its analogous to human consciousness forming when you get a critical mass of neurones interconnecting.

And those that worship khorne only do so through khornate emotions. A khorne worshipper isn't fuelling khorne with deception. So worship as a concept can't do anything, it has no presence in the warp. If it did it would fuel a chaos god of faith, not somehow act as a metaphysical emotion divvying machine.

The worship happens alongside the active ingredient, it isn't itself the active ingredient. If it were then only rage performed in a khornate worshipful manner would fuel khorne, despite it being a fact of 40k that all rage and murder fuels him which is why you can never get rid of chaos. Sentience begets it as a dark mirror.

The original RoC describes how some cults can engage in suicide pacts and their souls would coalesce into the warp as a very minor entity. This shows that focused belief and worship can affect how the worshippers' souls behave after death, and shape what forms in the warp. That would also explain why for example the belief in the Greater Good by Tau auxiliaries can form the Greater God warp god, in line with their beliefs. This is as opposed to unfocused emotion and souls just coalescing without clear defined beliefs in which case you get whatever the warp gives you in the end.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

We’re told they’d masquerade as different historical figures, nudging mankind’s development along, using its skills and abilities of precognition to do so.

So….why didn’t he take control much longer?

It is strongly hinted that the Emperor was Alexander the Great (which is stupid), and also that humanity has had lots of other empires before the Imperium. Who's to say that the Imperium of 30k/40k is not just the last in a long series of empires built by the Emperor, which all collapse because he is a powerful but incompetent tool? Maybe the Dark Age of Technology ended in a way not too dissimilar from how 40k is fated to end, and with the same fool at its head? Maybe this has happened many times, and the Long Night just obscures all the previous incidents? Last time, it fell due to a machine rebellion, and this time due to Chaos interference. Every Imperium of his falls to some oversight, but eventually he'll have made all the mistakes one can possible make, and it'll finally last.

Hell, make the Emperor all the big historical conquerors - Alexander, Julius Caesar, the Yellow Emperor, Ghenghis Khan, etc., and say that the "official" histories are just coverups of the Emperor's fundamental incompetence as a leader.

(Yes, I do think the habit of making the Emperor retroactively important is detrimental to the setting - it lessens the tragedy if he was always there and planning it all along, rather than being a single big mistake arising from the natural tendencies of humanity.)

I hate all that "oh actually everything that ever happened in history is secretly because of our cool character" trope. It's in Mage the Awakening and it's the worst thing about that game.

It's the worst part of the Heresy novels when Oll Person has been in every single conflict in history, just dumps me right out of the story every time. And as you say, it make the Emperor seem laughably incompetent if this immortal, regenerating, psychic genius can't get things done in the tens of thousands of years he's been around, everything is still kind of a bodge job.

That's why I prefer the "Emperor wasn't around until the DAOT but he thinks he's been there for ages" take because it makes everything a bit less silly, and leaves our history the hell alone.

Iracundus wrote:
The original RoC describes how some cults can engage in suicide pacts and their souls would coalesce into the warp as a very minor entity. This shows that focused belief and worship can affect how the worshippers' souls behave after death, and shape what forms in the warp. That would also explain why for example the belief in the Greater Good by Tau auxiliaries can form the Greater God warp god, in line with their beliefs. This is as opposed to unfocused emotion and souls just coalescing without clear defined beliefs in which case you get whatever the warp gives you in the end.

I don't see how that applies to worship though. Them all acting in a way they think is holy emoting in a concerted manner, would bind their energy together when they die because like emotions stick together in there. But they aren't worshipping anything because nothing exists to worship. The best you can say is they idolizing a concept not an animus. If their intent is to make a warp god for greed with their deaths they intrinsically know there isn't one yet, because they haven't made it. So they invest in being greedy.

This is where I think worship is correlation causation error. It happens alongside the emotions that actually feed the God, but it itself is not anything other than a focus for the mind to act in ways that feed the entity they worship. Unless a khorne follower can empower khorne through worshipful pacifism it doesn't have an affect. And obviously violence feeds khorne where you're worshipping it or not. So if there is any power behind worship it's the weakest metaphysical force in the warp.

The tau entity is simply the emotions of the auxillia made manifest. A god of selflessness, altruism. Causing billions of entities to train their emote altruism, empathy sympathy would all feed into the warp god. Worship is just the real space cultural construct that aids in directing the emotional state they need to be in to feed that entity.

Da Boss wrote:I hate all that "oh actually everything that ever happened in history is secretly because of our cool character" trope. It's in Mage the Awakening and it's the worst thing about that game.

It's the worst part of the Heresy novels when Oll Person has been in every single conflict in history, just dumps me right out of the story every time. And as you say, it make the Emperor seem laughably incompetent if this immortal, regenerating, psychic genius can't get things done in the tens of thousands of years he's been around, everything is still kind of a bodge job.

That's why I prefer the "Emperor wasn't around until the DAOT but he thinks he's been there for ages" take because it makes everything a bit less silly, and leaves our history the hell alone.

While I agree with the first bit, there are many ways to parse the second. Instead of his age as the limiting variable, it could be his power, intelligence or a number of other things. Ie he isn't a genius but is 40000 years old. Which makes him a man cursed with a self inflicted sysaphean task to save the species, but with limited ability to do so.

Or the fact that the shamans that made him had very different views on how life should be lived to be in harmony with nature, at odds with the industrialised ratrace. So he's fighting human nature itself to bring people back to being one with nature as his creators intended.

We can also look at the fact that, up to the Age of Strife? Mankind had been doing perfectly well thank you. Growing its knowledge, science and maturity pretty organically, at its own pace. Master of its own destiny throughout.

Sure, we’re told, as covered earlier, the entity that would become The Emperor, gave helpful nudges and nip/tucks when it thought it necessary.

But that’s not the same thing “I am leader, all bow and follow my lead”. There evidently was no need for that.

The Age of Strife was the culmination of at least two issues. Mankind’s AI Servants rebelling, and the downsides of man starting to grow into a psychic species.

The AI Rebellion could’ve been the work of an instant (a single, rogue unit transmitting its, for want of a better word, manifesto across the galactic equivalent of the internet), or it could’ve been a long time coming, conducted in secret Ala GSC* until sufficient Men of Iron were onside.

The emergence of Psykers isn’t something you can really control as such. Not even The Imperium’s extreme measures work 100% of the time. And, unlike pre-Age of Strife man? The Imperium knows what Psykers and the associated risks are.

But regardless. With seemingly no central government or overlord? No one person, however powerful, could do a damned thing about either except fight.

That brings us to The Great Crusade. Just about…..but there’s one more event.

The Warp turmoil caused by the Eldar in the run up to Slaanesh’s birth.

Now, that by no means helped anyone. But, with any and all warp travel now incredibly risky, even for Orks? It may have done mankind a favour of sorts.

See, just as mankind was going through its undoubtedly darkest hour? The warp storms meant no galactic power could really press that advantage. Yes, untold worlds and communities were annnihilated, and even into the Great Crusade suffered Xenos raids. But so far as we can make out? Those were localised affairs.

If your world was lucky enough not to have a nearby Ork stronghold, or managed to retain its technological base and all the perks that brought? You were able to ride it out,

But, and this feeds into The Emperor’s plan of Unifiying Terra and launching the Great Crusade being on a strict time limit. Because as soon as Slaanesh’s birth blew out the warp storms? Everyone regained safer and more reliable warp travel.

This is why it was only after Ullanor, when the Orks - the only major galactic power still standing other than mankind - had been broadly contained, did The Emperor take his step back to begin the next part of his plan (Take over and learn how to extend the Webway).

And for that? Mankind needed that central figurehead. That was the only time in our history we arguably needed a Master of Mankind,

Without that singular driving force, reuniting the Sol System? The remaining worlds would’ve been easily picked off one by one by one.

I could even make some argument that having an understanding of the Orky view on existence? By ensuring he had the biggest army with the toughest lads offering the most flightiest fight you ever did fight, The Emperor’s plan was banking on his forces being a lodestone to start drawing in Orky forces, thus sparing far flung holdouts of humanity.

Huh. The last point is a really fun idea. I've always hated that the Primarchs are so physically big, and that the Emperor's projection is also massive. Just silly to me - I never imagined it that way when reading the old background and was surprised by it when it became part of the background in the early 2000s.

But if you see it as the Emperor playing into Ork psychology (and Orks were definitely the most widespread problematic Xenos species at the time of the Crusade) to try and draw them all in for a massive fight, it's quite funny and I don't hate it as much.

My major issue with that is that I think he'd have been flattened if that'd worked as well as it would have needed to - they'd just have been swamped in Orks to a ridiculous degree.

I don't think there was a risk of that. I very much doubt the Orks were ever more than a nuisance to his plans, a problem to be solved, but even if they had been more central, the Great Crusade proved itself eminently capable of dealing with them.

Remember that part of why the Heresy happens is that there is room for it to happen. The xenos by that point are mostly dealt with. The Orks in particular have had their backs broken over and over and were so crushed that Tempest implies that the Ork threat used as a pretext for the Calth Conjunction was almost completely manufactured. Certainly Guilliman was perfectly aware that the force assembled was comically outsized for the supposed threat, and only played ball because he thought it was political theatre and he believed Horus needed the prestige. The Orks were so absolutely shattered that they wouldn't seriously threaten the Imperium again for over a thousand years which is telling when you consider how fast they can spring up!

It really is amazing how much the Heresy snatched defeat from the jaws of the Great Crusade's victory. Did you know that the Imperium planned to have Terminator armour completely replace power armour, as the most advanced models like Tartaros had no real downsides? Those plans didn't happen because the Heresy stopped them. But it's telling how much the Crusade was really just a formality by that point.

Orks are an omnipresent threat. As we know, and presumably mankind knew before too long? Once you’ve got Orks? You’ve pretty much got Orks forever.

You can entirely rid a planet, but it’s the work of generations. And you have to be pro-actively hunting them down all the time.

The same could be done on the galactic scale. You just need sufficient forces to shutdown any nascent Waaagh! before it gets going. Or, let it grow to a certain manageable size, letting it draw in other lingering forces, before confronting them with overwhelming force.

If you can do that? You can manage them. And potentially in such a manner that none survive to get ‘Arder and more Kunnin’ from the defeat/

That was the promise of Ullanor as I see it. The back of the Orky threat broken, potentially forever. Had the Heresy not occurred? It seems entirely possible the Imperium would be of such strength and number. Heck, even having the Primarchs as a “Come And Get A Really Good Fight Over Here, You Viridian Sizable Lady’s Chemise” lodestone.



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I’m also entirely persuaded along the same lines that the Eldar did much the same before, either directly or through the oft hinted at artificial defenders of their former realm.

Break the back once, manage the number, and reduce the menace to a constant nuisance. And for the ancient Eldar? Don’t wipe them out because watching the misery Orks inflict on others is just too fun.

If we combine a few Eldar technologies together we can see potential means by which they kept the Orks at a manageable level.

They use psychic engines which draw warp energy to power things. This is as close to a perpetual motion machine as you can get. They will always be able to draw power. Psychoplastics can be grown and healed by the application of warp energy. Combine those two in one machine and you've got an endlessly powered, endlessly repairing weapon.


Add to this the void weaver, super heavy built from the ancient Terra forming technology that consists of monofilament and wrairhbone parasites to chop up and break down everything organic, you have a plausible way to de contaminate a planet of Ork spores - a perpetually running and repairing planet scourer.

Their robot armies built with similar technologies means they could provide an Ork population with an endless opponent that keeps them at just the right level of containment, killing the biggest off and sniping the oddboys so they are perpetually stuck in a feral state.


And there you have a plausible Ork control measure that would work for as long as that empire functioned..the birth of slannesh blew up all the psychic engines like a galactic EMP, as they drew their power from the increasingly unstable warp, bursting the Ork dam and letting them flood the galaxy again.

Yup, I’d agree with that. And we can reasonably infer from Commoragh’s ongoing nightlife that they didn’t wipe out the Orks for selfish, entertainment purposes.

I think we could even argue there’s a level of Orky Organisation that’s No Threat to the then Eldar civilisation, but still plenty to keep other races in their relative foxholes. If you can keep it at or around that level? You have a second layer of personal defences, after a fashion.


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We can also consider the Waaagh! in a wider context. It’s not just a holy war equivalent, but a mass migration. The Orks gathering their forces then heading out to wherever they currently aren’t. Not just for a really big fight, but for all the resources.

We know Ork civilisation has generalised stages of development, reflected by the staggered appearance of Oddboyz. I shan’t go into that in great detail here.

The Waaagh! is essentially another implication of that. A societal stress reaction to attack (everyone, duff ‘em up dem gits!) and/or to resource scarcity. Something that spread among the normally fractious and anarchic tribes to get them all pulling (and punching and kicking and fighting and screaming and stomping and gouging) in more or less the same direction until the threat is neutralised, you’ve acquired sufficient new resources for abundance or, I suppose, you’ve met the resource issue in the middle and enough of you got perished that scarcity is alleviated.

 Hellebore wrote:

I don't see how that applies to worship though. Them all acting in a way they think is holy emoting in a concerted manner, would bind their energy together when they die because like emotions stick together in there. But they aren't worshipping anything because nothing exists to worship. The best you can say is they idolizing a concept not an animus. If their intent is to make a warp god for greed with their deaths they intrinsically know there isn't one yet, because they haven't made it. So they invest in being greedy.

This is where I think worship is correlation causation error. It happens alongside the emotions that actually feed the God, but it itself is not anything other than a focus for the mind to act in ways that feed the entity they worship. Unless a khorne follower can empower khorne through worshipful pacifism it doesn't have an affect. And obviously violence feeds khorne where you're worshipping it or not. So if there is any power behind worship it's the weakest metaphysical force in the warp.

The tau entity is simply the emotions of the auxillia made manifest. A god of selflessness, altruism. Causing billions of entities to train their emote altruism, empathy sympathy would all feed into the warp god. Worship is just the real space cultural construct that aids in directing the emotional state they need to be in to feed that entity.

The beliefs of the Tau auxilia shaped how the Greater Good god looked. There is no reason a philosophy of collectivism and altruism has to look like a Tau but the beliefs of the Tau auxilia result in a five fingered Tau (probably from the influence of all the humans under Tau rule).

The following is my attempt at integrating everything into how the warp works and is admittedly my headcanon but I think it is internally consistent:

Warp gods are conglomerations of warp/psychic energy and souls are also made of this energy. They can be formed unconsciously through like attracting like until they reach critical mass to be born. However the example of the suicide pact entities from the original RoC and the Greater Good god show that it is also possible to create warp gods/entities through active means.

There is the willing or unwilling sacrifice of souls towards a god. The sacrifice sends the energy of these souls directly to the target god instead of just pouring that energy into the warp (like pouring a cup of water into the ocean), where anyone can attempt to scavenge it. The psychic energy of these souls either join the god, strengthening them in the process, or can be used to do things, which is why daemons treat souls like fuel and currency.

Worship however directs psychic energy towards a god too and is like a willing sacrifice of an infinitesimal amount of the soul, with more devoted acts sacrificing more. It is why gods value the acts of their champions rather than that of a lowly cultist. Species that are more psychically powerful are worth more, so the worship of an Eldar (whose souls shine brightly in the warp) is worth more than that of a scrawny human scribe deep in a hive. However, the tiny motes of worship multipled by quadrillions of humans over 10 thousand years adds up. That is why the Eldar gods weakened pre-Fall as active worship of them and their traditional values waned. The Ork gods are powerful because they are a reflection of all the Ork souls that join them and also the Orks' unwavering belief in essentially Orkiness, and that belief shapes their gods into Gork and Mork, who are basically giant Orks and a reflection of the Ork psyche. That is why the Ork gods, while being powerful and nearly invulnerable to harm, are also not dominating and ruling the warp. Just as Orks love fighting, including against each other, so do their gods and it is in their gods' nature to fight each other as much as it is to fight others.

The beliefs and worship of the mortals shapes the entity that forms (or which feeds from them). That is why the beliefs of the Tau auxilia created a Tau looking god, and why the Eldar pantheon seem to all basically be Eldar in form. Unfortunately, humanity seems largely too weak psychically and too unaware to consciously create warp gods, while the Eldar descended too far into decadence to care. In the absence of conscious active shaping, the warp forms something original out of the conglomeration of souls and psychic energy, resulting in forms like Tzeentch which are not of any specific organized relgion.

The worship of the Imperium may have created an Emperor warp god that merges with the Emperor of 30K, and changes him to fit more in line with the beliefs of his subjects. That is one of the theories advanced by the Eldar Farseer in discussion with Guilliman. Maybe the 30K Emperor didn't want religion, but after thousands of years of worship, maybe the Emperor of 40K now wants worship because he gains strength from it, and perhaps the views of the Emperor warp god have influenced and changed the views of the original Emperor.

Within such a paradigm, psykers are souls that are able to channel energy from the warp and this energy can do work in realspace, like any other form of energy. Supernatural effects and miracles are warp driven effects that are channeled by the god, so pushed from the warp side rather than a mortal manipulating warp energy from realspace side. That is why for example in the original story of the Fall of Cadia, the activation of the Necron pylons dimmed Celestine's light while also weakening daemons, since Celestine is basically a daemon of the Emperor.

 Hellebore wrote:

Or the fact that the shamans that made him had very different views on how life should be lived to be in harmony with nature, at odds with the industrialised ratrace. So he's fighting human nature itself to bring people back to being one with nature as his creators intended.

I don't think a neolithic man (or gestalt) would have any particular appreciation for "harmony with nature", as nature at that point meant starvation, child mortality, and dying of infections. And of course a total disregard for the environmental impact of human activity, as no human activity at the time had major impact on nature (at least not on a scale that an individual could perceive).

While I prefer the theory of the Emperor as a bioweapon or warlord left over from the DAoT (simply the one who "won"), the neolithic origin is pretty clearly the official one ever since the very earliest references. And it can also work to explain some of his eccentricities, and doesn't require the stupidest parts of his background (being Alexander the Great).

Specifically, what if the Emperor still basically thinks like a neolithic farmer? The way you survive is to be deeply distrustful of anyone outside your tribe due to prevalent low-level violence, nature is as much an enemy as an ally, uncertainty is very risky, and you display power through displays of bulky material wealth (actually this one might be too premature for a true neolithic farmer). He even uses religion to maintain control. While he perhaps intellectually knows that religion is fraud (or dangerous) and that englightened secularism is the way forward, his instincts still lead him towards the exact same basically religious mechanisms that he grew up with. (If you want to promote athetism, maybe don't walk around like a golden demigod with a bloody halo of all things.)

The Emperor just expands the notion of "tribe" to all of humanity, and instead of burning down forests to make cropland (again, not sure if that actually happened in neolithic Anatolia), he burns the galaxy much more than Horus ever did. While the Emperor is clearly stated as trying to make ecological repairs to Terra, it's not clear to me that this is due to any particular affection for nature, as much as because he thinks it is useful. He razes the Himalayas to build his home, which I think should put to rest any idea that the Emperor cares about "harmony with nature".

(None of this analysis requires any assumptions on Ork behaviour.)

On the xenocidal nature of The Emperor?

Look at modern day Britain. Not too close, it’s not that pretty a picture. But during the warmer months? I can go for a walk in a wood or a forest or a heath with zero fear of being attacked by a carnivorous animal. Because we drove the big things to absolute local extinction ages ago.

We don’t need to pack bear spray or a firearm to dissuade hungry fauna, because there’s nothing left to offer that threat.

We’re also completely rabies free, so if the smaller critters do decide to come and have a nibble? I shouldn’t get a particularly nasty disease (would still seek medical aid of course. Low risk doesn’t mean you get complacent).

That seems to be the thinking behind the Great Crusade’s Xenocidal rampage. Remove all threats. Leave mankind dominant, unassailed and unassailable.

I am not defending it necessarily. But looked at on the long term scale? It’s a means to an end. A morally indefensible act for a technically morally defensible outcome.

From there? Man has the galaxy. All of it. And with a central leader, proper mutually beneficial trade networks could ensure an abundance for all.

So you guys all agree that the Eldar and presumably the Golden Age humans could easily have wiped out the Orks?

And the Eldar didn't because they were amusing, and the Golden Age humans didn't for some other reason?

Poor form! I think the Orks were just too difficult to eradicate, too canny when it gets down to it and far too successful a weapon. I'm sure they could win battles against the Orks but they were spread too thin, and the Orks were always growing out there in the far reaches of space, terraforming otherwise totally barren planets into Ork worlds just by existing.

Orks need far less tech to survive on barren worlds than Eldar or humans do, being essentially a kind of lichen (algae symbiotically paired with fungus) means they can live on bare rock with no real useable atmosphere and slowly through leeching nutrients from the rock and photosynthesis they can re-organise the atmosphere into something that supports more complex Ork life. The baseline need for food for Orks would be a lot lower due to their photosynthetic nature and so their barren worlds could house deceptively large populations of Orks.

The Galaxy is massive and the human and eldar empires would be necessity have to leave a lot of those barren, useless systems uncolonised and focus on the nicer, more amenable systems. That's ceding a huge amount of ground to the Orks and it's just not going to be feasible to visit all of these places and eradicate them before they get too dangerous!

I don't think any of the great Empires could fully deal with Orks, just keep their numbers down inside their borders.

Eradicate? Not necessarily. The Galaxy is a big place. Huge. Mind bogglingly so.

Even with Warp Travel, you can’t simply go wherever you want, whenever you want. So a systemic extermination across the galaxy seems…well I never like to say impossible, so will settle for Incredibly Bloody Unlikely.

Then add in the Ork approach to Warp Travel. Which is basically….build a big ship, or hitch a ride on Space Hulk. Press the big red GO button. See what happens.

Which pushes such an extermination into the even further Incredibly Bloody Unlikely. Because you just cannot fully predict where they’ll turn up.

Manage? Yes. Oh yes you can manage them. All you “need” to do is having sufficient forces of sufficient mobility that when a Waaagh! is gathering, or perhaps just appears in your system? You can kick the snot out of it.

You’ll still suffer losses, of course you will. But hardly anything compared to not being prepared.

We kind of see that with the modern Imperium. What it lacks in responsiveness, it has in spades for “well, feed more troops in”. Great for the Orks, because that fight never ends. And in a way? Being able to stalemate Orks is something of a second, maybe third place. It keeps them in position and drawing in more and more, because that’s clearly a Really Good Fight.

It just needs to work more on the “and now they’re gathered, proper overwhelming hammer blow to shatter them, and who knows how many would be Next Big Warbosses.

So the Orks are the least dangerous major species in 40K?

We've really been done dirty.

Who said that? We’re not talking about 40K. We’re talking ages past, and how a sufficiently numerous civilisation with near infinite military resources when needed might tackle Orks. I mean it’s not the thread’s original topic, but here we are.

Far and away? Orks are the single most successful species the Galaxy has ever known. They outlasted the Old Ones, the C’Tan, the Necron, the Eldar, who knows how many others. They outlasted the golden age of mankind.

They’re persistent, but they are predictable. For the most part. Until they aren’t. And it’s that last bit that’s the main pain for everyone else, because you never know when they’ll stop just gleefully running into your traps because it is after all still a Really Good Fight, and instead turn the trap against you in a way previously not thought possible.

Think of it like Command and Conquer. The key to managing the Orky population is their Tech Tree. If you can arrest that? They’re not too tricky. But arresting it on a huge scale is the problem.

Let’s consider it on a single planet scale. Perhaps we’ll choose Angelus.

There? The Orks were planet bound, trying to get enough gubbins and worky bits and scrap to build a new ship. At that point? Angelus’ Orks weren’t a threat to The Imperium. And it seems possible to have even an escort frigate in orbit, periodically bombarding the build site. Until such time as the Orks on the planetside build orbital defence weapons (and they absolutely could for avoidance of all doubt)? That tactic would keep them where they are.

Or indeed until an Orky fleet of any description does what they do best, and just sort of turn up unannounced in case there’s any interesting fights on offer.

But the point is because of how their society is structured? It is possible to arrest a given Ork world’s development.

Other species might put out a distress call. I’m not convinced Orks would care to do that.


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Compare to Humanity. Dead Emperor is BIG trouble. So many factions would result.

And unlike Orks? You can’t necessarily just clobber the biggest and loudest of your rivals to assert dominance and have it gleefully respected.

Because most Orks? They just want a Boss that’s ded ‘ard and leads them to the best fights.

Orks are basically a galactic fungal infection. Once a planet is infested with spores, its basically impossible to get rid of them short of annihilating the environment with fire and starting over. Even massively technologically advanced civilizations would struggle to eradicate that sort of problem.

It is simply easier to maintain an active military and periodically cull the ork population before they form proper Waaaghs and I expect that was the standard procedure with all civilizations that existed during the DAoT. They are nuisance that you manage, because they CAN become a huge problem if they get left alone. Billions will die and you will lose many planets if a Waaaagh forms, but if you follow procedure you can manage the orks. They might even be useful if turned against your rivals.

 Da Boss wrote:
So the Orks are the least dangerous major species in 40K?

We've really been done dirty.

Definitely not the least dangerous. That definitely goes to the T'au. But they are the most manageable. Orks are utterly chaotic, but in a predictable way. You can manipulate and control the chaos they cause, which means you can keep populations of orks below where they become an actual problem OR you can control their actions with external pressures to control them on a larger scale.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


Other species might put out a distress call. I’m not convinced Orks would care to do that.

Definitely not. If a population of orks is being managed on an Imperial world with periodic culls the orks are probably perfectly happy with the situation. They get into constant fights and are just happy with how things are. They don't know they're missing bigger fights out there and their ignorence is bliss.

You could probably Gaslight a population of orks into being willing live-fire training dummies for the Imperial Guard.

They may do it on an instinctual level (Weirdboyz) if they can’t actually get to grips. Hence the Angelus example.

Not Angelus specifically, but its status as an Ork held world that’s not too deep into its technological evolution. Park a ship or two in orbit, periodic bombardment of the main settlement. Not so much to wipe out the Orks, just to undo their hard work rebuilding GorkaMorka.

There, unless the Orks can build a surface to orbit defence of sufficient oomph to take out the ships keeping them in check? They’re contained. Which isn’t much fun for the Orks.

In such a situation? Weirboyz might, however subsconsciously, throw out a beacon or call for aid. Something to draw spacefaring Orks to the planet.

 Da Boss wrote:
So you guys all agree that the Eldar and presumably the Golden Age humans could easily have wiped out the Orks?

And the Eldar didn't because they were amusing, and the Golden Age humans didn't for some other reason?

Hard to say about Golden Age humans because they have very little lore (though it seems plausible considering some of the nonsense DAoT tech we've seen), but the Eldar? Absolutely. They were not only post-scarcity, they were basically post-everything. They created and destroyed stars on a whim. The reason they didn't affect the galaxy more than they did is because they were inwards-turned. The Orks were not amusing, they were uninteresting. Who cares about war and politics when you are so close to omnipotence that you don't notice a difference? This is also why DAoT humanity and the ancient Eldar empire seemed to not interact much beyond what Cawl speculates to have once been a diplomatic site. They just did not care.

That does not mean Orks are not dangerous in present day 40k. They are. But they are predictable. There is a reason why they are the default antagonist in so many 40k games, often before more striking enemies appear - see Space Marine 1, Dawn of War 1 & 2, and so on. They are "normal". The Imperium is used to fighting them. Everyone is used to fighting them. They can be a serious problem when massed, but they are also a problem that even the regular Imperial Guard alone can competently deal with on even ground, because very, very very often they have to, and the Imperium wouldn't last long if they couldn't.

Man, I really hate modern 40K background.

That last bit isn't that modern. Orks have been the regular brawling partner of the Imperium for the last 10k years. That the Imperium has endured and at times even rebounded a bit during that time tells us they can't be too unmanageable.

Not every threat has to be cataclysmic on a galactic scale. With Orks you can tell stories that aren't just about the end of everything. They can be a local threat for local narratives. I would actually like it if GW used Orks more often as the antagonists. Remember that the very first 40k scenario ever published, in the back of the Rogue Trader rulebook, was about some Space Marines hiding out in a farm that unfortunately also happened to be where some marauding Orks had buried some treasure. I also liked that Orks weren't as flanderized back then, and did (marginally) have interests beyond immediately fighting.

(I guess this thread is now about Orks.)

If you think Orks have been flanderised? Give the Ufthak Blackhawk stories a whirl. Loads of Orky action, and insight into their cultural world view.

 Da Boss wrote:
Man, I really hate modern 40K background.

Which bit?

The eldar having galactic dominon until the fall is almost as old as 40k itself. And while there is no text that specifically walks you through that they culled the Orks, it is a logical inference based on how Orks work and the technology we know the Eldar possessed. If they weren't suppressed in some form, the galaxy would have been overrun by them and no other species would exist. Certainly the Eldar empire couldn't have reached its apex and kept its whole population in indolent boredom for tens of millennia if they were perpetually fighting Ork wars. Maiden worlds that were Terra formed are as old as that background, while the void weaver technology comes from epic armageddon in the early 2000s it combines two existing Eldar technologies from the early 90s - monofilament weapons and wraithbone immune parasites (where warp spiders get their name).

Terra forming a planet and releasing a nanobot swarm that eats ork spores is hardly a complicated thing. The idea that you cant get rid of Orks once they infest is more problematic than technologies that remove them.


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 sigkill wrote:
.
(I guess this thread is now about Orks.)

It something I've noticed about 40k in general is that discussion revolves around the imperium but it's been done to absolute death so many times that all the answers are wheeled out pretty fast and it often launches conversations into areas not discussed as much.

I wish more people put up threads about non imperial factions to discuss this instead, but it looks like it only happens in other threads.

I always assumed that the Eldar's galactic dominion was in reality pretty spread out. Like, they were everywhere, but only on selected worlds they thought were good enough - the beautiful maiden worlds.

I never saw them having a massive, teeming population, because it goes against the Elf trope they're inspired by. So I always thought there was PLENTY of space for Orks to be off in the barren reaches of the galaxy, warring with each other and whoever else. I figured the Eldar would likely just hide themselves form the Orks with all kinds of trickery, rarely ever fighting them face to face, because that's just not how they work.

I felt it was implied by the fact that the Squats, who also existed in the barren and hostile galactic core, specifically had fought countless wars against the Orks, enough to justify them having the Hatred special rule.

If it turns out I was wrong about all that, well that's all fine. I just think the setting is much poorer for it.

Edit: And I'm sorry for derailing the thread, I wasn't going to reply again only Hellebore asked me directly and it seemed rude not to. I sort of want to make a thread about these sorts of things, but I feel I can predict how it will go and the prospect is too disheartening for me to go through with it.

During the golden age/pre birth of slaneesh The eldar where everywhere, regardless of off their numbers due to their access to their webway. That was their ace in the hole.

We know quite a bit about eldar from that time becuase they hid and survived in the webway on their craft worlds that haven’t changed (as far as I am aware) since that time.

We don’t know much about humanity from that time and even less about ork. We know the Krorks were a thing an that orks evolve as they become more numerous. So there could have been a golden age ork population during that time which was much more civil, as humans and eldar seemed to be.

For all we know the birth of slaneesh obliterated orks aswell resetting their civilisation to the war machine it is in 40K.

I’d also be interested to know if the orks ever had access to the webway when they were troops for the old ones and if they did why did they loose access.

I absolutely hate the modern Krork background. Awful!

Reminds me. I got a copy of the original Necron Codex to read up on that…

The 3e codex just refers to an ancient race known and the Krork. I think the inference back then was supposed to be that that was what the Orks used to be called at some point.

In the (awful) War of the Beast series they invent the idea that Orks gradually evolve into bigger and smarter forms until they become building sized "beasts" which some fans have taken to be them "evolving" into Krork, the idea that Orks eventually evolve into "Primork" level Krork.

I know the idea of Orks getting bigger from fighting has been around for ages and I broadly have no issue with that. But it's taken to such a ludicrous extreme here, and also linked to Ork intelligence in a way I really dislike.

It's also the story where they retcon it so that Armageddon is Ullanor which...I mean when people talk about them making the setting smaller with the Heresy stuff this is THE prime example of that. Awful stuff on par with the Heresy causing the Tyranids.

I absolutely hate this idea and I think it's some of the worst background ever written. It leads to lots of fans speculating if Ghaz is going to "become a Krork" or whatever and I just find it awful.

I always thought they introduced it so they could give orks a Guilliman equivalent on the table top.

For what ever it’s worth I’m glad ghaz is a big bugger now. I always thought the 2nd ed model was underwhelming for a ork of his reputation.

Actually, that concept predates War of the Beast. It’s mentioned as a hypothesis no later than Xenology.

Essentially, there’s speculation that Ghaz may be a hitherto unknown Oddboy, specifically a Leader Caste.

We also see from the Ufthak novels that once a Boy becomes a Nob? He becomes more intelligent, the better to form more kunnin’ battle plans. Not “sudden genius”. Just a greater capacity to think beyond clobbering whomever is nearest.

The implication of course is that greater size and greater leadership abilities go hand in hand.

I don’t buy that the Krork = Orks. Which is why I’ve bought the Codex so I can read the primary source.

But the other stuff, of bigger = smarter remains canonical.


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Though I hasten to point out greater intelligence is still relative. It doesn’t mean a Warboss is going to be a strategic genius on par with a Space Marine or Autarch.

Just that, for Orks, they’re more capable of abstract thought and seeing bigger pictures in a given theatre of war.

That, with the natural Orky drive to follow the biggest and ‘ardest does support what makes them so successful as a species. All their knowledge is in their genome. And the more the fight, the tougher they get, with their growth only being arrested once someone or something slaps them down.

So whilst still somewhat basic of outlook? Having the biggest and strong also be the most mentally capable makes sense. They’re the one with the vision and the muscle to see it through. And the rest of society instinctually follows Da Plan, whatever it is. There’s less second guessing, less rebellion. Until at least Da Plan stops getting results, which will lead to a leadership challenge.

God I love Orky society!

Why wouldn't a warboss be as smart as a Space Marine? I maintain that Orks are not stupid at all, they are excellent problem solvers. It's just that their drives and desires make no sense to us, and their appearance and behaviour leads to them being stereotyped as stupid.

Anyway, canon-schmanon. I've always taken the in universe mechanicus or inquisitorial view on Orks with a grain of salt - we're looking at an alien species through the lens of absolute xenophobes, of course they're going to get stuff wrong (notably, not being able to believe that Ork tech could work at all).

I do recognise that the ambiguity has been stripped out of all of that now and the meme lore version is basically how it works in 40K these days.


And the Imperium now works just like Ork society too. Space Marines are bigger and smarter than normal humans, Custodes are bigger and smarter than Space Marines and Primarchs are the biggest and smartest of all. And everyone wants to follow the biggest and smartest guy naturally.

Edit to add: I'm sorry for derailing, I'll stop replying now!

Orks have a societal drawback. The aforementioned in this thread need to seek out the best fight.

The Boyz expect it of the Warboss. And a Warboss that can’t find a big enough fight likely isn’t going to be Warboss for very long.

So, despite obvious if entirely alien intelligence? They’re relatively easy to bait. You make a show of strength and put up a real fight.

For the Warboss to keep his hand in and maintain his position? He kind of has to duff up the enemy’s biggest and best champion. Stomping their warriors into the dirt just isn’t enough.

That seems to lead to a fairly blinkered view of a battle. The Warboss wants to, and kind of has to, go where the fighting is thickest. And so, prone to ambush.

All much easier said than done, but it does introduce a level of predictability Astartes don’t really demonstrate.

A given Chapter will have its preferences. But they’re by no means limited by said preferences.

A Warboss is heavily informed by his Clan’s predilections. If you’ve no Blood Axes in your cadre of under Bosses? You’re probably not going to think of something typically Blood Axes in terms of tactics. And if it does occur, it may be dismissed as Not Orky.

A Warboss may not have the knowledge of structural weaknesses, so when assault fortifications or looking to bring down an edifice? It may lack the insight a Chapter Master might as to how to effect that as efficiently as possible.

We also see Orks get too caught up in the current fight, where they’ve having so much fun battering everything in sight, they can easily lose sight of the wider battle or theatre.

But, as ever? That’s all true until, Orks being Orks, it isn’t true. Which may imply any Warboss will be able to see any given Clan’s approach - they’re just mentally ranked differently.

 Da Boss wrote:
Why wouldn't a warboss be as smart as a Space Marine? I maintain that Orks are not stupid at all, they are excellent problem solvers. It's just that their drives and desires make no sense to us, and their appearance and behaviour leads to them being stereotyped as stupid.

I think "their drives and desires are different" feels like a bit of a stretch to explain why Orks are not pretty dumb, when we see them comically self-sabotage in every conceivable way leading all the way back to the oldest lore.

The 4th edition Orks codex (my favourite one) very much shows how weird they are, and yes, scary, but also funny. You could argue all that self-sabotage is largely rooted in all the stuff they just don't care about, but at that point you could just as well use it to excuse the Skaven too...

(Edit: And yes, I think the Beast series is profoundly silly too)

Even their sabotage makes sense in their society.

It’s entirely permissive. You can get away with whatever you can get away with. Which usually boils down to “can I beat up the other Ork”.

This ensures regular fights, which act as a social steam valve, ensuring as many Orks as possible are as ‘ard as possible. And because they can survive even the most horrific injuries? It’s quite often both sides getting the benefit.

It also keeps their economy ticking over. Docs get paid, so the more you get injured, the more you spend. This helps prevent the hoarding of wealth, just as paying Meks for ever bigger and grander toys. This is further reinforced by Teef being biodegrable. Yes you could amass a huge amount of Teef by means fair and foul. But sooner or later? They will rot away to nothing, so you’re better off spending them.

Poverty is all but unheard of. Because again, permissive. Your Teef regrow, and you can always nick whatever you think you can get away with.

And importantly? Everyone has a great time living in that society.

I really think all this is trying to get around what is presented at face value, when there is nothing wrong with what is presented at face value.

When the Gargant that tried to slam its giant saw down on Trazyn the Infinite found itself catastrophically overbalancing when doing so (it was built with very poor balancing), resulting in the whole Gargant tipping over and falling into the sea where it was destroyed, that wasn't actually a win in a way we can't understand. It was incompetence. And it's okay, because it was funny.

What little we know of Golden Age humanity paints a species still prone to division and infighting and self-destruction, not fundamentally different from any other stage of humanity, just with bigger golden toys.

Golden Age humanity never could have wiped out the Orks, it would have inevitably been destroyed long before that, either by itself or by Chaos (so you know, kinda same thing that happened to the Eldar).

As long as the universe exist, there will likely be Orks in it. I don't believe you can say that about Eldar or Humans (or Tau even though their journey to galactic hegemony is just starting).

Tyranids could wipe out orks, however Tyranids are perhaps the only faction who, in theory would just consume everything there was in the Galaxy. You can't respawn orks if there's nothing left.

Though in practice there'd probably be some floating rock in the middle of nowhere with a handful of orkspore. Perhaps even durable enough to survive the pure black of nothing for countless eons until it drifts into a new Galaxy.




Necrons might also have done it as well if given enough time and if pressed to actually bothering them enough to do it since their weapons focus on disintegration. They've also the potential tenacity to keep at it.

Eldar, humans and many others would get so far and the consider it "job done move onto the next political issue"

Necrons technically have the capability, but would sooner descend into civil war and insanity.

There's a difference between extinction and suppression.

The Orks were not a galactic threat during Eldar dominon. It doesn't mean they wiped them out, it just means they never had a concentration high enough to trigger galaxy wide waaaghs that would exterminate everyone they ran over.

For some fun maths we can do the following. If an Ork colony doubles exponentially without challenge, how long will it take before there as many Ork colonies as stars in the galaxy?

The highest estimate of stars is 400 billion.

The number of doublings it takes to get from 1 to 400 billion is roughly 39.

60 million years divided by 39 is 1,538,461 years.

So, if Orks had no threats and just kept expanding as their spores are want to do, you could take 1.5 million years between doublings and we'd still get as many Ork colonies as stars in the galaxy in the 60 million years since their creation....

Given that orks breed much faster than that, you could take the time humans got from existing to the imperium (anywhere from 350,000 to 400,000 years) and use those as single colony generations, and it would take 15.6 million years for Orks to have as many colonies as stars.

So assuming an Ork population went from 1 planet to 2 planets in 400,000 years, without threats they would have 400 billion planets in 15 millon years.


As Orks grow as much as the environment will allow, they would absolutely have needed something to keep them in check for the 60 million years between their creation and the age of strife.

I'd be cautious about attributing too much resilience and mobility to Ork spores. I don't think that is substantiated by the material. It also takes a while for spores to grow, and they're hardly invisible while they do - we are not talking genestealer cults here. The spores are a problem, but they're not particularly viral.

In particular, spores have never been shown to be able to cross interplanetary space, which means Orks only spread between planets when Orks intentionally decide to go somewhere else. Orks can certainly build spaceships after reaching a certain technological level, but why would Orks ever go to an empty planet? There is no fight to be had there. Orks have no inherent drive to multiply, except as necessary to form a Waa-Ork, and in that case it is done through recruitment. I am not aware of any case where Orks intentionally colonize an otherwise empty planet. I think that is actually the real reason Orks don't spread to cover the entire galaxy whenever there is a power vacuum - the Orks have no motivation to go anywhere when the best available scrap is with other nearby Orks. Only when non-Ork civilizations appear do the Orks start moving outside of Ork space. The main complication to this analysis is that Ork travel technology is hardly reliable, and there are plenty of stories of Orks ending up somewhere they didn't intend to (Gorkamorka being perhaps the most famous case).

Orks don't know whats out there until they go. They don't have astronomorks checking if they can see someone to Crump in another star system.

Their waaaghs are described as part holy war and part migration. They build ships to go find someone to scrap with. They also do run away and get run out of areas where one Ork tribe got bigger and they didn't join.

Orks are always moving around and until they get to an empty planet they don't know it's empty.

Indeed, that’s their greatest limitation. And their greatest boon.

If even the Orks don’t really know where their ship or Spacehulk is taking them? How can you properly prepare?

 Hellebore wrote:
Orks don't know whats out there until they go. They don't have astronomorks checking if they can see someone to Crump in another star system.

Their waaaghs are described as part holy war and part migration. They build ships to go find someone to scrap with. They also do run away and get run out of areas where one Ork tribe got bigger and they didn't join.

Orks are always moving around and until they get to an empty planet they don't know it's empty.

That’s not 100% true though is it? I’m sure Ghazkull has visions to let him know which direction to send is waaaaaaagh. God knows what orky tech lets them direct their space hulks, probably a witted boy with a rod up his backside

 Ashiraya wrote:


Hard to say about Golden Age humans because they have very little lore (though it seems plausible considering some of the nonsense DAoT tech we've seen),

If GW writers have done any reading for their copy paste I sincerely hope they read the culture stuff, but with a 40k dystopia mindset. I would have thought humans in the 'Dark Age' had culture level tech and all of the pettiness and power hunger still. So when humans can have the power of gods, we start to squabble like our pantheons of old, with tens of thousands of human empires and alliances competing with each other. Those able to escape the society get a copy of colonisation for dummies (an STC is probably an equivalent of a scouting for boys camping guide), a basic spaceship (decommissioned warship, rusting hulk etc.), and go found a new world.


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 Da Boss wrote:
In the (awful) War of the Beast series they invent the idea that Orks gradually evolve into bigger and smarter forms until they become building sized "beasts" which some fans have taken to be them "evolving" into Krork, the idea that Orks eventually evolve into "Primork" level Krork.

It was pretty awful. The idea of bigger is better is also hilarious and straight out of invader Zim. Often thought its GW seeing how far they can push things to see what people swallow.

mrFickle wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
Orks don't know whats out there until they go. They don't have astronomorks checking if they can see someone to Crump in another star system.

Their waaaghs are described as part holy war and part migration. They build ships to go find someone to scrap with. They also do run away and get run out of areas where one Ork tribe got bigger and they didn't join.

Orks are always moving around and until they get to an empty planet they don't know it's empty.

That’s not 100% true though is it? I’m sure Ghazkull has visions to let him know which direction to send is waaaaaaagh. God knows what orky tech lets them direct their space hulks, probably a witted boy with a rod up his backside

It isn't 100% true but it is true enough for the argument that Orks move around a lot and are basically everywhere in the galaxy.

I hate the fact they are green and fart spores to reproduce.

 Adeptekon wrote:
I hate the fact they are green and fart spores to reproduce.

The spore thing is a retcon. In 1990's Waaargh The Orks! it is made clear that new orks are grow in marsupial-like pouches on older orks that have gone feral (like kangaroos). They were always green, though - that's a an original Warhammer staple.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


I don’t buy that the Krork = Orks. Which is why I’ve bought the Codex so I can read the primary source.

I'd also suggest the White Dwarf 3rd ed Kroot Army list. IIRC, it's where it's suggested that Kroot are also an offshoot of the Krork. If not, I know it's one of the Kroot articles from that era.

The Emperor, or Emperor of Mankind was introduced in the book Realms of Chaos Lost and the Damned in 1991, he was created when all of the shaman and women on Earth combined their powers.

That is why he is still alive even 40,000 years in the future.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


I don’t buy that the Krork = Orks. Which is why I’ve bought the Codex so I can read the primary source.

I'd also suggest the White Dwarf 3rd ed Kroot Army list. IIRC, it's where it's suggested that Kroot are also an offshoot of the Krork. If not, I know it's one of the Kroot articles from that era.

My memory of it was it was theorised that orks landed on Pech and got eaten by a krootoid lifeform that then developed into the Kroot based on absorbed Ork DNA in the same way all krootoid life forms do.

 sigkill wrote:

 Adeptekon wrote:
I hate the fact they are green and fart spores to reproduce.

The spore thing is a retcon. In 1990's Waaargh The Orks! it is made clear that new orks are grow in marsupial-like pouches on older orks that have gone feral (like kangaroos). They were always green, though - that's a an original Warhammer staple.

They were different shades to start with before settling on green. Check out some of the older golden demons and eavy metals. I thought they still grew to juvenile status in the ground in Waaahh?