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Hi, I am kind of a noob to 40k fluff, so excuse my if the answer is pretty obvious.

How are orks born? I understand they are technically fungus, but are they grown out of the ground, are they made like humans are (Are there even females in the ork society?) or are they cloned?

If you could give a source that would help more as I am quite interested in the ork background.

Off the top of my head, I remember seeing a picture of an Ork growing underground in one of their codexs. 3rd edition I believe. It shows them in some kind of embryonic sack underneath the ground. Of course it may have changed since then.

They're not. They grow, like a mold. They spore constantly throughout their lives. If enough spores gather in a corner or something, ti will spread like a mold. This mold will get these biggish pods growing in it. When these pods open, out comes Orks, Gretchin, squigs, and all the rest of the Orkoid ecosystem.

These initial waves of Orks, if there are no other Orks around, will be Feral Orks, and have little to no technology. If they survive long enough, killing and fighting and all of that, then a following generation will be Boyz. And once you have Boyz, you start getting Meks and Nobs and all the rest.

And, soon enough, you have a full-on WAAAAAGH!

As Orks go krumpin they give off spores. Wen they are killed there is a massive release of spores. The wind carries the spores and they grow into either Orks, Gretchin, Snotlings or other fungus after a short gestation.

Basic summary from the Ork codex.

Well that's quite interesting! I have always referred to them as vegetables, but now I have a new view on them!

Mommy and daddy ork 'ave a bit of a scrap in da back of da trukk.

And that's how ork babies are made.

yeah they basically are plants! Do they bleed green? They should.

Kinda. Their blood is described as being very very dark. Almost black IIRC.

Could be dark green. Doubt its actually green like grass.

Green like, like chlorophyll?



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Although now I think about it, the whole green thing doesn't sit very well with the fact that they are all meant to be sporing fungi. These grow in the damp and dark, and thus don't require chlorophyll to aid in photosynthesis for their energy. Who ever heard of a green mushroom?

And here I was thinking Orks were such a biologically plausible idea...

Green shrooms. Most pictures i've seen of the Ork fungus usually have red shrooms.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Kinda. Their blood is described as being very very dark. Almost black IIRC.

Could be dark green. Doubt its actually green like grass.

But in the space marine game they have red blood

 migs6357 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Kinda. Their blood is described as being very very dark. Almost black IIRC.

Could be dark green. Doubt its actually green like grass.

But in the space marine game they have red blood

That tends to be how the video games work. I always figured it was because a large chunk of the population playing them would just assume Orks were "conventional" aliens, rather than highly aggressive fungi. Hence the bleeding like a human.

Ork blood is part of their digestive system, and can therefore vary in colour depending on what (and when) the Ork ate. It' usually represented as red but can be darker to almost black.

The green is from the algae which is in their skin (and possibly other organs and muscles) rather than their blood. Technically this makes Orks more like lichen, a mixture of fungus and plant, with some mammal thrown in.

Orks = Interplanetary Space Herpes.

Once you've got them, impossible to get rid of.

And every now and then, you'll have a load of greenskins charge out of your forests and attack everything in sight.

Think this was in the GorkaMorka rulebook.

That's a bit weak though (on the developers behalf, not yours!). Even the dimmest gamer with the least knowledge of the 40k lore should be able to go "cool, green alien blood!".

Green shrooms. Most pictures i've seen of the Ork fungus usually have red shrooms

Awesome! No way in hell I would eat that. Mind you last time I had any shrooms I spent 5 hours sat on an inflatable walrus, wearing a magic cape and staring at trees. And none of that was the content of a hallucination.

With this in mind squigs seem like a more natural development. They are also meant to be the more basic creatures, so why they start going green as they get bigger is beyond me.

Think this was in the GorkaMorka rulebook.

Sick picture! yeah I remember that. I think it was in the Ork codex circa 3rd edition!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Though it may well have been in gork morka too, GW often reuses their art, so I had not meant to contradict you.

Somewhere along the way, fungal toe infections got a lot more dangerous....

So did face flannels...

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Catachan_Face-Eater

Welcome to grimdark

 Flinty wrote:
So did face flannels...

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Catachan_Face-Eater

Welcome to grimdark

Living murder blankets. Brilliant.

So they should fight orks with fungus remover instead of bolters?

I am melting, melting!

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
So they should fight orks with fungus remover instead of bolters?

I am melting, melting!

Close. They use flame throwers. The heat kills the spores.

There is no problem that cannot be solved through the application of sufficient napalm.

 Zed wrote:

 migs6357 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Kinda. Their blood is described as being very very dark. Almost black IIRC.

Could be dark green. Doubt its actually green like grass.

But in the space marine game they have red blood

That tends to be how the video games work. I always figured it was because a large chunk of the population playing them would just assume Orks were "conventional" aliens, rather than highly aggressive fungi. Hence the bleeding like a human.

Actually, that's due to the GW 'Eavy Metal and art teams. They tend to make Ork blood red so that it shows up against their green skin(green blood on green skin isn't very visual friendly, so says White Dwarf circa 3rd ed).

The 3rd edition Space Wolves cover even shows red Ork blood:

Orks grow undergrond from their spores.

Also, according to the lore I remember, Ork blood (along with skin) gets darker and more green/black color the bigger they get.

The blood cover varies on who you are readings books etc. Just a drop in the ocean of errors that have come up over the decades between GW and BL sources .

 migs6357 wrote:
Well that's quite interesting! I have always referred to them as vegetables, but now I have a new view on them!

Some of us still tell our armies to eat their greens before the greens eat them :3

Storks

When a mommy ork and a daddy ork love each other a whole lot...

From Waaargh the Orks! (1990), an old source but nothing has changed about what is said here.

I heard that in the original rogue trader game there were female orks, and they bred is this true?