Orks at Ullanor (and beyond)

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**Millicant**

What do we know about the Ork warband that fought at Ullanor and it's expanded empire throughout the galaxy? Colors/markings? Tactics/themes? Anything other than "they died by the Emperor's hand' (with help from his sons)?

So far, here are the places that have been mentioned:

Ullanor, their final defeat
The large space battle where the Emperor fights a monstrous ork in the belly of a disintegrating rok
The edge of the galaxy where they are cleansed by the White Scars

**Psienesis**

They were probably green.
Their banner probably had a big white or yellow Ork skull on it, possibly with crossed bones and/or wrenches.
Even their grots and runts were huge.

**Maximus Bitch**

Such a large empire would have a diverse bunch of Orks.

**Millicant**

Is there even a name associated with this Ork empire?

**Formosa**

Yep I think so, think its in the hh books fw have done, I'll check

**Ashiraya**

Ashiraya wrote:
Orks during the 30K era were insanely strong. Ghaz seems like a joke in comparison.

The Wolf of Ash and Fire wrote:The Emperor fought an armoured giant twice his height and breadth. Its skull was a vast, iron-helmed boulder with elephantine tusks and chisel-like teeth that gleamed dully. Its eyes were coal-red slits of such vicious intelligence that it stole Horus’s breath.
Horus had never seen its equal. No bestiary would include its description for fear of being ridiculed, no magos of the Mechanicum would accept such a specimen could exist.
Six clanking, mechanised limbs bolted through its flesh bore grinding, crackling, sawing, snapping, flame-belching weapons of murder. The Emperor’s armour was burning, the golden wreath now ashes around his neck.
Chugging rotor cannons battered the Emperor’s armour even as claws of lightning tore portions of it away. It was taking every screed of the Emperor’s warrior skill and psychic might to keep the mech-warlord’s weaponry from killing him.
‘Father!’ shouted Horus.
The greenskin turned and saw Horus. It saw the desperation in his face and laughed. A fist like a Reductor siege hammer smashed the Emperor’s sword aside and a fist of green flesh lifted him into the air. It crushed the life from him with its inhuman power.

This may not be Ullanor, but it shows that Orks during the Crusade were pretty serious.

**Xyptc**

Ashiraya wrote:
Ashiraya wrote:
Orks during the 30K era were insanely strong. Ghaz seems like a joke in comparison.

The Wolf of Ash and Fire wrote:The Emperor fought an armoured giant twice his height and breadth. Its skull was a vast, iron-helmed boulder with elephantine tusks and chisel-like teeth that gleamed dully. Its eyes were coal-red slits of such vicious intelligence that it stole Horus’s breath.
Horus had never seen its equal. No bestiary would include its description for fear of being ridiculed, no magos of the Mechanicum would accept such a specimen could exist.
Six clanking, mechanised limbs bolted through its flesh bore grinding, crackling, sawing, snapping, flame-belching weapons of murder. The Emperor’s armour was burning, the golden wreath now ashes around his neck.
Chugging rotor cannons battered the Emperor’s armour even as claws of lightning tore portions of it away. It was taking every screed of the Emperor’s warrior skill and psychic might to keep the mech-warlord’s weaponry from killing him.
‘Father!’ shouted Horus.
The greenskin turned and saw Horus. It saw the desperation in his face and laughed. A fist like a Reductor siege hammer smashed the Emperor’s sword aside and a fist of green flesh lifted him into the air. It crushed the life from him with its inhuman power.

This may not be Ullanor, but it shows that Orks during the Crusade were pretty serious.

I love that story. The vaunted God Emperor of Mankind almost laid low by a large Ork with some Dread limbs bolted onto its body.

Admittedly, the Emperor and Horus were "tired" because they had been fighting for a long time but still... a nice cold dose of reality right there.

**the ancient**

Wasnt Horus the size of one of his arms?

So your probably looking at a 8m mechanically enhanced ork. Who wasnt the war boss. It took the Emp and Horus to take it down.
Theres your nice cold dose of reality.

**Ashiraya**

Xyptc wrote:
Ashiraya wrote:
Ashiraya wrote:
Orks during the 30K era were insanely strong. Ghaz seems like a joke in comparison.

The Wolf of Ash and Fire wrote:The Emperor fought an armoured giant twice his height and breadth. Its skull was a vast, iron-helmed boulder with elephantine tusks and chisel-like teeth that gleamed dully. Its eyes were coal-red slits of such vicious intelligence that it stole Horus’s breath.
Horus had never seen its equal. No bestiary would include its description for fear of being ridiculed, no magos of the Mechanicum would accept such a specimen could exist.
Six clanking, mechanised limbs bolted through its flesh bore grinding, crackling, sawing, snapping, flame-belching weapons of murder. The Emperor’s armour was burning, the golden wreath now ashes around his neck.
Chugging rotor cannons battered the Emperor’s armour even as claws of lightning tore portions of it away. It was taking every screed of the Emperor’s warrior skill and psychic might to keep the mech-warlord’s weaponry from killing him.
‘Father!’ shouted Horus.
The greenskin turned and saw Horus. It saw the desperation in his face and laughed. A fist like a Reductor siege hammer smashed the Emperor’s sword aside and a fist of green flesh lifted him into the air. It crushed the life from him with its inhuman power.

This may not be Ullanor, but it shows that Orks during the Crusade were pretty serious.

I love that story. The vaunted God Emperor of Mankind almost laid low by a large Ork with some Dread limbs bolted onto its body.

Admittedly, the Emperor and Horus were "tired" because they had been fighting for a long time but still... a nice cold dose of reality right there.

It's not a 'nice cold dose of reality'. This Ork was on a demigod level of sheer power. If anything it is even more proof of how detached from realisticness this setting is. The Orks during the 30K era were absurdly mighty, a threat that makes the Orks of the present day seem like pests. Ghazghkull is like a grot next to this son of a swineherd.

**BrianDavion**

it's not detached from reality at all. one of the most common THEMES of 40k is that "the universe is past it's prime, what was, is greater then what is"

the great battles of today are simply weak shadows of those of yesterday.

**the ancient**

Well Afganistan is a bit piss poor compared to WW1

**Judge Dredd**

I'm not a big fan of the orks and their fluff, but as far as I know there isn't theoretically limit to the strenght an Ork could reach given the right amount of battles, right?

So I find it perfectly coherent that an Ork (or more than one) of that kind could have very well existed in that times.
And anyway Horus and The Emperor killed him practically seconds later. That piece become a bit less impressive if you quote it all:

‘No!’ yelled Horus, battering his way through the last of the greenskins to reach his father’s side. The Mech-Warlord turned his spinal weapons on Horus, and a blistering series of lightning strikes hammered the walkway.
Horus dodged them all, a wolf on the hunt amid the ash and fire of the world’s ending. He had no weapon, and where that wasn’t normally a handicap to a warrior of the Legions, against this foe it was a definite disadvantage.
No weapon of his would hurt this beast anyway.
But one of its own…

Horus gripped one of the warlord’s mechanised arms, one bearing the spinning brass spheres and crackling tines of its lightning weapon. The arm’s strength was prodigious, but centimetre by centimetre Horus forced it around.

Lightning blasted from the weapon, burning Horus’s hands black. Bone gleamed through the ruin of his flesh, but what was that pain when set against the loss of a father?
With one last herculean effort, Horus wrenched the arm up as a sawing blast of white-edged lightning erupted from the weapon. A searing burst of fire impacted on the Mech-Warlord’s forearm and the limb exploded from the elbow down in a welter of blackened bone and boiling blood. The beast grunted in surprise, dropping the Emperor and staring in dumb fascination at the ruin of its arm.

Seizing the chance he had been given, the Emperor bent low and surged upwards with his bluesteel sword extended. The tip ripped into the Mech-Warlord’s belly and burst from its back in a shower of sparks.
‘Now you die,’ said the Emperor, and ripped his blade up.
It was an awful, agonising, mortal wound. Electrical fire vented from hideous metal organs within the wreckage of the greenskin’s body.

Horus felt the build up of colossal psychic energies and shielded his eyes as a furious light built within the Emperor. Power like nothing he had ever seen his father wield, or even suspected he possessed. All consuming, all powerful, it was the power to extinguish life in every sphere of its existence. Physical flesh turned to ash before it and what ancient faiths had once called a soul was burned out of existence, never to cohere again.

**Ashiraya**

That the Emperor wins does not make the Ork unimpressive at all.

**Judge Dredd**

I was referring to the whole situation, not to the Ork's power level. And I said "a bit less", not "unimpressive at all".

Generally when people talks about this battle only that first bit above get posted, and the way that paragraph ends, with Horus desperate and The Emperor immobilized, make it sounds way worse than it is.

But it's not like the Ork comes out any more weaker anyway.

**Xyptc**

It reads like the Emperor used the same psychic attack he later uses on Horus, right in front of Horus.

Anyway the point still stands; a (very) large Ork had the Emperor on the ropes with a combination of strength, toughness and mek-tek.

No "magic weapons", no "empowered by the Chaos Gods", just good old fashioned Ork brutality.

**Ashiraya**

Xyptc wrote:
It reads like the Emperor used the same psychic attack he later uses on Horus, right in front of Horus.

Anyway the point still stands; a (very) large Ork had the Emperor on the ropes with a combination of strength, toughness and mek-tek.

No "magic weapons", no "empowered by the Chaos Gods", just good old fashioned Ork brutality.

Indeed! It displays the truly mindboggling levels of strength and toughness things can reach in this setting.

**Frankenberry**

Xyptc wrote:
It reads like the Emperor used the same psychic attack he later uses on Horus, right in front of Horus.

Anyway the point still stands; a (very) large Ork had the Emperor on the ropes with a combination of strength, toughness and mek-tek.

No "magic weapons", no "empowered by the Chaos Gods", just good old fashioned Ork brutality.

While the Emperor vaporizing the Ork's soul was badass, I agree. It's impressive to see general might wtfpwn two of the most powerful beings the 40k galaxy has ever seen.

**Dinamarth**

Did it occur to anyone that the Emperor wanted to appear to be losing? Maybe to test Horus?

**Pilau Rice**

Xyptc wrote:
It reads like the Emperor used the same psychic attack he later uses on Horus, right in front of Horus.

Physical flesh turned to ash before it and what ancient faiths had once called a soul was burned out of existence, never to cohere again.

Hmm, kinda the same, very powerful none the less. This attack would suggest that the Orks entire being had been destroyed, whereas Horus' body was carried away by Abaddon and his cronies. I guess because the Emp was too wounded to summon its full potential.

Dinamarth wrote:
Did it occur to anyone that the Emperor wanted to appear to be losing? Maybe to test Horus?

I've thought on this before.

I don't think it was to test Horus, but perhaps a way for Horus to repay the favour. The Emperor had saved Horus before

IA: Luna Wolves
The two fought together on many occasions. At the fortified city of Reillis, a Human settlement unwilling to accept the Emperor's beneficent will, the defending army used secret tunnels to infiltrate behind the besieging Imperial army and hundreds of shock troops swamped the command encampment. Unprepared and unarmoured, the Emperor and Horus fought back to back until a plasma blast stunned Horus and sent him staggering to the floor. The Emperor stood over the Primarch and refused to give ground until reinforcements arrived to drive their attackers back. On the Ork-infested planet of Gorro, Horus repaid the debt by hacking the arm from a huge, frenzied Greenskin warlord as it struggled to choke the Emperor's life out of him.

Maybe Horus had found it quite galling that he had to be saved by the Emperor and had been trying to redeem himself, Gorro providing the ideal opportunity.

**Judge Dredd**

Dinamarth wrote:
Did it occur to anyone that the Emperor wanted to appear to be losing? Maybe to test Horus?

I wouldn't be surprised given how quickly The Emperor wasted him after he was free.

**tgjensen**

BrianDavion wrote:
it's not detached from reality at all. one of the most common THEMES of 40k is that "the universe is past it's prime, what was, is greater then what is"

the great battles of today are simply weak shadows of those of yesterday.

The Imperium and mankind, yes. And the Eldar, of course. But the universe, and the galaxy, and all the other races, are not "past their prime". That theme is not really universal at all.

I think the idea of an Ork the size and power of a Primarch is moronic. It just smacks of uninspired comic book logic at its worst, and I say that as an Ork player and a comic book reader.

**Millicant**

Sooo....

Any details on the orks from the Ullanor warband? Colors, markings, tactics, themes, etc?

**Dinamarth**

Not yet. I think the only real details were included in the Hastur Sejanus short story.