Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi! So I was reading up on the Hrud and their races ability to do the following (Quoted from the wiki) " to dramatically accelerate the aging of any living being or to accelerate the slide towards entropy of an object that comes within their vicinity." I remember reading a topic on dakka a few months ago talking about a Hrud effecting a space marine and killing him with this effect. Space marines are marvels of biology however they are their core humans and as such limited in the event of extremes. Orks on the other hand are stated to only ever become bigger and stronger as they age and are so biologically resilient that they are immune to what appears to almost all forms of "natural causes" death.

So what happens when Hrud and Orks collide? Can Hrud cause an Ork to age so much that it actually dies or would that Ork just get meaner and greener? Are Orks vunerable to the extreme atrophy brought on by the Hrud? Assuming the Hrud can push anyone to the extremes of aging and atrophy then yes they could theoretically kill anyone with their powers however I think the question is do the Orks have any limits in this regard to give at all?

Its like when you put the the guy who can surpass any limits to the guy who has none in the first place who wins? Well technically only one of them has to give at all. <-- Taking from the Goku versus Superman Deathbattle.

Orks are not noted for being biologically immortal, though I am not sure any Orks have been kept in captivity long enough to test it as a theory. Given that they are living creatures, however, it stands to reason that they age like anything else.

if Hrud can age a space marine they can proably age an Ork

BrianDavion wrote:if Hrud can age a space marine they can proably age an Ork

Well CAN is not the question. The effect of said forced aging is.

Psienesis wrote:Orks are not noted for being biologically immortal, though I am not sure any Orks have been kept in captivity long enough to test it as a theory. Given that they are living creatures, however, it stands to reason that they age like anything else.

However the thing is that Orks dont age like everything else. Orks only get bigger and stronger with age with no mention of that process ever stopping.

I think that's where you're mistaken.
Orks don't get bigger/stronger with age, they get bigger/stronger with fighting. Fighting is like a source of sustenance for an ork, thriving off of combat. That's why the Octarius Campaign is creating larger orks, because they're in constant warfare. It's why orks encountered in the Great Crusade were so big - they fought, and nothing was strong enough to beat them.

Think of orks a little like the body's immune system. They encounter a pathogen and fight it. If they defeat the pathogen, they become immune to it (stronger), but if the pathogen overpowers them, they die. If an ork keeps winning his fights, he gets more powerful - when he loses them (aka, dying) then he doesn't get more powerful.

At least, my view and knowledge.

That is correct. Orks, being fungal based, also don't age like animals. Orks probably aren't "immortal," since they are still organic creatures, but their lifespans may well be exceedingly long. My guess would be that it depends on how fast the Hrud could age the Ork. So, I suppose the question then is, "is its aging effects fast enough to kill the Ork before it krumps em good an proper?"

Might be like trying to age an oak sapling that hits back as it grows bigger.

Do you think they can answer this in the Faq ?

There's also the acceleration of entropy. That might be plenty to kill just about anything

I expect the Ork would sprout a fruiting body which would go 'puff' in a cloud of spores.

I am pretty sure Orks can get really, really old. They are a kind of plant after all
There'd probably need to be one hell of a gigantic Hrud migration to create an entropic field powerful enough to age the Orks. But I do think it could be done. Nothing is immortal.
I think the question indeed should whether the Orks can be aged fast enough in order to save the Hrud from being stomped roight an proppa. Probably not considering the fact that the Ork ecosystem spawned by dead Orks would also age faster than normal.

It is accelerated entropy, not just age.

This is key.

So if you cause them to age and decay then when they die they give out spores which in turn will age rapidly and give out more spores etc etc.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
So if you cause them to age and decay then when they die they give out spores which in turn will age rapidly and give out more spores etc etc.

There is still the entropy aspect to consider as chemical bonds break down and the very atoms begin to deteriorate. How does releasing spores help any if they're falling apart on a molecular level?

 King Pariah wrote:

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
So if you cause them to age and decay then when they die they give out spores which in turn will age rapidly and give out more spores etc etc.

There is still the entropy aspect to consider as chemical bonds break down and the very atoms begin to deteriorate. How does releasing spores help any if they're falling apart on a molecular level?

How does entropy make them fall apart on a molecular level?
The only effect described in the fluff is accelerated aging, nothing else.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 King Pariah wrote:

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
So if you cause them to age and decay then when they die they give out spores which in turn will age rapidly and give out more spores etc etc.

There is still the entropy aspect to consider as chemical bonds break down and the very atoms begin to deteriorate. How does releasing spores help any if they're falling apart on a molecular level?

How does entropy make them fall apart on a molecular level?
The only effect described in the fluff is accelerated aging, nothing else.

Because that is what entropy is. It is the universal constant of "decay". Everything everywhere decays.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 King Pariah wrote:

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
So if you cause them to age and decay then when they die they give out spores which in turn will age rapidly and give out more spores etc etc.

There is still the entropy aspect to consider as chemical bonds break down and the very atoms begin to deteriorate. How does releasing spores help any if they're falling apart on a molecular level?

How does entropy make them fall apart on a molecular level?
The only effect described in the fluff is accelerated aging, nothing else.

I just so happen to be reading a book that explains how entropy effects living organisms



Keep in mind we have no way of knowing if the laws of physics are the same in the 40k universe.

 Tibs Ironblood wrote:
So if you cause them to age and decay then when they die they give out spores which in turn will age rapidly and give out more spores etc etc.

Eventually if this continues there will be so many young orks that their psychic energy will directly call to Gork and Mork who will crush the Hrud and allow their younglings to grow into a massive Waagh.
There are advantages to having interventionist gods.

Those young Orks will be crumbling to dust in short order as the Hrud entropic field grows. More, they won't have any elder Boyz about to teach them the kultur.

 Psienesis wrote:
Those young Orks will be crumbling to dust in short order as the Hrud entropic field grows. More, they won't have any elder Boyz about to teach them the kultur.

Gork and Mork have taken care of the Hrud and their field. Maybe younglings with no elders to guide them is how new clans get started

That isn't how things work in this scenario and, being Warp Gods, neither Gork nor Mork are likely to put in personal appearances.

Basically, the Hrud entropy effect is a radiated field... an "aura power". Anything caught in the field gets entropied. This includes the spores from the first wave of dying Orks. Now, spores gestating into the various sub-classes of the Orkoid species requires a lot more than just time, there are environmental concerns to take into account as well. Being a fungus, the conditions have to fall within a certain range of tolerances to allow the spores to gestate and grow.

The spores are not going to do this in a Hrud entropic field, they're just going to rot, because that is what fungal spores that fail to find suitable environments do.

For all we know orks are immune to it becuase of some weird orky field. We already know they have a gestalt psychic effect why not something that counters the hrud effects?

Is their any fluff that describes the hrud effect working on orks? I know of things that mention its effects on humans and marines but not on other things.

From the Planetstrike book, the Hrud accelerated the aging of the Guardsmen they were fighting by a factor of ~200, aging them fifty years in a couple of months.

Now, this is completely massive. The Ork spores would have to draw nourishment from the soil at 200 times the rate that they usually do to keep up with the entropy. Needless to say, this is something that they probably can't.

 Ashiraya wrote:
From the Planetstrike book, the Hrud accelerated the aging of the Guardsmen they were fighting by a factor of ~200, aging them fifty years in a couple of months.

Now, this is completely massive. The Ork spores would have to draw nourishment from the soil at 200 times the rate that they usually do to keep up with the entropy. Needless to say, this is something that they probably can't.

Only if it effects them in the same way

 Psienesis wrote:
That isn't how things work in this scenario and, being Warp Gods, neither Gork nor Mork are likely to put in personal appearances.

Basically, the Hrud entropy effect is a radiated field... an "aura power". Anything caught in the field gets entropied. This includes the spores from the first wave of dying Orks. Now, spores gestating into the various sub-classes of the Orkoid species requires a lot more than just time, there are environmental concerns to take into account as well. Being a fungus, the conditions have to fall within a certain range of tolerances to allow the spores to gestate and grow.

The spores are not going to do this in a Hrud entropic field, they're just going to rot, because that is what fungal spores that fail to find suitable environments do.

The range of tolerable conditions for Ork spores is virtually unlimited. Ork spores can survive anywhere, even on bare rocks in deep space without any soil or oxygen. Ork spores are capable of creating their own ecosystems. This enables Ork spores to survive regardless of initial environmental concerns.
Also, they are not going to rot, because that is not what the Hrud entropic field does. The entropic field increases the process of aging, it has never been described as doing anything else besides that. A fungus needs time to grow. If you accelerate the pace at which the fungus ages, it is not going to rot (unless it is dead), it will grow faster. Now this would increase nutrient requirements, but whether the environment would be able to sustain that depends on the amount of nutrients in the environment and on exactly how fast Ork spores can terraform their environment in order to sustain themselves. And as the the entropic field would accelerate the pace at with Orks die, then it would also accelerate the pace at which spores get released into the environment, thus also increasing the pace at which the environment is being terraformed to support an Orky ecosystem. Eventually, I predict that the effect of the entropic field would be an infinite exponential increase in the number of Orks. The faster the Orks age and die, the more new Orks spring up, age, die and make even more Orks spring up etc. etc. etc. This seems like the most typical Orky possibility. Because that is the most important consideration here. We are talking about Orks. Orks are supposed to be funny and random. Anything could happen when Orks are involved.

It would be pretty funny if they used their entropy beam and the orks in question just got stronger, bigger, and tougher. That seems like a potential disaster for the galaxy.

I would think that it's more of an entropic field than just aging, but the way living creatures experience entropy is by aging and withering, then dying. Like, if you put a baby next to a bunch of Hrud it won't grow up, go through puberty, become a man, etc. and then die. It'd probably just become a very old looking baby and then die. So an Ork wouldn't necessarily give off more spores than germinate and grow rapidly, they'd just die faster.

I'll just say again - from what I know, Orks only seem to get bigger as they fight. NOT as they age.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:
I'll just say again - from what I know, Orks only seem to get bigger as they fight. NOT as they age.

Indeed. Probably some growth hormone mixed in the dopamine or whatever Orks get when they fight.

These things sound pretty powerful. Must suck for the imperium as everything crumbles from entropy including equipment, vehicles, hive cities. And somehow these things are able to hide despite this entropy effect. By the way their ability is described they must be the easiest aliens to find. Follow the crumbling trail. Guess they don't need to eat and gak also.