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Orks are immune to chaos. Orks stalemate Tyranids. Eldar are dying. The tau are too small and are in danger of being eaten. The imperium is taking its final breaths. The necrons are slowly awakening.

Are Orks the galaxy's saviors?

Saviors? What are they saving?

Waut yu' goin' un bout? Da galxee! Uf corse!

Orks the saviors of the galaxy?


That's a bit like saying Michael Gove is the Savior of the UK Education system.

When they're done destroying it, all that'll be left is a large number of uneducated idiots in a poor excuse for a civilization.

Orks are not immune to Chaos, for starters. There are both Khorne Orks and Nurgle Orks, and there's probably a few Tzeentchian Cults that are populated by Mad Doks and Weirdboyz, and I'm sure there's a few Slaaneshi Ork cults that are doing things in ways that other Orks find strange and un-Orky.

Nonsense, the Tyranids and Necrons are the true saviours of the galaxy!

walkertreat wrote:
Orks are immune to chaos.

No they're not.

walkertreat wrote:
Orks are immune to chaos.

No they aren't.

 Wulfmar wrote:
When they're done destroying it, all that'll be left is a large number of uneducated idiots in a poor excuse for a civilization.

Uthan the Perverse wrote:The Orks are the pinnacle of creation. For them, the great struggle is won. They have evolved a society which knows no stress or angst. Who are we to judge them? We Eldar who have failed, or the Humans, on the road to ruin in their turn? And why? Because we sought answers to questions that an Ork wouldn't even bother to ask! We see a culture that is strong and despise it as crude.

Prophet of Gork and Mork. Save us all.

The galaxy cares not for your petty struggles. It wouldn't care if the Tyranids turned every resource-bearing world into a rocky, airless husk. It wouldn't care if the Necrons exploded every single star, or if Chaos claimed every single soul. When people talk about saving/destroying the galaxy, they're referring to its inhabitants. The Milky Way doesn't care if it collides with Andromeda and is absorbed into it. It's not the galaxy itself that's under threat from anything.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The galaxy cares not for your petty struggles. It wouldn't care if the Tyranids turned every resource-bearing world into a rocky, airless husk. It wouldn't care if the Necrons exploded every single star, or if Chaos claimed every single soul. When people talk about saving/destroying the galaxy, they're referring to its inhabitants. The Milky Way doesn't care if it collides with Andromeda and is absorbed into it. It's not the galaxy itself that's under threat from anything.

This, although the premiss of your argument would seem to have merit,
After all Inquisitor Kryptman thought the same thing, manipulating the orks into blocking the Nids and using them as a shield.

But if we used your suggestion of "save"... Well necrons, tau and even robots could do the same job of protectin the galaxy from the Nids and chaos..

I'm not entirely certain what you're saying to me. My point is that galaxies aren't entities that can be threatened or consequently saved.

Your sentence structure is what confuses me. Does everything after "This" refer to the OP? Your continuation of that sentence is rather odd.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I'm not entirely certain what you're saying to me. My point is that galaxies aren't entities that can be threatened or consequently saved.

Your sentence structure is what confuses me. Does everything after "This" refer to the OP? Your continuation of that sentence is rather odd.

Rain Forests are not entities either, yet they can be saved. It doesn't have to be a living breathing creature with feelings to be saved, it just has to exist; to be something.

If I prevent a tree from being cut down, I have saved it (from at least one threat). Were I to pull a rock out from under a steam roller before it was ground into paste, I would have saved it. The rock does not care that it is saved, but what it is has been saved; it would have been broken down and destroyed, ceasing to be what it currently is and being transformed into an entirely different object.

The galaxy can be saved, because the galaxy is a thing. An object, if you will. What constitutes saving / destroying the galaxy is, however, up for debate. The only example you listed which really fit was being destroyed completely and utterly. Having the inhabitants wiped out and worlds stripped of life would not, in the technical sense, cause the galaxy to cease to be.

The galaxy isn't an object, though. It's exactly the same as all this "save the Earth" stuff that people talk about. Global warming isn't the Earth dying, it's just the Earth changing. If the environment changes enough, if the skies went dark from ash and starved all life from light, if the ice caps melted and the seas consumed all land - the Earth would remain. When people say "save the Earth", they really mean "save the animals/plants/ecosystems/whatever".

You can't crush space. When we refer to the galaxy, we tend to refer to the bodies within it, the vast majority of which have zero life whatsoever. The point is that no amount of Tyranid, Necron, or Chaos activity will constitute any meaningful change to the galaxy as a whole. That's what I'm talking about.

So why do the Orks represent "saviours"? If the Orks win, it's a victory for the Orks. It's not a case of "Team Galaxy" (which seems to be Man, Eldar, Tau, Orks, and other native races) vs "Team Anti-Galaxy" (which seems to be Chaos, Tyranids, and Necrons). If the Orks become unchallenged holders of the entire galaxy, the OP's premise seems to be that this is a "salvation" of it - that the ultimate victory conditions of Chaos, Tyranids and possibly Necrons are all somehow objectively bad for the galaxy itself. By this logic, I'm wondering what the OP is referring to by "the galaxy", because if Orks killing everything and ultimately winning is good, why is a Tyranid victory bad?

Also, rain forests are absolutely entities. Entities that, by their very definition, constitute a certain amount of life (mostly trees) and ecosystems innately linked to that life. Deforesting and pollution can cause them harm. Pollution can cause harm to sealife, but it doesn't harm the sea itself - the sea, as an entity, is immune to harm because it's just a water body. The sea is still the sea if it has no life in it. It only becomes "destroyed" when Tyranids come and eat it, along with the atmosphere.

EDIT: Also, I didn't say that galaxies aren't entities. I said that they are not entities that can be put under threat.

 Wulfmar wrote:
Orks the saviors of the galaxy?


That's a bit like saying Michael Gove is the Savior of the UK Education system.

When they're done destroying it, all that'll be left is a large number of uneducated idiots in a poor excuse for a civilization.

So damn true


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 morganfreeman wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I'm not entirely certain what you're saying to me. My point is that galaxies aren't entities that can be threatened or consequently saved.

Your sentence structure is what confuses me. Does everything after "This" refer to the OP? Your continuation of that sentence is rather odd.

Rain Forests are not entities either, yet they can be saved. It doesn't have to be a living breathing creature with feelings to be saved, it just has to exist; to be something.

But trees are living organisms. As are all plants. All of which have a sense of survival, a measurable IQ, and evidence of rudimentary emotions.
You can save a rainforest in much the same sense as you can save a litter of kittens.

You can't, however, save a collection of inanimate materials floating through space.

I think you're just arguing over semantics now, I'm guessing OP means save the life/ecosystems/balance etc of the galaxy.

Remember, the emperors only alive because the orks believe he is

ahzek wrote:
Remember, the emperors only alive because the orks believe he is

And the Orks are alive because Khorne rewards his greatest warriors.

Therefore, Khorne is keeping ol' Empy alive!

Konspirusy feeree!

Oddly, I've been thinking along parallel lines to this since the latest Codex came out, especially with all the talk of the number of Waaaghs increasing as the Warp is stirred up by Chaos and the 13th Black Crusade.

Orks appear to have become a brutal but effective immune system for the biodiversity of the galaxy, ensuring that there are a fairly large number of species.

Orks are psychicaly inclined to seek out and pick a fight with the biggest, most dangerous thing around. Therefore, as any one species begins to rise to a point where it's in danger of making the galaxy a monoculture, it comes to the notice of the Orks and under sustained attack.

The Orks were originally bred for this, to ensure that the Necrons didn't wipe out the galaxy. As the Imperium came into the ascendant and began wiping out other species wholesale, it became the Ork target of choice (a situation which still exists).

When the Tyranids turned up, they were obviously a major threat to life in the Galaxy, and hence a good prospect for a fight. Likewise with the Necrons turning off the snooze function on their stasis chambers. And if Chaos really gets going, they may not wreck the galaxy's biodiversity but they'll play havoc with things like cause and effect.

If there's nobody likely to destroy all life in the galaxy at the moment, the Orks content themselves with fighting each other, in a sort of extremely violent dormant state.

There isn't any canonical evidence that I can think of for this, and even if it's intentional by GW's writers (which I doubt) it's debatable if this is something that the Brain Boyz engineered or just dumb luck. But in either case, yes - Orks are the only hope for the galaxy.

"I am not sure I like the direction this party is taking. We must strive to maintain balance." - Jaheira the Druid.

ImAGeek wrote:
I think you're just arguing over semantics now, I'm guessing OP means save the life/ecosystems/balance etc of the galaxy.

It's hardly semantics. If someone says "the Solar System", do you think it only refers to life on Earth? The problem is also that an Ork victory is no less harmful to the "life" or "balance" of the galaxy than a Tyranid or Chaos one, so your definition doesn't apply either. The only difference is that, in the end, there are Orks everywhere. Like I said before, why are Orks on "Team Galaxy"? If any faction in the setting wipes out every other, it's a loss for everyone but themselves. Saving or destroying the galaxy simply does not come in to it. Why is there this idea than an Ork victory is a good thing (judging by the use of the word "save")?

Graphite wrote:
danger of making the galaxy a monoculture

Do you have any idea how insanely huge a galaxy is? Also, why is being a "monoculture" a bad thing? Why does biodiversity matter?

Graphite wrote:
The Orks were originally bred for this, to ensure that the Necrons didn't wipe out the galaxy.

They were created as tools to fight the Necrons with. If you wanted to ascribe a higher purpose, it would be "ensuring that the Necrons didn't wipe out the Old Ones". This is also true for the Eldar. The Orks were engineered to be good at war, and that they are. Your description as the galaxy's immune system makes them sound much more like Tyranids, acting as a whole to perform a single function. If this were true, their actions wouldn't constitute random attacks in random places. They'd be targeting the weakpoints of a civilisation to cripple its power base. There'd be some method to their madness, but the only method is that they love to fight. They don't target the Imperium, they just encounter it most often because the Imperium is practically everywhere.

Graphite wrote:
Orks are the only hope for the galaxy.

That is just terribly dramatic.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

ImAGeek wrote:
I think you're just arguing over semantics now, I'm guessing OP means save the life/ecosystems/balance etc of the galaxy.

It's hardly semantics. If someone says "the Solar System", do you think it only refers to life on Earth? The problem is also that an Ork victory is no less harmful to the "life" or "balance" of the galaxy than a Tyranid or Chaos one, so your definition doesn't apply either. The only difference is that, in the end, there are Orks everywhere. Like I said before, why are Orks on "Team Galaxy"? If any faction in the setting wipes out every other, it's a loss for everyone but themselves. Saving or destroying the galaxy simply does not come in to it. Why is there this idea than an Ork victory is a good thing (judging by the use of the word "save")?

There can't BE an "Ork victory". As soon as they're the most powerful thing around, they'll start fighting among themselves and leave everyone else (relatively) alone.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

Graphite wrote:
danger of making the galaxy a monoculture

Do you have any idea how insanely huge a galaxy is? Also, why is being a "monoculture" a bad thing? Why does biodiversity matter?

No, I don't know how big the galaxy is. Neither does anyone else. There's a hell of a lot of dust in the way which stops us from seeing.

Lower genetic diversity leads to the possibility of being wiped out by plagues, etc. Just ask bananas. But from a 40k point of view - it's perfectly possible that the old ones liked having a bit of variety about the place.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

Graphite wrote:
The Orks were originally bred for this, to ensure that the Necrons didn't wipe out the galaxy.

They were created as tools to fight the Necrons with. If you wanted to ascribe a higher purpose, it would be "ensuring that the Necrons didn't wipe out the Old Ones". This is also true for the Eldar. The Orks were engineered to be good at war, and that they are. Your description as the galaxy's immune system makes them sound much more like Tyranids, acting as a whole to perform a single function. If this were true, their actions wouldn't constitute random attacks in random places. They'd be targeting the weakpoints of a civilisation to cripple its power base. There'd be some method to their madness, but the only method is that they love to fight. They don't target the Imperium, they just encounter it most often because the Imperium is practically everywhere.

But they're PSYCHIC. All of them. How do you know that isn't going on at a subconscious level?

As I said, I don't believe GW intend Orks to be regarded this way, or indeed that the Brain Boyz deliberately engineered them to be like this. But this is how they are, and act, right now. Possibly by pure dumb luck.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Orks are the only hope for the galaxy.

That is just terribly dramatic.

Graphite wrote:

There can't BE an "Ork victory". As soon as they're the most powerful thing around, they'll start fighting among themselves and leave everyone else (relatively) alone.

Are you suggesting that the Orks rise to extreme heights of power, enough to destroy the forces of Chaos, Tyranids and Necrons, and that the "good guy" factions survive it too?

Graphite wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

Graphite wrote:
danger of making the galaxy a monoculture

Do you have any idea how insanely huge a galaxy is? Also, why is being a "monoculture" a bad thing? Why does biodiversity matter?

No, I don't know how big the galaxy is. Neither does anyone else. There's a hell of a lot of dust in the way which stops us from seeing.

Lower genetic diversity leads to the possibility of being wiped out by plagues, etc. Just ask bananas. But from a 40k point of view - it's perfectly possible that the old ones liked having a bit of variety about the place.

Huge. Incomprehensibly huge. So huge that nothing could turn it into a "monoculture". Do you seriously think that life across the galaxy will become too genetically similar and be at risk to mass plague? Ignoring everything else wrong with that, pathogens aren't space-capable, and there's only so much spreading a single outbreak can do through interplanetary travel.

Graphite wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

Graphite wrote:
The Orks were originally bred for this, to ensure that the Necrons didn't wipe out the galaxy.

They were created as tools to fight the Necrons with. If you wanted to ascribe a higher purpose, it would be "ensuring that the Necrons didn't wipe out the Old Ones". This is also true for the Eldar. The Orks were engineered to be good at war, and that they are. Your description as the galaxy's immune system makes them sound much more like Tyranids, acting as a whole to perform a single function. If this were true, their actions wouldn't constitute random attacks in random places. They'd be targeting the weakpoints of a civilisation to cripple its power base. There'd be some method to their madness, but the only method is that they love to fight. They don't target the Imperium, they just encounter it most often because the Imperium is practically everywhere.

But they're PSYCHIC. All of them. How do you know that isn't going on at a subconscious level?

As I said, I don't believe GW intend Orks to be regarded this way, or indeed that the Brain Boyz deliberately engineered them to be like this. But this is how they are, and act, right now. Possibly by pure dumb luck.

Because it demonstrably is not how they act at all. Like I said, if the Orks were possessed of the purpose you suggest, they would have much clearer goals than being the equivalent of galactic pests. They would be like the Tyranids - innumerable organisms acting as one to fulfil a common goal (especially true if their psychic link worked the way you suggested). If their goal was to arbitrarily decide when to "trim" species that rose to galactic power, they would be doing an awful lot more to disrupt that power than showing up for a bit of lootin' and fightin' and shootin' occasionally. They also would fight each other far less.

The Old Ones did not engineer the Orks to keep up some galactic standard of biodiversity (even though they are nothing, even combined, to the sum of galactic biodiversity - think of how many different non-human species are on Earth alone and magnify that to a galactic scale). They were created entirely to fight a war that ended scores of millions of years ago, just like the Eldar. The Old Ones had a lot more to worry about during the War in Heaven than what galactic biodiversity would be like many millions of years after they had been wiped out.

Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

Graphite wrote:

There can't BE an "Ork victory". As soon as they're the most powerful thing around, they'll start fighting among themselves and leave everyone else (relatively) alone.

Are you suggesting that the Orks rise to extreme heights of power, enough to destroy the forces of Chaos, Tyranids and Necrons, and that the "good guy" factions survive it too?

Nope. I'm suggesting that if anyone gets to uppity, including the Orks, the Orks will turn up an banjax their plans.

Graphite wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:

Graphite wrote:
danger of making the galaxy a monoculture

Do you have any idea how insanely huge a galaxy is? Also, why is being a "monoculture" a bad thing? Why does biodiversity matter?

No, I don't know how big the galaxy is. Neither does anyone else. There's a hell of a lot of dust in the way which stops us from seeing.

Lower genetic diversity leads to the possibility of being wiped out by plagues, etc. Just ask bananas. But from a 40k point of view - it's perfectly possible that the old ones liked having a bit of variety about the place.

Frozen Ocean wrote:Huge. Incomprehensibly huge. So huge that nothing could turn it into a "monoculture". Do you seriously think that life across the galaxy will become too genetically similar and be at risk to mass plague? Ignoring everything else wrong with that, pathogens aren't space-capable, and there's only so much spreading a single outbreak can do through interplanetary travel.

Life could well be everywhere, and certainly is within the 40k setting. Intelligent life doesn't seem to be that common, but far from rare. However, from your argument - why should anyone worry about Tyranids, for example? None of the Big Bad Dooms of the galaxy are, if we looked at a realistic size of the galaxy, going to make a dent in it. Because as you say, the galaxy is mindbogglingly big. You think it's a long way down to the chemist etc. etc. But 40k isn't realistic.

Monoculture may be the wrong word, since I was referring to one intelligent spacefaring species eclipsing all others rather than all life full stop.

Graphite wrote:

As I said, I don't believe GW intend Orks to be regarded this way, or indeed that the Brain Boyz deliberately engineered them to be like this. But this is how they are, and act, right now. Possibly by pure dumb luck.

Frozen Ocean wrote:Because it demonstrably is not how they act at all. Like I said, if the Orks were possessed of the purpose you suggest, they would have much clearer goals than being the equivalent of galactic pests. They would be like the Tyranids - innumerable organisms acting as one to fulfil a common goal (especially true if their psychic link worked the way you suggested). If their goal was to arbitrarily decide when to "trim" species that rose to galactic power, they would be doing an awful lot more to disrupt that power than showing up for a bit of lootin' and fightin' and shootin' occasionally. They also would fight each other far less.

The Old Ones did not engineer the Orks to keep up some galactic standard of biodiversity (even though they are nothing, even combined, to the sum of galactic biodiversity - think of how many different non-human species are on Earth alone and magnify that to a galactic scale). They were created entirely to fight a war that ended scores of millions of years ago, just like the Eldar. The Old Ones had a lot more to worry about during the War in Heaven than what galactic biodiversity would be like many millions of years after they had been wiped out.

But that's the point. I don't think they were engineered to be some highly precise galactic conservation system. The Brain Boyz engineered Orks to be really, really simple and really, really difficult to stop working. Not efficient and elegant. If I were them, I'd have built in a failsafe to stop them wiping me out, like, oh, I dunno, starting to fight among themselves. I'm also not convince they were only created for the War in Heaven - there's a lot of clever redundancy in them that allows them to operate indefinitely without the Brain Boyz intervention - and if the Brain Boyz really did devolve into Snotlings, the Orks are still protecting them. Sort of.

No, the Ork psychic-ness is to find where something dangerous is happening, go there, and hit it with axes. The fact that this stops hive fleets and black crusades is incidental.

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
The galaxy cares not for your petty struggles. It wouldn't care if the Tyranids turned every resource-bearing world into a rocky, airless husk. It wouldn't care if the Necrons exploded every single star, or if Chaos claimed every single soul. When people talk about saving/destroying the galaxy, they're referring to its inhabitants. The Milky Way doesn't care if it collides with Andromeda and is absorbed into it. It's not the galaxy itself that's under threat from anything.

That's an argue for the sake of argue.

They are the only race among the sentient, biological factions to have the numbers to at least put a fight on Tyranids and Necrons, so for how much stupid and brainless they could be the op has a point.