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Orkoids keep growing as they keep fighting and winning, yes?

Even Squigs can get to the size of battle tanks if they live long enough.

So, presumably, can Gretchin.

Say you have a particularly canny, conniving, aggressive Grot.

Keeps on fightin' and winnin'. Keeps getting bigger. Eventually gets to be the size of an Ork Yoof.

Starts beating up Yoofs, and still winning.

Gets bigger.

Grot the size of an Ork?

How do you tell the difference between him and a mek?

Grots are cowardly gits and don't have proper Orky values or the right stuff to properly WAAAAGH. Maybe some grots might get bold enough and big enough to smack about some umies but big enough to krump a proper Ork? Dats eresy.

I dunno now, but in the old days, Grots (gretchin) were a sort of sub-race of Orks, genetically locked into being smaller and smarter. Leftovers of the ancient "Brain-boyz".

2007 Ork codex wrote:Gretchin have a similar physiology to orks

This suggests that gretchin do grow in the same manner as the boyz.

However:

2007 Ork codex wrote:Makari the Grot, luckiest of all his kind, lived to the ripe old age of nine before being sat on by his master and subsequently fed to an ill-tempered Squiggoth

This suggests that even if it were possible, no gretchin has had the opportunity to grow as large as an ork before being killed.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I dunno now, but in the old days, Grots (gretchin) were a sort of sub-race of Orks, genetically locked into being smaller and smarter. Leftovers of the ancient "Brain-boyz".

Weren't those snotlings? I thought it was implied they are the remnants of brain boyz?

It was the old ones who created and ruled the orkz. The brain boy fable has some truth in it but morphed over time.
As far as grots getting bigger, the only a count of such a thing is that snotlings are younger grots that will grow to that status.
Personally I don't mind the idea of a larger grot, it's inventive, and while grots are cowardly, grots are cruel, and if they have any amount of power they will exact their revenge. It's a common thing when grots are turned into killa kanz to outright kill orks before being shutoff.
If a grot got big enough he would exact revenge, though it won't be as long lived as a killa kanz tantrum.

Grots have a similar physiology to Orks like dogs have a similar physiology to humans: Roughly the same organs in roughly the same places performing roughly the same tasks, with roughly the same chemical processes running under the hood. Yet, distinct enough to be considered separate species.

I don't think Grots are some sort of "miniature orks", so whatever biological trait that causes orks to grow in reaction to violence might be absent from grots, or present in a way that renders it inconsequential. I don't think it's been culturally suppressed, either.

Makari himself lived well past the average gretchin life expectancy and, as Ghazghkull's protegee, took part in quite a lot of combat and probably had the chance to boss around other, less privileged grots. Yet he didn't grow much taller than a normal grot and certainly not to ork size.

I don't recall a specific source to say that squigs constantly grow, but the various breeds of squig come in all shapes and sizes so the huge ones are just naturally huge.

Snotlings, as the remnants of the Brain Boyz, were always small and weedy, but their vast intelligence allowed them to maintain their position of authority; not that clever though seeing as how they didn't know they owed their intelligence to a certain type of mushroom. Orks and Gretchin also became more intelligent after consuming the same mushroom, eventually eating all of it, but unlike the Brain Boyz, they retained some of their enhanced intelligence through subsequent generations but the Brain Boyz were just snotlings without it.

So from what I've read, no other orkoids keep getting bigger, just the Boyz. I think it was the 3rd Edition Codex that said in some of the bigger ork Empires there were ork nobs as big as warbosses and hinted that in the galaxy core where the truly huge and ancient orkish Empires exist the warbosses could be hugely massive. I would say though, that there is likely to be an upper limit on just how big an ork could get, if they could live long enough to achieve it. So there could theoretically be a larger category of ork, above what we typically see as a warboss, but they haven't been encountered. Gretchin, Snotlings and Squigs are only ever as big as they are though; one might presume that the Gretchin equivalent of the super-massive warboss would just be a really, really sneaky git!

Mostly good points, although I will continue considering the issue.

Tremolo, however - all Orkoids have the same base genetic structure, because all orkoid spores, no matter which subrace they're from, can grow into any kind of orkoid, depending entirely on the environmental conditions of the location they take root. What varies is which parts of the genetic structure are active.

 Gogsnik wrote:


So from what I've read, no other orkoids keep getting bigger, just the Boyz. I think it was the 3rd Edition Codex that said in some of the bigger ork Empires there were ork nobs as big as warbosses and hinted that in the galaxy core where the truly huge and ancient orkish Empires exist the warbosses could be hugely massive. I would say though, that there is likely to be an upper limit on just how big an ork could get, if they could live long enough to achieve it. So there could theoretically be a larger category of ork, above what we typically see as a warboss, but they haven't been encountered.

The 1st or 2nd book of the "beast arises" series describes a warboss the size of a titan....I love it because it makes my counts as stompa supported by the fluff!

In the Eye of Terror, there is an Ork that has become its own planet.

If we assume that the Gretchin grows to full Ork size, I think what would differentiate them is the size of their noses. Gretchin have some serious schnozz going on.

 Gogsnik wrote:
I don't recall a specific source to say that squigs constantly grow, but the various breeds of squig come in all shapes and sizes so the huge ones are just naturally huge.

Snotlings, as the remnants of the Brain Boyz, were always small and weedy, but their vast intelligence allowed them to maintain their position of authority; not that clever though seeing as how they didn't know they owed their intelligence to a certain type of mushroom. Orks and Gretchin also became more intelligent after consuming the same mushroom, eventually eating all of it, but unlike the Brain Boyz, they retained some of their enhanced intelligence through subsequent generations but the Brain Boyz were just snotlings without it.

So from what I've read, no other orkoids keep getting bigger, just the Boyz. I think it was the 3rd Edition Codex that said in some of the bigger ork Empires there were ork nobs as big as warbosses and hinted that in the galaxy core where the truly huge and ancient orkish Empires exist the warbosses could be hugely massive. I would say though, that there is likely to be an upper limit on just how big an ork could get, if they could live long enough to achieve it. So there could theoretically be a larger category of ork, above what we typically see as a warboss, but they haven't been encountered. Gretchin, Snotlings and Squigs are only ever as big as they are though; one might presume that the Gretchin equivalent of the super-massive warboss would just be a really, really sneaky git!

Are you telling me that the Ork psychic field is powered by magic mushrooms

 Psienesis wrote:
In the Eye of Terror, there is an Ork that has become its own planet.

Isn't this an 1d4chan fanfic?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
In the Eye of Terror, there is an Ork that has become its own planet.

Isn't this an 1d4chan fanfic?

I could have sworn that that was in Codex: Chaos Space Marines (the latest Codex) when discussing Daemon Worlds and the Eye of Terror.

Either way it's the Eye of Terror, where you've got worlds that are upside down or made entirely out of burning cages with people in them. It's no indication of what is actually possible. What happens in the Eye of Terror stays in the Eye of Terror.

Rosebuddy wrote:
Either way it's the Eye of Terror, where you've got worlds that are upside down or made entirely out of burning cages with people in them. It's no indication of what is actually possible. What happens in the Eye of Terror stays in the Eye of Terror.

Almost nothing in 40k is "actually possible".