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That kind of intentional Ork cruelty and organized malice seems quite un-Orky.

I agree that the past portrayal of Ork brutality towards those they conquered was best portrayed as inadvertent due to not understanding what other races can withstand. It matches with how they call humans Runtz etc... An Ork might reprimand another Ork by punching them in the face. The punished Ork might shake their head but then be no worse off really. Even if a few teeth get knocked out, those regrow. A human might get their jaw smashed, irreplaceable teeth knocked out, skull fractured, if not outright die.

The ramshackle unsanitary conditions of an Ork settlement that an Ork might tolerate would lead to death by overwork exhaustion, starvation, or disease for humans, all while the Orks scratch their heads over how weak these Runtz are and why they keep dying for no apparent reason.

As someone else said, a major theme in Beast Arises was that, as the size and power of the Beast's Waaagh grew, so did the Orks' collective intelligence and sense of organization. When the Imperium first attacks Ullanor, they are awed by by the massive and systematically-planned sophisticated infrastructure (hydroponic farms, planetary interconnection networks etc) they witness there, being administrated by a technician and manager caste that had evolved for just that purpose. I think one character described it as seeing the birth of a permanent system of galactic governance or something along those lines.
And just like the Orks became more and more "civilized" in regards to how to run things, they became more "civilized" (read: systematically cruel and inhumane) towards the humans they had subjugated.

Lets not lose ourselves in the 30k stuff...the Orks no longer have Primarch Orcs...so how are they now?

Well so far as we know...they just want to fight and loot. Ghazzy might have more complex plans but I have never seen any lore about that.

Rebel4ever85 wrote:
Lets not lose ourselves in the 30k stuff...the Orks no longer have Primarch Orcs...so how are they now?

Well so far as we know...they just want to fight and loot. Ghazzy might have more complex plans but I have never seen any lore about that.

ghaz has shown more than most warbosses in planning. most warbosses commit to an attack till they win or die. Ghaz n the other hand goes in with objectives (for example when he raided an imperial i forget was a foregeworld or defended manifactorum) to acquire better teleporter tech, raided, got what they wanted and left. The lore since 5th has described how the most terrifying thing about Ghaz is that he isn't' following the normal established ork ways.

If Ghaz warband expanded sufficiently one assumes that this empire would acheive a high level of civilisation and he himself would evolve. Is that his path to becoming a Krork.

Ghaz will also do the 'unfinkable 'to a proppa normal ork, he'll retreat.

I think it was during his big invasion of armageddon when things went all the way south he was going to make a lat stand but the ork gods themselves manifested thru thrak's weirdboyz and told him that he was not to die here, he had a destiny, and then literally pulled his spacehulk into the warp and away from armadeggon so he'd survive.

Since then he's learned that sometimes you have to leg it it today to come back and fight tomorrow.

Orks just wanna fight.

If that involves wiping out whole other species, it’s likely not a malevolent thing. Because fighting is everything to an Ork. And your position in the pecking order is only stymied by how ‘ard you are.

So Orks don’t have a conventional morality as we consider such things.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Orks just wanna fight.

If that involves wiping out whole other species, it’s likely not a malevolent thing. Because fighting is everything to an Ork. And your position in the pecking order is only stymied by how ‘ard you are.

So Orks don’t have a conventional morality as we consider such things.

The post here forced me to think of someone redoing cindi lauper's 'girls just wanna have fun" song as "Orks just wanna have fights".

Yeah, you made me think of that. Now you have to think about it too.

(Ghawd I just know that;s gonna be done as a video on youtube now... )

As to ork 'morality", I believe they have at least something like morals. Like messing with that chaos stuff is just wrong, it ain't proppa orky bee 'ave yer. Is that a form of morality or just programming from the slann? Anyway you almost have to admire the orks for being nearly immune to chaos corruption, certainly humans and even space marines don't have nearly as good a record in that department.

Their unshakeable faith in their own Gods probably helps there. There are no Greenskin agnostics or atheist. And the only division (Gorkers and Morkers) is likely a deliberate thing to encourage more fighting.

It could be argued that whilst certainly smarter than the rest of his species, Ghaz is still largely acting out of instinct rather than insight and consideration?

Racerguy180 wrote:
All they want to do is krump. if they krump enuff that there is nothing left to krump, they'll krump between each other. (un)fortunately for them, they really never get that far so....lather, rinse, repeat.

Indeed. Absent an external threat, they are more than happy to krump each other. Its almost like they are a body's immune system. When the body has no invaders they just circulate and are dormant (busy fighting each other). When "the body" detects a disease or other external threat, its Waugh time.

60mm years. They could have also destroyed earlier Nid threats (Ymgarl), Necrons that didn't go to sleep, and a whole range of other species.

Oddly enough, this all seems to make the orks seem less evil than the imperium. I mean, orks may invade, slaughter, enslave, etc, but they don't seem to have an organized system of intentional genocide for non orks. (Well, except for that bit where they went full nazi and were having mass cremations and such, I never saw that book.)

The imperium practices intentional genocide and total extermination of non humans as a matter of course.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Oddly enough, this all seems to make the orks seem less evil than the imperium. I mean, orks may invade, slaughter, enslave, etc, but they don't seem to have an organized system of intentional genocide for non orks. (Well, except for that bit where they went full nazi and were having mass cremations and such, I never saw that book.)

The imperium practices intentional genocide and total extermination of non humans as a matter of course.

That's because the Imperium should never really be seen as the good guys.

Orks are not necessarily evil, they just happen to want to fight. A lot.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Oddly enough, this all seems to make the orks seem less evil than the imperium. I mean, orks may invade, slaughter, enslave, etc, but they don't seem to have an organized system of intentional genocide for non orks. (Well, except for that bit where they went full nazi and were having mass cremations and such, I never saw that book.)

The imperium practices intentional genocide and total extermination of non humans as a matter of course.

Huh... yeah. If the Imperium had its way, any non-human in the galaxy would be "contained" if they can be of use, or purged otherwise. The IoM is basically on the same level as the Necrons.

As far as we know, the orks don't have any long-term plans for other races. In fact, if they were on the verge of destroying humanity, they'd probably let it rebuild to fight it again later.

Orks do not want to conquer the whole galaxy in my opinion. In the lore, they are looking for a good fight because they enjoy it. If they completely conquer the galaxy, they will not have anything to fight and will probably only fight amongst themselves.

The best example of this in the lore is the relationship between Ghaz and Yarrick. Gaz respects Yarrick for his ability to put up a good fight and mentioned humans like him are hard to come by.

 Spartan 117 wrote:
Orks do not want to conquer the whole galaxy in my opinion. In the lore, they are looking for a good fight because they enjoy it. If they completely conquer the galaxy, they will not have anything to fight and will probably only fight amongst themselves.

The best example of this in the lore is the relationship between Ghaz and Yarrick. Gaz respects Yarrick for his ability to put up a good fight and mentioned humans like him are hard to come by.

my favorite part of the Yarrick fights is that the ork believe he is so dangerous actually affecting a human and so he does manage to get stronger. they fear his bionic eye enough to make it a deadly laser weapon. I mean that not to diminish yarrick, but more as a thought experiment on when the orks want a strong enemy they create one... perhaps this is the Emperor of mankind's ultimate origin? ors wanted a big golden enemy?

 G00fySmiley wrote:

 Spartan 117 wrote:
Orks do not want to conquer the whole galaxy in my opinion. In the lore, they are looking for a good fight because they enjoy it. If they completely conquer the galaxy, they will not have anything to fight and will probably only fight amongst themselves.

The best example of this in the lore is the relationship between Ghaz and Yarrick. Gaz respects Yarrick for his ability to put up a good fight and mentioned humans like him are hard to come by.

my favorite part of the Yarrick fights is that the ork believe he is so dangerous actually affecting a human and so he does manage to get stronger. they fear his bionic eye enough to make it a deadly laser weapon. I mean that not to diminish yarrick, but more as a thought experiment on when the orks want a strong enemy they create one... perhaps this is the Emperor of mankind's ultimate origin? ors wanted a big golden enemy?

Pretty sure Yarrick had a laser eye prior to orks thinking it was super deadly. Laser bionic eyes are actually a fairly common combat implant, enough that its listed as a potential bionic for guardsmen in the FFG rpg books. The ork's belief has probably made his especially potent of course, but they didn't spontaneously cause his normal bionic eye to grow a weaponized laser.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Oddly enough, this all seems to make the orks seem less evil than the imperium. I mean, orks may invade, slaughter, enslave, etc, but they don't seem to have an organized system of intentional genocide for non orks. (Well, except for that bit where they went full nazi and were having mass cremations and such, I never saw that book.)

The imperium practices intentional genocide and total extermination of non humans as a matter of course.

Btw I didn't really read it as a concentration Camp but more as a slaughterhouse or breeding facility. I thought they were going to eat these humans all up and treated them like cattle, which is gruesome of course, but makes the Orks' Motivation not as evil as the Nazis...

 Grey Templar wrote:

 G00fySmiley wrote:

 Spartan 117 wrote:
Orks do not want to conquer the whole galaxy in my opinion. In the lore, they are looking for a good fight because they enjoy it. If they completely conquer the galaxy, they will not have anything to fight and will probably only fight amongst themselves.

The best example of this in the lore is the relationship between Ghaz and Yarrick. Gaz respects Yarrick for his ability to put up a good fight and mentioned humans like him are hard to come by.

my favorite part of the Yarrick fights is that the ork believe he is so dangerous actually affecting a human and so he does manage to get stronger. they fear his bionic eye enough to make it a deadly laser weapon. I mean that not to diminish yarrick, but more as a thought experiment on when the orks want a strong enemy they create one... perhaps this is the Emperor of mankind's ultimate origin? ors wanted a big golden enemy?

Pretty sure Yarrick had a laser eye prior to orks thinking it was super deadly. Laser bionic eyes are actually a fairly common combat implant, enough that its listed as a potential bionic for guardsmen in the FFG rpg books. The ork's belief has probably made his especially potent of course, but they didn't spontaneously cause his normal bionic eye to grow a weaponized laser.

I think that Yarrick learned that the orks believed he could kill with just a glare, and so had the laser eye bionic installed to further impress his legendary status and make them fearful of him.

Yeah, his bionic eye basically had a digital weapon built into it.