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I think 40K Orks have got one of the genuinely most interesting backgrounds of any game. And I'm not talking about the Anzion theory or anything like that.

The Gorkamorka redesign of Orks to be a spore based algal/fungoid life form that builds it's own self sustaining ecology (orkology) wherever it goes is sheer brilliance.

Orks have always had symbiotic algae in their blood. But now we find that they themselves are fungus. So Orks are a symbiosis between algae and fungus - aka a lichen! Remember next time someone is going on about Orks being mushroom men to waggle a finger at them and tell them that they are lichen men, and the only thing they fear are reindeer.

Lichen are THE "founder" species for new ecosystems. When barren volcanic rock is exposed to the air in places like Iceland or other volcanic islands, the first thing to start growing on those barren rocks is lichen. They can grow in any climate on Earth, from very hot to extremely cold. They can photosynthesize when there is sufficient light, water and carbon dioxide, but they can also saprophytically absorb minerals directly from bare rock. It's an incredibly effective team up.

Orks are engineered, so I don't think it's out of the question that they'd be even better at this than earth-evolved lichens. You can imagine that they might have a range of photosynthetic pigments to deal with the variety of light sources they might come across on widely dispersed worlds, and perhaps they're even better at slurping up minerals from barren rock than our home grown, honest to the Emperor Terran lichens are.

But wait, there's more! By growing on barren planets, Orks would also gradually terraform the planet into something far more habitable by complex life forms. As they photosynthesize they'd produce oxygen and lock carbon into complex organic molecules. (Btw oxygen and carbon and water would be pretty widely available in the galaxy - even the weeniest stars make those elements.)
Over time this would generate a much more large life-form favourable atmosphere and a rich mulch in which other forms of life could grow.

I'd imagine, given their nature, that Orks are pretty resilient to thin atmospheres. They're probably more resistant to low pressures than humans are for sure, and given they can photosynthesize, they would have access to nutrients as long as there is light, CO2 and water where they are. If they have enough of those things, they wouldn't need to take oxygen in from the environment to the same extent - they could simply use what they are generating in a closed system.

This means that colonization for Orks is much more viable on otherwise very barren worlds. And being colonized by Orks means that your world won't be barren for long - it'll have a teeming, rich orkosystem in (ecologically speaking) no time at all! This is the REAL threat of the Orks imo - they can fairly believably sprout up practically anywhere in the galaxy, in all kinds of environments that just wouldn't be tenable for other life forms without an incredible amount of work.

Like the Imperium of Man seems to have lost the ability to terraform planets any more, and the Craftworld Eldar don't seem to try. But Orks are a whole species of specially designed terraformers, taking barren rocks like LV-426 and transforming them into teeming fungus jungles full of orks, grots, snots and squigs in a very short time. Low light levels, cold temperatures and dry conditions are all no big deal to the Orkosystem - it will ruggedly cling to your rock and build something up from it, it'll just take longer with sub-optimal conditions.

Even space hulks and derelicts could conceivably host novel Ork colonies (something I'd love to see explored).

I wanted to make a post about this because I was being grumpy on some other threads and I wanted to write down why I love Orks so much as someone with a bit of a background in ecology - they're (intentionally or not) a really clever idea for a terraforming, self sustaining, galaxy conquering race.

And of course, when you look at it like that, they really are the perfect thing to prepare the galaxy with lots and lots of delicious biomass for another apparently engineered xenos species...

It certainly seems possible.

It’s worth keeping in mind that the spores appear to produce the Orky Ecosystem in a set order. First come the squiggly beast, then the Snots and Grots to herd them, then the Orks themselves.

If we look to Ork tech and how Oddboyz begin to emerge, it’s possible the order of Orkiforming is also down to pressure triggers. So it could be less “begins with Squigs, then a set amount of time later Snots and Grots”, and more that the more complex life forms begin manifesting when the environment is conducive.

Furthermore, we know Squigs come in all sorts of sizes. Whilst I don’t think there’s any set example of micro biological squigs akin to bacteria and other simple forms of life, the environment itself may dictate through basic evolutionary pressures which Squigs thrive. And from there, the genetic engineering plays it role, and so the spores ensure there are Squigs most likely to survive.

Then, it’s a matter of time until those Squigs have begun to change the makeup of the atmosphere so other varieties can also thrive, and over time, you’re off to the races properly.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can dump some spores on absolutely any world. We’re still talking science and not magic here. But provided the world isn’t entirely inimical to life (lack of atmosphere, no protection from solar radiation etc) yeah, I think it is entirely possible an initial number of Orky Spores could begin a terraforming process.

Some terraforming lore tidbits that may be useful for the discussion here:

We know the Tau are capable of it (Worldshaper being a famous specialist)

We know the Imperium is at least partially capable of it (Armageddon was completely terraformed after the First War in M41, and Lords of Silence presents it as standard procedure in creating an Agri-World).


The Votann Ghulo Industrial Complex are especially specialised in terraformation and are noted to be able to work with even barren lifeless rocks.

Votann I'd expect to be able to do it, since they have Dark Age Tech.

I'd imagine the Imperium just sort of isn't very good at it any more though. Like if they could terraform barren worlds, they could fix polluted worlds as well - it's all the same sort of thing, isn't it? But they don't do that really. So I sort of don't doubt that the tech exists in parts of the Imperium or some Magos vault, but I think it's not readily available tech in the Imperium.

I'd also expect Tau to be able to do it as well.

But the difference with all of these species is that any terraforming effort is likely to be an absolutely tremendous amount of work. For Orks, it just happens because they are there, no effort needed at all.

And that can kind of tell you a lot about Ork psychology. They don't really need anything -their needs are met by the Orkosystem they live in, in which they are designed to be top dog. The whole system exists to serve and sustain them. So they really have no understanding of the struggle for survival of other species. They're so robust and have such tenacious biology that they likely don't even really notice environmental conditions very much. If they encounter situations that are impossible for them to manage I'd reckon they'd be a bit like spoiled children - reacting with disbelief and then declaring the challenging environment stupid and angrily stomping off.

They'll never really be capable of understanding why other species do the things they do, because it's not needed for them. Why bother with all this farming and stuff, there's always loads of fungus and fat squigs to eat. And anyway who needs to eat that much?

I dunno I just find this really alien mindset that Orks have due to all of this endlessly fascinating and entertaining to think about. It's why I'm an Ork fanboy I suppose. I don't think anything else in 40K comes close to the Orks as an original idea with real sci fi chops that follows through on it's own logic.

I wish people were more focused on this stuff and not the absolutely stupid "they believe it so it's true" stuff or the cringey krork stuff. But I suppose I'm weird for liking sci fi ecology this much!

They definitely do terraform the planets they infect, but I expect that is simply a by-product and not the actual goal of whoever made the Orks. They are most definitely a bio-weapon of some kind, the face they terra-form(Orky-form?) planets is simply a tool to that end. It makes them more resilient and difficult to eradicate. It ensures they can survive even if their spores land on a totally dead world(something even Tyranids can't manage).

If Orks were actually intended to modify planets for their creators to eventually take over and inhabit I would expect to find orky planets that have stabilized. The normal ork forms have died out and been replaced by more animalistic and plant like forms that are just waiting for someone to arrive and claim the world. Maybe the world is still inhabited by savage orks who exist only as a self-defense against something else taking over, but otherwise the biosphere remains low level and wild. But Savage orks pretty much always turn into normal orks if left unattended and their worlds eventually become industrial wastelands that spit out Waaaaghs into space.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:

I'd imagine the Imperium just sort of isn't very good at it any more though. Like if they could terraform barren worlds, they could fix polluted worlds as well - it's all the same sort of thing, isn't it? But they don't do that really. So I sort of don't doubt that the tech exists in parts of the Imperium or some Magos vault, but I think it's not readily available tech in the Imperium.

Nah, they can do it. It is just expensive and takes a long time.

And when you have a civilization on the scale of the Imperium, what is the point of cleaning up a polluted world? If its an industrial planet, which it probably is if it got polluted, it doesn't benefit anybody to clean it up. Its just going to get dirty again. You don't care about the peons slaving away in the factories, filtration masks will extend their useful service 15% at basically negligible cost which is far more than clean air would extend their life space since you are working them to death anyway...

Its not like the pollution can spread through the vacuum of space to any worlds where you might actually care about the pollution, so any clean up can be focused where its actually needed. And really, world where anybody cares about pollution are worlds where the Imperium will simply not allow it to get polluted in the first place. If its an agricultural world, they won't build any industry that would eventually poison the world and make it unusable for its agricultural purpose.

Paradise worlds won't have any industry on them for the same reason.

If Orks are indeed the descendants of Krorks? It absolutely could be a central part of their design.

The C’Tan and Necrons were intent on exterminating all life. What better weapon to frustrate them than a highly resilient, highly adaptable warrior species which can reseed a world with life?

On a galactic level, Orks would also provide a sort of service - Ork worlds would be far easier to colonize after being terraformed by the Orkology. You've got fully functioning soil and atmosphere, a water cycle and all the rest. The atmosphere is probably already breathable or close to it.

And again, they just do this automatically, by existing, and they do it all over the place. The galaxy would realistically be full of barren worlds with nothing approaching conditions for complex life, but the existence of Orks would up the number of planets able to support complex life by craploads.

Of course, you'd have to deal with the fact that you're totally infested with Orks, but it might well be worth it to gain access to habitable worlds "on the cheap". It can't be worse than your average death world, after all!

Edit: Another aspect of this is logistical and cultural. If an Imperial world gets defeated badly enough, it collapses completely, knowledge is lost, the culture degenerates and it loses the ability to make war any more. Imperial wars (and Tau, and Eldar) require huge amounts of non-combatants engaged in logistical work. Growing food, making armaments, moving stuff around and so on.

Orks hit the ground running it a culture that is impossible to degenerate because it is innate, with knowledge coded right into them about how to make incredibly complex technology and their logistics are provided by the Orkosystem or are really very low anyway (I'm willing to bet an Ork needs to eat less per kilo than a human, due to it's weird biology). Kill every ork on a planet and you'll still have them coming back again months or years later - at a lower threat level, but still there, still needing resources to be spent to deal with them. Individual Orks don't matter much at all, but the system is incredibly pernicious.

In a way, Tyranids are the opposite of this, taking precious biomass rich worlds and reducing them to uninhabitable rocks. They also crumble into mindless animals on an individual level (most forms anyway) if you kill off the synapse creatures in the area. An infestation of Orks is in a certain way ecologically additive - like all plants, they are fundamentally ecological producers that are going to create complex molecules and stabilise ecosystems. Tyranids are like an entire ecoystem of predators - producing nothing, purely saprophytic and predatory, devouring the products of other ecosystems.