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G'day all.

I was just wondering what colour Ork Blood was, is it red like they say in White Dwarf or is it green like wat it would most likely be due to algea in blood and all that.

Please help me settle an argument with my mate.

Cheers, Old Sledgeaxe

Chuck Norris doesn't read books, he simply stares at them until he gets the information he wants.

I always figure it is black.


Heck GW stole the concept from Tolkien why not take the blood color too.

does fungus have blood?

It's kind of tough to say actually.... now that I think about it.


If you go by strict GW canon, all I've been able to dig up so far is that yes they do "bleed" but I've yet to come across a definitive "Their blood is x color" statement.

Now if you go by the "Dawn of War" PC games then, for some reason all the Ork blood is red in all of the games they've released so far. I'm not sure if it is official canon in that vein or the programmers just made it that way. Though interestingly enough, even in the cinematics, the ork blood is red too so it seems that is what GW probably approves of as well.

i think in the Codex it says it is green

Master Llyons wrote:i think in the Codex it says it is green

No it doesnt... unless my codex is missing a page.

They used to say it was green if memory serves.

Their skin is green due to fungus in their skin, the fungus has chlorophyll in it like earth plants do and thus needs to be on the skin to get light for photosynthesis.

other than this orks still are relatively humanoid and thus have red blood.

I remember reading in an old official source that the blood was green for that reason - it is full of chlorophyll.

legoburner wrote:I remember reading in an old official source that the blood was green for that reason - it is full of chlorophyll.

Chapter Approved way back in Ye Olde Dayes Said it was Red because of the Rule Of Cool. Imo it is Black as it is Red mixed with Green Algae to make a mush.

Yep, according to a WD from 9years ago Ork blood is red because it looks cool when you paint it on a model.

Codex Orks, 2nd edition, 1994 (just dug it out) p6:

Their blood, which is green, carries a symbiotic algae through their veins, digesting and reconstituting damaged body tissue and even rebuilding major organs.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
So Chapter approved is more recent, but is the old codex more significant? Maybe just agree on black blood instead

legoburner wrote:I remember reading in an old official source that the blood was green for that reason - it is full of chlorophyll.

chlorophyll does nothing in the blood it needs light, thats why ork SKIN is green, because the chlorophyll is in the skin so it can actually get light.

Just cheack lexicanum.
It says its green.
http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ork_Physiology#Ork_Physiology_and_Biology
second paragraph first sentence.

Says red for me...

Actually it says both....

Mu wrote:Actually it says both....

Why yes it does,actually I have always imagined that Orkz would have dark blood,black or purple..no real scientific reason for my belife,it just seems right to me.

Any color you want it too be man.

Its pink with large white blood cells coincidentally shaped exactly like daisies.

I remember the old green blood fluff as well but I'm on the "Whatever you want" bandwagon.

As long as it has daisies!

thanx everyone, me and my friend now both agree on it being black, we did this 'cause of the BADASS factor and that none of us was wrong or right.

I'm probably gonna paint black blood onto the bases of my space marines to show the carnage they caused against the zenos.

Cheers, if theres anything else please continue to comment.

Guns don't kill people, Chuck Norris does.

Old Sledgeaxe wrote:thanx everyone, me and my friend now both agree on it being black, we did this 'cause of the BADASS factor and that none of us was wrong or right.

I'm probably gonna paint black blood onto the bases of my space marines to show the carnage they caused against the zenos.

Cheers, if theres anything else please continue to comment.

Guns don't kill people, Chuck Norris does.

WHAT!!! You didn't say it was from slaughtered Orks on the bases of Space Marines! As an Ork player I'm deeply offended!

Just kidding, of course. Make sure you post photos!


Guns don't kill people, Brock Samson does.

i'm also an ork player but my SM's have had a hard time against my friends who both do Nids and Orks, Horde of course, so when i mowed them both down i was extremly pleased So i modeled dead orks and Nids onto my bases. Modeling the Carnifex onto my Captains base was a bit tricky though!!

If theres anything else that my change my mind please tell.

Guns don't kill people, Chuck Norris does.

You know, there are chlorophyll like compounds that are not green. There is such a thing as algae that produce photosynthesis using light from different spectrum of light. With their color depending on which colors they are primed to absorb, thus appearing in color the actually color it is not absorbing, I think.

Perhaps Ork blood can alter itself to absorb the most prevalent wavelengths of light, the blood could contain all colors of chlorophyll but only produce them in relationship to the star light of the system they are in.

Incidentally, I think black would be the universal absorber of light.

Just my two cents.

Cut a mushroom in half to find out.

Their blood has no color, for it is made of pure anger.

I say its a dark red that is almost black

Science to the rescue!

From a biological standpoint, I think it's safe to assume one of four colors. It seems that the blood would be red, green, blue, or black.

RED
This one is the most intuitive. Assuming that Orks have blood that use ferrous proteins to transport oxygen, the blood should be match human blood colors in that oxygenated blood is red. The iron in the compound creates the red tint, just as iron oxide (rust) has a red tint. Of course, the blood would be a different color when deoxidized, but who knows what that could be. It wold all depend on the makeup of the protein, but for all intensive purposes it seems that we're only concerned about with what color they bleed. Red blood could also explain the ork fetish of using red to decorate beasts and vehicles for war, a tradition which is assumed to originate from smearing blood on beasts before combat. But for the sake of being hypothetical, let's take a look at the other colors available.

GREEN
This one is supported by the "chlorophyll" argument. However, we have no particular proof that orks are autotrophs (ie, they make their own sugars for food). In addition, because hey are typically referred to as predominantly fungi, it seems rather illogical that the blood would be green since fungi have no chloroplasts. (On another note, the chitin cell walls of most fungi would explain the extra toughness granted to orks) Algae can be green, but assuming that orks (and orcs for that matter) are an age-old race, it seems that they'd likely contain cyanobacteria, an earlier form of the green algae we know an love. This brings me to the next color...

BLUE
Cyanobacteria is exactly what it sounds like: bacteria with "cyan" pigment. The molecules of a cyan pigment in bacteria are simpler and easier to construct than the complex green photosystems that we're used to and seem to be a likely candidate for a blood pigment. These bacteria could merely be incidental in the bloodstream, be a product of the orc/ork genome, or maybe a symbiote of some sort. However, this maybe a particularly dark blue, almost indistinguishable from black blood. This brings me to my last point...

BLACK
The final option would grant itself in the event of some sort of variation involving the above pigments. The blood could merely appear black or could in fact be a mixture of multiple pigments resulting in a murky indistinguishable pigment. This is pretty much the wild-card pigment: if in doubt, this is probably the best choice.


Man, I love biology. Any questions?

In all the depicted art I've seen, of either drawings/paintings/computer rendering, or photographs of actual models Orks have had red blood. I remember reading an artist's comments on why the blood was always red when the texts state that it is green (I don't have any idea who, this was probably 10-12 years ago).

paraphrasing some guy in an article a long time ago wrote:
It's simply about what people see. People have red blood, so that's the color they instantly recognize as blood; Pools of black or green or blue don't visually convey blood, especially on the greenish to blackish skin of an ork.

Well, red has the psychological effect on us humans as being 'blood' if you know what I mean.

If you mix red with green (to support the chlorophyll argument) you get black!

There you go!

Just some additional thoughts.

Red could still be viable if we consider that their blood could contain hemoglobin. Seeing as all animals on earth had red blood, it goes to show that hemoglobin is an effective oxygen carrier and is probably similarly used in xenobiology. I still feel uncomfortable with the "green-chlorophyll" idea. If they can produce their own sugars, why do the fight? Why don't they just vegetate like any other chlorophyll-bearing organism? It'd be a lot more efficient.

I agree, black is the best compromise.