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I’ve just seen the Orks described as bad guys, I’ve never seen them this way. They really just embrace their nature, and Ork is gonna Waaaaggghhh. But they aren’t malevolent and therefore if they managed to dominate the galaxy all that psychic energy would feed Gork and Mork who seems to be extremely powerful but harmless warp gods. If humans and eldar were reduced in number then choas would become much weaker and less dangerous. But even so orks love to fight chaos (as much as anyone else) - it’s not like the galaxy is dependent solely on the imperium tackling the threat of choas.

Or the nids.

And we know (I think it’s canon) that as orks grow I. Number they become more civilised and so they might become less randomly aggressive. Or at least if there were lots more of them they would inevitably fight each other more than other people meaning that there would still be space for a significant number of humans to live. And probably more safely than they currently do

In an Orky dominated galaxy, there may be a curious peace for non-Orky survivors (if there are any).

Orks thrive not just on fighting, but getting into the best and hardest fights. It seems the tougher the foe, the ‘Arder the surviving Orks get.

Hence, I wonder if in the lack of any organised galactic resistance (Imperium, Craftworld etc), lone worlds might have a decent chance of being left be, because the bigger fight is going to be against other Orks.

But then…Orks don’t shy away from using other species as slave labour. So said planets might yet be in for a rough time of it.

But hey, the Orks would still be a happy bunch!

Good points. I forgot about the slavery. Must maybe as they advance/evolve and the Krorks emerge they would give that up?

Also they saved the life of Yarrik because he was a good fighter. So orks wouldn’t seem to be in the business of Xenocide against capable military opponents

I don’t think Orks would become more “civilised”, because their civilisation is already plenty robust. So there’s no real impetus for further development, as every Greenskin is fully accepting of How Things Are.

The biggest and strongest lead. And provide they lead everyone else to Really Good Fights, their position is fairly secure until the lads start to lose, or they fail to find good enough fights to stop everyone getting bored.

It’s that second part which explains Waaagh! on Waaagh! conflict. Not only is it a way for the Warlords to prove who is best, but it keeps everyone else entertained until they can find someone else to krump.

I think it helps to see the Orky love of warfare with our need for food.

Us humans are fairly easy to wrangle when we’ve plenty of food to go round. And even when times are a bit tight, we’re happy to share to a degree. But, deprive us of food for even a few days? And we can turn really nasty.

Deprive Orks of *someone* to krump, and they’ll start krumping one another. Leave that for long enough, and all their cohesion can collapse - at least for a while, as they get it out of their system.

Pretty sure an orks dominated galaxy would either result in humanity's extinction or enslavement.
Remember that they also eat people. So not only slaves but also cattle.

So no, an ork run galaxy would not be the best outcome. At least for humans. For orks it would be great, they can fight on as many worlds as they like.
Perhaps give a bunch of human slaves guns and armour to spice things up a bit.
Re-enact the good ol' days of the Imperium, if you would.

Orks would probably be into larping and re-enactments, now that I think of it. Except with real weapons and fireballs.

I think if Orks really "won" they wouldn't like it as much as the struggle to win. It'd be more boring only having each other to fight, and no interesting other people to krump.

And Orks might not be actively malicious or cruel, but they are also completely devoid of empathy. They don't understand suffering and pain very well, and think it's funny. They accidentally kill human slaves all the time because they don't really think about how fragile they are. And yeah, they absolutely eat humans (and any other species they can find).

I think an Ork dominated galaxy might still be better than Chaos annihilating realspace or Tyranids or Necrons clearing all life from the Galaxy except for their own, but I don't think it'd be a good time for anyone.

I think they do have empathy - just not in a way another species would recognise. Because it’s all filtered through sheer Orky Kultur.

Being hurt to an Ork isn’t a bad thing. If you get hurt, you either die, or survive it. And if you survive it, you end up ‘arder. This is why they consider scars so impressive. The bigger and uglier the scar, the ‘Arder you must be to have survived it being inflicted.

As that’s all Orks ever know, they’ve no basis to think other species don’t enjoy the same things. As a species they’re so utterly single minded, it just doesn’t occur there are other outlooks and philosophies. And if it does, Orks Are The Best soon takes care of it.

If Orks became the dominant life form in the galaxy, then everything else would still basically be subject to unpredictable and random destruction.

The Orks are definitely "the bad guys" from the point of view of all other races, in the same way the Imperium and the Tyranids, and baically every other faction is also "the bad guy" to all other races.

The definition of Malevolent relies on a desire to do evil. that may technically not apply to Orks, but they definitely have a built in desire to cause massive physical damage basically to everything that isn't directly theirs.

The practical outcome is effectively the same.

A civilization needs the capacity to resist such incursions into their territory. The ability to harness the output of multiple star systems increases the ability of a civilisation to resist Ork incursions, but also make sit more likely for an incursion to occur, and for it to be a biggie (the fight drawing more orks toward it).

Otherwise, they are enslaved, and while Runtherds will have a degree of desire to look after their slaves to keep the work output up, I don't see them being particularly worried if they grind an enslaved race into extinction.

Could Ork dominance on the galaxy lead to a sudden change in their approach? Not enough data. In the absence of that, then if Orks achieved galactic dominance, then they are unlikely to be a benevolent and nurturing force supporting the development of other civilisations. Other races would randomly be stamped flat at unpredictable times.

mrFickle wrote:
But they aren’t malevolent

Depends on how you define malevolence. Even if you go "Oh, they're not actively malicious, they just embrace their nature"... well, the same could be said of Tyranids or Nurgle's daemons. At the end of the day, they still leave a trail of destruction wherever they go. Not exactly conducive to peaceful, civilized societies.

Also, I think Grots (who vastly outnumber Orks) are most definitely capable of cruelty. Granted, they're not as creatively sadistic as the Drukhari or Slaaneshi, but they would gladly attack peaceful worlds or communities that Orks would view as too boring to bother with. They're little sh*ts who make themselves feel strong by bullying those weaker than them.

.

We saw the most civilized Orks become so civilized they started building concentration camps...
Though I wonder if Orks without any other opposition might just devolve into feral Orks. In that case the galaxy would actually become a comparably nice place with just some stone age Orks in every wood.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
We saw the most civilized Orks become so civilized they started building concentration camps...
Though I wonder if Orks without any other opposition might just devolve into feral Orks. In that case the galaxy would actually become a comparably nice place with just some stone age Orks in every wood.

They're orks, there will always be opposition. They'll just fight themselves. Or fight the Chaos gods like that Tuska guy tried doing.

I hate the idea that Orks "level up" in civilisation and become more human like as they go. That's from the War of the Beast, right? God what a disappointment that was.

Orks don't need to become more civilised, their civilisation is already perfect. They are a fully functional, self replicating culture and ecology. They have zero reason to change, and it baffles me that you'd set out to write a story about them without understanding that.

 Da Boss wrote:
I hate the idea that Orks "level up" in civilisation and become more human like as they go. That's from the War of the Beast, right? God what a disappointment that was.

Orks don't need to become more civilised, their civilisation is already perfect. They are a fully functional, self replicating culture and ecology. They have zero reason to change, and it baffles me that you'd set out to write a story about them without understanding that.

Now, I’ve not read War of the Beast. But…it depends.

Going as far back as the original Xenology book, it was speculated Ghaz was just another Oddboy. A leader caste which, like other Oddboyz, only emerge when a given Orky society needs them.

If War of the Beast solely painted the upper echelons as more intelligent, cunnin’ and brutal? That, by me, is fine. But if the emergence of a supreme Orky Overlord somehow overrode sheer Orky belligerence in the lower ranks, without them being literally kicked into line? I’ll still read them, but that’s a NO from me.

I think the best end result is the Deceiver* defeating the Nightbringer and completing the Great Warding of reality from the warp, then deciding he prefers the taste of human mind marinated in contentment.


*Or whoever the Newcron equivalent is.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I hate the idea that Orks "level up" in civilisation and become more human like as they go. That's from the War of the Beast, right? God what a disappointment that was.

Orks don't need to become more civilised, their civilisation is already perfect. They are a fully functional, self replicating culture and ecology. They have zero reason to change, and it baffles me that you'd set out to write a story about them without understanding that.

Now, I’ve not read War of the Beast. But…it depends.

Going as far back as the original Xenology book, it was speculated Ghaz was just another Oddboy. A leader caste which, like other Oddboyz, only emerge when a given Orky society needs them.

If War of the Beast solely painted the upper echelons as more intelligent, cunnin’ and brutal? That, by me, is fine. But if the emergence of a supreme Orky Overlord somehow overrode sheer Orky belligerence in the lower ranks, without them being literally kicked into line? I’ll still read them, but that’s a NO from me.

I always thought there was fluff out there that painted to the Orks not becoming less warlike but developing new roles/odd boyz for things like diplomacy and strategy. So instead of waaaaagh for the sake of it there is a planned campaign etc. and eventually if the Orks become numerous enough the Krorks emerge that are their version of primarchs.

But don’t get me wrong they don’t start acting like humans and most of the Orks are still your standard football hooligan orks.

But most that I’ve put together from Dakka threads so who knows

The second Ufthak Blackhawk novel introduced me to the concept that as an Ork becomes a Nob, they become “more finky”. So there does seem to be some correlation between being ‘ard and being kunnin’.

Where that ends? Harder to say.

Orky diplomacy is mostly presented as “give us stuff and we won’t krump you”. At least until krumping you with the stuff you just handed over seems funny.

Oddboyz do seem to manifest in a hierarchy though, tied to the population density. This appears to be to ensure an Ork society in a given area remains pretty self sufficient.

That's pretty much all from the one novel series The War of the Beast which is I think an attempt to see if they can replicate the Horus Heresy success by having a series set after the Heresy.

All the stuff with the orks "evolving" into Krork which are "primeorks" is imo absolute crap and epitomizes what I strongly dislike about the modern 40K background.

I only read the first couple of novels, because I love Orks and was excited to see a series focusing on them, but it's really very bad. Like bad comic book from the 70s level bad.

Well, the first are better than the latter ones for sure
And their big Orks were just like what we already had in the background with Orks growing indefinitely when they don’t die.

Their society didn't seem to change in the series (though it's hard to say because we don’t have an Ork POV in that series). They just developped even larger constructs (attack moons) and their gestalt field became stronger (and the series did give some more background how it seems to work, but nothing about that sounded off the mark from what we already had about Ragnarork and Ghazghkulls waaagh leading to hyped up Orks everywhere in the galaxy). But basic orks and grots behaved like you know them. Even having diplomats doesn't seem to be that far off considering Blood Axes.

Edit: also Krorks don’t belong into that discussion if you ask me, they're just a myth that was never expanded upon, no?

I thought it was acknowledged that Trazyn has a Krork in his collection?

But the truth of them might just be another level of nob or could have been some strange experiment by another mad doc

Ork leaders are interesting. Ghaz seemed to have gone from a simple goff to the ardest ork in the galaxy and I wonder if the psychic waaaaaghh energy makes leaders more powerful and kunnin becuase their followers believe it

I know I'm pissing into the wind on this, but I much preferred the psychic field when all it did was make Weirdboyz zap stuff.

It has become a sort of handwavium for the Orks and I really dislike that.

I also find the idea of building sized Orks ridiculous, and question why it's never happened in other situations given how long Orks and Humans have been in conflict and the size of the Ork empires the Great Crusade burned through.

I think it's a consequence of massively upping the power level of the Emperor and the Primarchs to a ridiculous degree, so now they need to amp the Greenskins up a similar amount or some old fluff doesn't make sense like Horus saving the Emperor from being strangled by an Ork.

I preferred the old days (at least how I remember it) that waaaaagh psychic power was generated by the collective presence of orks, but it needed an weird boy to do something with it (preferably one chained to an earthing rod)

And orks were created with genetic knowledge/genius and not able to make things happen through the power of collective belief.

But we are where we are.

I would however love to know more about the real history of the Orks. I like the idea of them being. A genetically engineered army but I don’t like the idea of them being left to do their own thing after the war in heaven, becuase if they were they probably would have taken over the galaxy once the old ones were gone and the necrons went to sleep.

I mean, they did take over quite a lot of the galaxy!

On the psychic field, I guess it depends how far you’re willing to take it.

A shoota or slugga which say, has no spring to make the automatic fire work is a different proposition to one where it is in fact, just a roughly gun shaped lump of metal.

The former it’s just the psychic field allowing the repeating mechanism to work. The latter is….very daft.

I do like the concept, especially as it suggests a typically Orky waste of phenomenal power.

Consider they have force field projectors, tractor beams etc, and never really apply that to anything beyond weaponry.

The Bubble Chukka could be an excellent defensive item, sorted out so it fires reliably and predictably to deploy invisible barricades, frustrating enemy advances. But…no. They’re used to encompass enemy vehicles and units so when they fire, they’re hitting themselves.

Lifta-Droppa, Traktor Kannon and their ilk could be use for massive construction projects. And sometimes they are when it’s building a Gargant. But for the most part? They’re used to destroy stuff.

mrFickle wrote:
I preferred the old days (at least how I remember it) that waaaaagh psychic power was generated by the collective presence of orks, but it needed an weird boy to do something with it (preferably one chained to an earthing rod)

And orks were created with genetic knowledge/genius and not able to make things happen through the power of collective belief.

But we are where we are.

But that's...exactly the sort of thing the Beast series doubled down on. Hence the whole answer to Orks conquering the galaxy was killing their weirdboyz who channelled the waaagh energy.
Concerning the make things happen... well it's still as ambigious as it always was, even though Internet memes have run away with it. If you ask the Admech ork tech wouldn't work or only works because Orks belief so.
However, we also have the admech stealing ork teleporter technology to copy it so obviously them teleporting whole moons is not (only?) because of waagh energy but because their meks actually do fine work.

Yeah I suppose a teleported wouldn’t work on belief alone because at the destination there might not be any orks to believe that you arrived ok.

As always the truth will be somewhere in between.

It also begs the question - could you make the Orks believe in something specific so that it manifests. That wouldn’t be good.

mrFickle wrote:
Yeah I suppose a teleported wouldn’t work on belief alone because at the destination there might not be any orks to believe that you arrived ok.

As always the truth will be somewhere in between.

It also begs the question - could you make the Orks believe in something specific so that it manifests. That wouldn’t be good.

I'd say it doesn't get anymore specific than what Weirdboyz manifest, like a foot or a fist of gork.
That being said Ghazghkull is the Prophet of gork and mork so he might be the only one to make orks believe something.

An Ork Galaxy would be a Happier Galaxy so technically yeah it is the best moral outcome if we define morality as the way to optimize happiness.

Humanity (and so many others) is getting exterminated though, but well there never was a future for the galaxy that didn't end in absurd amounts of galactic genocides.

 Tyran wrote:
An Ork Galaxy would be a Happier Galaxy so technically yeah it is the best moral outcome if we define morality as the way to optimize happiness.

Humanity (and so many others) is getting exterminated though, but well there never was a future for the galaxy that didn't end in absurd amounts of galactic genocides.

I dunno, I think Tyranid galaxy might be happier. I'm not sure if they actually think or have emotions, but that's a form of happiness, right?

Random thought: Eldar ending is the best. Sure they are arseholes, but they don't necessarily exterminate everybody nor purposely are hellbent on making them suffer, while the necessity to still contain Slaanesh would schackle them to stay in that state of not going full crazy giggling while they remove you from this plane if existence.

 Tyran wrote:
An Ork Galaxy would be a Happier Galaxy so technically yeah it is the best moral outcome if we define morality as the way to optimize happiness.

Humanity (and so many others) is getting exterminated though, but well there never was a future for the galaxy that didn't end in absurd amounts of galactic genocides.

The way I see it Orks are kind of a self-correcting system that doesn't want to win. Orks want the same thing Chaos wants - a constant state of war.

Chaos wants it because the wartorn atmosphere creates huge amounts of emotions to feed off.
Orks want it because it creates endless war for them to fight in which is basically their main objective in life.


Orks don't actually want to win, they want to struggle to win; for them the constant struggle is what's important. That's why if they win within an area and they can't find other foes to fight, the Whaaagh falls apart into infighting. They need the constant challenge of combat to remain functional. Smarter orks at the very top can recognise this and its why they will put huge amounts of resources into finding other combat areas and why if they don't, they will get challenged and taken down by other orks.

A very cunning ork who was winning the galactic war would likely realise that winning would result in nothing but ork inflighting. So I suspect what would happen is they would go the path of Dark Eldar and start "farming" other races. Fighting them to within an inch of their life and then moving on; leaving behind destruction. The Orks would then get a new war against a new faction they were farming and the one they just beat up would be left alone for a while to recover and be stronger and ready for another fight.

Any races that proves resourceful and can rebuild would likely be promoted whilst races that are crushed and don't recover would likely fall entirely.




Eldar ruling the Galaxy again could work, but lets not forget that all that the Dark Eldar embody is a part of Eldar as much as what the Craftworld embody. If Eldar won and Slaanesh was gone as a threat, what else would keep the Craftworld from eventually falling back into their old ways? How long could they maintain The Path when there is no Slaanesh at the end as a risk?
Chances are there would be an initial period of peace followed by Eldar Hubris having them conquer and rule over lesser races (everyone else). They might not wipe you out, but they might well use you for slaves, servants, science and other stuff. Plus they will bulldoze your planet to build a new hyperspacefreeway. They won't even have to file the paperwork with your local Galactic Planning Office either!



Tau are the only race that might let you survive and thrive within their society, though only going so far up the totem pole before you'd hit social barriers at advance. A Tau victory would be one of the best for non-Tau races.