Adeptus Ridiculous - You Have Been Lied To About 40k Orks | Warhammer 40k Lore

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://shop.orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculous0:00 Intro14:00 EpisodeThink you know everything about the greenest, meanest, and most meme’d-about faction in Warhammer 40k? Think again. In this episode of Adeptus Ridiculous, Bricky, DK, and Kirioth team up to revisit the "You've Been Lied To" series, tackling the chaotic, retcon-heavy history of the Orks. From their earliest space-faring days in Rogue Trader to the modern setting, Games Workshop has fundamentally shifted how these green monsters function—meaning there’s a very good chance you’ve been fed some serious misinformation. We’re splitting this episode wide open to compare the hilarious old-school lore with the contemporary reality. Does painting a trukk red actually make it faster? And why—no matter what the internet tells you—an Ork cannot just pick up a stick, say "bang," and use it as a gun.Support the show

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Adeptus Ridiculous podcast. My name is D.K. Diamantis and happy belated birthday, Bricky. Huh? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was kind of interesting as all of these little clips were collected for the birthday thing. And then I see this cute little artwork of y'all in it. And none of you had any clips in it.

You just, you were in the artwork with stolen valor. In my defense, no one asked me. make a video. Possum asked me, was like, oh, is you cool? If someone gets art of you for Bricky's birth? I was like, of course it is.

That's great. Saw a notification on your on your Discord about a Kudabort. I was like, of course I'll leave Brickie a message. I wasn't told to actually give you a clip. It's more than fine. I would have been embarrassed.

I would have specifically wanted to embarrass you. That's the whole point. I know. That's why I should have been asked. Let's listen. All right. that's it. I'm pissed off now. God, add another 15 degrees Celsius to the UK. Why me? What's that I do? Oh, yeah, Kyria. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So not providing a clip. Although, to be fair, that

that is, that's down to institutionalized awkwardness. Yeah, institutionalized. Yeah, you're crossing a boundary there. Are you, are you infringing in some way? Do you even need to think about it? But now you've started thinking about it. When do you stop? And what conclusion can you even reach? And is it the right conclusion to reach in the first place. Oh, look, you were supposed to do it two days ago. It's too late now. That's, uh, that's, that's, that's being British for you. I mean, I mean, fair enough.

I will say there was a small clip of, of, um, Andy and, uh, uh, pancreas in like a bar. And I'm pretty sure pancreas was like held at gunpoint. I don't, I don't, I don't, he did not want to be there. You could, you'd seem very awkwardly be like, yeah, happy birthday, big man. With his general. grievous jacket because of course. Of course. Yeah.

It's so typical. I am not trying to start drama or throw shade at pancreas, but that's kind of his default though. Being offered with a general grievous jacket on. Yeah. Well, like yeah. And then just sort of having that like, does somebody have a gun to your head? Are you okay?

I'm fine. You know, like. There's a, there's a, there's a definitely a difference between in-person pancreas and online pancreas. There's a world there. But, uh, reaction to being in the UK. That might have been all it is. Hmm.

Just as general malaise, like, why I'm even here? What's the point of this place? It could be that. Yeah, he was, he was riding on the northern line one too many times and now his eardrums are ruptured. And he does, he doesn't know where he is anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

He's been there for less than a week and he's already got the British cynicism in him from, from his trip. Let's go. It doesn't take long. Mm-mm. But, uh, speaking of. rare cynicism, 11th edition launched. Oh boy. I will say this is unrelated to it though.

This morning, they dropped the rules for Caiaphas Kane. Now, granted him, Kyivus Kane, like many Black Library characters, do not have actual currently usable in-game rules. They're legend rules, aka fun with your friends, but not for like tournament play or whatever, which is fine, you know, it's like it's a whole thing. thing. I mean, it would be nice if you could actually use them like you can with Gant's ghosts, but, but that's neither here nor there. I don't want to bang that drum too much today. I will say there's a really great rule that he has that I find to be genuinely hysterical.

Uh, because he's got his usual stuff, you know, but he has one rule called trapped by excuses, which means you, you have to start him on the board. You cannot put him in. serves. He must be present, which is very humorous to me because he's run out of reasons to not fight. It's a good rule. I like it. He also has the other rule, which is unparalleled luck, which is for a phase, you can get a two plus invulnerable save, which is the same thing Makari gets. I mean, if anyone should have that, it is him. That is very cane-coded. I like it because there's a negative to it as well. Like I like the fact that there's an ante that goes along with it.

It's very funny. Also, yeah, the Stompah is down 200 points. It might actually be runnable. Hell yeah. Let's go, work players. Dave all been waiting for. Stompah stocks might finally be going up. This is a shocking revelation.

Are the Thousand Suns still amazing? Um, they never were. Oh, no. Well, they, they, oh man, I, I thought they were just, they just went like crazy in some mode because something, something. And like, everyone was like, oh, yeah, Zangor's are finally usable again. You can use them to, like, catch objectives. And I finally have a use for this whole plethora of Zangor's I never built because I don't want

them anymore. Honestly, no one really knows because it's too. to say. But the initial assumption is that pretty much every army is fine. Oh, that's cool. Pretty much every single army is fine to an extent. People will complain about stuff because certain things might not go the way they want. Like, guard infantry went up in points a lot more than they should.

But like, guard as a faction is fine because all the other stuff is fine. I don't know how good thousand sons are. but for the most part, pretty much everything is like at least fine except for Tao, which is apparently quite overpowered. Again. Let's go.

Let's go. Let's get that rail cannon discussion going again, huh? I love it. Love it. For a while, everybody's like, oh my God, I can't believe the Tao rail cannon can do that much damage.

It's crazy. They're O.P. You get two of them or something like that. Yeah, the classic. But no, I mean, it's the first, it's the first few months of a new addition. It's normally going to be shenanigans. It always is. And I will give Games Workshop a little credit. They're doing a balance updates every month for the first three months instead of once a quarter, which I think is pretty cool. So, yeah, I'm a fan. So, I mean, I hate to say it, but while it's not

perfect, there are definitely issues. For the first time, and maybe a few days, decades. Games Workshop is acting like an actual game company with actually like intelligent game updates for a new addition, which is insane to hear. It's actually high praise. They've also switched over as well for the Minnesota Field Manual like that, not just being PDFs now, but being its own website, which admittedly is bare bones as anything. But then again, the Field Manual always was. It was always just a list of stuff. But it's now just a website. site that's quicker to navigate.

So that by itself is like, oh, they're trying to make this easier. That's, that's nice. I was going to say, like a pig must have just flown into my window. Like, it's crazy. There, I mean, there are still issues. So give me wrong. Like, the fact that you can't get the rules of other armies on the app is dumb. The app is currently broken for, you can, like, run games on the app, which is cool.

Unfortunately, running games on the app is currently broken. There's, like a bug or two, so those need to be fixed. Um, but like you can download the core rules of Warhammer completely free. Get all the new points for free. Just download the PDFs. Uh, it's, we're almost there. They, they, they still haven't gotten us the full free digital, but goddamn, they're close. So that's, that's, well, if they give you the full free digital, you wouldn't have any reason to buy all the codexes for all the money.

Yeah, well, fuck them. Agreed. That's, on this, we agree. Yeah. Also, like, just charge me, just charge me $10 a month. No one buys two codexes a year normally. Like, I'll take the damn subscription. Yeah.

Yeah, I think they make a killing off that if they just did a $10 subscription. Here's all the rules fully down. Yeah, yeah. If you play in a 40K, like, it makes sense, you know. Mm-hmm. Whatever. Anyway, all that aside, I'm going to shill something at all of you. Die.

Oh, for a second, I was like, why is he, why is he shilling my demise? And I was like, oh, wait, he actually sells dice. So, so, unironically, there might be a tabletop stronghold thing like before, but he hasn't gone back to me on his email. And, like, it was supposed to be this week. And so I'm, I'm not sure what's going on with that one. So after I yell, die, I might send you a quick, like, 60 second clip shy, but that's only if he gets back to me. he doesn't need approval or nothing, so he's pretty easy.

Sick. Well, yeah, and if I don't, then we can just see the poster. Speaking of, shy, I hear you have a poster today. You sick freak. Oh, shoot. I didn't even see the work in progress on this one, I don't think. Or I might have forgotten because I'm stupid. Go for all the basics.

Why not? I say sick freak because I genuinely don't know what it is, but I just, I'm making assumptions. This is the part where Shai is like, I showed it to you 100 times, you absolute. Okay, all right. I'm going to click it. Oh. Oh, we love to see it, Shai. D.K.

Oh, we love to see it. And D.K. and Possum out here getting into a fetal position. Yeah, well, I mean, it didn't matter. Red Thirst, great for, like, the Blood Angels thing. Red Thirst. It could have been anyone. That could have been just a random ultramarine and, you know. They're painted ultramarine.

Spongebob licking, Sponsob licking abs thing. You know, that's, it doesn't matter what color of the armor was or what faction it was. Like, come on, man. You were in regardless. Oh, for sure. The context doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah. The red thirst poster currently available at Orchidate, along with all the other cool new merch we drop,

like the Magic of the Gathering sleeves and the new hoodie. and all the awesome things there. Now available in the description. And also, you can get all these posters digitally by going to the Patreon. A patreon. Patreon.com slash Adeptis ridiculous. Where you get access to the bloopers. If they happen, Discord access, posters.

I'm taking your job, D.K. I'm taking your job. I was going to say, the way you rattle off that Discord shill, I think that is job security by itself. No, no, no. I'm the new LLM model. I'm being trained off of you to take your job. Oh, man.

I already don't do enough. Oh, man, come on. Computer. Give me 14 more leather jackets to, oh, crap, what the hell is his name? I don't know. Who's the Nvidia CEO? Who's the Nvidia CEO?

I don't know. I also don't know his name. I guess he likes leather jackets, though? He does. I don't remember. It doesn't matter. Whatever. We need the image right now.

Red Arrow pointing a DK. What does he even do? Man, I introed the damn episode, shy. I intro the goddamn episode, all right? I just, I don't want to, like, keep, like, punching down here. But I did just realize that when we say you introed the episode, we threw immediately to not contribute to get anything towards Bricky's birthday. We didn't actually do any introductions at all apart from yours, which obviously...

That's also not my... Shut up, Kira. Shut up, Karioth. I will... Shut up, man. It's fine. Everyone knows. It doesn't matter. Curious, like, if D.K. gets fired, I get paid more. I'm on board.

I'm 31. Who gives his shit? Let's move on. What do you got for us, Kira? I've got a quote. I'm going to give you a quote right now. For instance, it is widely believed in the Ork Society that machines painted in a red color operate faster.

As disturbing as it sounds, facts such as this become true. Many captured orc weapons and items of equipment do not work unless wielded by an ork. I theorize that many orc inventions work because the orc themselves think they should work. The strong telekinetic abilities of the orc subconscious somehow ensure they function as desired. And that's from Genitor Lucas Anzian. All right. So we're just doing an orc episode, eh? Kind of.

I remember this one. This is shy wanting everyone to understand how the orcs work. This is orc's power of belief. And you were wrong about orcs and a red arrow pointing at like the bad doc Rothsnick. Like, boy, what does he even do? I mean, to be fair, I feel like there is usually a bit of a misconception about how the wa works in that, oh yeah, just one little orc can believe a thing and it'll happen and it's like, no,

it doesn't quite work like that. Like, you can't just have one little orc be like, oh, I believe the emperor's going to die, boy, more ains, and then, you know, kill the emperor, but, you know, yeah. And we were part of that problem. Oh, yeah, the tank story, eh? Well, no, I've always said that that story

was just like kind of a fun, fan indulgment type thing. I remember even in our little tank story thing, I'm pretty sure I say it might I think you did yeah but yeah etc etc uh that however got a sick hoodie out of that story is a sick hoodie out of that story is a fun little story it's it's a it's a cute little thing but like me me sitting here being like I hate when people um uh you get get war ham information from memes also me god I love emperor text to speech device take a lane Got to show some consistency. So yeah, this is a, this is, you have been lied to about or you have been lied to about

orcs at least twice. It's what Possum has titled this. So, uh, we're just going to go straight into it. We're going to go into it. When it comes to the transitioning of fantasy races to a space setting, the Aldari had a bit of an upper hand. It's really simple to shift a species known for elegance and elitist tendencies into the same exact thing, but in space.

The real difficulty lies in something more brutal. something known for cobbling things together out of nothing and essentially being built for nothing more than a good scrap. The shift from fantasy to sci-fi for the orcs started out in a very tricky manner and resulted in retcons even between the first and second editions of 40K. In fact, only very recently can we safely say that we have a bit more of a firm understanding on how the orcs work in the world of Warhammer 40,000. However, thanks to these constant updates and retcons, there's a very good chance that you've been lied to about, orcs multiple times, and from multiple sources. The most difficult bit about whether or not you've been lied to comes down to the orcs themselves, because honestly, they don't care about any of this. They don't care that they were once marsupials and are now mushrooms that photosynthesize.

They don't care that they once relied on humans for technology and now suddenly have innate technological knowledge. All they want to do is whatever it is they want to do. They'll believe whatever they wish to believe in, and if you try to tell them otherwise, they'll crump you. In fact, it's this stubbornness of the modern orc that has ultimately nerfed them. So today, we're going to be revisiting the You've Been Lied to series to talk about the orcs. And like the other episodes in the series, we're going to talk about the original law as it was written in the first editions of the game, but we're going to do something a bit different in the second half. We're also going to cover the law as it stands today so that we can

hopefully clear things up when it comes to one of the most memed about, factions in the game and showcase how far the orcs have come in the setting. Started off as marsupials, he says. All right. Let's not forget the or the orcs full of synthesized like mushrooms. There's a great callback. Yeah. It's entirely accurate on multiple fronts.

Until you said it, I didn't realize that that, it went over my head when Kirill said it, and then Bricka said and I was like, oh, right. I still try and drop that in occasionally. Just occasionally. Whenever it can come up organically, it's got to be thrown in there. And every time someone gets angry, it's not my fault they don't know, that they do photosynthesised. That's not my problem. So the majority of orc stuff that follows in the old school section here is from

Waulks in 1990 and Here We Go in 1991. It's believed that orcs were the first alien race encountered by humanity. Nobody remembers. In the first meeting of man in Ork, there was an exchange of a long, hard look. Neither side cared for what they saw and a conflict began that has continued ever since. This is why Orks are the principal enemy of humanity and vice versa. Ork spacecraft plunder the Imperium, while humanity unleashes crusades on Ork worlds for no other reason besides the fact that they're Orks. As for ancient history on Orks, Imperial Scholars believe that on the original Ork home world, wherever that may be,

there existed a race that was indirectly responsible for the spread of Ork Society. They believe this early race was extremely intelligent and controlled these Orkish races effortlessly. They developed technology and even created the legendary and summarily lost orc standard construct templates. It's imperial belief that this race is what uplifted them into a space-faring race. It's the belief of the Imperium that this race eventually became the modern-day slothel. slave race known as the snotlings. So snotlings are symbiotic with fungi, which they harvest and eat. The cultivation of this fungi in underground cave systems caused mutation in the brains of these

snotlings. The ever-growing and constant eating of this fungi caused the snotlings to unlock their full brain power until eventually they became super-intelligent entities referred to as brain boys. Super-intelligent entities. In order to get tasks done, they would breed two separate races to work for them. The Gretchen and the Orks, the Gretchen obviously being the intermediate stage of orc development. Orcs would be sent to harvest fungi, but they were not good at their job. They would nibble on it as they worked slowly unlocking their brain potential. The Snottlings would become so confident in their intelligence that they would forget that this was a result of the fungi

and believe it was just a part of their nature. The orcs would eventually get smart enough to overthrow the snotlings and would enslave them. The orcs would restrict the snotlings fungi consumption and it would cause them to rapidly decline into an almost juvenile state mentally, even by orc standards. But the orcs would begin to suffer too. The orcs would stop cultivating the fungi for one reason or another and it would go extinct. This would cause the orcs to regress as well, capping off their great advancements in technology. though the orcs would revert into a lesser capacity, it was still a greater capacity to where they were at originally.

And I've got a quote for you here, D.K. That's wild. So the fungi made them smarter, and then they forgot about the fungi, and they stopped cultivating it, and it went extinct, and they don't have this fungi anymore, huh? Nope.

And then there they got all stupid again, just not as stupid as they were before. That's crazy. Anyway, This is the situation that persists to this day. It is difficult to reconstruct this phase of orc history in any precise detail. Like most orc history, the story had to be pieced together from fragments of orc legends, which have only been passing references of brainboys and give only brief glimpses of a time when the orcs were not in control.

Poor lads. Yeah. Well, they did it to themselves. I mean, or lads. It's their own damn fault. So at this point, orc culture would revert to a focus on the most brutal and strong elements

while dealing with an issue, which was tech problems. Though they have their own mech boys who are able to take care of stuff since they are a bit more tech savvy, they needed something more consistent. So orcs began to take on human and alien slaves. They work in the orc workshops and factories

to allow for the upkeep of orc tech and potential advancements. Outside of this, the orc vassal communities pay tribute to the orcs in the form of arms and tech look at that lad look how well-equipped that lad is

yeah he almost looks like he's wearing space marine armor well-equipped is a strong word but he's I guess so come on compare that to your current your current lads in power armor that they've got and

mega armor sorry not power armor and size you think there's ever been an orc slaver that was like, oh yeah, work on this here mechanical piece and repair it, you know me? And the humans like, okay, I don't know what this is. How do I repair it? And the orc just tells him to just bash it with a hammer. And so there's just a human slave somewhere just mindlessly bashing a suit of armor with a hammer,

because that's how the orc thinks is like you repair it. That sounds like it would happen like that. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds reasonable, don't it? I don't know what I'm doing, but sure. Luckily, they don't either, so it's all fine. Now, we're going to go through some of the old law for the biology of the orcs.

Now, they're about two metres tall and are carnivorous with strong thrusting jaws and huge pointed teeth. No orc has ever learned patience. They speak in quick, short bursts and swear continuously. They also laugh hysterically when something strikes them as being very funny. And the following examples are given for things they find hilarious. Sudden accidents. News of a terminal illness. Struggles of a doomed victim.

Oh, boy. I was going to say this reeks of early 2000s humor. Honestly, though, has it changed much? Maybe the terminal illness one, but... Yeah. But the most part, that sounds about right. Yeah. I feel like that one just wouldn't be included, but you could sort of infer it from everything

else. They always look angry, thanks to their facial features, and they constantly chomp and grind their ever-growing teeth. They are difficult to befriend and are known to fight among themselves. When an orc kills another one in a brawl, it's not considered to be a crime. The victim is blamed for being stupid or weak. All right, so this still holds up then, all right? Typical, typical orc stuff.

Yep, yep, yep. Humans share a similar physiology to orcs, and orcs can only inhabit world similar to those of humanity due to these physiological needs. Despite this, the orc life cycle is very different from humans. Orcs are born into feral communities and are brought up in a primitive lifestyle. Once these orcs have grown into boys, they go back to orcish society. The majority of orcs spend their lives as one of the boys, and will die in battle before reaching the final stage of orc life, the breeding stage. That's the final stage of orc life, huh? It's, yep.

It's not, it's not as rough as you might think. Don't worry. I don't think it is, but, you know, I think it's actually, I'm not going to lie. I'm going to blame you a little for that one, Kierreuth, because you said it very suss-like. You were very much like, oh, before the end of the final light, the breeding stage. I don't know how much that. Man speaks in British accent, Bricky. You said it's suspiciously

No, no, he specifically put more emphasis on the statement I refuse to be laughed at like this I demand to be taken seriously Post another SpongeBob meme It's Post another SpongeBob meme you twitch

You clown, you jester I will concede that In an attempt to build a bit of intrigue, I might have made it sound a bit more ominous than it is. But, you know, so yeah, we get to the breeding stage because they only reproduce at the end of their life. And due to the nature of their existence, this means that only the strongest orcs are able to breed, ensuring that each subsequent generation is stronger than the previous one. A mature orc will feel a primal instinct to leave the community and wander into the wilds, and each orc community has set up a dedicated area where this primal urge can be fulfilled.

They will live out the rest of their lives here returning to a completely feral state, and they will be able to breed a new generation while never returning to society itself. Unlike other races, there are no genders among the orcs. Half of these feral mature orcs will develop marsupial pouches in which an orc is born and nurtured. After a short amount of time, this whelp will be able to leave the pouch in the pouches. order to develop. It'll eat squigs, survive off the land, and we'll learn to be resourceful. There's something so, like, just weirdly off about the idea of an orc with a marsupial pouch. I don't know why. It just, it's just not right, man. It's just not right. Yeah, I don't,

I don't, I don't really like the idea of orc breeding pouches. That's, doesn't really sit well with me. For God's sake, shot. It's not ECP. being green. No, shy. No, don't drag Kermit into this, please. Having a hard enough time dealing with Miss Piggy. Come on. Leave me alone. What's he done to deserve being involved in this sort of affair? I mean, really? Turns out Kermit was a grotling all along. My marsupial pouch. You know what? That wasn't bad. That was pretty good. That genuinely

That genuinely surprised me. I wasn't prepared for, for like, a good impression. For a solid, Kermitie for a, yeah. I'm so, I'm so used to doing English accents. You don't like my English accent, Kareth. You don't think my English accent is as accurate as my Kermit impression? I think it's charming in its own way. boy, brov

It's This is so An ex ain't inee That's That's As if I was Born in Britain And then moved

Repeatedly As you were growing up To several different countries This is if you were born in Britain And immediately moved to the United States And don't actually know what a British accent sounds like You're keeping all this this in, right, Chai, this is, this is all the, this is all proper filler for until

Bricky gets back. Right? Carry out being impressed by a Kerman impression, my English accent, that's not an orc accent. Brother, this is, you were like, D.K., what do you do? This is what I do, right? Make fucking nonsense that you can use as Patreon filler. I was, I was going to say, this is, this is got outtapes if they have.

and written all over it. Absolutely, absolutely rammed this one. Bricky didn't even mention the outtakes in his shell. That was, that, Bricky trying to do the Discord thing is my job secure. You can't fire me. Look at how Bricky stumbled through the Discord thing. Wait, Discord or Patreon?

Patreon. I said, Jesus, like, you never mind. me. That's it. I'm out. I think you've sent Discord every time. Did I say Discord every time? That's crazy. It's because I'm staring right at Discord. Ricky's going to come back and be like, how far along have we got? You didn't keep going without me?

Nope. Probably should. Probably should. Instead, it's just become nonsense. Just absolute nonsense. It's not easy being green, brother. Should we just keep going? What's reckon, shall we?

Yeah, it's up to you, Shai. You might have to cut this bit out, but, you know, the rest of it's solid gold. Oh, yeah, you got to leave the Kerman impression in there. Okay, well, I guess that answers that question. When this bit does get put up on Patreon, keep this bit in, but then just take a screenshot of you saying that and just put that as the only image to go with the text, to go with the voice clip. Okay, let's keep going then.

Okay. There's an anterior chance we might have to keep this bullshit up for another 20 minutes. I don't know if, I don't know if we've got it in us. Or at least I'm worried that we do and it will be confirmed. Yeah, the problem is that we will do 20 more minutes of bullshit. Yeah. That's the problem. Okay, so we're going to move on to home world and space.

So, orc space revolves around an area to the west of the galactic pole, and it may encompass something close to 10,000 habitable solar systems. These worlds do not have a central governing body, and the orc planets shouldn't be viewed as representing a nation in any way. The average orc world is divided into interwaring empires. These empires seldom extend beyond a couple of worlds, and the biggest one on record is about 20. Thousands of these little empires exist,

and each one is ruled by a warlord. Territories and empires change hands constantly, as alliances are made, packs are signed or broken, often on the same day, and the old rulers are replaced with the younger and more ambitious ones. A warlord's power is represented

by the size of their respective fleet, and their only purpose is to fight. Being a 20-planet empire, with that sort of stuff, just being the norm, he's genuinely quite impressive, let's be honest. Yeah, I mean, it also, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, very orky. Very, very, very kind of what you expect of the orc. So, you know, that's, that's, that's dope.

I'm, I'm, I'm here for it. Interfuting warlords. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I do like the, uh, high levels of orc infestation. And it's just anywhere there's orcs. It's like, it's like that classic one, like the, there's still minor orc presence on the planet that has more guard than its actual weight as a planet. Yeah.

Minor orc presence somehow still. It's a commonly held belief among the speed freaks that painting a vehicle red will make it go faster. Glyphs that are red and emblems with some sort of magical significance are painted on the vehicle to win over the favor of the orkish gods. Orcs that happen to be rich can afford to paint the entire vehicle red. as this is a luxury among orcs. It's not really known if the red ones go faster or not, but the orcs certainly think so.

They drive red vehicles with even greater reckless determination. This results in the pushing of an engine's capacity to the extreme and squeezing a few extra miles per hour out of it, even at the risk of it falling apart. Ork technology is ultimately very confusing, especially to the orcs. And there's no better example of this than the shock attack gun. The exact origins of the tech for this weapon is uncertain and it's believed that it was made by the brain boys.

Though extremely complex in design and execution, the orcs have an upper hand when it comes to mass manufacturing. Once an orc gets the basic principles of a piece of tech down, they find it very easy to produce all kinds of weapons and devices that are similar or complementary. What did you kind of say that like, in a sense, what's that phrase of like self-inserting or not that a self-inserting? inserting but like self-selecting where do the red ones go faster maybe not necessarily but orcs if they have a red car tend to drive it really fast because they think it does kind of thing so therefore the red ones do go faster because the orcs are making it or driving it faster etc etc yeah like pushing the engine more because it's red so it should be it should be quicker so it is quicker because they're making it perform like not at a higher level but

they're just being horrifically reckless about it. Because they're like, well, it's fine. It'll go faster. It's red. I'm trying to remember when the, because I didn't play, I didn't play orcs after third edition, but I do remember there being,

I think it was a 10 point upgrade for vehicles, pretty much any and all vehicles, that you could paint them red and it would increase their movement speed, which is just a fun thing, just a fun thing to do. I mean, I do know, red you got in trouble.

Well, naturally. Um, because, because back then the, the, the actual paint job made a change to the thing, which is cool sometimes, but then really annoying if you, if you had to repaint your damn models. Um, but I know that there's like, uh, they have like the speed war and things of that nature in, um, as rules. And some of those, like the cult of speed and stuff like that do have things that revolve around that kind of kind of look. Um, like, don't let's not forget the. squig hide tires, or the very important enhancement known as faster than use.

So important for the speed freaks. It's just, it's very important. So sometimes you get a few of those, like in the speed waw and stuff like that. And, you know, you can get some of the colored type deals. So, you know. Well, doesn't, like, every orc inherently actually believe it? And so wouldn't that actually genuinely make it faster? Not necessarily them just being reckless because they believe it.

but wouldn't it, oh, we'll get, okay, sorry. Well, I didn't realize that was, that was a jump, but all right, I guess I'll shut up. In all caps, we'll get to that, D.K. This is the episode. All right. It's just, it's, fine, fine, fine. Shai explodes mentally. Yeah.

We will get to that. This is the episode. Shai said calmly. Yeah. Sorry, Capslock was on. Didn't mean to offend you. We're going to move on to faith and culture from the old law of the orcs. And orc faith and religion lacks refinement.

Humans love order, squats love tradition, Eldar love the arts. Orks straight up don't care. They take a look at humans, squats and Eldar and dismiss them in three words. Weak, weeny, weedy. Get wrecked. Nicely done, orgs. Nicely done. Ork culture is something that,

these races just don't appreciate. The orkish character is virtually invulnerable and is able to survive almost effortlessly. Effortlessly, Jesus. And this character is reflected in the warp by the mighty and belligerent orc gods, gork and morgue. An idea on what these gods look like can be found reflected specifically in the gargons. They are constructed in the direct image of gawk and mork by mech boys who had a vision midwa. They try their best to make these visions manifest in mechanical form, making a gargant a combination of war machine and religious idol. They act much like the gods they're modelled after, lumbering about and aimlessly leaving devastation in their wake as they do so. In some myths, the orc gods were felled and shattered into millions of pieces only for the

orcs to swarm out to put them back together. In orc mythology, gork and morke have regularly fought not only the other gods of chaos, but also the gods of other alien races. They have never been defeated and the stories tell of other gods hitting them only for gork and morke to laugh in their faces gork then grins and clubs the god while they're looking at him while morke clob is the foe from behind because because morke is cunning but brutal and gork is brutal but cunning yeah this is often made in in tabletop by morke related things being shooty based and more gun based and gork related things being much more melee based. Yeah.

A tip for you viewers. Hey. And of course, in your religion, you'd never have your gods lose, right? No, no. The gorks, the gork and morgue thing is just a self-insert fan fiction for someone's Space Marine chapter, except this time it's orcs. Yeah. I said, it's funny that old gags are just giant orcs.

I mean, they've got the perfect form. Why don't they need to be anything else? Oh, yeah. For our culture, that's that, that is the perfect deity, right? Just a big old oak and ox to crump. What's that kid? It's no surprise that the orc guards are seen triumping over the ruinous powers because orc weird boys triumph over their demonic and human servants.

Both human and demon are leveled by the psychic power and prowess of a weird boy as they channel the psychic energy of the other boys into a force that can destroy any foe and even banished demons. To the other orcs, they see this as an enemy withered by a blast of pure orkishness. The sight of demons wilting in front of a weird boy removes any and all fear they have on the warp and instills the belief that orkishness can vanquish anything. I don't know if that's quite the statement anymore. I feel like a lot of orcs are really scared of weird boys.

Yeah. Most books I read, the orcs are like, I don't John I don't trust that kid. It's weird. Yeah, for the old, the old law, it's definitely, it definitely seems more like, oh, this guy is an absolute legend. Just orcishness killing anything he goes near. That's brilliant. I think it gets a bit more, might get a bit more nuanced than that.

That is still true. Remember when Gaz headbutted a warp portal to death? Oh, yeah. Oh, he does do that, doesn't he? What a legend. that gas what a what a fucking legend anytime we do anything related to orcs

I'm suddenly like God I love orcs it's like I forget how cool they are and then we talk about them and like oh yeah there's a reason that I had a massive

orc army back in the day I think it's because since orcs are like I don't mean this in like an offensive way because Shia's gonna beat my ass if I do but like because they're kind of

one note sort of kind of it makes it so that like you see them and you're like, God, these are really cool. And then, and then afterwards, you kind of like forget about it for a little bit because you're like, yeah, those are orcs. Orcs rock. And then you just kind of move on.

Whereas, you know, obviously like because of that, the, I think when you, you remember orcs and you relearn about them, you're like, ah, hmm, it's like a warm blanket. You're like, ah, the orcs. Good times, good times. I said, compared to not one note space, Marines. Well, I mean, you got different flavors of space marines. Shai's trying to rage bait.

She's doing the thing that rage baiters do where they're like, oh, so you think that. And then insert, insert bullshit afterwards. I will not be affected by this. I'm too strong. I can already feel it affecting you. Or possibly morgue. Jack, you'll call his brother stay frosty, brother. I can't stay frosty.

Stay Frosty Brothers. Great. I'm waiting for the next Space Marine book that has a chap that's a stay Frosty, brother. And they just start heavy flame ring shit? Yeah. This doesn't appear Frosty, brother. Yeah. Me when I'm going to Wendy's.

Frosty machine's broken. It always is goddamn broken. Yep. Those ice cream machines, man. That one company that was a monopoly on repairing him. It's crazy. Is that the equivalent of the McFlurry machine at McDonald's? Because that's always broken in it, yeah.

Yeah. Now, regarding weird boys, they were the result of an ancient orc issue. When orcs go into battle, they're always chanting and stomping, and the anticipation of inevitable battle gets their minds bubbling, covering the entire battlefield in orkishness. In ancient history, the more psychically prone orcs would absorb all this energy like a sponge, and then just release it in a devastating explosion-like randomly.

The weird boys were the ones who learned how to more tactfully release this energy, but they still don't have any control over how fast or violently they absorb it. Sometimes they'll still fail to control it, and their heads will explode. This is why orcs refer to weird boys as Ed Bangers, but weird boys don't appreciate this too much. You can mock for you John when you've had no choice. Oh no! Me might had exploded from energy.

Or he's an headbanger. Yeah, I can see you being a little upset about that, yeah. I also would like to point out another tabletop thing is that when you have a weird boy or something, they get more powerful if they're attached to a unit of boys that's big. But then if you do, you get like the hazardous rule and you might blow up. So if you attach to 10 to 10 orcs, it's like, oh, yeah, that's pretty good. You're actually 20 orcs. It's like, oh, no. And he turns into a headbanger.

In the latest orc book, Warlord of Warlords, there's an orc weird boy who's head explodes twice. That's quite a feat, but I mean, it's, it's orcs.

Wait, what was the name of the, what was the name of the main character, the Blood Axe guy again? Oh, there's a question. Slitter. Slitter.

My mind immediately just went to when he was, I see you now, Slater. Not for law. Yeah. God, it's so peak. Eyeball stun grenade, yeah. Now, here's a couple of

myths regarding gork and mork. The first one involves gork and mork looking at the stars and seeing a planet shining amidst the darkness. Mork challenges gork to knock it out of the sky with his club, and gork tries to do so. He holds his club with as much power as he can, but he forgets that the club is tied to his wrist. The Flying Club flings gork to the stars and Mork grabs hold of him and follows him.

And this is the myth explaining how orcs achieved space travel. That's crazy. That is very like Norse Greek kind of auditory retelling of like, and he threw his clubs so high that he took to the stars kind of thing. It really is. It's Thor if he was stupid. Stupid er. Yeah. The second myth is, believe it or not, even more ridiculous.

And this one is for you, Bricky. Oh, boy. Gork and Mark? Oh, hi, Mark. Oh, hi, Mark. Oh, man, that's a shirt, dude. Oh, hi, Mark. Gork and Mork go looking for a gigantic squiggly bee.

and find it at the bottom of a huge cesspit. Also, at the bottom of the cesspit, is Nergel, who has eaten all of the snotlings. Gork and Mork clobbered Nurgle so hard that he spews up all the snotlings who are still alive. Nergel shrinks and becomes a squiggly beast. Then the snotlings then turn the squig into a feast for Gork and Mork. This myth clearly represents the orc triumph over Nurgel. The orcs have no fear of the realms of Nurgle and happily thrive on squiggly beasts that breed in their cess pits.

Wow. That must be true. I mean, clearly it has to be, you know. It has to be. If Gork and Mork say it's true. Supposedly Gork and Mork can totally beat Nurgle's ass. Supposedly, shy. My warp god deity can beat up your warp god deity in a fight.

As we talked about the warp and orcs for a bit, we might as well grab the squig by the horns here. There is no predilection for chaos among the orcs. Orks are far less likely to turn to chaos compared to other races because the orcs are stable and content. There is not a lot of psychic stress among their ranks. They're just viving. And the consistency of this vibe allows no path for chaos to invade their minds.

Other races view the orcs as inherently evil, thus tying them with chaos, but this is far from the case. Orks, like chaos, aren't inherently evil, they just live their life by their principles of fighting and survivalism. That being said, there are gargantuan orc powers in the warp that reflect the irresponsible and cheerful nature of the orkish state. Also, their overindulgence does really get the attention of corn who does feed on orc nonsense quite regularly. But feeding is not the same as temptation, and the orcs aren't really impressed with the rampaging actions of chaos or the attempts at temptation at all. They would just rather fight, and trying to bind an

orc to a contract is almost embarrassing. That's true. That's true. I would almost think that Nergel feeds quite a bit from the orcs too, even though they supposedly killed him. Wait, why would Nurgel feed? Don't they kill a lot? I guess, I guess they're looking for a good crumping, not necessarily like just mass slaughter and shit. Mass sloth would be corn, not nerg. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, if anything, I would, I mean, obviously corn is the one. Like, corn, if they're going to feel, then it would be corn, right?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I can maybe see, like, a teeny bit of Slanesh. Because it's about like, like, they want to go through their, like, the ranks would be de biggest and be de best and get bigger and better fights and that kind of pursuit of sort of hedon. There, but like, it's, that's me grasping at straws. It really, it really probably isn't anything besides corn. Yeah.

I think, I think maybe orcs are one of the few that don't really have anything for Slennaesh to grab onto because none of it is like in the pursuit of anything other than just what they're hardwired to do. Like, they're not stepping out of their lane or trying to do something to necessarily be the best. It's just that, that they are built to fight stuff. and the more stuff they fight, the bigger they get, which means they can fight bigger things.

And it's less like, I have got a plan to become the most powerful or combatant in the galaxy and more just, oh, that was a good fight, I want another fight. And that's it. And there's not really like as much in the way of like seeking something specific, more just, I'm doing orky shit.

Because that's what we do. I guess there is a little bit of like, oh, I want to be the biggest boss. But, I mean, again, yeah, I think you're right. I mainly just grasping at straws for that one. It's like, like what Shai is saying, pretty much every sentient being will feed chaos at least a little. But in this scenario, it's just, it's so little. Besides corn, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah. Corn is going to be the only one that really gets anything out of like anything substantial. Yeah. I mean, Tusca Demon Killer does exist, you know? Yeah. I'm trying to make a deal with an ork of like, I want you to go out and kill stuff. Obviously, idiot.

That's what I've already been doing that. What are you talking about? Do it to worship someone, but I'm just doing it anyway. Shut up. Leave me all fight me. Leave me alone or fight me. No, just fight me.

That's it. There's absolutely no incentive whatsoever, is there? There's just nothing. Now, we're going to move into the contemporary law. Would you believe Potsam, if they told you that the beginning of orc law retconning began in second edition and was scattershotted changewise all the way through to eighth edition. So that's probably why you've been lied to this whole time. So now we're going to get into the contemporary law as best as we can to help clear

things up. Let's start right at the beginning, the origins of the orcs and their history. But even the modern law has made this difficult because it has finally fully acknowledged the orkish nature of orc history. Only the orcs know the true history of the orcs in and out, and the vast majority of them, frankly, don't care to remember it, even though it's tied directly to their genetics. I've got a very short quote for you here, D.K. Would you say that the necrons may know a bit?

I mean, they should, right? Probably enough, you have preempted something that we are. Oh, come on, breaking it. No, no, no, I did it this time. We'll get there, she yells at me. Let him finish the episode. Man, this feels good. No wonder Shia always yells at me like this.

This feels nice. This is nice. Anyway. The quote, the old ones brought forth newer creations to defend their last strongholds, like the hearty, green skin, crook, and the technology-mimicking chakero. That is from the Necron's

third edition codex, which established a new monkey wrench in the Ork creation story. Oh, you know what? This is something that I was going to bring up in the intro, but then we couldn't. This is tangentially related to the Nechron's third edition codex. Last week, when we were talking about the Nightbringer and how it used to be the actual god on the tabletop, you, D.K., asked how much the Nightbringer cost, and I nearly said 350 points, but then I was like, that doesn't sound right in my head. So I said 300 points. The deceiver is 300 points. And I decided to assign that to the Nightbringer. The Nightbringer,

annoyingly, 360 points. So I already've been 10 points off if I'd only committed. But I second guess myself. And it definitely hasn't slightly bothered me all week. Okay? I just want to make that clear. It's not annoyed me just a little bit because it's just one degree off being correct. Clearly, you got right over it. It had no effect on you. You didn't need to look anything up. Yeah, obviously, I can see that. Duh, yeah, like Shai said, clearly you don't care.

It's not a big deal. It would be silly to be just a little bit bothered by that, which is why I'm not. Anyway, moving on. So, that line was from the third edition codex. And the early law beforehand did not include any sort of war in heaven. So now we have quite literally the creation story of 40K. But what came with it was not the brain boys. It was something new in the form of the Cork

as being what sounds like a proto form of orc. The only issue here is that the fourth edition orcodex has zero mention of this bit. So there seems to be a bit of a schism that's kind of confusing. More recently in the Infinite and the Divine, as well as Clone Lord, we see more references to the Cork as something truly gigantic.

So Civona in Clone Lord points out that the croak, and it's described as a 12-meter-tall monstrosity, wearing a crude exoskeleton that seems to be a hyper-advanced bit of armour, even more advanced than the armour that Bail is wearing. Bile remarks that the cork, he sees, is one of the first orcs that he read about in Eldari-Tex, and he had long theorised that orcs are some sort of an organic weapon system. Is Savona... I haven't read a clone order. Is that the not female space submarine that Bile keeps around? I believe so, yeah. Okay, right, right, yeah.

We also get a reference to the size of a crook during the War of the Beast, when Lario the Shadowseer is being interrogated. She remarks about how her people ruled the stars while terror was ruled by reptiles. Just like now, am I right? I don't know why I threw that in. Because you're not wrong. The royal family of lizards, we know this. She says many came against them like the soulless ones before.

saying the croak at the apex of their might in comparison to which this latest folly is laughable. Like, that as a sentence is annoyingly obtuse. The crook at the apex of their might in comparison to which this latest folly is laughable. This is why no one likes Eldar. Me, me when I need to fill out a word list for an essay, a word counts, that's so. And another big word. And another big word. And another big word.

Just do like the rest of us and make the periods, 1.5 pixels taller. Exactly. Fortunately, we now have some dedicated orc writers that have been doing some great work tying everything together. So we owe a lot of thanks to two in-world characters for rationalizing the early history of the orcs. Macari and a pain boy named Stimmer in Prophet of the Wa. During the sequence in which Macari explains DeGreen, part of his... His vision involves seeing warriors in the stars, huge orcs that were perfect, every single one being bigger than a clan chief and rippling with green.

As Macari says, they was orcs as they was meant to be. He could feel the gods above them, grinning with pride. And in Degobo rides again, Stim of the Pain Boy uncovers a necron glyph on Gorkamorka which awakens a memory of the war in heaven. He stumbles across a battlefield, but continues walking. As he walks, he realizes that he's not alone. Something that's like him, but also unlike him, something that was not made for war, but its purpose is now buried. It's referred to as a wretch. It has a reedy and annoying voice, and Stimmer tries to ignore it.

At the start of their journey, Stimmer and the wretch are roughly the same size, but with each step, the wretch begins to weaken and shrink. That or Stimmer gets bigger. The diminishing of the wretch causes it to cry and lament about the weakness of its form. It claims to have authority that they both know it doesn't have. it didn't even have it in the first place. It shrinks closer and closer to the ground until Stimmer realizes that the thing following him is basically a grot, but it doesn't realize it's a grot. So with these two passages combined with other context clues, we can kind of meet in the middle when it comes to the true nature of the origin of orcs. Orcs were made by the old ones and at the peak of their evolution, they were known as Croc. The Orchish races all had

different aspects that were designed initially by the old ones, and they were a brilliant and thriving race with a more diminutive form of them being their leaders with some sort of authority. Over time, this authority became more and more diluted, and the orcs slash crocs became diminutive, unable to achieve what they had beforehand, resulting in the instinctual race we have today. That seems about what I remember. Nothing there seems too off the beam path. Sounds plausible and nicer than an orks with marsupial.

pouches. So, you know, I'll take it. Their photosynthesize. Like mushrooms. That, if we can't get that in at least one more time, I'm going to be sad. So we're now going to move on to the home world and biology of the contemporary law. So orcs, as far as anyone can tell, don't have a dedicated home world. If they did, it is long forgotten. There are some worlds that they're more prone to due to incidents in the past, but a concrete place of origin is not really a thing for them at this point. As far as most of the other species are concerned, the galaxy is just inherently orky, and where they pop up is where they pop up. This reinforces the ideas that the old ones had when it came to the presumed intention

they have for creating this race, something rapidly deploying that was focused not on building itself up as a dedicated empire, but something that was ready to fight at the drop of a hat. In regards to creation, we have a gigantic shift from the original law and the contemporary law in regards to how orcs reproduce. Orcs are essentially an intersection between three different things, animal, algae and fungi. They are through and through a creature that was genetically engineered to not only be a biological weapon, but also spread rapidly. And all three of these things combined to essentially make a self-sustaining ecosystem that goes step by step to make more orcs. At a very basic level, take a random world that doesn't have an orc population on it and

throw an orc spore at it. First, the spores spread and start to form at least some sort of a sustaining niche ecosystem-wise. As the spores continue to multiply and spread, squigs will begin to develop in order to continue to not only spread the spores, but also to fill ecological niches and to start removing more localized environmental things, like other animals or food sources, and replace them with something that would begin to form an orc habitat. Grots will appear next to sort of iron out something a bit more tribal. and begin to cultivate some things for the orcs, and now, orcs will begin to appear.

This process can take decades, but there is a speed run option. If there's already a nearby orc population, most of these steps can actually be skipped since the world already has orcs, and they can just respawn. Huh, huh, that is rough for people who aren't orcs. That absolutely sucks if you're just minding your own business, and somehow an or. Spore arrives through some means or other.

That's, uh, yeah. Just blowing in the wind like a seed, right? Oh, how did this invasive plant life get here? The wind carried a seed over and now you're screwed, except it's an orc. Almost tiered like, moment like like like some bad spore arrives, everything gets screwed up. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, I'll hear medical supplies. What do you mean there from the double heel?

Oh, no. Twisted helix But pretty good That you remember that It's pretty good And well that was the cool one That was the super cool Gene Steeler

Well they're not cool They're assholes But No no they're cool Very memorable Yeah They're fighting against the bourgeois Of the Imperium

Okay They're truly they're important Truly Truly The fun begins Shut the fuck up Shy The fun begins when the fun guys arrive.

No, no, yeah, we got it. We got it, everyone. Let's try, he thought you'd get away from us. He's trying to run away verbally. I lost commitment on that really, really quickly as well. The key thing here is that the spread of this fungal network is not bound to the regular constraints of evolution and can basically appear anywhere. This is why even some of the most borderline inhospitable worlds still somehow managed to get an orc invasion,

because they will still find some way to be resilient and situate themselves successfully. Also, the spreading of a spore is quite easy. Orcs do it throughout their life, be it through sweating or scratching their skin. When they die, it's like a big puff of spores, so there's a common misconception that it's death which causes the cycle to begin again. But that's not true. death just makes the infestation worse. The orc develops underground essentially like the budding part of a mushroom in a sort of cocoon. When they're born, they're known as youths, and they're essentially like a teenager.

It takes somewhere around a year for an orc to kind of be born, but in some circumstances it can be a bit less. The different types of issues within an orc, tissues within an ork, allow it to survive. You've got the more animalistic structure that forms the muscles and body, the algae that forms the green of their skin as well as the nutrient absorption, and the fungal aspect allows them to be resilient, self-healing, and also connected to the green, which we'll talk about in a bit. There's a lot of confusion when it comes to what each part does, as some scientists believe the algae part serves as the storing of memories,

while the mycelial part serves as the means in which they gather nutrients, but this confusion is likely due to how intertwined and complex the system is, for something this brutish. The youths that appear kind of trying to find their way before they merge into Ork Society and one thing that helps them with this are the runt huds. We'll say before we move on, it does feel like even if the Imperium wasn't a stagnant hellhole

trying to unravel this lot, it sounds like the life's work of someone who's got several lifetimes and the chances are you're still not going to fully understand it because what even are these guys? They sure won't tell you either. And like, who are you going to do? What are you going to do? You're going to trust the robot skeletons?

Or are you going to trust the, I don't know, the elves who half of them are the dark Eldar? Like, I... Yeah. Well, like, even if you asked an orc, an orc probably doesn't know how the hell they work. They're just like, oh, I just going to wake up, Royish. And, like, what are they going to do? They're not going to tell you how they physiologically work, right? Absolutely. You could ask Grotsnick

if you live long enough and have a voice box for long enough. But even then, he would probably just be like, I kind of know how it works, but I'm also sort of going off vibes and I can just bring people back from complete death. So some of it might not even be right. I don't know. Classically, then, the runt herds are known as being the ones who handle the herds of Gretchen and Snottlings with a lot of enthusiasm and a lot of pride, but they are also the only ones that really care to know

orc oral tradition, and it's them who teach these traditions to the youths. They pass down the stories of the various wars and the gods, no matter how embellished, and it helps spark a light in the minds of the youths to seek out their designated purpose in orkish society. Designated being the key word, as since as early as Gorka Morka, the idea that orcs retain everything they need to function subconsciously has been a thing. Youths, upon emerging from the ground, are able to do many things.

Walk, torque, wield a weapon, drive a vehicle, survive, adapt, etc. Sure, the runt herds push them in the right direction, but they have everything they need rattling around in their heads. Another instinctual thing within the head of orcs is the belief that the bigger an orc is, the stronger they are. Obviously, this is hard to ignore as it's a bit of a biological thing to begin with, but there's some degree of mental subservience and understand standing of this that is innate within an orc. It can be theorized that orcs will reach a point

where they are so big that they can potentially reach the next step in their biological evolution, essentially crocs. But due to how regressed the species has become, this next step is seemingly impossible. Gaz is, of course, the orc that's living that is as close as we have to this potential capsizing point since the book series we don't talk about. But even he has limitations due to how he is becoming increasingly mechanical. That's true. He's kind of more machine than orc at this point, isn't he? Kind of feel like we actually got a little close when Uftak got upgraded by the

droucari homunculi poison in the big DACA. It was kind of a little bit of a little showing that one off a little bit because he got really smart and, you know, tough. I forgot all about that. That is. That's fair. he probably did get pretty close since he's all orc. At least he was getting closer at least.

Yeah. Still no gas, but you know. Yeah. But again, how or how much orc is gas actually since, you know, got decapitated? It's on a metal body at this point, right? So. Then we now turn to our newest episode of, oh, that Grotsnick. So true.

Love that show. The lovable scamp Grotsnick. Getting up to shenanigans all over the. place. It was a theory for a long time within the Imperium that Orks having latent memories was something biological, but it hasn't really come up in a lot more recent stuff Imperium-wise. It did, however, come up in a very unexpected place. Thanks to the sloppy head joke Possum made last episode, they were forced to read Phil Kelly books yet again. This is the established punishment for a possum now, by the way. You've got to go back and read Phil Kelly. And the evolutionary nature

of orcs is something the Tao have begun to uncover in the newest Farsight novel, Blade of Truth. Parsim really was to highlight, not joking, and we are to check out this quote, which I think is you, Bricky. I believe so. All right, Possum says, I really got to do this. Farsight shook himself, making the sign of scattered ash. They are evolutionary dead ends, nothing more. Not so. My feel have assessed the gene markers of the diminutive orcoids. And then they're... I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Just the...

No, no, that wasn't to you. That was to the author, I assume. Oh, okay, okay. The diminutive orchoids. I'm sure this is before they started to say foids and stuff, but anyway. I thought the same thing. My phoebus says the gene markers are the diminutive orchoids, and there are parts of their biosignatures that are missing.

When we grown, when we're conceded, when we're conceded. They result in drastically in large cerebellums. Why are we speaking of this? Viorlo is dying. It is the theory amongst my foremost phyogeneticists that the lesser orcoids were the leader of their society, the warrior caste, with whom you are so familiar, and are the equivalent of their shots.

The knowledge of how to propagate endless warfare is hardwired into their genetic code. The same can be said of their innovators, their earth cast equivalent, said to be a subset of their warrior caste. By my current theorist's reckoning, the smaller, brighter creatures were once their the genetic markers are still there for greater intelligence. They suffered some type of cataclysm that saw them subsumed, and their warrior cast rise to rulership in their place.

What a phenomenal quote. What an absolute baller. I do love that. It's like, bro, our planet is dying. It's like, hold on, hold on. More exposition. Viralos is dying. But hang on.

Hang on, though. Or casts, am I right? I feel like I need to read this book so that I can get a feel for, well, all right, this set, part of this book for this section, primarily because I want to know what is said after the exposition. dump and whether Farsight does think that was worth waiting for in the context of a person or a planet currently on their deathbed. Like, did he go, you know what, now you've said all that. Thank you. I definitely needed to know right this second or whether it's just like, did you not, could you

not tell that this was not the time for this? I want to know the end of the exchange. Just gives him a Batman slap. and they move on. Just a quick backhand. Actually, no, this is very important. I need to know this. Possum. I'd like you to continue to read this book so that

I can have all the information required. Four more times read this book. While you're at it, can I get a few other towel books? Can we do a full towel month of only Phil Kelly towel books? Is that? I don't know.

We have to increase his pay. And I don't really want to do that. Yeah. He made one sloppy head joke. You know, I don't, I think this is a little far. I'm worried there would be, there would be no amount of pay worth it. And that Bassem would just quit. We need, we need possum.

We can't afford to drive possum away. We can't go back to Bricky looking at wikies and the occasional books he's read. We can't go back to that. I mean, we, no, you're right. We can't go back to that. We can't go back to that. We've tasted, we've tasted success in, in a much more fancy way with which much better ideas we can't go back.

You're right, you're right. So all of that is still a theory by the Tao, but that's the issue with our understanding of orcs. On the surface level, we only have theories to explain what's going on because the aorks themselves just can't be bothered. Fortunately, in more recent books, we have some individuals who have experienced something that shows the extent of where orkish knowledge comes from and goes.

and that is de Great Green. Now we've talked about it before in the Grotsnick episode, but now's the time to talk about it again in a truncated manner. The Great Green has become very prominent in recent books and serves as a big step forward in explaining what orcs believe and how orcs are seemingly able to respawn constantly. The first real instance of this is, again, courtesy of Makari, when he sees it first hand.

To him, it looks like a moat that spreads from caverns like a beehive. scientifically it's like a galaxy-spanning mycelial network that connects all of of orc-kind together despite the size of even the biggest mycelial network it's able to pick up signals at any point and work to repair itself and fix issues while also intertwining with other organisms to allow for its survival on earth we have an incredible amount of fungal networks that cover the surface of our planet and these networks in many respects are connected to form a singular organism like the one in Oregon that is about 3.7 square miles in size. According to the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks

in a paper published just last week, the Underground Networks of Fun Guy stretched to about 110 quadrillion kilometres. I can't wrap my head around that number. That's an insane number. What the hell? While moving 4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the soil each year. If this network was to be spread out in a straight line, it would cover about 10% of the Milky Way galaxy. This is the kind of thing that would be said in a book, a Warhammer book, about how much ammunition they brought. And then it would be like, casualty rate, 300,000.

Oh, that's such. Ah, GW and their understanding of numbers. These are writers and people who like to do narratives. They don't understand military logistics. We brought 400 quadrillion shells, casualty. 100,000. And we ran out of all of them in two hours. The war went on for 100 years.

There was 10,000 dead. I'm sorry, what? Smaller death rate than World War II. two. I don't know why you're complaining. Look, it clearly wasn't that bad a war. You could have just wrapped it up earlier. Come on.

So the symbiotic relationship bit here is very important for understanding de Greene because it kind of explains why it's not warp related, but also warp related. It's entirely plausible that de Green is a network as a network is something intertwined between real space and warp space as a sort of tether that is symbiolpial. Arctic to both, while also being independent from both. As we said a minute ago, orcs are the budding fruit, but them showing up is not a random look of the draw thing. Much like a real-world mycelial network, DeGreen will send a specific type of orc to a specific place that needs it most. The example used previously was this. Say there's a really good

Blood Axe Warboss out there somewhere in the galaxy. It does its duty, kills a bunch of lads, and then gets killed. The spirit of this Blood Axe Warboss will return to the Great Green and when the environment called for a Blood Axe Warboss to fill the niche, the basis of that lad will be reborn in the form of a brand new orc. An orc that likely won't remember a damn thing about what happened to it, except the real primal makeup of that one orc. The constant death and rebirth fuels DeGrein and shows that you cannot kill an orc in a way that truly matters,

decay existing as an extant form of life. DeGrein knows where to send an ork thanks to specific conduits, and these conduits tend to be more potent orcs. War bosses, really. Orcs involved in serious sector-spanning battles are an example of a place where de Greene is going to want to send some form of reinforcements due to the inevitably high turnover of orcs. The bigger the war, the bigger the support.

And, of course, at this point we come to Gaz. He is made clear by Grotsnik is a fixed and finite point that is bigger than the space he occupies. He isn't classically an orc anymore. He is de Green made manifest And he not only draws the energies of DeGrean to him But even other orcs that are nearby Like moths to a flame

That is a huge amount of like This is what gas is so strong It's galaxy spanning Yeah he himself is like a psychic beacon Almost In a sense Yeah All the other orcs are like

What do we should go that way Like why I don't know Sheffield and then gas is over there. Unable to be killed with Crosnick really excited about putting it back together again every time. So we've seen too big to fail. So in a sense, the Great Green is a manifestation of spirit where like if an orc, like a mech boy, if a mech boy is really good at making fast vehicles and that mech boy dies most likely due to a car crash. In an area in which they need fast vehicles, the green might make a new orc with his ideas and skill set.

But it's not, it's not de Mechlead speed boss. It's like a different guy, but he just has the same type of ideas and thoughts. Okay. Yeah, as shy put it, like his blueprint. That's a good way of phrasing it. So in a sense, Like in a sense he's dead Like Mickle boy, the speed boss is dead

And will remain dead His individualality is gone But the But what like he is They make like a copy of him Yeah It's not him but it's With the exception of Makari

Because Macari is the one that does reincarnate normally Yeah For Gaz Interesting Yeah that's not how it worked Yeah that's that's that's that's that's cool it makes it makes it like it makes it makes it more interesting than just the same guy keeps coming back over and over again i mean obviously there's there is the one

exception to that but the idea that the knowledge and the ability and just the innate like talent that they're born with gets recycled over and over is he's way more fun than just yeah that guy died and so he brought him back because that narratively that can get a bit old whereas just there is this galaxy spanning thing that it's like we need we need someone real real good at sneaky killing over there luckily someone died not that long ago who's really good at that so let's just take the bits that make him really good at that and then shove him into a new lad and see what happens yeah your talents are immortal you are not also i like the idea that like as you get reincarnated. I'm assuming they update the blueprint. So like the sneaky guy, if he stays alive

and long enough, the blueprint just gets better. And you just keep getting sneakier and sneakier and the blueprint gets updated and it's kind of cool. This is again by orcs rule, actually, when you remember that they're there. When you remember their thing, orcs are really cool. Yep. So we have seen examples of orcs talking more and more about de green as a concept. Some are excited about dying and being reborn maybe into something stronger while others are afraid of it. Not in a afraid of death sense, but in a, oh no, I'm going to have to start all over again sense. Yes, it's so pragmatic. No, just doesn't it all, Zogger, to do us all again. I start from scratch, Zogginke. Now is a good time to talk about Wa and the four things it

represents. An event, a group, a war cry, and gestalt energy. So for orcs, war is the purpose of their entire existence. If they are not actively participating in it, they are working to do so. For orcs, this is the same as the human need for food and hydration. Constantly, orcs are fighting. They will launch raids on nearby enemies, and if there's no enemies around, they will fight one another. Critical mass, however, is something that can be reached, and this results in a planetary migration that is known as a war. It's a catastrophic crusade of pure violence that will keep going until there's nothing left to fight. Sometimes these hordes are not aimless and aren't just crumpin for the sake of crumpin.

These catastrophic forces can be slightly tamed by a war boss, and thus it turns into the second definition. A wah in the sense of an organized war. These tend to be more dedicated with a goal in mind and are only a thing so long. because the war boss is still around. If he gets oft, it tends to collapse into a nonsensical power struggle. During this, you'll often hear the third example of a war, which is just straight up yelling that as a battle cry for war. The fourth example is war energy, and this takes us into the really dicey nature of an orc's latent psychic abilities, which is the most memeable law stuff regarding orcs. At the very start of the episode, we had the quote that served as the basis for

the orc stuff works because they believe it does. This quote, is often complimented with a story in the fourth codex, which is a wazdaka. So the story talks about Ork-Mekwazdaka and how he became the king of the speed freaks. He doesn't stop and he's just addicted to going fast, to the point where he inspired the cult of speed. Deep in his mind, he has a cunning plan. He wants to harness the power of the warp so that he can make portals, allowing him to drive from planet to planet like it's a big interconnected speedway. Hell, yeah.

That rocks. That's awesome. And this story ends with this quote for you, D.K. All right. It is a plan that could only be spawned by a madman. And as a result, it enjoys a great deal of support from every speed freak who hears it. The power of orc belief is strong, and Wazdaka may yet get his interstellar highway operational. Should the speed freak war boss succeed, the power of his WAA would be devastating.

as his disciples tear in and out of reality across the breadth of the galaxy. Yeah, I forgot. This is the new orc model, by the way. Yeah. That's Wazdaka. He's such a rock star. God, that's so cool.

His plan, his mini, his everything is just so fucking metal, dude. Yeah, fuck that infinite Cid, hell shit. Perchiramo is a fuck. Get back to Wazdaka, making the motor speedway. Screw the web way. Yeah, man. And if he ever succeeds in it, he's just to be blasting life as a highway as he just tears across the galaxy. Oh, dude, I need an org version of life as a highway with the org accents. You're not getting it.

Damn. Surely someone's got to have the talent to make that happen. I say as someone who does not have the talent to make that happen. Someone's got to be able to do it. You've got a British accent, Kiriop. Yeah, you're halfway there. Yeah. I don't know if that counts as halfway.

You've got one out of the ten things needed to make this happen. Let's go. So all of this stuff is an example of two things. Latent orc memories and the gestalt field that the orcs unknowingly tap into. When it comes to the mech boys, their knowledge is innate due to it being genetic. They're able to achieve things that are beyond the comprehension of human technology, because frankly, Ork technology at one point

did exceed human technology. So realistically, they're tapping into hyper-advanced technological memories without understanding it outside of functionality. A mecboy will build a vehicle that is exceptionally fast

without too much effort on their end and then they will paint it red. Is it the paint that makes it go faster? Not really. It's already fast and subconsciously the color of the vehicle now reflects the actual functionality. A shockingly advanced weapon

with a clip that has an improbable amount of bullet works pretty well. Is that an unusable weapon? No, it's just a weird-ass-looking weapon that has functionality that exceeds a standard Imperium understanding of functionality, despite it looking like it was held together with sticks and stones. Their stubborn nature and their matter-of-fact understanding of things is ultimately the main thing holding them back. Some orcs are creative and even philosophical, but the majority just can't be bothered and are tethered to some degree of reality. Because of this, they don't have ambition and don't exceed their mental grounding. But sometimes they really do. A very good example of this is courtesy of Ork Amides, still stupid, but I still really like it, who has innovated and perfected

orc teleported technology into something actually baffling. He has invented a device known as the mega-tele-shocker, which has allowed for the start of the Fourth War for Armageddon and assured that the orc arrival in the system was a surprise. The device itself is essentially a planet-sized shock attack gun. Ten customized kill cruisers travel separately and are able to use their combined power to punch a hole directly through the warp to allow for Ork fleets to almost seamlessly pour through one side and come out the other. Sure, it had some really rough testing phases, like orcs being teleported directly into the heart of a star or being sent to an unknown place and time.

But the technology is actually impressive and uses principles already established through long-term orch technological constructs. That is insanely cool art as well, by the way. It's just gigantic. Like when you remember how big some of these orc cruisers are, it is so big. Well, it has to be.

I mean, you're launching your fleet across the stars or I guess across the war, but... Yeah, but this is an orc fleet. Yeah. It's crazy. And not for nothing, the Imperium has successfully used orc technology multiple times to their

benefits. Armageddon orc hunters use orc shooters from time to time, and the last chances did the same thing. Gaunt drove an orc buggy in first and only. Caius Kane used a lot of orc stuff on Perlia, which we'll talk about another time. The list just goes on and on.

In fact, the whole unusable orc weapon bit is used as a joke in brutal cunning too. But there is some truth when it comes to the orkish power of belief, but it doesn't really exceed something grounded at least slightly in reality. Every orc has a little bit of psychic energy that we like to call wire energy. Orks, of course, don't use or understand the warp quite like how humans do. Orks have a lot of trouble believing in things, or being convinced of something that they don't believe in in general. Sure, they believe in their gods, but some things don't need to be explained to them, and certainly don't tell them that they're wrong.

There are plenty of stories of an orc shooting a weapon that clearly has a smaller clip for a bit longer than it should. In the heat of the moment, the orc believes that there are still a few more bullets in there, and this manifests to sort of prove him right. Sometimes when driving a truck, an orc is so close to the destination that it believes there's still just enough gas in the tank so that it doesn't run out entirely, despite the fact that the vehicle has been running on empty for like 10 minutes. These are examples of how the orc power of belief actually works. It's reliant on working on the orkish belief and understanding that they embrace as opposed to something more goofy and unrealistic. If you hand an ork a stick and say that it's a gun,

he's not going to hold it and fire it like a gun. He'll likely say, nah, that's a stick before beating you to death with it. Similarly, the claw that Yarrick has doesn't work just because, the orcs believe it does, it works because a shitload of technology was put into Yarek's back to allow it to work. So, so the answer is a combination of orcs are so weirdly advanced and de-advanced that sometimes it just does weird stuff. And the other answer is, but sometimes it does work that way because of the latent psychic stuff.

pretty much just not in the most extreme ways that I think so collectively we've all done it we've all memed it we've all done the What no we haven't Curia

Shut the hell up What are you talking about Me pulling out my collar So it works Just not at the meme level That we all like to pretend that it does I mean based on what you just said It's a realm of like, okay, you know, there's 10 orcs.

They're all racing their cars. Their cars are going a certain speed and they're pushing the throttle. One orc is like, I got to hit the turbo and grabs a bucket of red paint and throws this shit all over his car or whatever. Most likely nothing will really happen. Now, on the other side, an orc is already. driving a red car and he's like, wait a minute, this is a red one and he pushes even harder on the stick that's already in the ground and he goes five miles faster.

Both can happen. Yeah. That sounds like a more realistic wah approach. What then? There's two tires and a seat in between them and so it becomes a bike, which is effectively what the meme interpretation has been for quite some time. He was a tank because he believes it's heavily armored. Yeah.

That, that, that's who. That was, yeah. No way. Hey, hey, hey, listen, that was a funny bit that someone told me way back in the day. I'm just reiterating the stories. And I will tell that story till my dying day as if that's actually how it worked. It's a, it's a great goofy. It's a great goofy story.

It's, it's a fun one that is, is technically incorrect, but does, uh, it's, it's a, it's a, it's, tone setter, if anything. Yeah, yeah. Kind of introduce the, introduce the more absurd side and then take it down to the bit where it's, it's more reasonable and grounded with what they can actually do, but it's still,

it's still a fun entry point. Yeah. Yeah, like, Lord, Lorgar survived a Titan firing him with like a magma cannon. So like, like, Primarkson survive a magma cannon. Well, kind of, he was like laying there,

looking like Pym at the end of the first Smiling Friends episode, and Angron had to save his life by holding the Titan over his head. Also, Shai says, it's more like Ork presses big red button in his truck that his mech promise will enable to turbo mode. That button is not connected anything, but Ork believes it does, and boom, car goes faster for a while, and then Ork thinks, I wonder if that shit is built properly, I can't trust those incompetent mecks and car explodes.

I think there's a billion different ways it could, it could work in that realm because what an orc thinks, it can flip on a dime as well. It's got just enough rules to be fun, and it's just vague enough to be really fun. And that's the balance. So the power of belief is just a part of the latent psychic power that orcs have that manifests as wire energy,

and it gets stronger and stronger the more orcs are around. This strength doesn't mean that they can start doing improbable things, It's just a side effect of the sheer volume of orcs being together. To many orcs, this helps intensify the battle a bit for them, but otherwise it doesn't have extreme psychic side effects. That is, of course, unless you're a weird boy. Weird boys are very psychically prone, and they lack control when it comes to how this wire energy is absorbed by them.

Weird boys dislike being around other orcs because the constant flow of energy can be deeply uncomfortable and can inadvertently cause them to explode. They wear very brightly colored outfits, or weird headware that gives Orks a heads up to kind of stay away from them. In order to relieve this tension from the overabundance of wire energy, a weird boy will go to their parents' room at 3am and say that they threw up. However, this throwing up is a bit visceral.

The psychic vomit discharged from a weird boy is less vomit and more breathing fire. They feel great after doing this, but others around them really hate seeing it. To help channel things, weird boys tend to carry things like copper staffs or psychically tuned headpiece. pieces that allow for things to be channeled a bit better, but there's never a guarantee it will fully work as intended. As we said before, the build-up of this energy can sometimes be so extreme that the head of a weird boy will explode. Though some of the weird boys hate how their energy sponges with a real uncontrollable apex where they can detonate, others really like it. Warpheads are weird boys that love the influx of wire energy and essentially ride the

overwhelming waves of it as long as they can before releasing it. All orcs are. tend to be a bit obsessive, but these guys have taken it to the extreme. And due to the constant overuse and exposure to the energies, they're also a bit mad off the battlefield. Except the Snake Bites war bosses listen to their mad ramblings as if they are prophecies from Gork and Mork. Oh, well, yeah, because... That is so cool.

Because snake bites are the more tribal type. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That bottom art is so good. That has got to be a death metal album cover somewhere, right? Oh, yeah, no, we do that one, and that's the album art of, in broad daylight with dull knives. Oh, nice callback. Let's go.

Oh, man, that album would sell like hotcakes, brother. Hell yeah. Okay, finally, finally, we've got Gork and Mork. Their creation is a bit confusing as there are two major points of contention not including that bit in the War of the Beast where Vulcan was so violently exposed to wire energy in the cathedral gargant

that he saw a full wiki page on Ork history. The first point is what Makari sees when he has his vision of de Green. In that vision he sees Gork and Mork fighting and their fighting resulting in the creation of the orcs. In a sense Gork and Mork were the progenitors

of the Orkish races and they were made in their image. Grutz Nick, however, thinks differently. He believes that Gork and Mork were created thanks to the repetitive and abundant wire energy that has followed Orch's society since its creation. This realistically stands in line with the creation of other warp-based entities like the Eldari gods and such, but ultimately it doesn't even slightly matter to even the most tuned-in arc. The gods are there and they expect a good crumping. Hell yeah, they do. Hell yeah. And that is essentially all the stuff, most of the stuff, that you've been lied to about

orcs several times, given how many changes they've had over there, over their history so far. That's a great episode by Possum, but I couldn't help but notice none of the quotes were said by orcs. Crazy. Crazy behavior, Possum. It's because they don't give a shit. The Orcs don't care.

It's everyone else that wants to know the answers. They're just like, yeah, we hit him again. Oh, that's, that's, uh, that's what you picked up from the runt heard stories. Yeah. He did a lot of hid. It was great. We hit him real jogging odd in it. Oh, okay.

Historian trying to talk to an orc. So, what is your culture as history? I don't know. We jogging hit things as old as we can. Oh, mm, all right. Anything else? No. I want that book.

I want that to be an actual. I'll set up for a novella, but you know. History of the orcs by Head Smacker Gett gobber. And it's just like a one-page leaflet. I want to know if Trazin has ever sat there and tried to investigate an ork and just, you know, I have a few things confirmed. And he's just not rid any of it down because he's like, this was an absolute waste of my time.

He's got to wake up the crook in his vault, right? Because he's got one, doesn't he? Yeah, it's true. Get an or the crook and then see what they agree on. The crook's just like, the fuck is this. The crook is going to kill the orc, right? And be like, they'll just smash his head in. I like the idea that they'd be a lot more refined than the orcs.

Oh, true. I guess they would, right. Yeah, yeah. The crooks more like, I say, good chap. I'm not at all sure about this gentleman. Oh, my God, that has to be the ones for the crook. A crumping. No.

I prefer a do. So I say, good day, little man, chap. How are you today? I see you are of my green lineage. How goes the fighting, old boy? What to follow you? Yes. My cousin, the primorke came earlier today.

Oh, no. I'm not to press. work. Oh, no. We got to get out of here. Well, anyway. Is that how we're ending the episode? No, no.

I mean, I mean, I feel like this is one of those episodes that that will be very useful for the future. Yeah. Especially bits of like the great green and things like that. But as far as I'm considering this whole time, we, this entire conversation was just delivered at the far sight while viola is burning.