How Many Orks…?

What makes a man truly a man?

In the innermost sanctuary of the NorthKern fortress, a lone sound still could be heard. A ragged sound, the heavy breathing of a man. In the darkness, near the shattered glowglobe on the desk, a body still tried to cling to life. Starving, old, tired, it was slowly losing its battle, but it could resist a few more minutes. The mouth was trying to form words, a last prayer maybe, but only a croaking sound emerged. The left hand tightened on an autopistol.

Is a man already a man when he is, and always will be, alone?

Shakingly, the arm rose, to rest the barrel of the gun on the temple of the officer. With feeble strength, the right hand gripped the aquila sitting on the desk. A flare, and the gun thumped, smoking, on the carpet. Silence.

Is a man already a man, if his world lie within a little tribe, a few hundred fellows, without a true society?

In the corridors and rooms, in the bunkers and artillery platforms, others lay, all dead, their purple uniforms showing the dark stains of their blood. Tens, hundreds of bodies, an entire garrison, their death showing their fight. First outside on the walls then in the redoubts, a group in the internal bunkers, a few in the armory, some, the slower ones, haphazardly spread in the corridors… On the heavily scarred adamantine door the blood of a last group spoke of a final resistance to protect the retreat of the remaining officers. And in the sanctuary, five bodies. Two dead of hunger and thirst, two others having bled to death, and the last, slowly chilling.

The battle was weeks old, yet the five had not exited. As tough as they were, and even if they had resisted, the doors had still been too damaged to open again.

Is a man still a man when every single one of his kind has been slaughtered? Is he still a man if he is the last one alive?

As the last man on Henn Tertius died, the skies rumbled, heavy with black and purple clouds, heavy with alien taint. The fortress’ tale had been everyone’s tale. A bountiful world, rich in farms and prosperous, Henn had been in the Emperor’s light for centuries. There were orks to contend with, teeming in the southern continent’s forest, but they were held in check, never able to gain enough strength to be a real threat. NorthKern, EastKern, Seven Hills, Lerh’s rock and another half dozen fortresses had been the dam the green flow had never been able to break. Until…

Military denomination would have called it a splinter fleet. For Henn Tertius, it was only death. Though feeble in comparison with Tartarus or Behemoth, the hive fleet was too much for a lone world with no reinforcements. Upon hearing of the threat, the bulk of the army was gathered around the main cities, trying to buy time for an improbable rescue. The fortresses had been stripped of most of their soldiers, and in the third week of the conflict they started breaking under the renewed pressure of the greenskins. Even when the skies grew heavy with spore and alien microorganisms, the Orks didn’t care about Tyranids. Orks don’t care about anything, period. They live to fight everything and everyone, howling in glee until their foe lies dead on the ground.

Eastkern fell first under a frenzied assault of the green beasts. In the span of a few days the other golden runes disappeared from the central Officio Tactica, but no one paid them attention. At the same time around the cities all military units were frantically fighting to survive a chitinous horde, without hope. Five days later the last defense broke, and two more sunsets were enough to see every man but one, entombed in his fortress, wiped out from the surface of the planet.

Having eliminated the human threat, the Hive Mind tightened its hold on the planet. The conflict had lasted weeks, but it had yet to send a true army against the orks, for past experiences had taught it that humans would be the true dangerous foe. That was the Tyranids’ first mistake. In the already conquered territories chitinous towers were slowly growing, always higher, trying to reach the sky and deliver the planet’s resources to their masters. All the while chimney on their flanks kept belching spores and clouds of viruses, the same clouds that drifted down from the flanks of the Hive ships. That was the second and most tremendous mistake of the Hive.

The tyranids are on the apex of animals’ evolutionary tree. They have mastered the genome of countless races, including some older than themselves, as they encountered and slew eldars and humans alike. They have fabricated viruses that hasten the growth of plants so much that a planet’s resources will be consumed in a matter of months. Tyranids had encountered orks before, a few specimens on human-controlled worlds. A few… the fleet had used their genomes, yet its all-powerful mind had discarded something. A little information, a few genes that weren’t of interest for it.

As the hordes of the tyranids turned and converged south, the Hive concentrated on quickening the death of the planet, forgetting that orks are mainly plants. They are sexless, and grow from the ground, then spread their spores all throughout their lives. This is why the Imperium, for all its might, cannot entirely eradicate them from its worlds, for they grow again from the very ground they were killed on. That is why the same viruses that can make a tree grow two meters in a day will make an ork spore ripen in a few dozen hours.

What makes an ork truly an ork?

The ork territory had been only slowly expanding during the imperial’s demise. Apart from the fortresses there had been no human presence nearby, so the orks fought among themselves, growing ever more ferocious as their numbers soared. Conquest over an empty land means nothing to them ; only the fight itself does.

The first tyranid horde to reach the ork territory penetrated deep in it, going even past the fortresses’ line and dispatching every warring tribe it encountered. Then the orks realized they still had a powerful enemy and converged toward it. The tyranid army was shattered. From the decaying jungles thousands upon thousands of orks rushed toward the fight, toward the north and its war.

The second tyranid horde was destroyed in a matter of days, swept away by the tidal wave of green beasts and death. Then, the greenskins separated in two hordes : most went north toward the ex-imperial territories while the rest marched east in the direction of the great plains.

Is an ork already an ork when it is growing in mother earth’s womb, fed by its roots? Is an ork nature, rather than nurture?

Ragkar’s eyes opened, and it took its first breath. Instinct made him push and hit upwards with all its strength, and after a few moments there was a shower of dirt and light fell on its face. Its last withering roots snapping from its skins like twigs the ork grabbed the earth and pulled, emerging from its buried cocoon in time to see other clawed hands break the ground’s crust. Breathing heavily, Ragkar blinked until its eyes focused. Other, smaller holes spoke of the earlier birth of squigs and gretchins. Two squigs were still visible, fighting to the death over the corpse of some chitinous worm. The bigger squig had the smaller’s belly in its jaw, and dark blood bubbled around its gnashing teeth.

Ragkar looked around. Of the two dozens or so orks coming out of the ground, only one seemed bigger than it. Roaring, Ragkar scrambled and ran toward it, throwing itself on its foe before it could completely get out of the hole. Still dizzy, the other one stumbled and fell under the impact, falling halfway back in its earthy cocoon. The dazed ork managed to catch Ragkar’s neck in one of its paw, though, and despite the fact that Ragkar hammered its fist on its foe’s face the other kept its hold and started squeezing. Letting out a strangled roar, Ragkar hit it again, shattering a tusk, to no avail. Then Ragkar’s left hand clenched on a rock, and the fight was over. Its enemy’s head pulped beyond recognition, Ragkar howled in triumph. It looked around again in time to see another ork ready to strike, and ducked then sent it tumbling back with a swing on the maw. Ragkar howled again and glared at the assembling orks. Raising its gore-drenched fist, it roared : “Me ! Boss Ragkar ! Boss Ragkar !”.

Cowed, the other orks joined.

Is an ork already an ork when he follows a warband, a pack intent on blood and death?

Ragkar didn’t know why or how he knew it but he knew that it had to go north. Something smelled, felt like blood in the north. Thus they marched north. Sometimes trotting sometimes walking they advanced, crossing other warbands, fighting the weaker tribes until the enemy boss was killed and the other accepted Ragkar’s authority. Day after day they ran, killing and feeding upon squigs and gretchins alike, arming themselves with clubs and whatever they could find. Ragkar knew it had to go to the huge tower it could see far in the north. It smelled like war.

By that time, the Hive mind had realized and analyzed its mistake. Yet, if manipulating one beast’s genome to alter its capacities is easy, inversing a mechanism evolved and perfected over thousand of years is a huge task. Modifying an entire ecosystem is infinitely complex, and reversing its changes is even more so. The resources were simply lacking. Had it concentrated on the reversal, the Hive mind would have been unable to bring enough forces to defend its territories. The easier way, hard though it was, was to crush the orks themselves. Spores started raining again on the planet, bearing warriors and monsters in incalculable numbers.

Is an ork already an ork when he joins the bloodthirsty behemot that is a Waaagh?

Ragkar heaved and tore apart the claw-ended arm of one of its last victims. It tossed it to Geruk who caught it nimbly. Geruk had a knack for weapons. From the corpses of the last two encounters against the scaly-killa’ it had extracted and fashioned weapons for Ragkar’s band. Thanks to it Ragkar was now wearing bits of carapaces for armor and holding a great claw-studded maul.

Every encounter was the same. A great fiery stone would come and crash, and Ragkar’s band would run toward it looking for the fight. Fast and deadly scaly-killa would have been born from the stone and Ragkar’s band would destroy them. The foes were strong and fast and would kill more than a few orks, but it meant that those orks were weak. Ragkar’s band did not need weaklings.

Ragkar breathed deeply. It could smell the fury in the north, the great call. It did not know why, but there was something in the air that made him feel strong. Every ork was growing far faster than it should. The more orks fight the more they will gain strength and weight for such is their nature ; they revel in the fury of battle. Ragkar’s boyz fought often and fiercely but they still were growing too fast.
Ragkar did not truly know that. Instinctively it felt it. Yet it did not care. Ragkar was still the strongest and meanest. Only that mattered.

Two days later Ragkar’s mob crested a steep hill. The sounds of battle and number of bands they crossed had been rapidly increasing, but they no longer fought against the other orks. They all could feel the fury, the Waaagh that was the great battle not far in the north. Only this fight would satisfy them now. They saw the battle and ran howling to join the dance of Death.

Is an ork only an ork when it is plunged deep in the fires of battle, fighting and killing with its brethren as if it was merely an extension of the Waaagh?

The battle was one of those that created legends. No human had ever seen the like or would ever see it. Had one seen it, he would have fallen to his knees in despair, understanding the powerlessness of his race.

The front was tens of kilometers wide, and growing. And it was not the thing human called a front. It was a true one, a melee raging as far as the eye could see. No trenches, no redoubts, no bunkers. Blades against claws, eyes into eyes, one arm’s length away from death or victory. Streams, rivers of green brutes flowed toward it from the south, mirrored by the torrents of purple beasts crashing from the north. In the middle a sea of fighter howled and fought, bled and died. Waves and currents stormed and met, clashing in fury and oblivion. Nowhere was the ground in sight. Corpses covered it from end to end and rivers of blood serpented between them.

It never ceased. Born from the blood and fury a word appeared and permeated the orks’ minds. This was the true fight. This was the Everwar. There was no respite, there was no sleep, they were fueled by the rage and hatred and needed no rest. Living orks fed from the dead, pausing for a second to tear a few mouthful of meat from the nearest corpses. Some died burned by the poisons in the foes’ bodies. Some lived and fought on, and kept shedding their spores. From the rich blood-soaked soil some of these were even maturing. Trampled and trampled again they sometimes still ripened and bore new warriors directly into the fight.

The prize was the tower. Rising higher than the skies, it was the dreamed trophy of every ork. The one who would bring it down would be the boss, forever. It was not the first tower to fall for the east had been poorly defended at first and the orks there had been free to roam and destroy. Yet it was one of the few that had grown to mature size, and overhead the malevolent form of a Hive ship hovered raining warriors and death upon the fight.

Huge six limbed beasts fought and killed, carving a bloody path until they were swarmed and brought down. Here and there a more ferocious ork bigger than the others would lead a push and progress for a while, until it met a stronger enemy than itself.

And over the cries of pain and howls of rage, over the sound of limbs cracking and bodies breaking, over the detonations of living mines and crude firearms, drowning everything and reaching the skies to defy the Hive fleet, the unending roar of hundred of thousand, millions of throats merged into a single cry : WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Brute force against deadly intelligence, white-hot rage against cold calculation, opposing forces met and clashed. Deadlier and deadlier beasts rained from the skies as the Hive mind tried and adapted its warriors. Orks merely fought on, growing stronger and stronger until they were brought down. Only at the foot of this tower had the Hive slowed the orks to a standstill. Barely.

Is an ork still only an ork when it reigns over countless members of its kind?

Ragkar had been fighting for days now. It knew nothing of it, barely remembered anything at all other than the red haze of battle fury. Only the present mattered, the hack and slash, the barbed limb thrusting at him right now, the sound of its maul splintering chitin and bones… A brief lull in the fight and it looked farther than the few meters before it that were now its world. As in every moment it could spare it looked at the Boss. The only warboss there could be here. Skarzgrim.

It had been there nearly from the start. It had been the one to lead the original thrust north. It had lived and fought, never been killed, never slowed. Every ork saw him upon entering the battle, every ork felt and accepted its unearthly strength, accepted it as their boss. They all believed in it and all respected it. Skarzgrim had kept growing stronger and faster, strengthened by their belief, and towered over them like an ork over gretchins. It was the incarnation of fury.

Every ork is instinctively a psyker. Everyone of them has that bit of psychic energy that focuses on their belief This is what those that are born with more understanding of the warp, the Weirdboys, tap into. This is what strengthens everything they believe in.

Millions and more orks directly saw and believed in Skarzgrim. An ordinary Waaagh is spread over continents, planets, but here the same number of orks were crammed in a single plain. There were no intermediate bosses that would divert part of the psychic power in themselves, there was only the Warboss. Every ork added its bit to their leader’s strength. Topping five meters the Warboss moved faster than any of its foes and fought with two gigantic axes that a nob would barely be able to budge. Skarzgrim killed everything that dared oppose it with merciless ferocity, be they mere gaunts of even carnifexs. Psychic frost, the excess of power it couldn’t absorb, congealed in green ice on its arms and body, cracked and fell evaporating again as it moved, covering it with a mantle of green smoke.

Weirdboys were drawn to it like moths to a candle flame and were drowned in the power exuding from the boss. Their sanity in shreds, drooling and bleeding from inside they hurled crackling bolts of green energy deep in the enemy’s mass faster than the eye could see, bringing destruction in an epic scale. Then, burned by the power they died in a matter of hours but it mattered not ; they were replaced by new ones. The countless bioartilleries behind tyranid lines barely matched them in firepower.

Is there a limit to power? When you add on it ceaselessly, does it change into something else?

Every hour brought more fighters in the Everwar, faster than they could die. The front extended again and again swallowing hills and plains in a wave of death and fighting. The power going into the Warboss was unmatched on the planet. Or was it?

In the east the situation mirrored the north. Another bloodbath, another standstill, countless beasts from both sides intent on annihilating their enemies, another Waaagh hardly less extensive than the northern one. Another boss, Kurgarm, huge and mighty and followed by the same crowd of maddened psykers using the power it couldn’t. Another tower over which the fight had concentrated, another rain of clawed monstrosities. In a strange symmetry, as a gigantic carnifex reached Kargrum, in the north a tyranid prince nine meters high carved its way to Skarzgrim.

Two epic fights started simultaneously, two duel against giants amongst their own kind. This was an effort from the Hive Mind to break the orks’ spirit. Those two tyranid beasts were exceptional, of such complexity that even the Hive mind had to rely on luck to complete them. They were the only viable ones of hundreds of tries, the perfect ordering of genes, the one-in-a-million chances. Completing those two had been part randomness, and had succeeded at a huge cost in resources. But they were perfect.

Two fight exploded, two duels in which blows of tremendous force were traded in a split second. Four limbs cracked and whipped, armed with razor-edged blades streaming deadly poison, parried time and again by axes steaming from the acidic touch in the north, and adamantine hammer and three-meters monomolecular claws danced the dance of death in the east. For half an hour the fights continued with no victors, roars against hisses, fury against hatred, matching speed, strength and cunning, looking for a chink in the armor or a default in the parries.

Skarzgrim’s axes glowed. They were cracked and shattered yet held in one piece by sheer willpower, the cracks filled with a burning green energy. The Warboss evaded a burning gout of plasma that incinerated two dozen orks behind and slashed again and again, axes crashing against claws and armored, barbed fists.

Kargrum’s hammer shook the ground each time a missed blow fell, its foe forced to merely deflect its swings for fear it would destroy its claws. Another volley of poisoned needles shot from the tyranid’s torso and were mostly evaded, the few striking one having no more effect on the ork than bee stings.

It couldn’t last forever. One mistake, one stroke of luck would signify instant death. That luck was for the carnifex to exploit. A corpse unexpectedly gave way under the weight of Kargrum’s body and for a split second the ork was destabilized. The tyranid monster instantly attacked with renewed fury, frantically thrusting and slashing until the heavy hammer deviated from the perfect parry it had always presented. Kurgarm’s left hand shot in the air in a spray of blood, then in a few seconds both its arms were sliced to ribbons in a shower of gore. Its last defying roar died when a mighty claw split its head and half its body in two and in the next instant its entire body was turned to shreds.

The Waaagh faltered. For a second the orks hesitated. The boss was dead, the boss was not the strongest. The killa’ had been stronger. Their fury dimmed, and doubt started spreading as the scaly-killas intensified their attack. Yet they dimly knew something. Ideas travel amongst the orks in mysterious ways, and somehow they knew there was a Waaagh in the north too. They felt it, and they knew there was a boss there. A strong boss, stronger than Kargrum because Kargrum had died and the other had not. They didn’t know there was another duel, or even the name of the boss, but they knew that boss was strong. The killa’ hadn’t been able to beat it, so they could beat the killa’. Ork warcries rose again and melted in the burning voice of the Waaagh.

They fought with renewed vigor their beliefs now turned north. Suddenly a gale, a storm of psychic power, born from their minds, rushed north.

There is a joke circulating amid the human kind. How many orks does it take to screw a lightbulb?

Fast like the wind the power ran over the hills and dead forests, over the mountains. Invisible and intangible, yet more powerful than a thunderstorm it swept over the dead cities of humankind and the corpses of their warriors.

Humans laugh at that joke. How many orks… How many humans does it take to screw a light bulb?

The power howled around the broken towers the Hive had been unable to defend and over the countless corpses spread around them. It flew over newborn orks who suddenly looked at the sky with blood thumping at their ears and fury burning their veins.

How many humans does it take to make an Emperor? A god?

The power crested the last hill, the same one Ragkar had been on when it first saw the Everwar. Ragkar was dead now but the Everwar was not, the Warboss was not, and the power rushed toward it.

How many orks does it take to make a god?

With a clap of thunder the power crashed into the Warboss and filled its body and mind to bursting. Then it erupted around it, sending the tyranid monster flying into the air to crash limply on the tower, blasting a huge crater. Every Weirdboy around the boss died on the spot, brain fried under the surge of energy. Orks and tyranids alike were knocked back and thrown a hundred meters away, and when the Warboss let go an ear-splitting howl a pillar of light shot from its mouth and the sky rumbled in answer. Green lightning crackled from the ork’s body and the earth quaked under its mere presence, throwing everyone to the ground, and from the piles of corpses the mingled bloods burned and evaporated in red-black smoke.

The Warboss looked up.

The Hive mind knew fear.

Twice in history had such an event taken place, deep in the orks’ empires. Twice, in times long past, long forgotten, yet none had forgotten the names.

The first ork had been called Garuk. The second Makhull.

Gork, Mork… Sork ?