Screaming, clashing steel, connecting fists. Familiar sounds fill the air like the sweetest melody. But you look around and see the tide of the battle is not as you expected. More of your own soldiers are laying bloodied on the ground than theirs.
One, two, you begin to count the slain, three, four, five… You look at your fingers… more than five. Lots of your boys, dead.
This was supposed to be a quick and easy slaughter. You spotted the rabble of humies dawdling across the plains and thought they’d be easy pickings. A little diversion to keep the boys happy until the next proper big punch up. To your surprise, these humies bit back hard. Bigger shootas than you expected, and sharper stikkas. Now your boys are dropping like flies.
You lift an eye to the heavens and beseech the god of destruction and then smack the back of the head of your mob shaman to do the same. He starts dancing about, chanting his raucous prayers to Gorkamorka.
You rejoin the fray, cracking skulls and spilling blood. You scream and bellow, and with each cry the furor of your boys redoubles. You’re surprised by the ferocity with which your enemies wield their weapons; their eyes filled with strength, not fear. You respect that.
You call out to Gorkamorka once again. Maybe if you were a finkin man you would have better assessed your opponents before sounding the Waaagh! But that’s not your way. Besides, everyone has to die and join the Great Green at some point, and today is as good a day as any. You know every one of your boys thinks the same, they won’t begrudge you for leading them to their deaths.
One, two, three, four, five… lots more gone. ‘Gorkamorka!’ you scream. You look at your surviving mob. They are fighting with brutality and strength. Pride swells inside you. It swells within the humies too. Every fallen greenskin emboldens them to fight even harder and to lift their pretty little banners ever higher.
You are about to beseech the green god one more time, but a rumbling in the skies tells you it is not needed. He heard you the first time. The twin-headed god answers.
Thunder roars and lightning cracks the sky as it pounds the arid ground. With every lash of electricity against the earth a plume of dry dust rises. When each cloud dissipates it reveals a sigmarite-clad demi-god, weapons held aloft. The massive warriors run towards you with surprising speed. The humies give a deafening cry of joy at the sight of reinforcements.
But the orruk cry is louder. A warcry of such gut-bursting delight. “Fank you!” you scream into the heavens, knowing Gorkamorka hears your gratitude, “Now this is a proper fight! Waaagh!”
Waaagh!
Have you ever smashed up your PlayStation controller in frustration? Have you ever flattened a bug simply for being smaller than you? Do you take pleasure in stomping a Coke can ready for the recycling? That’s pure Waaagh! energy right there. Maybe not very much, but you get what I mean. That inner propensity for destruction.
No one really knows what Waaagh! energy is, but we’ve all felt it. The wisest minds in the realms struggle to explain what it is that gives a Swampskalla Shaman his power, or what allows a Bonesplitter’s tattoos to deflect arrows, or what enables a Maw-Krusha to fly despite the protestations of physics. It’s just Waaagh! And nothing embodies the raw power of Waaagh! more than orruks.
The origins and the biology of these green-skinned bruisers are shrouded not so much in mystery, but in ignorance. Are they flora or fauna or something between? Do they copulate, mutate or just sprout out of the gunk left by other dead orruks? Not many people who attempt to study these creatures live to tell the tale, and the orruks themselves have no real desire to understand their own nature either. Their one love in life is destruction, and it seems they’ve been destroying things for as long as there have been things to destroy.
Since the earliest days of the Mortal Realms, Gorkamorka, the twin headed god of the orruks, has been roaming the lands with his greenskin children on a quest to discover more about the creatures that inhabit the world by bonking them on the head with his club to see how they break.
Many centuries ago, in the Age of Myth, he tried it on with Drakatoa, the living avalanche. The two became embroiled in a never-ending tussle that lasted until Gorkamorka was eventually rescued by a certain god-king by the name of Sigmar. By way of thanks, Gorkamorka smacked Sigmar in the face. The two then had an almighty punch up that visited untold destruction on the land around them, something they both found hilarious. Bruised and battered, the two came away from the battle good friends. The only way to gain the respect of Gorkamorka is to show him how ‘ard you are.
This friendship suited the orruks just fine. Sigmar would tell Gorkamorka and his armies where all the best fights were, and off they’d go and have a lovely time hunting all kinds of exotic and savage beasts that Sigmar wanted gone.
One of the earliest and most prevalent orruk clans was the Bonesplitterz. Being tasked with clearing the realms of troublesome beasts bred a type of orruk crazy enough to throw themselves at anything, no matter how big and ferocious.
If an orruk were to be hit in the head one too many times, that’s when they would begin to hear the thumping call of the Bonesplitterz in their head, often causing them to turn their back on their clan and wander off, in search of the nearest Bonesplitterz rukk.
Convinced by the belief that the bone marrow of beasts contain something of their power and essence, Bonesplitterz hunted their prey with mystic savagery, cracking bones and eating the marrow of their quarry. They were not led by warlords, like other factions of orruk, but by shamans with a closer connection to Gorkamorka than others.
Also in the Age of Myth, orruk artisans developed the technique of punching metal really really hard. In doing so they would craft crude armours, often painted in bright garish colours to attract all the wrong/ right kinds of attention. These hyper aggressive and very powerful orruks became known as the Ironjaws. Whilst less attuned to the spiritual and magical aspects of Waaagh!, the Ironjaws embodied its sheer brutality and blunt force power unlike any other clan of orruks before.
For a while, punching god-beasts in the face was all the orruks needed, but they eventually began to get bored. The Chaos gods whispered in Gorkamorka’s ears that maybe he was just Sigmar’s lackey, doing his dirty work for him. Suddenly, the empires of Order that had sprung up in all the places Gorkamorka’s children had cleared of danger started to look very appealing for a new kind of fight. The orruks abandoned their truce with humans, duardin and aelves, and Gorkamorka led them in the Great Waaagh!
The Waaagh! marched from one end of the realms to the other, and back again, flattening whole civilizations on its way. It wasn’t until Gorkamorka’s own dual nature got the better of him/ them that the Great Waaagh! ended. Gorkamorka began to fight within himself, splitting into his constituent Gork and Mork parts; Gork being the brutal but cunning aspect of the god of destruction, and Mork being the cunning but brutal one.
The Great Waaagh! fizzled, and the fighting somewhat lost its focus. For a brief while the forces of Destruction joined once again with Sigmar to try to repel Archaon the Everchosen at the Battle of Burning Skies, but they had chosen the losing side, and Chaos reigned victorious.
But Gorkamorka had not forgotten his children. The dawning of the Age of Chaos saw Gorkamorka sending lots of new and exciting opponents for his orruks to smash their fists into: spiky humies! The Age of Chaos was a true golden age for the orruks, a time of real top-quality violence. In Ghur especially, fed up with being bullied by greenskins, humans turned to droves to the dark gods in exchange for boons that might finally see off the orruk scourge, without realising that these very boons they sold their souls to gain only made them even more appealing targets for the orruks.
Indeed, Chaos’ encroachment into Ghur was not as successful as in other realms, such as Aqshy, Ghyran and Chamon, precisely because of the might of the orruks and their Destruction allies. But, boredom soon set in once again, and after 500 years of fighting Chaos, they were ready for a new challenge.
That is when Gorkamorka provided for his people once again, sending new shiny, lightning-powered demi-gods to brawl with, and with it a new age of violence: The Age of Sigmar.
During the Realmgate Wars, one orruk’s name became known over all others, so much so that he gained the moniker Fist of Gork: Gordrakk. Initially Gordrakk loved fighting the Stormcast Eternals, and held a similar respect for their god-king that Gorkamorka did back at the start of the Age of Myth, but upon learning that Sigmar’s eventual aim was to bring peace, he was sorely disappointed in him. This is when Gordrakk resolved that he would give Sigmar a good hiding, and began his rampage against the forces of order, drawing countless other greenskins to his side.
During the time of Malign Portents, mobs of orruks descended upon Shyish, realm of death, to attack Naggashazar, being convinced that Naggash, the great necromancer, was up to something. However, they were not able to stop the Necroquake from taking place and infusing the realms with potent death magic. The resulting mass-resurrection of souls took all the fun out of fighting for the orruks, as ghosts don’t break the same way flesh and blood bodies do. However, that mysterious Waaagh! energy came into play once again. The orruks began to believe with such belligerency that specters should die when they are punched, that it actually started to happen.
Eventually, to counteract the rampant death magics of Nagash, Alarielle the Everqueen performed the Rite of Life, which put an end to the ascendancy of death, and filled the realms with abundant life magic. It was around this point that many orruks (and gargants and other beings of destruction) began to hear a constant thumping in their heads.
On top of the Twinhorn Peak peak in Ghur, Alarielle’s Rite of Life had caused the trees to grow thick and fast, plunging their roots ever deeper into the mountains. This, in turn, weakened the fabric of an ancient prison that laid beneath the mountain. The prison was occupied, since before the Age of Myth, by Kragnos, the End of Empires, the Living Earthquake, a giant centaur-like god from a now extinct race. The pounding orruks were hearing in their head was that of Kragnos pounding the earth with his hooves.
Upon breaking free from his prison and discovering that the world as he knew it was gone, and that his people were long extinct, Kragnos began to rampage, deciding to tear down every bit of civilization he could find. The first city he happened to see was Excelsis, a Sigmarite City, and one of the few shining beacons of Order in Ghur.
As he thundered along the war path he picked up many megagargants on the way, who recognized that he was pretty big, and therefore worthy of their respect. As chance would have it, he also happened to bump into Gordrakk and his hoard of orruks, goblins, ogors, trolls and gargants on the way. Gordrakk was also on his way to smash up Excelsis as part of his Waaagh! against Sigmar. The two forces then spent a good amount of time beating each other to a pulp until a mutual respect develops. Finally Kragnos gave a grunt and nodded his head towards the lights of Excelsis. Gordrakk recognised a kindred soul and agreed. The destructive wave then turned its efforts, as one, to the desimation of Excelis.
Kragnos, or Da Boss Trampla as the orruks call him, embodied everything destructive in the realms, and a great many orruks worshiped him as a result. When the battle for Excelsis was finally thwarted by Lord Korak and the newly ascended Morathi-Khaine, Kragnos was teleported to a far-off part of the realms where there was only Chaos cities for him to break.
A great many orruks rallied to Kragnos once again, and the Kruelboyz especially begin to creep out of the shadows to join his side. In particular Gobsprakk, a powerful Kruelboyz shaman, began to champion the destruction god’s supremacy, prophesying great things on his behalf, visioning that he will destroy many empires.
If the Ironjaws epitomize Gork’s cunning brutality, then the Kruelboyz are the perfect representation of Mork’s brutal cunningness. The Kruelboyz have been present in the realms since the Age of Myth, but it was the Era of the Beast, and Kragnos’ awakening, that gave them a model range, emboldening them to step out of the mist.
Whereas Ironjawz see a problem and want to meet it head on with a big punch up, the Kruelboyz like to be the ones creating the problem in the first place. They like to set traps and play games with their enemies. A fair fight is a grotesque concept to the Kruelboyz. It’s not entirely certain where the cruelty of the Kruelboyz came from, some think it was born of chaos corruption, others believe the myth that it came from the time Mork once threw so many insults at a start that it exploded in anger, but there are certainly plenty of humies that can testify to just how potent that cruelty is.
It was the Kruelboyz who descended upon Excelsis once Kragnos had pushed it right to the edge, in an effort to push it over. It is the Kruelboyz who will creep out of their stinking swamps throughout the realms to pick at the bones of a civilization after it has been decimated by war.
This would also be a good place to remind ourselves that Kruelboyz are still orruks. They are still violent, and enjoy cracking bones and spilling blood as much as the next greenskin. Likewise, just because they are more brutish doesn’t mean the Iron Jawz don’t respect cunning. Gorkamorka is both cunning and brutal, and it is when both aspects of the twin-headed god are in unison that he can do his best work.
We see this embodied in Gordrakk himself. Following his defeat at Excelis, Gordrakk licked his wounds but then decided to carry on with his rampage against Sigmar. Through cunning, he captured Fangathrak, a massive worm-like godbeast in Ghur, and used the realmgate in the creature’s mouth to travel to the Eightpoints to duff up Archaon, the plan being to then use the eightpoints to try and gain access to Azyr. Whilst Gordrakk didn’t exactly win the battle with Chaos, he didn’t exactly lose either, and the Eightpoints is still very much reeling after his assault. That’s the last we saw of Gordrakk, hopefully in the new upcoming battle tome we’ll find out what happened next.
What Does an Orruk Army Look Like?
If the orruks should choose to flatter you by deeming you a worthy target for a punch up, what might you expect an orruk army to look like? Well, that depends on which of the three major sub-factions takes a shine to you.
If it happens to be a Bonesplitterz Rukk attacking, you can expect to see a wave of Savage Orruks charging headlong towards your front lines (or, more likely, towards any monsters in your army) screaming, naked, bedecked in bones and covered in war tattoos that seem to repel any arrows or blades that hit them. Most of them will simply be carrying weapons fashioned from the bones of beasts slain in the past, but a number will also be carrying giant gorktoof-tipped spears, so large that two Savage Orruks are needed to carry them and so powerful they can turn even the hardest hided rinox into a kebab. Among the teeming masses of savages are orruks even more bestial and rabid, known as Morboys, who even the average Bonesplitter will try to steer clear of due to their sheer animalistic strength and fury.
Charging in from the flanks will be detachments of Savage Boarboys and Boarboy Maniaks riding on their cantankerous boar steeds. Unlike their Ironjaw cousins, who beat their Gorgruntas into submission, the relationship between a Bonesplitta and his boar is much more amicable, and providing the orruk and the boar both survive the taming process, they tend to become good friends. Not that that matters for you, of course, you’re still going to be equally as flat either way.
The air will also be teaming with mystical green energy, directed by strange figures performing strange dances and rituals at the back. These are the Wurgog Prophets, Wardokks and Maniak Weirdnobs and they are the reason a huge foot seems to have appeared in the sky and is now trampling dozens of your comrades into the mud.
Considering Bonesplitterz attacks are suddenly going to become inexplicably less frequent in the years ahead, it’s more likely to be an Iron Jawz Fist that you end up facing.
Similarly to the Bonesplitterz, you’ll find yourself faced with waves of bodies, all eager to get into the fight. But these aren’t the ‘remote tribe hitherto untouched by the modern era’ kind of savage and more the kind of savage you’ll find at a Millwall football game. They’re not just throwing themselves at you in a rabid frenzy, there is some degree of measure and thought going into where it is exactly they want to be punching you.
They’re also heavily armoured, wearing scraps of metal that have been torn from dead enemies, eaten by big pigs, shat out, and then beat into shape with bare fists. So, we’re not exactly talking the heights of finesse and sophistication, but they’re a step up from their marrow-slurping mates.
Ardboyz form the masses of the army. These are aspiring Ironjawz, recently recruited from other orruk mobs, and as such they’ve got something to prove. They want to fight so that they can get bigger and stronger and earn more respect. One day they hope to attain the status of Brute. These are the bigger, more elite form of Ironjaw.
However, ahead of the masses of Ardboyz and Brutes will come stampedes of Gore Gruntas, heavily armoured and extremely bad-tempered porcine creatures that have been beaten into submission by their equally bad-tempered riders. Some of these creatures grow to be massive and are manned by whole crews of heavily armed orruks.
The Ironjawz leadership is less focused on magic than other orruk factions, but that’s not to say they don’t have shamans, such as the Weirdnobs, harnessing Waaagh! energy to support their troops. Ironjawz also use Warchanters to drum out a beat with their Gork and Mork sticks to keep the army in time with the primal rhythms of destruction, whether that be to sync their steps with the pounding beat of Kragnos’ hooves, or to the very charge of Gorkamorka himself.
But the central leadership of an Ironjawz army is the Megaboss. The biggest, strongest and most cunning among them. The orruk system is a might-makes-right one, and if you want to raise through the ranks you have to become the biggest and strongest, and beat down anyone else who thinks they’re bigger and stronger than you. Often Megabosses will ride their giant cabbage-shaped Maw Krushas to war; great hulking angry beasts that the bosses have to single-handedly beat into submission. Of course, the Megaboss is never one to lead from the back but will often be the very first one into any fray, leading his boys behind him as he goes.
If it turns out to be the Kruelboyz you find yourself fighting against you can expect an entirely different form of warfare. Chances are you would already be demoralized and exhausted before the battle ever begins. The Kruelboyz like to spread traps and play psychological games that whittle down their enemy’s numbers, strength and resolve before a fight. They’ll never attack when their opponents are at their strongest.
When you’re feeling your lowest, that’s when the mist rolls in, usually summoned by Swampskalla Shamans, who are skilled at harnessing the essence of the swamp to their advantage. From the smog you’ll hear sadistic laughter and taunting, soon followed by poison-tipped arrows set loose by Man-skewer Boltboyz and Beast-skewer Killbows. Why get up close and personal when you can kill from a distance? That’s the cunnin’ thing to do.
That’s not to say the Kruelboyz don’t also have brutish infantry too. Gutrippaz love to get up close and violent just like any other orruk, but they also see the value in skulking in dark places waiting for their chance to catch their quarry unawares, rather than running headlong at them shouting. They are often spurred on by Murknobs, holding their terrifying and stinking banners high.
Killabosses tend to lead the Kruelboyz forces, often riding on Corpse-rippa Vulchas or canine Gnashtoofs. These aren’t creatures that can merely be subdued by sheer force, like Maw Krushas or Gore Gruntas, cunning is needed to subdue these animals, for example, by poisoning a Vulcha’s corpse stash to gradually weaken it into submission over time. But the Killabosses are renowned for having cunning in spades, which is why they are where they are.
Kruelboyz have domesticated a number of swamp-dwelling beasts, such as Sludgedrakers ridden by Snatchabosses and Mirebrute Troggoths used by Breaka-bosses. Both types of bosses showcase the acute sadism and cruelty so apparent in the Kruelboyz way of life, with the Snatchaboss’s love for finding new ways of causing pain to his victims, usually practiced upon whichever poor soul ends up getting captured and locked in the cage hanging from his Sludgedraker’s neck for later, and the Breaka-boss’ fondness for inflicting pain on his troggoth steed, knowing that the trog is too stupid to understand where the pain is coming from, so will take out its frustration on any enemies nearby.
The Kruelboyz are also keen users of grots and hobgrots. Teams of grots will often ride Marshcrawla Sloggoths to hunt down the weaker and smaller prey on the battlefield. Hobgrots, who are slightly larger and more violent than your average grot, use weaponry traded with Chaos worshipping duardin to bolster the Kruelboyz ranks. But no matter how far down in the Kruelboyz ranks you are, if you have a cunning plan, you will be listened to. Their society is a meritocracy of sorts, rewarding the most devious and dastardly.
Destruction and Order: Can You Have One Without the Other?
Considering the orruks aren’t burdened with such pointless distractions as academia, their god is actually the most theologically complex. Gorkamorka is at once two distinct people, but also one person. It’s a headfuck to rival the Trinity – how can a god be one and multiple at the same time?
Catholics hold that if ‘God is Love’ then the Trinity is necessary, because love cannot exist in a vacuum. Therefore, God must be multiple people in order that love can be shared and given within God’s own self. The exact same logic can be used for Gorkamorka. If he is a god of violence, then it makes sense that he would have conflict at his very core by being two personalities endlessly locked in a tussle between each other. When the fighting runs out, he can always smack himself in the face.
Orruk society is similarly interesting. Can it really be said to be ‘evil’? Primitive, yes, but evil? There is a kind of simplicity to it. They are mostly incorruptible by the forces of Chaos (it does happen, but is rare,) which cannot really be said for other, more sophisticated societies in the realm.
Orruks may seem to have similar values to, say, Khorne – a love of violence and a respect for those best able to visit it upon others – but orruks are actually very different. Whereas chaos seeks to corrupt and warp civilization, orruks view civilization as a corruption in itself, a warping of the natural, simple, bestial and violent reality of the natural world (and, actually, they’re not far wrong.) The fact is, if the realms were only inhabited by greenskins, Chaos would never have got the foothold it did. It was so-called civilization that pathed the way for the ruinous forces.
There is also an uncomfortable relationship between Destruction and Order. For a start, it was the loss of his civilization that made Kragnos embrace pure destruction: “If I can’t have order, no one else can.” But there was also something that allowed the paragon of Order, Sigmar, and the epitome of Destruction, Gorkamorka, to become good friends after their realm shaping tussel back in the Age of Myth.
It was the destructive rampage of Gorkamorka and his orruks, clearing the realms of dangerous beasts, that allowed Sigmar to go behind him planting the seeds of civilization in the first place. And in the real world, what civilization on Earth was built without unprecedented destruction preceding it? There are countless ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ peoples across the globe and throughout history who could testify to just how ugly things get when ‘civilised’ folk show up.
There’s a cycle at work here of Order and Deatruction. The orruks are only doing their part in an ancient dance. Can you really get angry at them for having a great time while they’re at it?
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