In Warhammer 40k, there are two planes of existence: the material plane, and the Warp. Formerly known as the Realm of Souls, tens of millennia of war and death and suffering have transformed it into a nightmare world akin to Hell. The Warp reflects the collective unconscious of nearby conscious beings. For example, the warp near modern day earth would be a heavenly stock market run by Supply Side Jesus, because that’s what most modern humans believe in. Our fundamental beliefs about the world, either religious or otherwise, manifest in the Warp as spirits. The Warp also has the ability to influence the material plane through basically magic. Powerful individuals called Psykers have the ability to manifest their will directly in the Warp instead of unconsciously, and cause that will to affect material things and thereby cast spells. Everyone has some level of psychic potential, but usually it takes a lot of people believing in something as strongly as a religion.
Orks are a genetically engineered bioweapon that has decayed over tens of thousands of years from the ultimate soldiers, to a bunch of murderous football hooligans with cockney accents. Orks have stronger median psychic abilities than humans, but they don’t have exceptional psykers who can do fancy things on their own. Instead, the collective will of all the Orks in an area forms a WAAGH field which enforces their collective beliefs upon reality. This is what makes their crude technology work. There are also Ork shamans, who can’t use psychic powers on their own, but who can direct the WAAGH field to cast spells like a human psyker. A shaman is only as powerful as the ambient level of WAAGH nearby. No Ork army, no magic powers.
Note that humans are capable of the same thing, their abilities are just much weaker per human. The reason everything always sucks in 40K, the reason suffering and death are so normalised, is because trillions of humans believe in suffering and death at a fundamental level. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Humans created three of the four Chaos Gods. Humans are the ones choosing, on a subconscious level, for everything to keep getting worse and more miserable. Orks, on the other hand, are actually having a great time. Orks are genetically programmed to love fighting, so the human belief in endless war has created a great environment for the Orks, who are happy to do their part to keep the party going.
Quick correction. The warp was turned from a calm reflection of reality into hell not by the modern galaxy but the war in heaven which took place at some starting point up to around 68 million years ago. The Aeldari certaintly did not help the warp by birthing Slaanesh but the vast damage done to the warp was done by a conflict so vast it makes the modern fighting look like a water gun fight.
And this is the conflict the Orks were created to fight in. The galaxy was once home to a species now known only as the Old Ones. They controlled a little over half the galaxy. The rest belonged to an empire called the Necrontyr. The Necrontyr came from a planet with horrible radiation, and they had evolved to live short lives to compensate for their inevitable death due to super cancer. The Old Ones were masters of genetic engineering, and the Necrontyr pleaded with them to share the secret of long life. But the Old Ones refused. In their envy, the Necrontyr declared war on the Old Ones, and sought to eradicate them. This galaxy-spanning conflict was called the War In Heaven. The Old Ones created the Krorks, perfect super soldiers programmed with instinctual knowledge of weaponsmithing and arcane might, to fight as footsoldiers. A fungal infection that could bloom from a single spore into a ready-made army, infinitely loyal and eternally bloodthirsty.
The Necrontyr couldn’t stand up to the might of the Krorks, the Eldar, and the Old Ones’ other armies. So they struck a deal with the gods of their kind, stellar parasites called the C’tan, or Star Gods. The C’tan created immortal bodies of living steel for the Necrontyr to inhabit. Ageless and indestructible. The peasant class were furnished with artificial brains powerful enough to understand only simple orders to destroy. The opulent rulers were allowed to keep their memories and personalities, to live eternally. However, they were deceived, for in the bargain, the Necrontyr lost their souls. In Warhammer, the soul is a real thing. It is the connection between a person’s mind in the material plane, and the Realm of Souls. Without it, one is cursed to live a half life. Never to truly change or grow. The Necrons, for that is what they were now called, had become forever stagnant. Their souls consumed by the C’tan. In vengeance, the Necrons slew their own gods. Fractured their divine essence into shards and imprisoned the shards in war engines that drained their infinite power for use in battle. And then they finished off the Old Ones. The galaxy was left devastated and essentially barren after the war. So the Necrons went beneath the surface of their billions of worlds and slept, waiting for a galaxy worth ruling to re-grow. While the Krorks devolved into Orks from lack of fighting, and the Eldar became the dominant force in the galaxy.
"And the eldar said, ‘Fuck it.’ Literally. And they repopulated the entire galaxy, and fucked so much that they broke their reproductive process, and birthed Slannesh sometime around the year 30,000
WAAGH! is what Orks like to scream while they’re fighting. It also means an army of Orks (A WAAGH!, lead by a WAAGH leader), or the spiritual energy of a WAAGH!
Games Workshop releases a Codex for each faction in the game, which has the lore for that faction and the rules needed to play them. There’s a different set of codices for each edition of the game, and we’re currently on 10th edition, so there are 10 Orks codices. The more recent ones have the more up to date lore, but are more annoying to pirate. And not all the lore is in the codices. The codices are more an introduction to that faction’s lore. The deep stuff is in the novels. Drag doesn’t know which novels have Orks in them, most of the novels are about the Imperium (humans).
No, Warhammer is something older than RPGs: a wargame. Instead of controlling one little warrior, you control an army of little warriors. You have troops and cavalry and war machines and generals, and you roll buckets full of dice for every action. You fight against a friend’s army.
Warhammer doesn’t have any diplomacy or unit creation mechanics. You start with an army of a certain size, and you can hold part of your army in reserve, but that’s it. When they die, they’re dead. Each of your little guys was also hand assembled and painted by you, and you might have invented backstory for your army and generals. For example, your WAAGH! could be the Rippin’ Roughboyz, who prefer to get up close and personal with lots of melee units and giant mechs. Your WAAGHboss is the legendary Ironskin Thunka, an ork who has had so much of his body replaced with scrap metal prosthetics that some doubt there’s even flesh beneath all that steel and slag.
I don’t actually play, but I talk to the WH40K guys at my local hobby shop. I think the most expensive army I’ve encountered ran in the neighborhood of $1500. Apparently some single models can get upwards of $800+
Just to warn you there is a lot of lore and it’s changed and been retconned over the last 40 years. That leads to some odd stuff like Leman Russ having a tank named after him.
It’s also had some major tone shifts from silly (Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Cluseau ) to so Grim Dark it becomes Grim Derp. It’s in a sort of midpoint now.
So look into what you find interesting and if you don’t like it switch sources or topic. Expect things to be contradictory depending on when it was written.
Here is a good but silly video background to the origin of the orks. It’s still mostly accurate. In 30k the Emperor got hurt and was put on a life support chair. He’s been there for 10k years unable to communicate.
Premise of this series is they install a text to speech device and now big E can communicate. So they update him on the state of the Imperium and he fills in all the missing history. It’s a fan video and noncannon but lore accurate for when it was made.
If you want a more serious tone for your lore dump try luetin09 or oculus imperialis. They are to dry for me but pretty good content.
Also WAAGH is the ork war cry and WAAGH energy is the reality bending field that makes the orks group think real. So red things go faster because red is the fastest color.
In Warhammer 40k, there are two planes of existence: the material plane, and the Warp. Formerly known as the Realm of Souls, tens of millennia of war and death and suffering have transformed it into a nightmare world akin to Hell. The Warp reflects the collective unconscious of nearby conscious beings. For example, the warp near modern day earth would be a heavenly stock market run by Supply Side Jesus, because that’s what most modern humans believe in. Our fundamental beliefs about the world, either religious or otherwise, manifest in the Warp as spirits. The Warp also has the ability to influence the material plane through basically magic. Powerful individuals called Psykers have the ability to manifest their will directly in the Warp instead of unconsciously, and cause that will to affect material things and thereby cast spells. Everyone has some level of psychic potential, but usually it takes a lot of people believing in something as strongly as a religion.
Orks are a genetically engineered bioweapon that has decayed over tens of thousands of years from the ultimate soldiers, to a bunch of murderous football hooligans with cockney accents. Orks have stronger median psychic abilities than humans, but they don’t have exceptional psykers who can do fancy things on their own. Instead, the collective will of all the Orks in an area forms a WAAGH field which enforces their collective beliefs upon reality. This is what makes their crude technology work. There are also Ork shamans, who can’t use psychic powers on their own, but who can direct the WAAGH field to cast spells like a human psyker. A shaman is only as powerful as the ambient level of WAAGH nearby. No Ork army, no magic powers.
Note that humans are capable of the same thing, their abilities are just much weaker per human. The reason everything always sucks in 40K, the reason suffering and death are so normalised, is because trillions of humans believe in suffering and death at a fundamental level. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Humans created three of the four Chaos Gods. Humans are the ones choosing, on a subconscious level, for everything to keep getting worse and more miserable. Orks, on the other hand, are actually having a great time. Orks are genetically programmed to love fighting, so the human belief in endless war has created a great environment for the Orks, who are happy to do their part to keep the party going.
Quick correction. The warp was turned from a calm reflection of reality into hell not by the modern galaxy but the war in heaven which took place at some starting point up to around 68 million years ago. The Aeldari certaintly did not help the warp by birthing Slaanesh but the vast damage done to the warp was done by a conflict so vast it makes the modern fighting look like a water gun fight.
And this is the conflict the Orks were created to fight in. The galaxy was once home to a species now known only as the Old Ones. They controlled a little over half the galaxy. The rest belonged to an empire called the Necrontyr. The Necrontyr came from a planet with horrible radiation, and they had evolved to live short lives to compensate for their inevitable death due to super cancer. The Old Ones were masters of genetic engineering, and the Necrontyr pleaded with them to share the secret of long life. But the Old Ones refused. In their envy, the Necrontyr declared war on the Old Ones, and sought to eradicate them. This galaxy-spanning conflict was called the War In Heaven. The Old Ones created the Krorks, perfect super soldiers programmed with instinctual knowledge of weaponsmithing and arcane might, to fight as footsoldiers. A fungal infection that could bloom from a single spore into a ready-made army, infinitely loyal and eternally bloodthirsty.
The Necrontyr couldn’t stand up to the might of the Krorks, the Eldar, and the Old Ones’ other armies. So they struck a deal with the gods of their kind, stellar parasites called the C’tan, or Star Gods. The C’tan created immortal bodies of living steel for the Necrontyr to inhabit. Ageless and indestructible. The peasant class were furnished with artificial brains powerful enough to understand only simple orders to destroy. The opulent rulers were allowed to keep their memories and personalities, to live eternally. However, they were deceived, for in the bargain, the Necrontyr lost their souls. In Warhammer, the soul is a real thing. It is the connection between a person’s mind in the material plane, and the Realm of Souls. Without it, one is cursed to live a half life. Never to truly change or grow. The Necrons, for that is what they were now called, had become forever stagnant. Their souls consumed by the C’tan. In vengeance, the Necrons slew their own gods. Fractured their divine essence into shards and imprisoned the shards in war engines that drained their infinite power for use in battle. And then they finished off the Old Ones. The galaxy was left devastated and essentially barren after the war. So the Necrons went beneath the surface of their billions of worlds and slept, waiting for a galaxy worth ruling to re-grow. While the Krorks devolved into Orks from lack of fighting, and the Eldar became the dominant force in the galaxy.
"And the eldar said, ‘Fuck it.’ Literally. And they repopulated the entire galaxy, and fucked so much that they broke their reproductive process, and birthed Slannesh sometime around the year 30,000
Yooo, I love everything about that! Where do I sign away my free time?
Edit: also what’s waagh?
“WAAAAAAAAAGGH!” is what the 10-foot monster yells while charging at you.
WAAGH! is what Orks like to scream while they’re fighting. It also means an army of Orks (A WAAGH!, lead by a WAAGH leader), or the spiritual energy of a WAAGH!
https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/gaming_and_diversion/Warhammer_40K_Collection/Warhammer 40k - Codex - Orks.pdf
https://github.com/Overcharged-Plasma/warhammer-pdfs/blob/main/tenth-edition/formatted-pdfs/orks.pdf
Games Workshop releases a Codex for each faction in the game, which has the lore for that faction and the rules needed to play them. There’s a different set of codices for each edition of the game, and we’re currently on 10th edition, so there are 10 Orks codices. The more recent ones have the more up to date lore, but are more annoying to pirate. And not all the lore is in the codices. The codices are more an introduction to that faction’s lore. The deep stuff is in the novels. Drag doesn’t know which novels have Orks in them, most of the novels are about the Imperium (humans).
If you want to learn about the other factions in the game, like the humans, you could do worse than watching Astartes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7hgjuFfn3A
Is this a ttrpg like D&D?
No, Warhammer is something older than RPGs: a wargame. Instead of controlling one little warrior, you control an army of little warriors. You have troops and cavalry and war machines and generals, and you roll buckets full of dice for every action. You fight against a friend’s army.
Like Risk? I can’t even get anyone to ever play that with me.
Warhammer doesn’t have any diplomacy or unit creation mechanics. You start with an army of a certain size, and you can hold part of your army in reserve, but that’s it. When they die, they’re dead. Each of your little guys was also hand assembled and painted by you, and you might have invented backstory for your army and generals. For example, your WAAGH! could be the Rippin’ Roughboyz, who prefer to get up close and personal with lots of melee units and giant mechs. Your WAAGHboss is the legendary Ironskin Thunka, an ork who has had so much of his body replaced with scrap metal prosthetics that some doubt there’s even flesh beneath all that steel and slag.
Here’s the most legendary and well-known game of Warhammer in wargaming history: https://imgur.com/a/cant-cheese-cheeser-warhammer-V0gND
Eyyy, I’ve read this before!
This does seem pretty super cool.
It’s also a great way to sign away all your money too!
Fortunately I’m getting a promotion that’ll let me pay my monthly rent the times every week and still have a hundo for avocado toast left over!
Might not be enough…
Oof.
How much should it cost to hit the ground running?
No idea. I steer clear of the game out of self-preservation. I did read dozens of novels though, a lot of them twice, so the time investment is there.
Sounds like how most of the fun I have with Eve is in my head while not playing it.
o7 Fly Safe!
A quick search looks like between $100-$200 for most starter sets. Custodes are kinda expensive, as are most of the named heroes.
Oh that’s not bad.
I don’t actually play, but I talk to the WH40K guys at my local hobby shop. I think the most expensive army I’ve encountered ran in the neighborhood of $1500. Apparently some single models can get upwards of $800+
War with a footballer hooligan Cockney accent
I got started by reading all the books by Dan Abnett. Eisenhorn is amazing (though there are no Orks, sadly).
Just to warn you there is a lot of lore and it’s changed and been retconned over the last 40 years. That leads to some odd stuff like Leman Russ having a tank named after him.
It’s also had some major tone shifts from silly (Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Cluseau ) to so Grim Dark it becomes Grim Derp. It’s in a sort of midpoint now.
So look into what you find interesting and if you don’t like it switch sources or topic. Expect things to be contradictory depending on when it was written.
Here is a good but silly video background to the origin of the orks. It’s still mostly accurate. In 30k the Emperor got hurt and was put on a life support chair. He’s been there for 10k years unable to communicate.
Premise of this series is they install a text to speech device and now big E can communicate. So they update him on the state of the Imperium and he fills in all the missing history. It’s a fan video and noncannon but lore accurate for when it was made.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FyeoBm5QFnA
If you want a more serious tone for your lore dump try luetin09 or oculus imperialis. They are to dry for me but pretty good content.
Also WAAGH is the ork war cry and WAAGH energy is the reality bending field that makes the orks group think real. So red things go faster because red is the fastest color.