The Noob Looks into Ogors

Your Noobness here did a thing in my first episode of the podcast when I got hired on. It was a cooking show bit called ‘Cookin’ with Gog‘. And I thought it might be fun to have an Orruk cook talk about the differences between the other major races… and by differences, I mean which ones make the best eating. Well, It was a day or three ago that Hunter mentions that it’s not so much Orruks who are about the eating of other folk. That’s Ogors. (Cos there’s no race GW won’t misspell and trademark.) Now.. my impression of Ogres is the Dungeons & Dragons types. The sort you usually don’t meet unless your party runs into them up in the mountains or something and they come at you with a club the size of a middling log. So what is it I need to know about the GWM (Games Workshop Misspelled) Ogors then? Well, since they’re getting a new Battletome, and my painters over at White Metal Games also having a whole Ogor Mawtribe set all painted, finished and ready to rent, how about Your Noobness has a look. It’s time I did my first real look into a Warhammer Fantasy race.

Well, I can see this new Battletome has a couple of groups in it, just like the recent Orruk Battletome. Only in this one we have two Ogor ‘Mawtribes‘, The Gutbusters and the Beastclaw Raiders. But that doesn’t tell me a whole lot. I do see a lot of species-specific terms that it’s hard to keep up with. I see a lot of factions, warbands, kill-teams, chapters when it comes to groups of warriors among the different races. And maybe that’s an article all on its own; hierarchy and terminology so you can keep all this straight. In this case, it would seem the Ogors are a faction, the sub-factions above are ‘Mawtribes‘. And among the Mawtribes, they have nomadic groups called ‘Warglutts‘. And this is where some of what Hunter was talking about comes in. These Warglutts basically eat anything that moves. They call this being on the ‘Mawpath‘.

Okay. Let’s get this out of my system. Cloggchawmp. Gutbuster. Bellybonkers. Chuggmaws. Gluttmeister. Fatsuckers. VoreHorde. The Nomz. Blubbomancers. Chubbfangs. Meatknives. Marrowdrinkers. Bonecrunchers. There. That’s my bingo card. Let’s see how many of these vore-tastic portmanteaus may have actually got used by GW for this faction.

…

Well who ever said I was good at Bingo? However, I do see lots of names for the different groups and concepts among Ogors in the same vein. In this case: Meatfist, Bloodgullet, The Gulping God, Gutmagic, Underguts, Thunderbellies, Winterbite, Frostfang. But like the meme says, at least I tried.

I would say that what we have among the Mawtribes presented here, we seem to have the ‘Gutbusters‘ who about nothing BUT eating, and consist mainly of big-large-giant guys. A bit like someone crossed meat processing experts with an overweight mongol horde. Though points for originality here. While you’ve got a group that’s pretty much melee infantry, you’ve actually got a ranged Ogor group here too. The ‘Underguts‘ are pretty much pale, subterranean Ogors that tote cannons the same way soldiers tote rifles. And they’re pretty damn good shots too. Which I suppose puts a whole new spin on the idea of a ‘broadside‘.

Yeah. The hits just keep coming, right?

The Beastclaw Raiders are more the traditional seeming ogre stereotype I think of. These would seem to be cold winter mountain-dwelling barbarian horde types. They’re still big-large-giant guys who want to eat you. But they’re more about beast-riding and handling. They sweep into their foes with mounted cavalry raids. Or really fast hunting parties that do speed instead of beating you like brutes do. I think of a really fast group of really big Ogre types with proportional Homer Simpson builds only horribly muscled as well. I think of the, “Oh, he comin’. That reminds me, I probably have time to sharpen my sword before he gets to me- AH GEEZ HE’S ON ME ALREADY! GET OUT OF IT! HE HONGRY!”

There’s even a stealthy subfaction that pretty much operates from the cover of whiteout blizzard conditions. The catch being that they take their blizzard, The Everwinter, with them wherever they go. They ambush you with the help of ‘Yhetees‘ and ‘Frost Sabres‘. Which oddly makes me think of the quote from Frankenstein’s monster: “I seek the everlasting ices of the north, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am impassive.“

But that’s just the guys in the new Battletome. That really only gives me a general impression of Ogors as a whole. One of nomadic raiding giant guys that come on like mongol hordes on the steppes that worship eating. Which isn’t far wrong. They seem to have just the one god, The Great Maw. (The Gulping God?) Essentially a great hole in the world with giant rocky spires of teeth around it. Which was probably a meteor or comet strike, but one that caused the Ogors to dream their god into being in The Warp. Which is theologically interesting, certainly.

And I seem to have been right. Wandering nomadic steppe dwelling tribes that fought and related among themselves up in the plains near Cathay. Raiding other folk as they felt like it. They had no compunction against eating anything, but mostly were nomadic peaceful types. But they were starting to encroach on nearby Cathay, to the degree that kids were going missing. At this point, the Celestial Dragon Emperor Xen Huong was all, “Okay, enough of this.”

Whether it was coincidental that the comet/meteor just arrived then, or whether the Dragon Emperor’s astronomers summoned it in vengeance, the impact hits the Ogors a bit like the Tunguska Strike of 1908 on steroids. What, you thought that was just a line in Ghostbusters? Oh no… Two-thirds of the Ogor population were killed pretty much instantly. Their homelands blasted and destroyed in a near-extinction event. Those left, faced with famine and death fell upon anything edible to survive, including themselves. And even after survival of the fittest culled out the weak, they found the hunger they’d accquired never stopped. Indeed, they seem to consider themselves a cursed race in that their hunger never abates, like that of the Maw left in the earth in the impact’s wake.

Some of them went out to that crater and found that it went miles deep into the earth. It was lined with teeth and muscle. Essentially a great hungry maw. (Surprisingly, I found no images of this.) A Sarlacc pit on a scale you could see from orbit. And it would seem that in Age of Sigmar, the maw is revealed to be an aspect of Gork and Mork, whom I understood to be Orruk gods. The more you know, I suppose. Perhaps there will be a little clarification on this point in the new Battletome. I don’t find much in the way of citation to support this.

Fleeing into the mountains of the west, the remaining strong of them were set upon by attrition and hungry predators. They reach a land of ‘sky-titans‘ which seem a precursor race of more intelligent Giants. The Ogors also found these giants’ herds. Which proved as deadly as the things that had been eating them all the way up here when they went, “NOM TIME!” on the herdbeasts. The giants weren’t exactly pleased to find their cattle being rustled either. But their objections didn’t help them. The Ogors outnumbered them greatly. And these invaders, in ‘The War in the Heavens’ conquered and consumed the Sky-Titans to the very last.

Even that place was being tainted by the chaos of the Maw strike, and the Ogors left that too. The ones that stayed mutated into what GWM calls Yhetees. Again. The more ya know. But the survivors went on to the Mountains of Mourn, drove out the Dwarfs, Orruks and Skaven and finally, FINALLY the Ogors had a land of their own again.

I see them described as twice the size of men, and several times as wide. Full of overlapping teeth, and posessed of a gut that’s their pride and joy. Their guts are their status as well-fed conquerors of whatever they happen to want a the time. And tend to be signified by great armor plates over their bellies with all their cooking and eating tools hanging from the belt that secures their ‘Gut Plate’ to them. looks down At the moment… I could probably cosplay one. Albeit a short one…

I see them described as dim. Not bestial in their intelligence. But the idea here is that they’re fine with only knowing how to survive well, and are serene in their lack of need when it comes to higher concepts like good or evil. They seem pretty much only concerned with what fills their bellies well and efficiently. Or what gives them victory in a fight. They’ve even got kind of a ceremonial version of Sumo wrestling called ‘Gut-Barging‘. It’s a nomadic tribal intelligence concerned with status and consumption.

Much and much is made of their never-ending propensity for fighting and meat. Their worship of the maw is centered around feasts where ascendancy to leadership is fought over, and much is consumed in huge and vast pits full of meat and violence. Though they seem to be getting the idea that money is also useful. In that it can be used to finance the stuff they REALLY think is important. This is more an innovation of their current Overtyrant, Greasus Goldtooth. And I’m guessing since they really don’t have technology of their own, this may be where the Underguts are getting their cannons? I somehow don’t see them using the riddle of steel to forge cannons. Something humans didn’t really get right til the late 1600’s or 1700’s during the American Revolutionary War.

There are literally hundreds of tribes of these guys up in the Mountains of Mourn. And they’ve all got their own ways and traditions as they fight for status and food. But they’re still nomadic. They don’t like much to present themselves as a stationary target for predators, other tribes, or angry comets. They’ve kind-of learned that lesson the hard way. So they go where the eating’s good, and where they can demonstrate to others that they’re deserving of meat the most. Even of that means eating you and yours. They’ll unite sometimes against threats deserving of that kind of consideration. But not often.

They do love war. Which I suppose is convenient considering the setting of Warhammer Fantasy. I do like someone who enjoys their situation or their own nature. But getting to swarm over opposing forces, consume them and pillage anything else worth eating speaks RIGHT to the part of the lizard hindbrain in these guys that only really knows how to say, “EAT. KILL.” Only for Ogors, it’s really in that order. Whether it’s still wiggling isn’t really important. Making it go in their mouths very much is.

I’m not sure what I expected when I launched into this article. Not what I found. I kind of went in thinking, “Ogors? Really? Ugh.” to thinking this might be a fun faction to give a bit of a whirl. Not so much good or evil… Just HONGRY. And mostly unafflicted with the need to give a damn about anything’s opinion on how they act apart from their own folk. I mean, you don’t obsess over your food or livestock’s opinion of you is. I mean make no mistake, they’re huge, nasty, an horrible. But there’s a kind of Russo/Mongolian dignity to em too. At least from my own western indoctrinated POV. They don’t look for charity. If you beat em in a fight, then they’re not going to be hard about it. You were strong and they weren’t. That’s not likely to happen unless you’re something bigger than them, so it probably doesn’t come up much.

That, and I think there’s one personality among them out there…. I don’t know where he got the hat and Ogor sized flintlocks, which I’d guess are the size of elephant guns. Is he a pirate? Or did he just eat one? Either way, I’d like to know more about this fellow. Maybe even source that mini and have it for a D&D or other fantasy game character. I’m partial to Ogre characters with a bit of intelligence to em myself. But honestly… I’d like to imagine an Ogor character smart enough, and motivated enough to try to find a way to break the Maw’s hold on his people. One who’d finally sate their hunger, but not in the normal way of just being meat in their bellies.

-Edward WinterRose is a writer for White Metal Games, and has not seen Shrek a whole bunch of times. He also doesn’t imagine playing Ogors with Mike Myers’ brogue, despite his propensity for the accent.