Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-212.112.154.69-20160521191712/@comment-4851119-20160528105857

212.112.154.69 wrote: Or am i just underestimating orcs? I presume you're referring to the events of the short story The Wolf of Ash and Fire. In which case I have to ask, were you even reading closely?

The Orks of Gorro were far and away more impressive than most: In the course of the Great Crusade, Sejanus had seen many examples of the crudely effective greenskin technology, but what lay beneath the surface of the scrapworld were orders of magnitude more advanced and abhorrent Higher tech than any other Orks encountered during the 30K period. A thousand or more greenskins roared to see several hundred armoured warriors appear without warning in the midst of the wide chamber. Every ork was encased in rusted plates of hissing iron, strapped and bolted to their swollen bodies. Horus’s suspicion of a ruling tech class was all but confirmed at the sight of the wheezing pneumatics, cracking power generators and hissing, lightning-edged weapons. Standardised metal body armour for rank-and-file troops, common power armour for the Meks. For reference, even the Beast only had leather and hide body armour as standard.

The Custodians hewed the orks with precisely aimed blows of their guardian spears. They could wield them in lethally inventive ways, but this was not the place for elaborate fighting styles. Here it was kill or be killed. Strikes that would end any other life form thrice over had to be repeated again and again just to put a single beast down.

The orks fought back with all the primal, animalistic fury that made them so dangerous. Even terminator armour could be breached, their legionaries killed. The orks were doing both.

At least a dozen Custodians were dead. Perhaps the same again in Justaerin. Horus saw Ezekyle go down, a colossal spiked mace, twice the height of a mortal, buried in his shoulder. An ork war-captain, ogryn-huge, wrenched the mace clear and swung the weapon around its immense body to deliver the death blow. A shimmering sword sliced in to block the descending mace. Bluesteel, two handed and wreathed in fire. They were giving a force of Custodes and Terminator-armoured veteran Marines a lot of trouble.

Then the Emperor was amongst them.

His sword was a bluesteel shimmer, too fast to follow with the naked eye. He moved through the orks without seeming to move at all, simply existing at one point to kill before appearing elsewhere to reap greenskin lives by the score. Each blow struck with the force of an artillery impact, and shattered bodies flew from his sword as though hurled aside by a bomb blast. Nor was his sword the Emperor’s only weapon.

His outstretched gauntlet blazed with white-gold fire, and whatever the flames touched disappeared in explosions of red cinders and ash. He battered orks to bonelessness with bludgeoning blows, he crushed them with invisible coils of force and he repelled their gunfire with thoughts that turned their rounds to smoke.

They came at him in their hundreds, like iron filings to the most powerful magnet, knowing they would never find another foe so deserving of their rage. The Emperor killed them all, unstoppable in his purity of purpose. A crusade of billions distilled in one numinous being.

Horus had fought alongside the Emperor for well over a century, but the sight of his father in battle still had the power to awe him. This was war perfected. Fulgrim could live a thousand lifetimes and never achieve anything so wondrous. And Emps still takes on hundreds of them alone and slaughters them.

As blinding and mesmerising as the runaway plasma reaction was at the scrapworld’s heart, it was to a beleaguered golden light that Horus’s eye was drawn. The Emperor was fighting his way through a howling mob of the largest greenskins Horus had ever seen. Most were the equal of a primarch in stature. One even dwarfed the Emperor himself. His father fought to reach a fragmenting ring of iron surrounding the blinding plasma core, but the greenskins had him surrounded.

This was a fight not even the Emperor could win alone. But he was not alone. "Equal to a Primarch in stature". Size alone doesn't mean much but the narrative intent of this description is likely to suggest that their strength and fighting skill, while maybe not equal, is at least in the same order of magnitude as the Primarchs. It takes several of them to actually put the Emperor in a position of danger where he can't take them on alone.

The Emperor fought an armoured giant twice his height and breadth. Its skull was a vast, iron-helmed boulder with elephantine tusks and chisel-like teeth that gleamed dully. Its eyes were coal-red slits of such vicious intelligence that it stole Horus’s breath.

Horus had never seen its equal. No bestiary would include its description for fear of being ridiculed, no magos of the Mechanicum would accept such a specimen could exist. Six clanking, mechanised limbs bolted through its flesh bore grinding, crackling, sawing, snapping, flame-belching weapons of murder. The Emperor’s armour was burning, the golden wreath now ashes around his neck. Chugging rotor cannons battered the Emperor’s armour even as claws of lightning tore portions of it away. It was taking every screed of the Emperor’s warrior skill and psychic might to keep the mech-warlord’s weaponry from killing him.

‘Father!’ shouted Horus.

The greenskin turned and saw Horus. It saw the desperation in his face and laughed. A fist like a Reductor siege hammer smashed the Emperor’s sword aside and a fist of green flesh lifted him into the air. It crushed the life from him with its inhuman power. The Ork that actually gave him a good one-on-one fight is no ordinary Warlord; the existence of anything like this monstrosity is unprecedented at this point.

Being threatened by the Mekboss of Gorro isn't a low showing for the Emperor. It's an insane high end showing for the orks involved.