The Beast

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

This page is in need of cleanup. Srsly. It's a fucking mess.

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The Big Green Beast himself! Or maybe one of his Prime Ork underlings, it's honestly a bit unclear.

"Oh wow, Ullanor huh? Seems like the Ork spores weren't properly disposed of. Really proves that the Ork genome can make it through anything. Even toxic emissions from absolutely atrocious family reunions! And not even Vulkan could quite regenerate from those!"

– Magnus the Red

"I suppose the Great Beast was a sort of descendant of that one Warboss that Horus threw from the tower. Remember that? Truly an inspiring moment."

– Karstodes

The Beast is the mightiest Ork Warlord ever to terrorize the galaxy and fought during The War of The Beast. It would not be unreasonable (but it is Heretical, unless you made it out as a disgusting parody of the proper order of things) to call him the "God-Emperor of Orks".

The Legend

Back during The Forging (that is, the 32nd Millennium), the Imperial Fists were idly slaughtering and driving to extinction an alien race when they found something flabbergasting (which in retrospect da alens might 'ave beeen tryin' two dell da gitz): A HUGEASS WAAAGH!!! But it wasn't numbers alone that this Ork threat represented, but also its organization and composition. The Beast leading it was ginormous, far bigger than good old Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, and his nobs were colossal and mighty foes. How large was the Beast, you ask? He is said to have been as large as a HAB-BLOCK, with a mouth filled with tusks the size of TREE TRUNKS and this could be due to the fact that he's the same breed as Urrlak Urg, the Ork Warboss of Ullanor, and it took HORUS TO KILL, AND IT NEARLY KILLED THE FUCKING EMPEROR HIMSELF. Hell, he was so huge that, when he first appears, the Space Marines sent to kill him mistook him for a Stompa before they realize there's an Ork in that plated armor. But simply being extremely big and incredibly strong was the least of what made him such a threat because, beneath all that armor and muscle, was a brain with the intelligence, the drive, the simple strength of will, and character to forge that race of fungoid barbarian space football hooligans into an actual goddamn army; think of Greenskin Genghis motherfucking Khan IN SPACE and turned Up to Eleven.

How big of a threat was The Beast? The Iron Warriors teamed up with the Imperial Fists Black Templars, of all people, and then later the Fists Exemplar, both Imperial Fists successors, in order to fight him and his boyz. The fucking bitterest enemies in the galaxy teamed up together against him. Whole Crusades were dedicated to halt them, the mightiest fleets since the days of the Heresy were assembled. Tens of Chapters were lost, annihilated by the green tide. The Imperial Fists UNITED as a whole Legion in order to have a fighting chance and during the most heated point the Deathwatch was created.

The Deathwatch, the prime alien hunters and the most proficient annihilators of xenos the Astartes, and therefore the Imperium have ever produced, were created expressly as a last ditch effort to stop him.

Assorted accomplishments from this dude include

• Making attack moons. Not Roks, like Thraka's. MOONS as a whole and in plural, that's a whole new level of loot.

• Making logistics and army structure on a sophisticated level.
  • The thing goes beyond logistics and army structure. Can you guess what symbols they use? For tactically gifted gits they made them wear bloody axes, snakes for the... "herders", and horns for their best shock troops. That is, Blood Axes, Snakebites, and Goffs. The Space Marines don't recognize these symbols despite there being Iron Warriors who've fought during the Crusade. He laid the foundations for the Ork Klans. His legacy endures to this day as the great-grand-daddy of all the Orks in the current setting.

• Asswhooping dozens of Chapters in unison.

• He fucking reached and BESIEGED Terra itself (We can only imagine Abaddon becoming so green with envy after hearing this that he could pass for an Ork himself.).

• And, unlike Horus, he could have won if he hadn't backed up as he just had to crash his Attack Moon, GGWP Imperium. (Though that would have resulted in Chaos consuming the fractured pieces of the Imperium)

• He had Ork DIPLOMATS. Just think about greenskins that are capable of more complex thoughts than "run/hide and then run and krump that git's skull into pulp".
  • It goes far beyond that; one of the Ork diplomats went to the Senatorum Imperialis itself. He put in evidence what ineffectual little pieces of trash most of the High Lords of Terra are while also giving one of the most deliciously effective insults ever thrown at mankind - he acted in a civilized way, offering surrender terms, confronting a bunch of petty cowardly parasites who bickered among themselves like immature kids while trying to backstab each other. The guy nailed it in such a way that not even the worst desecration made by Chaos could have hurt the Imperials' pride.
  • Considering the way Orks speak, a civilized Ork wordsmith would probably sound a lot like BRIAN BLESSED "HELLO LORDS OF THE HUMAAAAAANNNNSSS, I AM A DIPLOMAT AND I AM HERE TO NEGOITATE YOUR UNCONDITIONAL SURENDAAAAAARRRRRRRRRR"
    
  • More or less. Direct quote: "The Great Beast has you by the guts. Struggle, he'll rip 'em out. Surrender, you get to keep 'em."

• His very presence was so overwhelming that he actually caused the entire Ork race to begin evolving on a cultural and biological level, becoming more advanced and more potent psykers. Seriously—the Orks advanced so much under him that they had technology ambitions, aspirations, and the power of WAAAGH! that allowed them to rival the old Eldar. And they had began building an actual civilization on the worlds they controlled. Not just simple settlements, but an empire with advanced cities and even worlds given over to food production and industry.
  • Frighteningly enough, the eldar actually mention that the ancient krork at their apex were so much more advanced that the Beast-WAAAGH was 'laughable' in comparison. Yikes.

• He was able to sicken the frigging Iron Warriors: when they went to Prax, they found that the Orks had organized thousands of farms with BILLIONS of humans in there so warped by the WAAAAGH! they were devolved into the cattle they were being bred for. When you've got a bunch like the Iron Warriors saying "It will be a mercy kill", you know you've become a sick fuck of the highest order. And I remind you, this is the same Legion that created the Daemonculaba. On the other hand, that might just have been because it wasn't Chaos' quackery. If it had been caused by Chaos, they probably would have laughed at or jeered the victims. Or maybe Honsou is strangely sick.

• He converted the fucking shaft-hatted Ecclesiarch, and a whole faction of his (granted, said shaft-hat was Vladimir Harkonnensome grotesquely fat nutjob), into fucking worshipping him, including composing a Latin High Gothic liturgy (which was strangely enough to confuzzle a Space Marine for a while) in his honor.

• He had colonized Ullanor. The whole world was now sporting Ork cities (and very well organized to boot) that would become killing zones for the invading forces. Secretly, the world had in fact been converted into a massive Attack Planet that was going to be used to defeat the Imperium (think that attack planet in the fuckawful Star Wars sequels, basically the same thing).

• He murderfucked the Ultramarines Chapter Master (Odaenathus), the Crimson Fist's Chapter Master (Quesadra), crippled a Blood Angels captain (Valefor) and gave VULKAN of all people a tough fight. Normally, any of the aforementioned would have sufficed to kill him yet it was a hell of a battle for the four.
• Eradicated the Imperial Fists. Yes, this guy managed to do what no armless failure has ever accomplished in 10 millennia, killing a First Founding Chapter off for real. (To be fair, the Grey Knights did not fight against the Beast)

• And Vulkan too (it's rather unlikely Vulkan stayed dead, what with him being a Perpetual, and a very marketable named character, but he hasn't been seen since).

Truly, this guy is the mightiest Warboss ever and the WAAAGH! Beast reigns supreme as the biggest and meanest WAAAGH!, Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka be damned. The WAAAGH! energy that suffuses him makes him akin to a living Ork demi-god. Able to regenerate from wounds Vulkan inflicts on him and channel his WAAAGH! energy to power the Ork's technology and fry Space Marines with ease. Insanely intelligent; possibly even a genius on a human scale. His existence has triggered a reaction in the Ork genome leading the entire race to transform into coherency and become efficient and organised. Not simply improving tactically but biologically, technologically, psychically, and even culturally. He's essentially their version of the Emperor . This Ork is the eventuality of uncontested success for a singular Ork. So vastly different have the Ork become in nature that it is possible that they are evolving into the Krork.

In "The Beast Must Die," it's revealed that the Beast was MOTHERFUCKING PISSED about the humiliation of the Ork race during The Ullanor Crusade, and he was determined to cripple humanity. His colonization of Ullanor and desecration of Horus's victory monument wasn't simply for nothing. It was PERSONAL. In short, this shows that Orks can be as hateful and vengeful as any other race.

Now for the big plot twist: the Beast wasn't just one Ork. There were six of him, six so-called "Prime-Orks", each an Orky version of the Primarchs, leading a Legion of Orks, which are heavily implied to be the modern Ork Clans. All of them are dead, mostly due to bullshit (see below). They worked seamlessly in unison, like the utterly fictitious Primarchs of an utterly fictitious Legion, achieving the same effect of everyone assuming there was only one of him. The extent to which he was a team, as opposed to one Ork with multiple bodies, remains unknown. While unfortunately the series really didn't flesh out the majority of them as it focused almost solely on the dominant Primork: only 2 of them are seen in the series, the rest are killed off-screen, and of those 2, one's purpose was just to be book ten's final boss. The drama behind their reveal so late in the series was supposed to be that there were two more books to fight them in, but Black Library spoiled what happened in every single book on their website (in the summary for when you went to purchase it no less) before book 9 even came out so there was no real drama to be had.

Oh, and one more thing: the Orkish phrase for the Beast's title is "Mag Uruk Thraka". Ghazghkull may not be at the Beast's level of power yet, but the parallels are definitely there.

Rumors about 8th Edition Ork Codex suggested Ghazzy might be elevated to fully fledged Primork status. These turned out to be false but the sixth Psychic Awakening book, Saga of The Beast, updates Ghaghkull's model and possibly rules and brings Makari back.

Fatal Flaw

However, for all its strength, the Beast also actually creates a natural (and very easy to exploit) weakness in Orks. As a result of how successful the Beast's Waaagh! was, the Boyz within it are supercharged with Waaagh! energy, a volatile thing at the best of times. Even the use of only a handful of Sisters of Silence and a Weirdboy has the power to set off a chain reaction strong enough to do anything, from wiping out all five Beasts at once to killing an entire planet of Orks. This is questionable from a fluff consistency perspective at best, as WAAAGH!!! energy seem to be switching (at a given writer's whim) from being a kind of warp energy (that Sisters can nullify) to being something totally different (for example psykers, daemons and psychic nulls have no impact on Ork teknology that is in essence powered by WAAAAGH!!! energy). But than again when was WH40k lore consistent?

Despite this weakness, the conflict against the Beast was desperate due to the Imperium only having a very small number of Sisters of Silence to help them, and only then because Vulkan asked them to. While the Sisters' numbers have been restored in the 41st Millenium, the more immediate threat of Chaos following the formation of the Great Rift may still compromise their ability to respond to any would-be successor. That being said, while Orks are without limit it would still take a hell of a long time for them to get that strong. Why, you would need to be fighting 24 hours a day, seven days, a week for more then a few centuries, all without dying for that to happen... what are the odds of any Ork living that long?

Ork Gitz and Bosses
From da canon:	The Beast - Boss Snikrot - Boss Zagstruk - Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka Grukk Face-Rippa - Mad Dok Grotsnik - Makari - Mek Boss Buzgob Mozgrod Skragbad - Nazdreg Ug Urdgrub - Old Zogwort - Orkimedes Tuska Daemon-Killa - Wazdakka Gutsmek - Zhadsnark da Rippa - Zodgrod Wortsnagga Kaptin Badrukk - Herman von Strab - Ufthak Blackhawk
From da gamez:	Brikkfist - Gorgutz 'Ead 'Unter - Kaptin Bluddflagg - Grimskull Mister Nailbrain - Orkamungus - Spookums - Stupid