Quote from: Creatures anathema p97

An Ork body's contains the genetic traits of both animal and fungal lifeforms. This plant-like nature is responsible for the Ork's incredible physique and toughness. Algae flows through an Ork's blood, breaking down and repairing damaged tissue at an advanced rate. this algae is the reason for the Ork's greenish colouration and freakish durability.

I would leave it up to the individual GM. HOWEVER, if they were highly effective against Orcs, I am sure it would state that they were Anti-Orc grenades. I think the purpose of these grenades is to clear jungle cover, not irradicate Orcs.

On the other hand, perhaps they are effective in destroying orc spores in the ground, and perhaps they work like a tear gas grenade on Orcs, causing them negative modifiers while in the gas cloud. I think I will use them in this manner, but not to instantly kill orcs.

I say yes, but only after a long and heroic journey into the depths of a jungle death-world to secure the inestimable Magos Biologis Acheothrax Mutilvaridan, the greatest living botanist in the Calixis Sector, lost on a research trip deep within the expanse and never heard from again. His data on Ork Cell-wall campactitude as relating to the absorbtion of chemicals through the hide, is utterly critical to deveoping an anti-orc gas-weapon, particularly on a WMD scale. Unfortunately, The esteemed Magos has lost control of his reasearch outpost, accidentally releasing countless transgenic orks into the surrounding jungle. It is only with a small army of lobotomized (and highly heretical) servitors carved out the husks of dead and dying orks that the magos has managed to keep the boyz at bay. Ironically, this act has resulted in the Magos carving out a niche for himself as yet another Boss amongst the clans (although his lobotomized 'boyz' sure do act a bit un-orky, they are nevertheless armed with the finest weapons and armour the magos can provide).

In order to get a hold of the Magos, the explorers will have to fight their way through a jungle of transgenic, psychopathic orks to reach the research station. There they will have to rescue the Magos from his would-be research projects and ferry him back to Port Wander. But in the mean time, the old Magos (always aa bit daft) as become more than a little Orky himself, and having 'gone native' it may be difficult to extricate the old man from his new, lobotomized 'family' of hulking green monstrosities.

But if the Explorers can suceed, they will have given the Imperium a valuable weapon against the Green Horde.

(I call this Adventure, " Dr. Multivaridan, I presume ?" or "Jane Goodall goes bad" or my personal favorite " Heart of Ork-ness " )

I would say no. The Orks are a symbiotic fungus-animal mix, but their fungal elements are essentially designed to 'help' the meat parts. An ork exposed to such gas might have some difficulty repairing tissue damage, but that kind of healing is long term, so it probably wouldn't make much of a difference. The ork wouldn't be exposed to the gas for long, then the healing process would continue.

Luddite said:

Do Orks contain plants and/or fungus inside them ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungus < Fungi are not plants.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae < Algae is a plant, not a fungus.

If they contain fungi then the grenade seems too specialised to effect them. Lexicanum says its a fungus, not a plant. Though it also mentions that they photosynthesise, a plant trait.

I would say no, partly out of the blatant "cheesyness-factor", but mostly because the way Anti-plant grenades seem to work they would have to be extremely standardized in manufacture and function. Orks however are living organisms with evolving traits, and they seem to be pretty much immune against most toxins and diseases (have you ever heard of an Ork with the sniffles?).

Then there's the fact that fungi isn't a plant...

Bilateralrope said:

It is a common plant trait. But photosynthesis isn't reserved to plants alone. Several forms of bacteria also photosynthesise.

Varnias Tybalt said:

I did not know that.

Bilateralrope said:

Now we know. And KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.

GI JOEEEEEEEEE

From Xenology by Simon Spurrier, published by the Black Library in 2006:

"I had my servitor fetch me a barrel of herbicide from the workrooms. Dichlorophenoxy acetic acid, the stuff that Catachans use to clear the jungle. Here it's for mould on the walls.

"The tiniest amount was corrosive to orkflesh, but at a microscopic level. A miracle! The algal helix was burned through - not destroyed, but decayed, retarded. I left the spores to grow for an hour and came back to find untidy structures, lopsided and tumorous, wretched amalgams of orkoid species.

"The rest seemed obvious. A delivery system - hollow-point rounds, maybe, to spread the stuff through a victim's body. It'd be like acid in their blood, you see? Racing through, corroding everything. Infecting. Even the spores on their skin."

We can see that this particular 'anti-plant' chemical was effective against Orks, at least in some capacity. By the sounds of things, they wouldn't kill the Orks directly, but rather cripple the part of their physiology responsible for their considerable resilience and regenerative ability and reproductive system. Most extreme case, the resultant deformed algal helix within their genetics would still attempt to function, essentially giving the Ork in question a form of cancer, which given the swift regeneration Orks are famed for, would probably take hold in hours across most of their bodies.

In that light, I'd say that certain anti-plant substances are highly toxic to Orks. They'd not be particularly effective as direct-damage weapons, but for longer-term exposure, it'd be an excellent weapon for wiping out Ork settlements with minimal chance of reinfestation.

No.

Case 1: It's algal (a plant). Algae is incredibly durable, far more so than other plant groups, it just doesn't behave the same (bichemically). Really interesting stuff. Most plants photosynethesise (primarily) using A chlorophyl, which reflects light in the green spectrum, yet most algae reglects light in the red, green or brown spectra (blue-green dispite the name isn't an algae). Essentialy the biochem is colpetely alien. We'll assume the symbiote is something like zooxanthellae, the most common (algal) symbiote (interestingly it's in symbiosis with an animal, coral polyps) in the world by a long way. Symbiodinium microadriticum (the most common Zooxanthellae) is incredibly durable, able to withstand enormous stresses across a wide spectra of environmental conditions (it's the polyps that are incredibly fragile, as they tend to eject the algae at the slightest stress, which rapidly kills the coral. Note however, the algae is usually fine). The large variety of corals is from the animal part of the symbiote, which are infinately fine-tuned, yet different species at widely different depths, pressures, light densities, up to 200 m's, at the limit of tolerance (again it's the polyp that reaches tolerance not the algae, although photosynthesis ceases long before this point, the alagae itself is undamaged).

Case 2: It's fungal. It behave's completely differently. Personally, I'd go with it being fungal as the mycetic spores make far more sense in terms of ork reproduction from the information we've been given by GW. Yes, some fungai can photosynethesise.

Essentially, antiplant works on different biochemistry to Orkology. Now there's no reson you couldn't develop an anti-Ork grenade, but the crossover would be slight, if at all.

For a regular generic anti-plant grenade, the answer would be a "no" (or at least, that wasn't the intent when they were created).

GM allowing though there could be some very specialized (and also very rare and expensive) grenades designed specifically to poison orkoid physiology perhaps. Could make for some fun testing to see if they really work or not too

-Tim

I would say maybe. Perhaps the same anti-plant grenade used on Catachan as stated earlier, since no doubt Catachan Anti Plant Gas seemed so focused and dangerous, not meant to slowly kill catachan flora but outright obliterate it. Orks are no doubt immune to low quality plantkillers but lets see them shake off a acid meant to clear a large section of harsh jungle

Leave it to a Imperium Scientist to want to use the best plantkiller possible just to kill mold.

As we all know, orks are part animal part lichen.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen

In fact, they might be closer to sloths because they have algae growing on them...

The most common preventative measure against ork infection is given as fire. So I'd assume that antiplant compounds do not have enough of an effect or are erratically effective.

Hellebore

I also have to say maybe. As others have pointed out, Orks are part fungus; not part plant. There is a difference in physiology right there.

On the other hand, there is also a difference between the herbicides you can get down at the local hardware store and the highly illegal ones like Agent Orange which will completely defoliate everywhere it's sprayed but it has been proven to give people cancer (hence its legal classification.) On the same token regular off the shelf Anti-Plant grenades probably won't do much to an Ork but those mastercraft ones filled with Catachan-X that are four times as expensive probably will. Course, you also have to be mighty careful how close you are to the blast area when one of those goes off...

Which could be represented as the 'Hellfire' type round. That stuff kills anything. Perhaps the use of this stuff is rarer than hellfire or other universal killydeath agents.

Or, it's simply too expensive to reequip all the Imperial guard with this technology.

I mean, bolters are better at killing orks than lasguns, but it doesn't mean all the guard get them to better deal with the threat.

Hellebore

Psion, thanks for mentioning Agent Orange. Nasty deformations are a very common problem among people that were in their mothers womb and in the wrong spot during the vietnam war, where Agent Orange was used to deny cover to the enemy soldiers and food to the entire nation. Even grownups were damage or deformed by exposure, and there is probably a large and extremely hard to measure number of stillbirths and misscarriages due to Agent Orange. More inspiration including some nasty statistics at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange So judging from how effective anti plant chems are at damaging humans, it can definitely be useful as a method of fighting orks in a more longterm sens. The important question for empire scale warfare is: How much more effective is it, regarding ease of production, transportation, handling, application etc compared to for example regular explosives, regular already existing ork-effective poisons or prometheum? Is it worth the trouble to set up huge production and distribution lines, or will this be a novelty item for specialist units such as inquisitors acolytes?

As for it's immediate useability for acolytes, I thought about just giving it the Toxic trait, but it will be pretty worhtless since damage from an anti plant grenade is very unlikely to get through an orks unnatural toughness. Only after the players have completed the awesome Heart-of-Orkness adventure suggested above will it be properly useful, maybe by denying the unnatural toughness of affected orks. I'd however like to use it as the big crowning achievement of a long campaign to stop an orc waagh. "We have created the perfect anti-plant-toxin, specifically designed to destroy every ork that is a descendant from the famous warlord KrakkTugg the Stomper! Go go genocide!"

Hellebore said:

In 40k fire is anti-everything. And lets face it, even if anti-plant grenades could kill Orks, I doubt the majority would notice before you got steamrolled.

Hellebore said:

Hellebore said:

Orks are lichens !!! Amazing!

I'm yoinking this for sure, cheers Hellebore!

Gretchen = lichen...wierd...

I'm still of the opinion that anti-plant grenades should affect Orks somehow...but there's unfortunately little in the fluff to support this (except the examples posted here so far).

Maybe rather than doing damage it interferes with their algae-blood causing fatigue or perhaps removing the Unnatural Toughness temporarily?

For a good long while the whole 'Orks are mushrooms' thing really bugged me. Smacked of 3rd Ed. comic, 'crafty cockney / dodgy geezer' Orky daftness (or WFB crossover).

However, its definately grown on me (no pun intended), especially with the lichen example (nice one Hellebore!). It makes the Ork actually alien rather than just some bit part thug from Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels...it also makes them really Dark Heresy ...nasty, insipid, festering, and impossible to get rid of once they take hold on a world, rather than 'tabletop' (cheesy-puff-breathed Waaaaaagh! anyone?).

I'm thinking it gets even better for Rogue Trader ...Ork spores attach themselves to the crevices of a starship and 'hibernate' until the ship anchors over a planet. The close proximity of the sun prompts them to gestate - they emerge sensitive to their surroundings as 'mekboys' and proceed like gremlins or mynocks to take apart the startship and rebuild it as an Ork killkroozer...excellent! Of course they've also hibernated through the Warp, which might be why Orks have a gestalt 'mass mind' pyschic thing going on?

'Well sir thats your 20,000,000,000 light year service done. Just a replacement Warp manifold and a new set of thruster rims. Oh and you had some Ork fungus growing round the atmo-seals. don't worry, we hit it with Weedol for you, no extra charge. That'll be 1,000,000 thrones please...'

Hmm..a little too 3rd Ed.?

I just had a quick look at that wiki article on lichens and theres a mistake. Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are listed as algae, they're not, they're a bacterium, whole different biology. Just had to get that off my chest.

Nullius said:

This is far and away the greatest thing I have ever read on these forums. I am definitely stealing this idea for use in my RT campaign.

Mellon said:

Considering the majority of the Imperium's fighting forces are armed with little more then a flashlight and a sturdy t-shirt (with higher-quality equipment reserved for proven elites) I'd have to say that yes, mass production is a no-go. However, this is Warhammer 40k. If you really, really, REALLY want to turn an enemy encampment into a parking lot and have the connections/resources; then somewhere nearby there is a master artisan who can make the perfect toy to ail your enemy with and usually delivers by the end of the work week. So for the Imperium at large? No, an anti-Ork defoliant is not happening. For the PCs with their obscene wealth and other protagonist powers? That depends entirely on the GM.

Hi All

Though I'd put in my two pennith.

To be honest I can't see why these granades wouldn't effect Oak, They have said Orks are part (or whole) plant based and there was the section quoted earlier re the experimenation.

Then when you look at it

Anti-plant grenade
Thrown
Rng: BSx3
RoF: S/-/-
3d10E (only affects flora)
Pen: 0
Blast (3)
0.5kg
Very rare

Frag Grenade

2d10X, Blast (4), common Pen 0

So for a 'very rare' item that works on a specific creature I get a smaller blast and an extra 1d10 damage with a damge type change.

In the grand scheme of things that is not all that good, the cost for these would be higher (not got RT yet) and you could be more deverstating with a weapon.

Gitface........

Gitface said:

But they would affect Oak, since Oaks are trees and these grenades should kill any plants, including Oak trees.

(Im sorry, I couldn't help myself)