Editing Nobledark Imperium Xenos (section)

=== Brain Boyz ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">''''' The Menace in Green: '''''

''“It’s no good. Bloody greenskins set a trap for us. Send a few trigger-happy Boyz our way, knowing that we’d think that’s all they got and advance. So we get cocky and march our way through the mountain pass. Then once we get too far in to retreat the Orks show they’re not as dead as we all thought and cut off the mountain pass. Only way out of the beartrap is to go deeper into ork territory. Don’t you see, Commissar? It’s an ambush.”''<br>
''“Ambush? What do you mean ambush? Orks don’t set am–”''<br>
-- Last words of the Hekaton 234th, right before being attacked by an Ork ambush

Brain Boyz are perhaps the greatest threat to the Imperium to come out of the Orkish menace in recent years. The greenskins have produced numerous threats over the millennia, including the numerous Beast WAAAGH!s, Armageddon Wars, the Wyrd War that decimated the legion Terra’s Sons, or the Black Croosade [sic] called by the Chaos Ork Rotfang Badgut, but these were often sector or segmentum-scale threats, none of which could compare to sheer destruction wrought by the War of the Beast. Some, particularly in areas that saw relatively little fighting during the War of the Beast, were foolish enough to say that the Orks were no longer capable of posing any organized threat to the Imperium, despite the Orks being responsible for the most brutal conflict in Imperial history. Orks were often seen as little more than cannon fodder, little more than mercenaries or catspaws of greater powers like Chaos or marauding distractions from more threatening adversaries like the Necrons or tyranids, not to be underestimated but not capable of being a significant threat on their own (no matter what the ravings of the inhabitants of the Sol system and its nearby territories had to say). All of which had to be reassessed when Brain Boyz made their reappearance on the galactic stage. 

<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Most inhabitants of the Milky Way, or at least those who have any idea of how the greater galaxy works beyond their own little world, have a general understanding of the Ork life cycle. Ork spores gradually orkiform the world, a single spore capable of germinating into a variety of different morphotypes depending on the availability of nutrients and the strength of the WAAAGH! field, producing first mushrooms, then more complex orkoid organisms such as squigs. Then snotlings appear, followed by gretchins, followed by orks. A complete self-sustaining ecosystem and war machine. What most don’t know, however, is that there is an additional stage to the Ork life cycle. Eventually, the Ork population reaches a “critorkal mass”, which prompts the development of a new Ork caste: the Brain Boyz. Orks become more intelligent the more of them there are, but Brain Boyz produce a quantum leap in Ork functionality, increasing the intellect of all orkoid lifeforms around them just by their sheer presence. The appearance of Brain Boyz in an Ork WAAAGH! is often heralded by an increase in the sophistication of Ork technology, including the appearance of more advanced Ork devices such as reliable tellyportas, attack moons, and gravity whips as the WAAAGH! field becomes strong enough to unlock the knowledge hidden in their genetic code. Indeed, many Great Crusade-era Warbosses, including Urlakk Urg of Ullanor (a.k.a. The Beast), the Mekboy Warboss of Gorro, and Gharkul Blackfang of Gyros-Thravian, all of whom ruled over Ork empires even more advanced than Charadon, Bork, or Octarius are today, could be seen as proto-Brain Boyz in a sense. Although the presence of Brain Boyz does not preclude the creation of these devices, their production certainly increases following their appearance.

In the past, the appearance of Brain Boyz was a cyclical thing, like a tidal cycle. Over the course of thousands of years, the Ork population would grow, the WAAAGH! field would hit a critical mass, and then Brain Boyz would appear. The Orks would then mostly unite under a single banner to wage WAAAGH! on the rest of the galaxy before being beaten back and the Brain Boys hunted down and destroyed (typically at great cost), returning the Orks to square one. Typically this was done by the Old Eldar Empire or in later years the Interstellar League of humans and their allies during Dark Age of Technology (for which Brain Boy WAAAGH!s were one of the reasons the League formed in the first place). And so the cycle would repeat itself. However, after the Fall of the Eldar and the Age of Strife, there was no longer any eldar empire or league of species to prune back the Orkoid menace. It is estimated that had the Great Crusade not set out when it did, in half a millennium or less Brain Boyz would have re-emerged with no checks on their power. This estimate might have been even lower if the WAAAGH! forged by the Beast had managed to hold. The great Beast ironically did the galaxy a favor, setting Ork back several thousand years by rushing headlong into war with the Imperium.

What the rest of the galaxy also don’t realize is that Brain Boyz are not just Orks with added kunnin’. Brain Boyz occur when the WAAAGH! field is high enough that a single Ork spore divides into twin zygotes. This isn’t exactly uncommon, Ork spores twin all the time, but typically these are chance occurrences whose products grow into two orks or two gretchin. Brain Boy spores are produced by induced twinning and grow into two different Orkoid lifeforms, an ork and a gretchin reflecting the duality of orkiness: brutal cunning and cunning brutality. Often, the ork will start out runty and the gretchin will come out particularly large, due to the gretchin twin taking up nutrients that would otherwise go to the Ork (though in the case of Ghazghull and Makari both came out particularly runty, likely due to the circumstances of their birth). Typically, this twinning is not immediately noticed, Orks typically don’t make it a point to record where a particular boy or grot is born after all, but the two Brain Boyz know each other on sight and are in constant psychic contact with one another (similar phenomena have been noted in eldar and human psyker twins). That said, most Orks instinctively recognize Brain Boyz once they reach some level of prominence. This ork-gretchin duality is just as practical as symbolic. Few would suspect a gretchin of being capable of altering the behavior of a WAAAGH! If the ork Brain Boy is killed, the WAAAGH! doesn’t instantly collapse from in-fighting and the sudden loss of brainpower. If a foe knows about the gretchin Brain Boy, they are often too paranoid about the gretchin Brain Boy to notice the ork one putting a choppa in their face.

</div>
</div>