The Beast

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

The Beast is one of the mightiest (if not THE mightiest) ork warbosses ever to ravage the galaxy, fought during The War of The Beast. It would not be unreasonable (if Heretical, unless you made it out as a disgusting parody of the proper order of things) to call him the "God-Emperor of Ork-manity".

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 the ork warboss of Ullanor, who it took HORUS HIMSELF TO KILL. Hell, he was so huge that, when he first appears, the space marines sent to kill him mistake 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 space football hooligans into an actual goddamn army. Let that sink in for a moment...

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 of them Imperial Fists successors, in order to fight him and his boyz. The fucking most bitter enemies in the galaxy who hated each other's guts, barring the Ultramarine fans versus the rest of the fandom during 5th edition at any time, 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.

Let it sink in: 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. Fucking wow.

And this, my friends, is why Kryptman really fucked up, because he just created a nursery for one of these things.

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. Let it sink for a second: he laid the foundations for the Ork Klans. His legacy is still lasting til now 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 (eat your heart out, Chaos Space Marines).
• And, unlike Horus, he could have won if he hadn't backed up as he just had to crash his Attack Moon, GGWP Imperium.
• He had ork DIPLOMATS. Just think about greenskins that are capable of more complex thoughts than "run/hide and then run and bash that asshat's cranium into pulp".
  • It goes far beyond that; the ork diplomat 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 back-stab each other. The guy nailed it in a way not even the worst desecration made by Chaos could have hurt the imperials' pride.
• 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 civilisation 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.
• 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 mercykill", you know you've become a sick fuck of the highest order if other sick fucks are disgusted with you. 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' quickery. If it had been caused by Chaos, they probably would have laughed at or jeered the victims. Or maybe Honsou is strangely sick.
• 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 Star Wars: The Force Awakens, basically the same thing).
• He murderfucked the Ultramarines Chapter Master, the Crimson Fist's Chapter Master, crippled a blood angels captain and gave VULKAN of all people a tough fight. Normally, any of the aforementioned before would have sufficed to kill him yet it was a hell of a battle for the four previously mentioned.
• 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.
• And the Sisters of Silence. May they rest in peace.
• And Vulkan too (temporally, as he is perpetual and all that stuff, so expect him to show up again sooner or later).
• Holy Emperor this guy is the ultimate Hero Killer, look at his death tally, Daemon Primarchs got nothing on The Beast, he would have laughed off at their attacks before using any of them as shine cloth.

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 Orks technology and fry space marines with ease. Insanely intelligent; possibly even a genius on a human scale. Him existing 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 becoming more advanced. 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.

Oh, and there were six of him, all so-called "Prime-Orks" (5 remain, since the Imperium managed to kill one ), each an Orky version of the Primarchs, leading a Legion of Orks, which are heavily implied to be the Ork Clans. 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. From what was revealed prior to their destruction the concept of the Prime-Orks (some may say Primorks, hur hur) is similar to the Emperor and his Primarchs. With one standing dominant as the beast-of-beasts with the lesser beasts being the leaders of his forces. Though all are basically Ork demi-gods in their own right and some of the most powerful beings in the setting. 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 randomly appear at the end of book ten to be killed. Though it gives some foreshadowing of how powerful individual Orks can truly become and that their kind may appear again in the M41.

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.

New rumors about 8th edition ork codex suggest Ghazzy might be elevated to fully fledged Primork status. Take it with a grain of slat or leave it.

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 fluff consistency perspective at best as WAAAGH!!! energy seem to be switching (at a given writers whim) from being kind of warp energy (that Sisters can nullyfy) to being something totally different (for example psykers, deamons 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.

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