Orc Tribes

The orc tribes are the beating green heart of the greenskin race, great war-mobs of scarred, bellowing brutes who understand only one thing: the next good fight. An orc is born spoiling for battle and grows in the having of it, and the more he fights and wins, the larger and meaner he becomes, until the mightiest are green giants a head taller than any man. To an orc, a life without war is merely a tedious wait for one.

They rove wherever there is plunder and a scrap to be had (the dusty Badlands, the high mountain passes, and every frontier between), organised into tribes that follow whichever boss is presently the hardest thing on two legs. Orc politics are gloriously simple: the biggest orc gives the orders until a bigger orc settles the matter with an axe. Most of the time the tribes are their own worst enemy, squabbling among themselves as happily as against anyone else.

The Old World is spared the worst of them by that disunity, until, now and again, a boss grows big enough and wins often enough to hammer the feuding tribes into a single roaring green tide, a Waaagh! that swells as it rolls. When that happens, the Old World stops its own bickering and holds its breath, for there is no force quite like the greenskins when they finally agree on something.